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ANNOUNCEMENTS AND NEWS

Marquette Philosophy Presents the Work of The Guardians in Plato's Republic with Claudia Yau Assistant Professor at Northwestern University

Event Details: Friday, Jan. 31^st at 3:30 PM
in Marquette Hall Room 105
Questions: grant.silva@marquette.edu

At the heart of the political project of the Republic is an extraordinary epistemic commitment: knowledge of the Forms enables one to make one's life and political community objectively better. From this commitment stems Plato’s revisionary proposal that full philosophical competency is a necessary component of political expertise, and the more drastic claim that, in the best political arrangement, only those who know the Forms would assume political power. Yet, for all of Plato’s confidence in the practical value of knowledge of Forms, he apparently says very little about how precisely one uses knowledge of Forms to live and rule. In this talk, I argue that the key is to focus on Plato’s claim that Forms serve as models (paradeigmata) for living and ruling. Yau shows  that Plato offers a rich and philosophically plausible account of models in Republic, which he brings to bear on his understanding of how philosophers use Forms to rule.

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On Friday November 15th, Richard C. Taylor, Professor in the Marquette Philosophy Department, was awarded the Aquinas Medal for Excellence In Christian Philosophy by the International Étienne Gilson Society. The award was for the work he has done to promote Christian Philosophy through his own research and through his leadership in the Aquinas and ’the Arabs’ International Working Group. The award ceremony took place in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. See the full story on Marquette Today. 

Read the interview with Professor Taylor about the Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group just published in IPMMonthly! Read the article here.

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Recently featured on the Wisconsin Humanities podcast, Human Powered: Philosophy's own Theresa Tobin and the Education Preparedness Program (EPP)! Listen to it here!

And visit the EPP website for more information about this impactful program, including upcoming opportunities to apply for a blended course yourself! 

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Dr. Ericka Tucker recently published an article Limiting the Political Imagination: Spinoza’s Prohibition of Novelty in the Political Treatise. She will be giving a symposium talk at the North American Spinoza Society Meeting at University of South Carolina in May of 2025. The talk is titled “Epistemic Democracy and Spinoza’s Political Epistemology.”

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