Journal articles on the topic 'Platon – Et Socrate'

Comment penser à l’égalité et à la différence entre les genres au domaine politique ? Dans La République de Platon Socrate-Badiou, dans son dialogue avec le personnage féminin d’Amaranta, il critique les conséquences de cet égalité absolue entre les gouvernants - philosophes établie il y a plus de deux mille ans par le Socrate de Platon. De cette façon, la femme semble acquérir le papier symbolique d’articulation entre une dimension publique et privée

Dans cet essai, l’auteur établit un parallélisme entre d’une part, la naissance de la philosophie comme discipline et l’importance que la relation Platon-Socrate y a jouée et, d’autre part, la naissance de la psychanalyse et la relation amoureuse (transfert) que fut celle de Freud à l’égard de Fliess. Ce faisant, il nous convie à une lecture attentive et renouvelée de leur célèbre correspondance et du Banquet de Platon.

On ne s'est jamais interrogé sur la portée de la philosophie d'Hermocrate, le reclus du Triomphe de l'amour , philosophie qui sera remise en cause par l'arrivée d'une jeune princesse dans sa retraite. Nous proposons un rapprochement avec le Banquet de Platon et nous relevons des ressemblances éclairantes entre les deux textes; elles résident essentiellement dans les schémas dramatiques et dans le narcissisme des projets pédagogiques des philosophes, Socrate et Hermocrate. Au contraire d'Alcibiade, dont l'intervention reste inefficace dans le dialogue de Platon, Léonide-Phocion, chez Marivaux, réussit à séduire l'élève du philosophe et rend celui-ci à un monde imparfait marqué des cicatrices du désir.

À partir du Gorgias de Platon, nous montrons que l'objet de la réfutation socratique est le discours, soit-il le produit des croyances de l'interlocuteur ou non, mais que le but de Socrate est principalement de conduire l’énonciateur refuté à se disposer effectivement à connaître quelque chose et à parler ou agir selon les déterminations de cette nouvelle connaissance.

La psychologie platonicienne de la République semble être affectée par une contradiction en relation avec la thèse de la tripartition de l’âme. Celle-ci est esquissée dans le livre IV et est toujours présente dans les livres VIII et IX ; Socrate semble pourtant l’abandonner lorsque, dans le livre X, il introduit la thèse selon laquelle l’âme est une réalité double, et peu après parvient, dans la suite du livre X, à démontrer son immortalité, en la décrivant comme une réalité simple, unique et unitaire. J’essaierai de montrer que ces changements de perspective dépendent du point de vue assumé par Platon dans son traitement de la nature et de la fonction de l’âme, dans les contextes que j’appellerai « génétiques », c’est-à-dire là où l’analyse touche à la question du statut ontologique de l’âme, et dans les contextes que j’appellerai « opérationnels », c’est-à-dire lorsque ce sont les fonctions, les compétences et les motivations de l’âme dans sa direction du corps qui font l’objet de l’analyse.

Il est bien connu que Socrate ne recevait pas d’argent pour son enseignement. En effet, la critique de la perception d’un salaire par les enseignants, pratiquée notamment par les sophistes, était courante chez les philosophes antiques. Ce refus de recevoir un salaire repose sur une conception pour le moins particulière de la nature même du savoir philosophique et de la relation entre l’enseignant et son élève. Cet article vise à examiner les profits matériels et intellectuels qui font de l’enseignement de la philosophie une activité gratifiante, qui mérite d’être choisie pour elle-même, en s’appuyant sur les oeuvres de Platon, de Xénophon et d’Aristote, dans lesquelles les critiques de l’enseignant salarié sont les plus virulentes.

<p>RÉSUMÉ</p> <p>À partir du Gorgias de Platon, nous montrons que l'objet de la réfutation socratique est le discours, soit-il le produit des croyances de l'interlocuteur ou non, mais que le but de Socrate est principalement de conduire l’énonciateur refuté à se disposer effectivement à connaître quelque chose et à parler ou agir selon les déterminations de cette nouvelle connaissance.</p> MOTS-CLÉS: élenkhos; réfutation; discours; connaissance; réalisation.

