Today I taught my grad seminar and then rushed over to Greg Hall in the philosophy department for the first meeting of a faculty reading group on Plato's Timaeus, and I have this to say:
Going from a room full of smart, energetic people who have read the same set of texts and have been building a conversation for a few weeks and who really take seriously the challenge of being open minded, believe in the value of augmentation, and thrill at combining knowledges across the table to make something new, moving from that to a room full of smart people who have read one small section of one text and have arrived ready to defend their own readings to the end--defend them to the end!--can be, well, stunning.
