Title: The spectrality of shame in Plato's Menexenus
Source document: Pro-Fil. 2023, vol. 24, iss. 1, pp. 23-33
Extent
23-33
-
ISSN1212-9097 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/pf23-1-35431
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.79832
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Rights access
open access
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The article addresses the theme of spectrality, the givenness of the other who remains here after departure as a ghost. It explores how this spectrality functions in Plato's funeral oratory in the Menexenus dialogue. In the first part, the article discusses J. Patočka's account of the specific givenness of the departed, which is experienced as a privation of a former intersubjectively intertwined life. The deceased other causes a twofold crisis. On the one hand, with the death of the other also comes the withering of part of myself, for I am unable to realise possibilities dependent on his or her presence. On the other hand, the meaning of the other's project, which becomes institutionalised through participation in the events and re-formation of the world, is endangered if no one is willing to take on and realise this meaning as one's own. The second part of the article discusses how Socrates' oratory addresses this crisis through specific temporality of the speech, one in which the past provides the present with a paradigm for appropriate civic action which is to be imitated in the future. In this context, he creatively uses the concept of shame to induce an attitude of responsibility for the polis, whose greatness is grounded in the virtuous deeds of spectrally present ancestry.
Note
This work was supported by VEGA under Grant No. 1/0020/21 Vývoj pojmu hanby v antickej a súčasnej morálnej filozofii s dôrazom na jej etické funkcie (The Evolution of the Concept of Shame in the Ancient and Contemporary Moral Philosophy with an Accent on Its Ethical Functions).
References
[1] Assmann, J. (2011): Cultural Memory and Early Civilization. Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[2] Barbaras, R. (2016): Pohyb existence. Studie k fenomenologii Jana Patočky. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart.
[3] Derderian, K. (2001): Leaving Words to Remember. Greek Mourning and Advent of Literacy. Leiden: Brill. | DOI 10.1163/9789047400455
[4] Derrida, J. (2006). Specters of Marx. The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. New York, London: Routledge.
[5] de Warren, N. (2017): Souls of the Departed. Towards a Phenomenology of the After-Life. Metodo 5(1), 205–237.
[6] Frei, J. (2023): K Patočkovu obrazu člověka. "Fenomenologie posmrtního života" a její kontexty, in Frei, J. – Sladký, P. – Šimsa, M. (eds.) Humanismus v českém filosofickém a politickém myšlení. Patočka, Masaryk, jejich kritikové, interpreti a pokračovatelé, Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart.
[7] Homéros (1962): Ílias. Bratislava: Slovenský spisovateľ.
[8] Patočka, J. (2016): Fenomenologie posmrtného života. In: Fenomenologické spisy III/2. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 130–142.
[9] Patočka, J. (2009): "Přirozený svět" v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech. In: Feno-menologické spisy II. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 265–334.
[10] Plato (1997): Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
[11] Ruin, H. (2015): Spectral Phenomenology: Derrida, Heidegger and the Problem of the Ancestral, Kattago, S. (ed.): The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 61–71.
[12] Steinbock, A. J. (2001): Interpersonal Attention Through Exemplarity. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(5–7), 179–196.
[13] Steinbock, A. J. (2014): Moral Emotions. Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
[14] Sternad, Ch. (2017): The Holding Back of Decline: Scheler, Patočka, and Ricoeur on Death and the Afterlife. Meta 9(2), 536–559.
[15] Suvák, V. (2014): Žáner epideiktických rečí a Gorgiov Palamédés. Filozofia 69(3), 256–266.
[16] Thukydides (2010): Dejiny peloponézskej vojny I-IV. Martin: Thetis.
[2] Barbaras, R. (2016): Pohyb existence. Studie k fenomenologii Jana Patočky. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart.
[3] Derderian, K. (2001): Leaving Words to Remember. Greek Mourning and Advent of Literacy. Leiden: Brill. | DOI 10.1163/9789047400455
[4] Derrida, J. (2006). Specters of Marx. The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. New York, London: Routledge.
[5] de Warren, N. (2017): Souls of the Departed. Towards a Phenomenology of the After-Life. Metodo 5(1), 205–237.
[6] Frei, J. (2023): K Patočkovu obrazu člověka. "Fenomenologie posmrtního života" a její kontexty, in Frei, J. – Sladký, P. – Šimsa, M. (eds.) Humanismus v českém filosofickém a politickém myšlení. Patočka, Masaryk, jejich kritikové, interpreti a pokračovatelé, Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart.
[7] Homéros (1962): Ílias. Bratislava: Slovenský spisovateľ.
[8] Patočka, J. (2016): Fenomenologie posmrtného života. In: Fenomenologické spisy III/2. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 130–142.
[9] Patočka, J. (2009): "Přirozený svět" v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti letech. In: Feno-menologické spisy II. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 265–334.
[10] Plato (1997): Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
[11] Ruin, H. (2015): Spectral Phenomenology: Derrida, Heidegger and the Problem of the Ancestral, Kattago, S. (ed.): The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 61–71.
[12] Steinbock, A. J. (2001): Interpersonal Attention Through Exemplarity. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(5–7), 179–196.
[13] Steinbock, A. J. (2014): Moral Emotions. Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
[14] Sternad, Ch. (2017): The Holding Back of Decline: Scheler, Patočka, and Ricoeur on Death and the Afterlife. Meta 9(2), 536–559.
[15] Suvák, V. (2014): Žáner epideiktických rečí a Gorgiov Palamédés. Filozofia 69(3), 256–266.
[16] Thukydides (2010): Dejiny peloponézskej vojny I-IV. Martin: Thetis.