This dissertation is guided by two central questions. The first question is "Is the War on Terror inevitable?" By comparing the language used by President Bush in a speech given on September 20, 2001 to the language used by Homer in the Iliad, particularly his depiction of the shield of Achilles in Book 18, the War on Terror can be recast against a backdrop of mythology rather than fact. It is a tale we tell ourselves about the world, and its status as inevitable is far less convincing. The second guiding question is "How is the appearance of inevitability to be mitigated or resisted?" The second stage of the dissertation addresses the concept of mimesis (representation) as it appears in Plato's Republic and in the work of Baudrillard, as means by which to resist the power of the shield. As critical tools, mimesis and simulacra extend the promise of critical distance, thereby allowing the "thus it is" claim to be understood as an illusion. However, mimesis and simulacra tend to maintain an underlying "thus it is" of their own. The thirds stage of the argument will challenge the "thus it is" through a discussion of Odysseus and Nietzsche, both of whom teach that life is poiesis. The final stage will turn to the concept of ekphrasis, the verbal representation of a non-verbal representation, in order to develop it as a tool useful for critical theorists. Ekphrasis has the advantage of both recognizing the power of mimetic representation and disrupting it. The dissertation will conclude with an ekphrastic reading of the September 20, 2001 speech.

The argument in Plato's Philebus presents three successive formulations of the hedonist principle. Commentators often take Socrates' argument in the dialogue to be dealing solely with the third formulation, which states that pleasure, rather than intelligence, is closer in nature to the good. I argue that, nonetheless, in the dialogue Socrates remained concerned to provide a direct refutation of the first formulation, that is, of the straightforward claim that pleasure is the good for all living beings. Chapter One ascribes to the Philebus a conception of intrinsic good, which is then shown to underlie the dialogue's notion of true pleasures. Chapter Two examines in detail the problem of the “one and many” concerning pleasure, and argues that this is the problem of forms in relation to other forms, rather than that of forms in relation to particulars. This interpretation is the one that is consistent both with Protarchus' understanding of hedonism in the dialogue, and with the dialogue's methodological passages, i.e., the passages on the “god-given method” and on the four ontological kinds. In Chapter Three, it is shown how division into forms is required by Socrates' conception of the nature of pleasure. Some of the forms of pleasure are ways in which falsity is admitted into the nature of pleasure. Three accounts of false anticipatory pleasures—those of Kenny and Gosling, Mooradian, and Penner—are examined in some detail.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.