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Dr. Edvard Lorkovic

In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates warns his friends against what he calls the greatest evil for humans: misology, literally “the hatred of words.” Such hatred doesn’t mean abandoning words altogether; it means giving up on the reliability of language to communicate truthfully about the world, using it instead as a mere tool for persuasion. But, as Josef Pieper points out in several writings, to use language as a tool is to abuse it, just as the sophists did and continue to do. Misology precludes the age-old pursuit of truth and wisdom we call philosophy, which is at the heart of a genuinely liberal education. This presentation reflects on how misology threatens philosophy and the contemporary University along with it.