Mark D. Jordan

Quotes

• “The end of philosophic education, on many ancient views, is not a body of propositions to be measured against an equally propositional and already apprehended truth. The end is, rather, the having (hexis, habitus) of abiding intellectual excellences, of a power (arete, virtus) to think truthfully.”
• “Aristippus is credited with having said that those who stop short of philosophy in the preparatory studies are like Penelope's suitors: they marry the maids, but not the mistress.”
• “The claim of philosophy to be about the whole can be secured only if the many "ordinary" languages in the whole can be taken over by an act of persuasion into a language about the whole.”
• “Socratic trustworthiness depends upon devices of irony, both spoken and acted. … The irony of words prevents Socrates from being taken as the source of doctrines. The irony of actions prevents Socrates from being made into the literal founder of a philosophic school. … The ironic voice does not seek to possess the student, but directs him, lustlessly, to the desire of philosophy itself .”
• “Porphyry is right to suggest that Plotinus' teaching "voice" has about it something particular (idios), speaking as if inspired and from his own experience rather than out of the tradition. The rhetorical character of the "voice" is precisely that of an autobiographical urgency in the attainment of the One: "Attempt to lead the god in you back to the godhead in the all."”
• “Academic writing excuses itself from rhetorical care in the selfless service of some precise truth—and then deforms our only means for speaking truth.”

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Key dates

Born

1953

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Wikidata facts

Instance of

human

Family name

Jordan

Gender

male

Citizenship

United States

Occupation

philosopher

Employer

Emory University

Award

Fulbright Scholarship

Official website

www.hds.harvard.edu/people/mark-d-jordan

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