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ix Acknowledgments Iam indebted to my parents, Pam and Bob, and brother Rob, for creating an environment in which eccentricities are warmly accepted, supported, and treated as sources of amusement. I would also like to acknowledge my wonderful colleagues in Fairfield University’s Philosophy Department for providing a welcoming and friendly environment in which to work; I am grateful to the university for granting me a pretenure leave in 2006–7, during which time I drafted several chapters of this book. Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press has been a model of professionalism and expertise and a delight to work with. I have had the great fortune of studying with several scholars who understand the act of thinking to be an expression of joy—Charles Solomon, Larry Kimmel, Judith Norman, and especially John Sallis—and I am profoundly grateful to those friends and colleagues whose conversation and companionship have shaped these ideas in more ways than I can say. I would like to acknowledge in particular Ryan Drake, whose humor and acumen make all things better, as well as Jocelyn Boryczka, Jill Gordon, Chris Long, Marina McCoy, and Hasana Sharp. The ideas for this book have been vetted in a number of professional conferences and speaking engagements, and I would like to thank the philosophy faculty and students at Boston College, Colby College, Trinity College, University of Kentucky, and Baylor University, as well as the members of the Ancient Philosophy Society, whose annual conferences create a rich environment for the sharing of ideas and an intellectual home. It has been my great honor to receive the benefit of the time and attention of a number of people who have read and commented upon portions of this manuscript and given invaluable feedback. In addition to those already mentioned, I would like to thank Claudia Baracchi, Emanuela Bianchi, Walter Brogan, Sarah Glenn, Francisco Gonzalez, Benjamin Grazzini, Gary Gurtler, Drew Hyland, Brooke Holmes, Sean Kirkland, Robert Metcalf, Mitchell Miller, Holly Moore, Mark Munn, Michael Naas, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou, Gregory Recco, Eric Sanday, Michael Shaw, Anne-Marie Schulz, Christina Tarnopolsky, Lew Trewlany-Cassity, and Adriel Trott. Portions of a few of the chapters in this book first appeared as journal articles, and I thank these journals for permission to reprint this scholarship: an early version of chapter 3’s arguments about the myth in the Phaedo first appeared in “The Geography of Finitude: Myth and Earth in Plato’s Phaedo,” International Philosophical Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2009): 5–23; the “Immortality” section of chapter 7 first appeared in “Alive and Sleepless: The Politics of Immortality in Republic X,” Polis 24, no. 2 (2007): x | Acknowledgments 231–61; and portions of chapters 9 and 10 first appeared in “Psychology and Legislation in Plato’s Laws,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 26 (2010): 211–42. Research for portions of part 2 (on the Republic) was undertaken while enjoying the hospitality of the Albert Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, Germany, made possible by a Fulbright grant and the sponsorship of Dr. Günter Figal. ...

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