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Chapter 8 - Naked Apes, Featherless Chickens, and Talking Pigs: Adventures in the Platonic History of Body-hair and Other Human Attributes

from Part II - Classical Philosophy and Rhetoric, and Their Reception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2021

Marco Fantuzzi
Affiliation:
Roehampton University, London
Helen Morales
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Tim Whitmarsh
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

This chapter examines the reception of two Platonic texts, the Protagoras and the Statesman, in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers and Plutarch’s Gryllus. It argues that part of the reason for the success of this reception lies in the way that Plato’s texts are embedded in insolvable problems such as what constitutes nudity and how one distinguishes between animal and human. Embedding a text in a wicked problem is an effective way to ensure it afterlife. In the case of Plato, the difficulty of this problem is exacerbated by his decision to ground his distinction between animal and human in the presence or absence of body-hair. Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, in different ways, draw attention to the simultaneous complexity, instability, and capaciousness of body-hair as a signifier. They are attracted to explore its potential, but are ultimately forced to reject it and the systems of thought that it supports as unsatisfactory.

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Reception in the Greco-Roman World
Literary Studies in Theory and Practice
, pp. 194 - 216
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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