<p><em>Socrates and Us: An Essay on the </em>Apology of Socrates<em>, Philological Interpretations and History of Philosophy. </em>I start out with a philological problem, the question of how to translate a disputed passage (30b 2–4) in Plato’s Apology. This problem is connected to a philo­sophical question, the Socratic and Platonic opinion on the relation between virtue, material goods and happiness. I then discuss the role of our «pre-understanding» in the interpretation of historical texts. Is a «purely» historical interpretation possible? Is a «purely» historical reading of philosophical texts worthwhile, if it does not concern our modern philosophical problems? In discussing these hermenutical questions I use John Stuart Mill’s reading of Plato as an example. A peculiar problem in the history of philosophy is the question of the historical Socrates and the different roles he has played. I investigate especially Mill’s use of the character of Socrates, but I also include examples from the twentieth century. Furthermore, I analyze Plato’s staging of Socrates in the <em>Apology</em> as a moral hero and the mythological status he is given. Finally, I discuss whether the Socratic philosophy is of any value today. I argue that the Socratic method ought to have an important place in moral and political education, and that this method is not value-neutral. It presupposes certain virtues, virtues taught and incarnated by the historical Socrates.</p>

AbstractThe main disciples of Socrates criticise the use of city walls. However, their attacks are less grounded in a deep strategic reflexion than related to the traumatic consequences of Pericles’ strategy at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. The Lacedemonians’ opposition to the erection of surrounding walls is more likely linked to their aristocratic ideology and interests than to moral imperatives. Though Plato and Xenophon’s motives are to avoid political divisions in the city, their positions on fortifications reveal their aristocratic bias and the question of the walls appears to be part of a more general questioning on the spatial and political organisation of the city. On that issue, Aristotle criticises Plato from a pragmatic point of view and defends the use of walls, but under strict conditions only. The Spartan and Socratic critique of the building of the walls, as well as Aristotle reluctance to fully accept them, could be traced back to a common Greek archaic ideal.

AbstractTo unravel the intricacies of the last argument of the Phaedo for the immortality of the soul, the reader has to peel away successive presuppositions, his own, Plato's and not least the presupposition that Plato very skilfully portrays as being shared by Socrates and his friends.A first presupposition is the reader's own. According to our modern ways of thinking, a soul that is immortal, if there is such a thing, is a soul that lives forever. That presupposition is not shared by Socrates and Cebes (Socrates' interlocutor in the final argument). A soul that survives separation from the body, once or a number of times, is held to have survived death and therefore to be immortal. But it does not follow that it will live forever. For a soul to live forever, it must be shown to be not only immortal, but imperishable. Only if the soul is both immortal and imperishable can the assembled company be sure that the Socrates who is talking to them now will still be living when, after sunset, he has drunk the hemlock and can talk to them no more.The modern reader who has divested himself of the presupposition that immortal and imperishable are mere synonyms, and therefore appreciates the need for an argument designed specifically to prove that the soul is imperishable and not merely immortal, has nonetheless to be aware of a second presupposition, a presupposition shared by Socrates and his friends which restricts the meaning that the modern reader might otherwise suppose to be conveyed by the word 'imperishable'. Both Socrates and Cebes, as portrayed in the Phaedo, take it for granted that the only time when the soul might perish is the moment of her separation from the body. Provided it can be shown that the soul will survive separation from the body, no matter how often the body is taken from her, the soul, so they are happy to assume, will have shown herself to be both immortal and imperishable.We do not have to suppose that this second presupposition is shared by the author of the dialogue. Plato's subtle but insistent restriction of the moment when the soul might be threatened with extinction to the moment of her separation from the body has been deliberately designed to alert the reader to a way of thinking which Socrates, Cebes and Echecrates all take for granted, but which Plato does not necessarily invite the reader of the dialogue to share.The restriction is nonetheless essential to the structure of the argument. It is because Socrates does not envisage a possible extinction of the soul at any moment other than the moment of separation from the body that he is able to present a soul that is essentially alive as immune to the death which separates soul from body, however often such a separation may occur, and as therefore (so he claims) not only immortal but imperishable.In presenting that argument, how far has Plato deliberately foregone any attempt to prove that the soul is imperishable subsequently to the moment of her separation from the body? Socrates argues that the soul is unaffected by the death of the body because she is essentially alive. He does not argue that she is immune to destruction or extinction because she is essentially existent. In the face of Plato's silence, in the Phaedo and elsewhere, the modern reader has to hold in abeyance a third and final presupposition, that only a being whose essence it is to exist can of its nature never not exist.To understand the dialogue is therefore no easy matter. The reader needs to distinguish Socrates as the mouthpiece of Plato from Plato as the author of the dialogue. At the same time the modern reader has to distinguish the Plato of history from a fictional Plato who shares our own ideas and our own preconceptions, including the concept of a being cuius essentia est esse. An intricate double task, which other modern readers of the dialogue have so far not even attempted.

