LETTER: Starved of sense
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Your support makes all the difference.From Dr Gary Slapper
Sir: It may be that being so caught up with the philosophical niceties of whether Phraedrus is an early or late work of Plato, Julius Tomin has overlooked a less abstract problem regarding the dimension of time ("Pub philosopher on hunger strike over Plato clash", 27 November).
The power of the so-called "hunger strike" is that it represents the road to martyrdom, so that the authority whose view or policy is to be converted is made to capitulate before it has a death on its doorstep. If you say at the outset of not eating (as Tomin has done) that the hardship is "scheduled for seven days", then the event is merely a farce. Living in a barrel, like Diogenes, might be a more enduring stunt.
Yours faithfully,
Gary Slapper
Law School
Staffordshire University
Stoke-on-Trent
27 November
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