Hickman - Unlikely Stories

Unlikely Stories: How Ancient Drama of Philosophy Can Help us Think about the Non-Human World

Dr Louise Hickman is reader in Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Birmingham Newman University.

It is often forgotten that Plato wrote philosophy not in the form of treatises but as dramatic dialogue, often full of myth and abounding with animals. In the Platonic corpus, narrative is an integral part of gaining knowledge of the world. Plato’s dialogues also put before us a trenchant critique of writing. This paper will argue that revisiting this era of shift from oral to written culture, and the resultant debates about mythos, logos, truth, and human knowledge of the natural world, can point us towards a way of including nonhuman species more meaningfully in narrative by affirming the co-created nature of stories.