Cet article analyse les quatre versions de la chanson « Everyone Says I Love You » dans le film Horse Feathers (Norman Z. McLeod, 1932) des Marx Brothers, en tant que quatre éloges comiques sur l’amour, dans la tradition du Banquet de Platon. À l’instar des invités de Platon, Zeppo, Chico, Harpo et Groucho Marx offrent chacun une vision différente de l’amour et de ses vertus, qui se succèdent dans une séquence développementale. Faisant fond sur la dialectique hégélienne et la psychanalyse lacanienne, ce travail fournit une interprétation des éloges des Marx Brothers afin de proposer une triangulation entre l’amour, la philosophie et la comédie. Enfin, l’article soutient leur inséparabilité fondamentale : le comédien et le philosophe, Groucho et Socrates, représentent deux espèces de l’amoureux.

On the evidence of Plato’s Theaetetus and Phaedo the author claims that Protagoras argued against changement. The paper develops in four steps. First, the paradox of the dices is taken into account. Then four parallels to this argument are recovered in Socrates’ autobiography in Plato’ Phaedo. Third, the four parallels are identified with the wise causes of the antilogies. Finally, the author addresses the objection that both Theaetetus in the Theaetetus and Socrates in the Phaedo show serious wondering and dismiss such arguments as merely sophisms by focusing on how the notion of wondering is used in the Euthydemus.

In this contribution I aim to analyze how Simone Weil (1909-1943) interprets the image of the Good and the periagōghē of the soul described by Socrates in Plato’s Republic. In the first part, I consider the key role that Plato plays in the last writings of Weil. The Athenian philosopher, in fact, becomes a specific reference for Weil in the 1940s, within her attempt to reformulate an ethic for contemporaneity. In the second part, I analyze Weil’s specific comments on the Socratic image of the sun (Resp. VI 504a-509c) and on the last part of the myth of the cave (Resp. VII 518b-d). In the last part, I try to highlight Weil’s originality and her specific contribution : the author in fact frees herself from the Platonic text and follows an interpretative path that integrates the role of desire. She deviates from an intellectualist interpretation of the vision of the Good and pushes both the analogy of the sun and the exit of the prisoner outside the limits of nous.

