Tragic Ethics: What to Do When Gods Set Bad Examples, with Paul Woodruff
Summary:
Join us for an afternoon with Professor Paul Woodruff, University of Texas at Austin, and one of America's foremost interpreters of Plato, Thucydides, and other Greek thinkers from the ancient world.
Description:
How should we live if we believe that human life is vulnerable to misery and death, while we cannot rely on gods to do right by us? Paul Woodruff develops the concept of "tragic ethics" in order to answer this question. The philosophy of Plato repudiates Greek tragic poetry as supporting beliefs in impulsive and shameless gods, and in doing so turns away from virtues like compassion, reverence, and good judgment, which often show favorably in tragic poetry. Woodruff is a philosopher and dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.