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© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expositions 2.1 (2008) 001–004] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v2i1.001 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Editors’ Preface

JohN A. DooDy, KIm PAffENroth, AND PEtEr BUSch

It is an exciting time of growth for Expositions. Last year we launched 
the journal in order to publish peer-reviewed articles for a wide audi-
ence—not only for specialists in a scholar’s own field but for curious 
readers in other humanities disciplines and the wondering public at 
large. As we begin our second volume, we are now (as Nietzsche would 
say) “becoming what we are”: growing into ourselves, discovering new 
ways of inviting authors into a conversation that is worth reading. 

Socratic Questions

one of these discoveries is actually a rediscovery. This spring our issue 
investigates Socrates as a model for interdisciplinary studies. Although 
his research and teaching methods were less than popular in his own 
day—the Athenian democracy saw fit to execute him for impiety and 
corrupting the young—Socrates is now applauded by academics across 
the political spectrum. Allan Bloom, for example, declares Socratic  
inquiry to be nothing less than “the soul of the university” (1987, 268). 
for martha Nussbaum, meanwhile, Socratic questioning is central to 
the life of the mind and to life itself: “Socrates said that the unexam-
ined life is not worth living for a human being. In other words, this 
life of questioning is not just somewhat useful: it is an indispensable 
part of a worthwhile life for any person and any citizen” (1998, 21). 
finally, cornel West holds up “Socratic questioning” as “the enact-
ment of parrhesia—frank and fearless speech—that is the lifeblood of 
any democracy” (2004, 209).

What then is the significance of Socrates today for all students of the 
humanities?  Should we think of the humanities as a grand Socratic 
dialogue, as the aforementioned scholars would seem to recommend?  
or would a Socratic approach only take us so far in understanding 
some topics, authors, or texts?  to take a few not-so-random examples, 
what if we happened to be studying a novelist and teacher in Victo-

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rian England, a black social reformer in post-civil-War America, or a 
christian theologian and bishop in late antique North Africa?  how do 
these wildly disparate writers answer the questions posed by Socrates?  
Do they even ask the same questions that he does?  And what do they 
think of his questioning activity itself, his whole “examined life”?

Three articles in this issue help us begin such a reconsideration of  
Socratic inquiry. Thomas hibbs opens with a study of W.E.B. DuBois, 
whose Souls of Black Folk invokes Socrates (alongside St. francis and 
the “sorrow songs” of former slaves) as an alternative to Booker t. 
Washington’s practical education for economic advancement. Accord-
ing to hibbs, Socrates’ example is no less important for understanding 
Souls of Black Folk as a whole, because the work should be understood 
as DuBois’ own apologia or Socratic defense. our second article, by 
todd Breyfogle, introduces readers to Saint Augustine’s Confessions by 
helping them appreciate its qualified continuity with the Socratic tra-
dition. on the one hand, Breyfogle advises that we read Confessions as 
if it were a Platonic dialogue and so to engage Augustine’s text in active 
conversation rather than accept it as an authority; on the other hand, 
he emphasizes that the book moves beyond dialogue in using poetry 
to stir the reader’s imagination. finally, we are pleased to include a 
hitherto unpublished manuscript by Walter Pater, edited and intro-
duced by Gerald monsman. As monsman shows, Pater’s “Gaudioso, 
the Second” was intended as a response to his wayward student, oscar 
Wilde. Against Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and what Pater saw as its 
detachment of beauty from morality, Pater reaffirms a Platonic view of 
beauty as exemplified in a very different portrait, one that our readers 
will literally see for themselves in the pages of the article.

New Features

At Expositions we have an unofficial motto: “Scholarship that scholars 
actually like to read!” one way we live up to this boast is by including 
essays that explore intriguing questions without following the usual 
formula for scholarly articles. Whether by holding a three-way inter-
disciplinary roundtable on harold Bloom’s Jesus and Yahweh (as we 
did in issue 1.1) or by reviewing a “neglected classic” that has as much 
to say about life in Victorian England as it does about physics in four  



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© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008

dimensions (as in 1.2), we have already found new occasions for invit-
ing otherwise bashful disciplines into conversation with each other. 
This spring we continue this work with two features that we expect to 
offer as regular sections in upcoming issues.

The first we call “overheard in the Academy.” Unlike our usual  
academic roundtables, which review recently published books, “over-
heard” is an exchange about a matter of present concern which all 
sorts of people in the humanities are talking about. ripped from the 
headlines, bullied from the blogs, cajoled from the cocktail parties, 
these are the issues that get us wondering or arguing with each other. 
In this issue we have invited four scholars to weigh in on a typically 
provocative proposition from Stanley fish: that the question, “how 
are the humanities useful?” has only one honest answer, namely, that 
they aren’t.

our second new feature is a section called “Notes, Insights, and 
flashes.” Perhaps hard to classify within conventional categories, these 
short pieces will reflect upon or challenge existing scholarship, provide 
intriguing new paths of interpretation and close analysis of a text, or 
take a position that is still too experimental or risky to be developed in 
an ordinary article. We expect some of our most exciting scholarship 
to appear in this section. In this issue we begin with a note on Susan 
Neiman’s reading of Eichmann in Jerusalem. What did hannah Arendt 
mean when she spoke of “the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying  
banality of evil ”? for Neiman, Arendt meant that evil has shallow roots 
and can therefore be uprooted by human hands. According to Bernard 
G. Prusak, however, Arendt actually meant that evil has no roots at all, 
no ultimate cause that we can discern.

We are now accepting submissions of “notes, insights and flashes” 
for upcoming issues of Expositions. Please see our website for details 
(www.equinoxpub.com/expo) . 

The Evolution Continues

our last article this spring reviews recent books on charles Darwin. 
As Andrea D. Wolfe notes, Darwin’s account of our biological origins 
continues to meet popular resistance despite what researchers see as 
ever more robust empirical support for evolutionary theory. Why do 

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we find this gulf between ordinary and scientific opinions? how have 
recent defenders of evolutionary theory sought to bridge it?

Wolfe’s essay is a fitting conclusion to an issue with so many new 
features on display. No doubt Expositions will continue to evolve as 
we adapt and survive in the competitive, dangerous world of academ-
ic publishing. As the editors, however, we also hope that the journal 
shows some evidence of intelligent design.

References

Bloom, Allan

1987 The Closing of the American Mind. New york: Simon and Schuster.

Nussbaum, martha

1998 Cultivating Humanity:  A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. 
cambridge:  harvard University Press.

West, cornel

2004 Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. New york:  
Penguin Books.