O que o próprio Heidegger chamou de virada (Kehre) do seu pensamento, no início dos anos trinta, tem diretamente a ver com sua maneira de entender Platão. Ao Platão que ele saudava como tendo promovido a questão do ser, se substitui o Platão tido como iniciador da metafísica e, junto com Sócrates, precursor do cristianismo. Ora, segundo Heidegger, é tal configuração metafísica que requer ser ultrapassada por uma apropriação mais originária do Ser. O afastamento de Heidegger do cristianismo incide assim de maneira cabal sobre sua interpretação de Platão. O contrário ocorre com Simone Weil. Aproximando-se do Cristo, ela descobre um Platão cujo pensamento apresenta grandes afinidades com as intuições cristãs. Donde sua ênfase sobre « o desejo do Bem », que reside em todo homem, e sua equação entre o Bem em Platão e o Deus da revelação cristã em sua dimensão « impessoal ». É, portanto, em torno da interpretação da alegoria da caverna e sobretudo da questão do Bem abordada por Heidegger no curso « Da essência da verdade » (Vom Wesen der Wahrheit) e no ensaio « A doutrina de Platão sobre a verdade » (Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit) que a distância entre as duas leituras de Platão se manifesta Comunicação apresentada em 8/8/2003 no Colóquio «Simone Weil e a Grécia» organizado pelo Prof. Fernando Rey Puente em parceria com o Núcleo de Estudos Antigos e Medievais da em todo seu vigor. Além de inaceitável, a visão heideggeriana do Bem em Platão parece-nos ditada por motivos amplamente questionáveis, enquanto que a leitura weiliana revela a potencialidade da analogia no campo do pensamento.Abstract : Heidegger’s turn (Kehre), which took place in the beginning of the thirties, is directly related to his interpretation of Plato. The « Plato » whom he first praised for having promoted the question of the Being, is replaced by the « Plato » seen as the one who started metaphysics and, together with Socrates, was the precursor of christianity. In fact, for Heidegger, a more originary appropriation of the Being goes beyond this metaphysical configuration. Thus, Heidegger’s drift from christianity had a manifest effect on his reading of Plato. The opposite occurs with Simone Weil. After encountering Christ, she discovers in Plato’s thought elements akin to christian intuitions. She stresses that the “desire of the Good” is present in every man and equates the Good in Plato with the God of christian revelation in its impersonal dimension. It is indeed in the understanding of the cave allegory and, above all, of the idea of the Good that the two « readings » differ most vividly. The Heideggerian hermeneutics of the Good in Plato is unacceptable and, moreover, seems to be dictated by controversial motivations, while the Weilien reading of Plato reveals thepotentiality of the analogy in the realm of thought.

AbstractThe structure as well as the themes of the Symposium suggest that Eryximachus’ speech plays a fundamental role in the dialogue. The problem is that what he says in praise of love is far from clear and continues to be a subject of debate. The aim of our article is to re-examine this speech to clarify its meaning and determine its contribution to Plato’s theory of love. First, we will analyse the text of the Symposium, then we will investigate its medical back-ground, and finally we will evaluate its philosophical impact. We will argue that Eryximachus’ speech, which draws inspiration from the Hippocratic Collection and the Pre-Socratic thought, is based on the concept of ‘harmony’: a balanced and organised unity of opposites. According to Eryximachus, love – conceived of as harmony – is the key to the health and the virtue of human beings, as well as to the cosmic order and justice. Thereby the specificity of Eryximachus’ speech will become clear: Plato tries to combine science and morality by proposing, among other things, some considerations on bioethics.

Abstract In Hippias Minor, Plato does not merely condemn Homer as a reference in ethical matters. He opposes two uses of poetry when it comes to referring to and giving meaning to it: poetry as a source of knowledge admitted and frozen by tradition, ethically normative, and poetry as a source of philosophical questions, conducive to ethical reflection. The debate shows that Socrates’ view of Homer, as well as his Homeric point of view, allow us to ask good and often paradoxical questions about the link between truth, falsity, knowledge and calculation, which are essential for those who want to build solid ethics. The dialogue then shows how the philosopher enriches the meaning of the Homeric text.

Socrates conversed and Plato recorded, bringing together an entwined version of their notion of rhetoric. How do we balance absolute truth with opinion, belief, and conjecture? This lecture centres on the dialogue Gorgias plays to Socrates/Plato’s notion of rhetoric as a fully formed social practice; it illustrates the practice and study of persuasion. Socrate parla et Platon enregistra, réalisant ainsi une version combinée de leur notion de rhétorique. Comment équilibrer la vérité absolue avec l’opinion, la croyance, et l’hypothèse? Ce cours se focalise sur le dialogue de Gorgias relatif à la notion socratique/platonicienne de la rhétorique comme étant une pratique sociale complètement formée; le cours fournit une illustration de la pratique et de l’étude de la persuasion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: "Le Protagoras est sûrement l’un des plus beaux dialogues de Platon. Il est traditionnellement placé parmi les dialogues socratiques de Platon, en compagnie, entre autres, du Lachès, de l’Euthyphron et du Charmide. Ces derniers dialogues examinent une vertu en particulier (respectivement : le courage, la piété, la tempérance), alors que, dans le Protagoras, il s’agit de comprendre non pas une certaine vertu, mais l’unité même des vertus. Par là, il se distingue déjà de ces dialogues, tout en restant dans le cadre des rencontres socratiques caractéristiques de la première période de la production intellectuelle de Platon. [...] Je voudrais, dans ce petit essai, revisiter les arguments produits par Socrate pour soutenir l’unité des vertus."

