With support, young adolescents crave the challenge of learning about serious ideas through serious literature. Middle-level learners also enjoy opportunities to become immersed in activities that foster a deeper understanding of serious ideas. After discussing the value of using serious narrative literature, a rationale is provided for supporting…

I attempted to argue that, for Aristotle, art can be understood to have instrumental consequences directed toward external ends affecting ethical praxis. First, I considered the philosophical case that art, for Aristotle, affects ethical practice. Second, the non-philosophical literature related to some of the possible usages of art is sampled.…

This dissertation investigates the distribution of the pronominal clitics and the modal particle [Special characters omitted.] in fifth-century Greek (more specifically in Herodotus, the tragedians, and Aristophanes), which is typically assumed to be governed by Wackernagel's Law. It argues for a prosody-dominant model of clitic distribution,…

The intention of this work is to show that Plotinus' metaphysics, his theory of Intellect, can be interpreted as a philosophy of the sign. The fact that Plotinus describes Intellect, the world of real beings, as a sign or a trace of the One is well-known, and we use this aspect in our work. However, what is even more important from our perspective…

I argue in this paper that the ability of art to express a holistic experience of life challenges the abstractness and formulaic tendencies of some philosophical ethics. The paper examines the presentation of death in three poet-playwrights--Sophocles's "Oedipus Rex," Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and John Donne's "Meditation XVII." Sophocles's…

The implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) across the country necessitates revising the English curriculum, asking teachers to incorporate and analyze more perspectives in the classroom as society becomes more diverse. The authors wondered if this reform might provide an opportunity to examine social equity by studying an anchor…

We suggest that Book Five of the "Republic", where Plato discusses the status of women in the guardian class, is a superb source of Platonic insight. For it is precisely the discussion of women that is most vulnerable to co-optation by the modern vernacular of interest, a vernacular to which the "Republic" is vehemently opposed. If students come…

The proverb "chalepa ta kala" ("fine things are difficult") is invoked in three dialogues in the Platonic corpus: "Hippias Major," "Cratylus" and "Republic." In this paper, I argue that the context in which the proverb arises reveals Socrates' considerable pedagogical dexterity as he uses the proverb to rebuke his interlocutor in one dialogue but…

How has philosophical reflection contributed to the ways that we think about teaching? In this paper I explore two forms of narrative reflection on teaching--genealogies and portraits. Genealogies tell a story about the origins of teaching; portraits find expression in myths and other narrative forms. I explore two genealogies of teaching--one…

In a thematic study she calls The Hero's Journey, the author introduces the classical archetype of the hero and the journey of the hero with Homer's "The Odyssey." After all, the wily tactician dreams up the idea for the wooden horse trick, thereby winning the war for the Greeks. He visits hell and, against all odds, makes it back. He defeats the…

This article applies the paradigm of Black insurgency and social uplift to the teaching of the Greek and Latin classics at Black colleges and universities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It demonstrates how study of the classics helped construct the tools of Black agency by imparting three important lessons: the knowledge that…

The polymath Empedocles has not been considered a prominent figure in the history of rhetorical studies nor contemporary appropriations of antiquity, despite the reported attribution of his invention of rhetoric by Aristotle. This neglect is understandable, as the surviving fragments of Empedocles' work provide no significant reference to rhetoric…

"Tragedy," both in what the author calls the strict and nuclear ancient Greek sense of the term (which does not imply that tragedy is clearly and distinctly defined, even in ancient Greece) and in the looser, derived sense of the word, has a long and compelling history. It is not only true that tragedy as practice and performance has a…

The teaching of classical Greek dramas is integral to drama education at the University of Pretoria. In the past few years these dramas increasingly faced the danger of becoming "foreign"/irrelevant to modern day students. The introduction of performance practice to teach these dramas brought a whole new dimension to teaching and…

The contemporary university is an uncomfortable amalgamation of ambitions once held by a variety of educational institutions. It owes debts to the philosophical schools of Ancient Greece and Rome, to the monasteries of the Middle Ages, to the theological colleges of Paris, Padua, and Bologna and to the research laboratories of early modern…