relationship that exists between the student and teacher

by tiffanysd
The sexual act exhibits identification as both a unity and a division. The two become one, but the unity is not a monism. Radier intercourse exists as particulars in relation. However, in the Socratic paradigm, Phaedrus's body identity is subsumed under the body of knowledge that belongs to philosophy. Recognized as a mere imitation of true beauty, his beauty no longer has power to wield influence over the older philosopher by inciting eros in him. As Burke has illustrated, unity and division existing simultaneously produce a tension, and this tension provides the ground for rhetoric. He says: "But put identification and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric" (RM, 25). Socrates attempts to erase the rhetorical situation by creating a coterminous identity between Phaedrus's beauty and true philosophic beauty as the proper object of eros. Phaedrus's beauty has no ontological significance of its own. Its worth is found in its tiffany necklaces abiUty to point away from itself to universal Beauty. Thus, Socrates attempts to totalize the discourse in terms of bodies and words.

If Socrates were to engage in sexual behavior with his student, the lines of power would be obscured. The beauty of Phaedrus would be given the same status that knowledge is given tiffany accessories in relation to Socrates, and in the sexual exchange they each would owe something to the other. Burke considers this dynamic relationship of collaboration and asks: "When two men coUaborate in an enterprise to which they contribute different kinds of services and from which they derive different amounts and kinds of profit, who is to say, once and for aU, just where 'cooperation' ends and one partner's 'exploitation' of the other begins?" (RM, 25). However, even though Socrates does not submit himself to the beauty of Phaedrus in the sexual act, Phaedrus still exudes a kind of power. The objectification of his beauty is necessary for the philosophic dialogue to progress and serves as the topic of philosophical investigation. Therefore, even in the philosophic arena, Socrates has not been able to completely disassociate "the self's relation to itself (Davidson, 119).

If Phaedrus accepts the arguments of Socrates for the primacy of philosophy, his beauty wiU stiU have a relation to himself. Actually, it wiU contribute to his subjectivity in another way; it wiU give him the subject role of philosopher. Arnold I. Davidson interprets this phenomenon in Foucault s ethics: "Our 'technologies of the seU,' die ways in which we relate ourselves to ourselves, contribute to the forms in which our subjectivity is constituted and experienced, as weU as to die forms in which we govern our thought and conduct" (119). Phaedrus's identity tiffany rings is estabUshed in his abiUty to self-reflect on the objectification of his own beauty, either through the sexual act or as the subject matter of philosophical inquiry. Thus, humans exist as the topics of their own discourse; they reside in the tension between knowing and being made known.

By reading the Phaedrus using the insights of Burke and Foucault, we may better appreciate how rhetoric and philosophy can at tiffany bracelets times work together. Having a philosophical construct that does not separate what we say from how we say it, opens up the possibility for examining how context and content inform one another. Foucault's notion of technologies of die self and Burke's idea of identification demonstrate that authences influence how knowledge is conceptualized and disseminated. The significance of reading the Phaedrus using Burke and Foucault's rhetorical insights in this way is that we can better understand the actual relationship that exists between the student and teacher from the standpoint of how knowledge is produced and provoked within the identity of die student as philosopher.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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