Abstract: This paper studies the interplay between the history of mankind, philosophical polemics and ethical debates about the best life in the fourth century BC through an inquiry into the positions of Dicaearchus of Messana, a pupil of Aristotle, and his disagreement about the best life with Theophrastus. Against recent interpretations, the paper establishes the various stages in Dicaearchus’ history of wisdom, its downward path and its criteria to define “philosophy”. This leads to a better understanding of Dicaearchus’ assessments of the Golden Age, the Seven Sages and Socrates and, above all, of his notion of the “practical life” as not restricted to politics and as opposed to contemporary scolastic conceptions of philosophy probably put forward by Plato and best exemplified by Theophrastus in Dicaearchus’ eyes.

The Language in the Workplace project, based in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has for most of its history concentrated on oral interaction in professional and manufacturing organisations. Recently, however, the project team widened its scope to include an introductory investigation of e-mail as a mode of workplace interaction. The ultimate intention is to extend the project's purview to encompass all written modes, thereby allowing a fuller focus on the complex interrelationships between communication media in the workplace. The Problems of Communication In an illuminating recent study, John Durham Peters explores problems that have dogged the notion of 'communication' (the term in this sense originating only in the late nineteenth century) from the time of Plato. The overarching historical problem he discusses is the recurrent desire for complete communication, the illusionary dream of transferring completely and without modification any idea, thought, or intention from one mind to another. There are two further and related problems that are particularly germane to my purposes here. A belief, at one extreme, that communication 'technologies' will interfere with the 'natural' processes of oral face-to-face interaction; together with its obverse, that communications plural (new technologies) will solve the problems of communication singular (self-other relations). A notion that dissemination (communication from one to many)1 is an inferior and distorting mode, inherently deterministic, compared with the openness of (preferably one-on-one) dialogue. Perhaps first formulated in Plato's Phaedrus, this lament has reverberated ever since, radio providing the instance par excellence.2 Yet another problem are the oppositions creating and sustaining these perceived problems, and their resultant social polarisations. Peters argues eloquently that technologies will never solve the differences in intention and reception amongst socially and therefore differentially positioned interlocutors. (Indeed, he counts it as a benefit that human beings cannot exempt themselves from the recognition and negotiation of individual and collective difference.) And he demonstrates that dialogue and dissemination are equally subject to imperfections and benefits. However, the perceptions remain, and that brings its own problems, given that people continue to act on the basis of unrealistic assumptions about communication. Looked at in this context, electronic mail (which Peters does not include in his historical studies) is a particularly fruitful site of investigation. I will focus on discussing the two problems enumerated above with reference to some of the academic and business literature on e-mail in the workplace; a survey conducted in part of a relatively large organisation in Wellington; and a public e-mail forum of primarily scientists and business people concerning New Zealand's future development. Communicative Distortion The first communication technology to be extensively critiqued for its corruption of social intercourse was writing (by Socrates in Phaedrus). Significantly, e-mail has often been characterised, not unreasonably, as a hybrid of speech and writing, and as returning written communication in the workplace toward the 'immediacy' and 'simplicity' of speech. In fact, as many practitioners do not sufficiently appreciate, informality and intimacy in e-mail communication have to be worked at. Efforts are made by some to use friendly salutations; a chatty, colloquial style; typographical representations of body language; and to refrain from tidying up errors and poor expression (which backfires on them when addressing sticklers for correctness, or when, as often happens, the message is full of obscurities and lacunae). When these attempts are not made, receivers impute to the messages the coldness and impersonality of the most functional letters and notes -- and this is only enhanced by the fact that so much e-mail in the workplace is used for directives (instructions and requests) or announcements (more specifically, proclamations; see below). In contrast to the initial reception of some earlier communication technologies, e-mail was widely welcomed at first. It was predicted to usher in a new egalitarian and democratic order of communication by flattening out or even by-passing hierarchical relations (Sproull and Kiesler; any issue of Wired magazine [see Frau-Meigs]). The realisation that other commercial factors were also contributing to this flattening out no doubt helped to dispel the utopian view (Casey; Gee)3. Subsequent literature has given more emphasis to the sinister