New Approaches to Classics Lecture: Professor Victoria Wohl

Title: Of Pigs and The Proper: Philosophy and The Other in Plutarch's Gryllus Description: Plutarch's Gryllus ("Grunter") stages a dialogue between Odysseus and one of his men who was turned into a pig by Circe about whether animals are more virtuous than humans. This humorous treatise raises serious questions about the place of the other in philosophy: must philosophy exclude the other in order to constitute the proper domain of reason (logos) or does it require the other for its practice of intellectual inquiry (dialogos)? This paper examines how the treatise thinks through these questions and the implications for Plutarch's philosophy.