George A. Miller
When George A. Miller died in 1951 he left an estate of almost a million dollars to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "to be used . . . for educational purposes . . . other than current general operating expenses." More Information
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Support for this series as a whole is provided by:
Office of the Chancellor, Office of Equal Opportunity and Access, Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, The Center for Advanced Study, George A. Miller Programs Committee and Peggy Harris Memorial Fund, The Council of Deans, The David Gottlieb Memorial Foundation, and The Graduate College.
Love and Beauty in Plato's Symposium: 'Only in the Contemplation of Beauty is Human Life Worth Living'
September 13, 2007
Thursday, 7:30 p.m.
Third Floor, Levis Faculty Center
919 West Illinois Street, Urbana
Alexander Nehamas
Carpenter Professor of Humanities, Princeton University
This lecture takes three ideas from Socrates' famous speech on love (eros) in Plato's Symposium and advances them as providing a plausible contemporary understanding of beauty: first, love desires to possess beauty; second, love desires to 'give birth' in beauty's presence; and third, love drives lovers to place beauty in ever broader contexts. These ideas bear remarkable similarities to Nietzsche's views on beauty and illuminate the importance of beauty as a value in the general economy of life.
This presentation keynotes the conference Life, the Universe, Everything — and More: Plato's Timaeus Today held September 13 – 16. For more information visit www.timaeus.uiuc.edu.
In conjunction with:
Beckman Institute
Center for Advanced Study
Center for Global Studies
Center for Writing Studies
College of Education
College of Engineering
College of Fine and Applied Arts
College of Law
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
College of Medicine
College of Nursing
Department of Anthropology
Department of Astronomy
Department of Chemistry
Department of the Classics
Department of English
Department of French
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Department of History
Department of Landscape Architecture
Department of Linguistics
Department of Mathematics
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
Department of Philosophy
Department of Physics
Department of Political Science
Department of Psychology
Department of Speech Communication
Gender and Women’s Studies Program
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
International Programs and Studies: William and Flora Hewlett International Endowment
Office of the Chancellor
Office of the Provost
Program in Comparative and World Literature
Program in Medieval Studies
Program for the Study of Religion
Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials
School of Architecture
School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics
Spurlock Museum
Unit for Cinema Studies
Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
University Library
Champaign-Urbana's Greek Community
John Templeton Foundation
Robert D. Novak
Parmenides Publishing
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