aspects of e-mail -- its deployment by managers in the surveillance, monitoring, and performance measurement of employees, its capacity to support convenient and efficient reporting regimes, its durability, and its traceability (Brigham and Corbett; Corbett). This historical trajectory in attitudes towards, and uses of, e-mail, together with the potential variation in the readers' interpretations of the writer's feelings, means that people are quite as likely to conceive of e-mail as cold and impersonal as they are to impute to it more positive feelings. This is borne out in the organisational survey carried out as a part of this research. Of the respondents working in what I will call a professional capacity, 50 percent (the same proportion for both male and female) agreed that e-mail creates a friendlier environment, while only a small percentage of the remainder were neutral. Most disagreed. Interestingly, only a third of clerical staff agreed. One can readily speculate that the differences between these two occupational classes were a significant factor with regard to the uses e-mail is put to (more information sharing as equals on the part of professionals). Those who felt that e-mail contributed to a less friendly environment typically referred to the 'loss of personal contact', and to its ability to allow people to distance themselves from others or 'hide behind' the technology. In a somewhat paradoxical twist of this perceived characteristic, it appears that e-mail can reinforce the prevailing power relations in an organisation by giving employees a way of avoiding the (physical) brunt of these relations, and therefore of tolerating them. Employees have the sense that they can approach a superior through e-mail in a way that is both comfortable for the employee (not have to physically encounter their superior or, as one informant put it, "not have to cope with the boss's body language"), and convenient for the superior.4 At the same time, interestingly, respondents to our surveys have generally been adamant that e-mail is not the medium for conflict resolution or discussion of significant or sensitive matters pertaining to a manager's relationship with an individual employee. In the large Wellington service organisation surveyed for this study, 70% of the sample said they never or almost never used e-mail for these purposes. It was notable, however, that for professional employees, where a gender distinction used in the survey, 80% of women were of this view, compared with 60% of men. Indeed, nearly 10% of men reported using e-mail frequently for conflict resolution purposes. In sum, there is the potential in e-mail for a fundamental distortion; one that is seemingly the opposite of the anti-technologists' charge of corruption of communication by writing (but arguably with the same result), and one that very subtly contradictory, appearing to support, the utopianism of the digerati. The conventions of e-mail can allow employees to have a sense of participation and equality while denying them any real power or influence over important matters or directions of the organisation. E-mail, in other words, may allow co-workers to communicate across underlying tensions and conflicts by effectively suppressing conflict. This may have advantages for enabling an organisation's work to continue in the face of inevitable personality differences. It may also damage the chances of sustaining effective workplace relationships, especially if individuals generalise their use of e-mail, rather than selecting strategically from all the communicational resources available to them. Dialogue and Dissemination Notwithstanding the point made earlier in relation to radio about the flexibility of technology as a societal accomplishment (see note 2), e-mail, I suggest, is unique in the extent of its inherent ability to alternate freely between both poles of the dialogue -- dissemination dichotomy. It is equally adept at allowing one to broadcast to many as it is at enabling two or more people to conduct a conversation. What complicates this ambidexterity of e-mail is that, as Peters points out, in contradistinction to the contemporary tendency to valorise the reciprocity and interaction of dialogue, "dialogue can be tyrannical and dissemination can be just" (34). Consequently, one cannot make easy assumptions about the manner in which e-mail is being used. It is tempting, for example, to conclude from the preponderance of e-mail being used for announcements and simple requests that the supposed benefits of dialogue are not being achieved. This conclusion is demonstrably wrong on two related counts: If e-mail is encouraging widespread dissemination of information which could have been held back (and arguably would have been held back in large organisations lacking e-mail's facilitative qualities), then the workforce will be better informed, and hence more able -- and more inclined! -- to engage in dialogue. The uses to which e-mail is put must not be viewed in isolation from the associated use of other media. If communication per se (including dialogue) is increasing, it may be that e-mail (as dissemination) is making that possible. Indeed, our research showed a considerable unanimity of perception that communication overall has significantly increased since the introduction of e-mail. This is not to necessarily claim that the quality of communication has increased (there is a degree of e-mail communication that is