Brennan McDavid
1.4K posts
Brennan McDavid
@profbmcd
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy. Generalist/Fox. Plato-obsessed Aristotelian.
Orange, CA Katılım Şubat 2013
340 Takip Edilen389 Takipçiler
@millerman I’m open to the possibility that I’m just too old now to land the joke.
English
@millerman This passage is such a howler. I used to delight in reading it aloud to my students. But a few years ago their responses shifted from puckish smirks to prudish eye-avoidance, and now to a kind of virginal unknowingness. It falls like an inside joke that they aren’t in on.
English
Socrates asks Cephalus this question at the start of Plato's Republic, and Cephalus replies that what's good about getting older is that you feel the mad sting of sexual desire less than when you were younger. "Old age brings great peace and freedom from such things."
Joe Flint@JBFlint
Mick Jagger sums it up in NYT interview: Question: "What’s good about getting older, physically or metaphysically?" Mick: "There’s nothing good about it."
English
@ashleytrubin @BrandonWarmke “Just think of all the things you’ll learn!” -J.S. Mill (paraphrase)
English
@BrandonWarmke A colleague of mine actually asked during an HR training session on the do’s and don’ts of hiring: “what if I see a candidate’s social media and I don’t like their views?” The answer was not nearly as strong as it should have been.
English
Junior faculty member: "His views on immigration make me feel uncomfortable and I just really don't think this is what our students need right now."
How many colleagues will start an argument about this to defend the applicant? This itself explains the situation academia is in.
H S Joshi@jon_stewartmill
2/ All it takes to quash an otherwise excellent candidate's application in the current ethos is one or two committe members taking issue. Others will go along because they don't want to alienate their colleagues--especially on ideologically salient matters.
English
I started reading 20 years ago and I've been in a loop ever since.
Michael Millerman@millerman
My favorite book is Plato's Republic
English
A test for whether students are ready to use AI:
If you aren’t playing David’s part here, then you have no conception of the instrument.
English
@dwaldenwrites @HSRdirector Absolutely agree. This is why I brood in my office, dreaming of never-realizable syllabi that force students to do things like police ride-alongs. Sigh.
English
I was recently at a meeting for educators. A professor spoke of classes for college students—for freshmen it was “how to do college”. for seniors it was “how to do life” —like how to sit with someone who is grieving etc because the kids had not learned these things in their homes
Josh@JD_Quotes2017
Always go to the funeral. Always go to the hospital. You don't need to know what to say. In times of profound crisis, people don't remember your words, they only remember whether you showed up for them at their lowest moment.
English
@SWGoldman Now I'm sad I looked. It doesn't even admit of the pleasure of having my biases confirmed.
English
@JamesWHankins1 I think her argument is more subtle than this. She argues that, in the Laws, Plato takes up the thorny question of how *obedience to the law* fits with the development of virtue. He had not faced that question in Republic, on her reading.
English
Julia Annas says that the Republic generates the ideas and the Laws represents the prudent application of the ideas to an actual society. No significant 'development' of P's political principles, in other words, btw Republic and Laws. 'Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond.'
eburke@JamesWHankins1
I generally agree with the view of Julia Annas that the Republic is a thought experiment. I also think there is a lot of sly humor in the Republic. The boys are throwihg a lot of balls in the air once Thrasymachus retires from the scene. They are trying to shock, trying to shake readers out of their prepossessions, by 'following the argument wherever it leads.' Things get serious again at the end of course, a bit like the beginning and the end of Boccaccio's Decameron. Happy to be corrected by real specialists on the text, though I have been teaching it to undergrads for about 45 years.
English
@olivertraldi @jjosephporter Wait are you in dc right now too? Can we all get together on Tuesday or Wednesday?
English
Brennan McDavid retweetledi
Why is it ‘cancelled’ in the U.K. but ‘canceled’ in the U.S.?
Because we gave them that L in 1776.
English
I think we are sleeping on ostracism. It lets us satisfy the urge to purge, but it’s temporally bound, so everyone gets time to think it out.
Surprise bonus: sometimes these banishments issue in great books like The History of the Peloponnesian War or The Divine Comedy.
Hollis Robbins@anecdotal
Excommunicate is a better concept than cancel. Discuss.
English
@zenahitz Augustine's pondus consuetudinis carnalis in Confessions 7.17.
Română
I'm so honored to have been included in this series! Hug America big tomorrow! Re-read the Declaration! 🎆
Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Ed@ufhamilton
Incoming Hamilton School Professor Brennan McDavid recently spoke at @stjohnscollege as part of its "Thinking About America" summer series, presenting on Adam Smith's case for public education in commercial society and liberal education as a civic enterprise.🇺🇸 You can watch Dr. McDavid's lecture here: youtube.com/live/LYeHT7ySV… #UFHamilton
English
Interesting, but misleading, sketch of Plato's political theory by @LayWilliams. In reality, Plato isn't a bleeding heart about inequality. He makes property classes legible, not flat. He enfranchises classes unevenly. He thinks the rich are *better*.
nytimes.com/2026/06/21/opi…
English
Indeed. This is *essential*. We are bad at seeing ourselves. We need to look into other selves. Hit up great book Alcibiades 1 for this one trick.
Zena Hitz@zenahitz
I think there's a typo! Let me fix it. The essential thing about the Great Books is that many of them take place before the conditions of modernity: industrialization, modern media, mass scale cities and institutions, the therapeutic/managerial state, and modern technology.
English