Euthyphro and the Logic of Miasma

Euthyphro is a Socratic interlocutor claiming enormous religious expertise, while his portrayal in the eponymous dialogue raises questions the reliability of his beliefs. This paper closely examines how Euthyphro justifies his case against his father, identifying an argument that relies on the concept of miasma. In so far as miasma is considered in isolation, Euthyphro has a good argument. Unfortunately, there is more than miasma at stake when considering why one could prosecute one’s own parent. Introducing the other relevant concepts, honor and shame, we find his case reflects a dilemma at the source of ancient Greek religious thought. It would not be possible for Euthyphro or anyone else to know what to do in his case

Editorial: BILETA special issue: Technology and Legal Education

Fragmentation and convergence are two discoursal lenses that have been used to view changes that have taken place in the domains of legal services,the legal profession, regulation and legal education. While they may appear orthogon al, the relationships between them are intimate, sophisticated, constantly shifting and require much more analysis. In this paper I shall argue that law schools need to engage with both processes for they are powerful actants upon the way we perceive our schools and our roles within them. They are also powerful forces upon what and how we teach, and the nature of the knowledge that is the focus of our heuristics. To exemplify this argument and to begin to examine its strength as a tool for analysis I shall focus on one area of legal education, namely the three fields of legal information literacies, legal informatics and legal writing. I shall argue that the sum of the convergence of all three would significantly improve the educational effects of the parts in our curricula. I shall explore how studies in New Media on media convergence give us models for such convergence, and can reveal the educational effects that the process may bring about

Bitter Knowledge: Socrates and Teaching by Disillusionment

This essay examines Socratic teaching by investigating one aspect of my own practice in law school today; its companion essay, The Poverty of Socratic Questioning: Asking and Answering in the Meno, examines Socratic teaching by investigating Socrates\u27 practice in the Meno. They are meant to complement, and to complicate, one another. They also are meant to extend and to supplement some of the views of Socratic teaching expressed in two earlier essays\u27ofmine: Must Virtue Be Taught?, 37 J. LEGAL EDUC. 495 (1987); and NeuerMind the Manner of My Speech, 14 LEGAL STUD. F. 253 (1990)

Speaking the Truth: Supporting Authentic Advocacy with Professional Identity Formation

When law students are asked to articulate legal rules in a persuasive communication such as a brief, they may experience internal tension. Their version of the rule, as framed to benefit a particular client’s position, may be different from the way they would articulate the rule if they were not taking on an advocate’s role. The conflict between those two versions of a legal rule leads some students to wonder if advocacy itself is deceptive, if an advocate’s role requires one to sacrifice ethics for success, and if ancient Greek philosophers were correct when they derided persuasive communication as “trickery and magic,” and criticized advocates for making arguments that were “artfully written but not truthfully meant.” This tension is not unique to students. All advocates must ask themselves whether they can provide a true and accurate version of the law (truthful law) and simultaneously articulate a version of the law that will help their clients. This question speaks to the very nature of law and what it means to be a lawyer. If the question is not successfully resolved, students and lawyers are more susceptible to the cynicism and discontent that permeates the legal profession.Using Plato’s denunciation of rhetoric and rhetoricians as a starting point, Part I of this Article will explore how the first year of law school may create and exacerbate tension between law students’ desire to advocate on behalf of their clients and their desire to truthfully communicate the law. Part II will explore how law school could resolve this tension with an explicit discussion of legal determinacy and the lawyer’s role in creating law: what students need to hear, when they need to hear it, and where that conversation might be placed within the curriculum. The Article will identify the developing area of professional identity formation as a natural location for an effective discussion, which would ideally occur within the first year of studies. In that discussion, law students can explore a view of lawyers as meaning-makers and truth-tellers: rhetoricians who understand and are faithful to the true essence of a law but are also able to create alternatives within the scope of that true law. Students and lawyers can integrate their own identities into this professional identity, and maintain authenticity in their advocacy

Ancient Greek Psychology and the Modern Mind-Body Debate, 2nd Edition

Ancient Greek Psychology and the Modern Mind-Body Debate offers an overview of Platonic-Aristotelian thought on man with a view to considering what its alternative conceptual framework may contribute to the modern debate which is dominated by the scepticism confronting modern reductionism. The mind-body problem is central to the modern philosophical and cultural debate because we cannot understand what man is until we understand what consciousness is and how it interacts with the body. Although many suggestions have been offered, no convincing account has as yet appeared. Perhaps it was all mistaken ideology from the start? A crucial (and fatal?) distinction was made by modern natural science in the 17th century between the subjective/qualitative and the objective/quantitative. The ancient Greeks, notably Plato and Aristotle, focused not on consciousness and experience, but on goal-directed reason/form, and the contrast was not mechanical matter, but the particular. The latter owed its intelligibility and being to reason and form and did not, therefore, constitute a realm of its own. Hence the ancient picture of man did not fall apart either: the soul is conceived of as a dynamic-telic aspect of the human organism. Considering the problems and consequent scepticism that confronts modern reductionism and the recent appearance of holistic ideology in many areas it is suggested that we take a fresh look at the alternative conceptual framework of our ancient Greek ancestors

On matriculation certificate in further education : notes on how to binge and question syllabi topics : an excursus on Systems of Knowledge

In education, the common practice is for students to demonstrate what they know in examinations. The grading system makes more noticeable this basic fact. This paper, in its first section, considers the two-year course students complete in a sixth form to qualify for a Matriculation Certificate that holds two passes at Advanced level and four at Intermediate level. To this extent it questions whether students qualify for their Matriculation Certificate by digesting a vast amount of information from six subjects at the cost of depriving themselves of other abilities, like the capacity to bring to fruition their relationships with others or the ability to understand matters of public interest. For this purpose, this paper measures and explores whether such condensed coursework dulls creative and inventive skills. The second section of the paper investigates whether Systems of Knowledge offers an alternative path about how students engage with people and the world in a critical, creative, and innovative fashion.peer-reviewe