Michael Davis Discusses Lesser Hippias

Michael Davis, professor of Philosophy from Sarah Lawrence College, discussed with Baylor faculty and students his paper, "Lies Like the Truth: On Plato's Lesser Hippias" on October 18, 2013. The dialogue, he argued, raises through its treatment of Odysseus, "a man of many ways" (polutropos), the problem of the soul : How can what is "somehow all beings" show itself as what it is? He also linked this question of the soul with our experience of poetry and philosophy.

Davis has written widely on ancient philosophy and poetry, including commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics (The Poetry of Philosophy, 1992) and on Aristotle's Politics (The Politics of Philosophy, 1996), The Autobiography of Philosophy, 2000, and most recently The Soul of the Greeks: An Inquiry (University of Chicago, 2012). A collection of his essays, Wonderlust: Ruminations on Liberal Education, was published in 2006.