Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull.

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What does the love of speeches have to do with love simply?  Is there human love without language?  Does the language of love breed the love of language, or vice versa?  If the ability to evoke love by way of words is a power, is this power – to re-present things either as they are or (by playing a game of mimetic manipulation) to make them appear other than as they are -- the origin of politics? And how does this power turn speech into action, rather as the sight of the beloved moves one to deeds of daring or desperation or devotion?  Why does the city, the polis, in which politics comes to be, seem to bring forth both the sophist and the philosopher, and why do they look alike to the city?  Plato’s Gorgias gives us a conversation between the two and raises a question about what they look like to the young one aspiring to the life of a citizen.  In the Symposium, fashionable citizens drink to love by speaking about it, and one wonders if love makes an appearance, perhaps only a cameo, and whether the conditions present in the conversation are ripe for its entrance.  Are love and speech coming together or flying apart?  In the Phaedrus, we go outside the walls of the city, to enact somehow, in a one-on-one conversation about love and writing, what the city seems to need within, if it is truly to be one: friendship -- upon the gentle ground of which love and speech may find a place to meet, if they can devote themselves to the love of wisdom.  Can rhetoric (child of the goddess Persuasion?) find a happy home in the city after all?

Online seminars in this series will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be mailed the texts. Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This ten-week series is $600. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.