Two day workshop: Friday 6pm to 9pm; Saturday 10am to 4pm
Led by: Tim Addey, Chair of The Prometheus Trust and Luis Castañeda. Mr. Castañeda is a freelance designer and teaches Visual Communication at Florida State University.
This workshop, part of a comprehensive research and educational project, offers a complimentary approach to studying the Platonic doctrine via the Prometheus Trust and to help its “…advancement of education by the teaching of all subjects concomitant with a comprehensive and liberal education for the development of self-determined, rational, integral and versatile individuals.”
Participants will study a selected Platonic dialogue, engage in brainstorming sessions, and then propose and design diagrams intended to represent and illuminate the philosophical ideas or concepts found within the text. The essence of this project and workshop is to revive a creative approach to philosophical inquiry by re-establishing the use of symbolic language as a means to access and engage with the Intellect.
This first workshop will be structured yet experimental in nature, serving as an initial framework for engaging Platonic concepts through design. It will also help inform and shape the development of future workshops.
As this is the first of these workshops we have decided to start with Plato’s First Alcibiades: the Platonic schools of late antiquity considered this dialogue as the most appropriate introduction Platonic philosophy. It centres on the Delphic exhortation “know thyself” and touches on fundamentals of Socratic dialectic, the nature of the human self, the relation of the soul to body, important elements of metaphysics, and perhaps even hints of the mystery celebrations of Eleusis.
Our Friday evening session will open with a short talk on the dialogue, opening out, we hope, with a general discussion of some of its important points.
On the Saturday we will use the starting points of the dialogue to explore how a deeper understanding of them can be aided with diagrams and other symbolic representations.
There are no fees payable (although donations are welcome in order to help with expenses).
Please register as soon as possible: the workshop has a maximum of 10 participants, and a minimum of 4 in order to be viable.
Register by emailing the Trust: info@prometheustrust.co.uk
We will confirm the running of the workshop by July 1st.