Standing Before the Mysteries

Standing Before the Mysteries

Audio recording of a lecture given by Dean Sarah Davis on August 28, 2026 as part of the the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “At St. John’s we talk a lot about the importance of questions. We understand that questioning is required for independence of mind, for one to come to one’s own conclusions, to live according to one’s own convictions. In this lecture, questioning looks even more radical. More than simply the way we access the truth of things, the suggestion is that questioning itself, the shape of a question as question, is particularly revealing of the nature of the world we are trying to understand, not as a means to an end, but in its own right. The lecture focuses on the description that Socrates gives Meno of shape in Plato’s Meno as the only existing thing that is found always following color. I argue this moment marks a turn in their inquiry into virtue toward the question as question. I investigate this turn and connect it to Heidegger’s argument in his essay ‘The Way to Language’ and the way-making that happens when, as he puts it, ‘language speaks.’”

Santa Fe, NM

2026-08-28

Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.

sound

mp3

English

SF_DavisS_Standing_Before_the_Mysteries_2026-08-28

M4A

00:51:17