The Disordered Soul and Presidency of Donald J. Trump: Platonic Reflections on 45 D. R. Koukal University of Detroit Mercy
Thank you all for coming today. I want to also extend my thanks to Stuart Patterson and the Shimer Great Books School for accepting my offer to come and share some thoughts with you. I’m very happy to be among kindred spirits again, and also excited to experience the latest iteration of Shimer College—the most itinerant institution of higher learning I know of, and one that persists in existing in one form or another against ridiculously long odds. Whenever I have visited in the past, despite the different places, the younger students, the different faculty, etc., I have always found an atmosphere I have recognized. I also want to express my sincerest gratitude to North Central for recognizing the value of what Shimer College has been offering its students for so long, and allowing it the possibility of persisting. To flirt with a cliché, Shimer allowed me to discover the vast largeness of the world, and it means the world to me that North Central has stepped forward to keep this door of discovery open. But before getting to the talk proper, I need to address the following question: what business do I have, holding forth on Plato? You should know from the outset that I am no Plato scholar, and that my area of philosophical research is actually phenomenology. Still, over the past 25 years of teaching lower division survey courses, I’d like to think I’ve developed a familiarity with Plato’s style of thought; I’ve even come to regard him as a kind of friend. So, you might think of what I am offering you today as the product of a friendly but philosophical dialogue that has occupied my mind for the past several months, as I have tried to grapple—both as a philosopher and a citizen—with the dangerous situation that has overtaken our polis since
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© 2018 D. R. Koukal