regarded as unwanted). But the fact that a majority of respondents reported increases in use or stability of use across almost all media, including face-to-face interaction, suggests that a more communicative climate may be emerging. We need then to be more precise about the genre of announcements when discussing their organisational implications. Responses in focus group discussions indicate that the use of e-mail for homilies or 'feel good' messages from the CEO (rather than making the effort to talk face-to-face to employees) is not appreciated. Proclamations, too, are better delivered off-line. Similarly, instructions are better formulated as requests (i.e. with a dialogic tone). As I noted earlier, clerical staff, who are more likely to be on the receiving end of instructions, were less inclined to agree that e-mail creates a friendlier environment. Similarly, instructions are better formulated as requests (i.e. with a dialogic tone). As I noted earlier, clerical staff, who are more likely to be on the receiving end of instructions, were less inclined to agree that e-mail creates a friendlier environment. Even more than face-to-face, group interaction by e-mail allows certain voices to be ignored. Where, as often, there are multiple responses to a particular message, subsequent contributors can use selective responses to strongly influence the direction of the discussion. An analysis of a lengthy portion of the corpus reveals that certain key participants -- often effectively in alliance with like-minded members who endorse their interventions -- will regularly turn the dialogue back to a preferred thread by swift and judicious responses. The conversation can move very quickly away from a new perspective not favoured by regular respondents. It is also possible for a participant sufficiently well regarded by a number of other members to leave the discussion for a time (as much as two or three weeks) and on their return resurrect their favoured perspective by retrieving and responding to a relatively old message. It is clear from this forum that individual reputation and status can carry as much weight on line as it can in face-to-face discussion. Conclusion Peters points out that since the late nineteenth century, of which the invention of the words 'telepathy' and 'solipsism' are emblematic, 'communication' "has simultaneously called up the dream of instantaneous access and the nightmare of the labyrinth of solitude" (5). The ambivalence shown towards e-mail by many of its users is clearly the result of the history of responses to communications technology, and of the particular flexibility of e-mail, which makes it an example of this technology par excellence. For the sake of the development of their communicational capabilities, it would be a pity if people continued to jump to the conclusions encouraged by dichotomous conceptions of e-mail (intimate/impersonal, democratic/autocratic, etc.), rather than consciously working to develop a reflexive, open, and case-specific relationship with the technology. Footnotes This does not necessarily exclude oral face-to-face: Peters discusses Jesus's presentation of parables to the crowd as an instance of dissemination. The point is not as transparent as it can now seem. As Peters writes: "It is a mistake to equate technologies with their societal applications. For example, 'broadcasting' (one-way dispersion of programming to an audience that cannot itself broadcast) is not inherent in the technology of radio; it was a complex social accomplishment ... . The lack of dialogue owes less to broadcasting technologies than to interests that profit from constituting audiences as observers rather than participants" (34). That is, post-Fordist developments leading to downsizing of middle management, working in teams, valorisation of flexibility ('flexploitation'). There is no doubt an irony here that escapes the individual employee: namely, every other employee is e-mailing the boss 'because it is convenient for the boss', and meanwhile the boss is gritting his or her teeth as an avalanche of e-mail descends. References Brigham, Martin, and J. Martin Corbett. "E-mail, Power and the Constitution of Organisational Reality." New Technology, Work and Employment 12.1 (1997): 25-36. Casey, Catherine. Work, Self and Society: After Industrialism. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Corbett, Martin. "Wired and Emotional." People Management 3.13 (1997): 26-32. Gee, James Paul. "The New Literacy Studies: From 'Socially Situated' to the Work of the Social." Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. Eds. David Barton et al. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 180-96. Frau-Meigs, Divina. "A Cultural Project Based on Multiple Temporary Consensus: Identity and Community in Wired." New Media and Society 2.2 (2000): 227-44. Peters, John Durham. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1999. Sproull, Lee and Sara Kiesler. Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Derek Wallace. "E-Mail and the Problems of Communication." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/email.php>. Chicago style: Derek Wallace, "E-Mail and the Problems of Communication," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/email.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Derek Wallace. (2000) E-mail and the problems of communication. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/email.php> ([your date of access]).