Browsing by Author "Lorkovic, Edvard"

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    A philosophical defense of myth: Josef Pieper’s reading of Platonic Eschatology
    (2021) Lorkovic, Edvard
    This paper is born of an observation: Plato seems interested in, if not worried about, the afterlife, what happens after we die. The Republic, Gorgias, and Phaedo all end with a story about the world beyond finite human experience, an eschatological myth, whereas other dialogues, like the Meno, Phaedrus, and Apology, allude to the same. Although the myths in the Republic and the Phaedo incorporate more in addition, including apparent accounts of the structure of the universe (Republic616d-617d and Phaedo108d-113c), each of these stories represents an ostensibly theological event: the judgment of souls by divine, which is also to say completely wise and just, judges. Put simply, these myths are about the afterlife. This seemingly theological feature occupies a prominent place in otherwise philosophical texts: in the Gorgias, Socrates shares the myth with Callicles, a moral relativist and crass political realist who is unwilling to be persuaded by philosophical arguments that an unjust life is never profitable and that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it; in the Republic, Socrates concludes his defense of justice as the best kind of good, namely as something good in itself and for its results, by recounting a story told by Er, a warrior who was permitted to bear witness to the judgment of souls and return to the world of the living to report it, which shows that justice is rewarded in the afterlife even when it is not beneficial in the here and now; and in the Phaedo, Socrates tells the story to his friends after attempting to persuade them that the soul is undying and shortly before drinking the poison that will end his life, as a way, it would appear, of assuaging his friends’ fear of death and worry for his soul. In each case, Socrates treats the content of the eschatological myth seriously and connects it to the arguments that preceded.
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    Charles Taylor and the sources of responsibility: authenticity as a non-subjective moral ideal
    (2009) Lorkovic, Edvard
    Dr. Lorkovic discusses the notion of authenticity, a key element informing the interface between the family and the state. Drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, Dr. Lorkovic addresses the joint concepts of self and authenticity, the ideal of being true to oneself. While being true to oneself would suggest a private moral subjectivism, Dr. Lorkovic suggests that the shared moral world is a condition of the existence of the self and thus of authenticity and that, therefore, being true to oneself necessarily involves responsibility for others.
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    Josef Pieper and the recovery of leisure in the workaday world
    (2022) Rundell, Lauren; Lorkovic, Edvard
    In this paper, I look at Josef Pieper’s conceptualization of what he calls “total work”. In the world of total work, one’s value is reduced to their practical value to society. In this world, Pieper argues that we lose our ability to realize our full humanity by limiting ourselves to only the concerns of the workaday. The missing element that Pieper brings forward is that of leisure. Leisure, Pieper explains, is a time and place in which we are able to be fully human, free from concerns of the everyday. By recovering the practice of leisure, Pieper believes we can recultivate that which makes us distinctly human and reclaim our value as more than just our output. One of the activities Pieper proposes to promote leisure, the example that I will be focusing on here, is his example of philosophy. When properly practiced, Pieper argues that philosophy can lead to the realization of one’s humanity through experiencing a deeper understanding and affirmation of the world. Through looking at Pieper’s writings on total work, leisure, and philosophy, I will argue that the University should be a space dedicated to the fulfillment of the individual by distinguishing it from concerns of the everyday. I will then argue that this should be done by grounding academic disciplines in philosophy and practicing them in a philosophical way. By reuniting the University with its foundation in philosophy, the university can be re-established as a place of leisure, where one can realize their full humanity.
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    The misuse and abuse of words: reflecting on misology with Plato and Josef Pieper
    (2020) Lorkovic, Edvard
    Concerning the apparent abuse of the word “eternity,” Romano Guardini observes: “A word is not merely a sign to convey a meaning. It is a living thing, embodying spirit. In company with other words it makes up language, and language is the room in which man lives.”[1] If humans live in language, then it matters very much how we use it; we ought to be careful about how we speak and write. Guardini adds: “When a word decays, it is not merely that we become uncertain of each other’s meaning. One of the forms that compose our life has perished. A signpost has become illegible. A light has been extinguished and our intellectual day made darker.”[2] If the corruption of a word impoverishes our intellectual lives by obscuring the portion of reality to which the word refers, the corruption of language more broadly would have a devastating effect on human life by darkening reality as such. The misuse of words not only confuses speech and compromises communication; it obstructs access to truth. Philosophy has much to say, of course, about language. I am not, however, concerned herein with the philosophy of language. Instead, my concern is moral and political: how are words related to human life, and what are the consequences, for persons, of the misuse of language? Although these questions are perennial, and are almost certainly particularly salient today, my approach is ostensibly historical, treating Plato and one of his twentieth century readers, the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper. What can we learn from them about the misuse of words?
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    The pursuit of mathematical truths: a rich and meaningful aesthetic experience of inquiry
    (2017) Ulliac, Kevin; Lorkovic, Edvard
    Given a Deweyan philosophy of mathematics, education, and of the nature of experience, the pursuit of mathematical truths can be classified as rich and meaningful aesthetic experiences that are ends in themselves. My argument is that mathematical experiences of inquiry can have a meaningful impact on an individual that is of similar effect on an individual as a work of art, such as a painting, or a novel, or a piece of music. The nature of mathematical inquiry is to expand an individual’s conscious experience of themselves, their relation to other people, and their relation to the world at large.