Tag: ancient Greeks

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Christopher Nolan, one of my favorite living directors, is now working on a movie of the Odyssey, to be released next summer. Frankly, everything I am hearing about it fills me with dread, especially the cast full of Africans. I may just skip reviewing it. I may skip it altogether. But just in case, I have been preparing by rereading the Odyssey and surveying other adaptations. (more…)

5,475 words

Chapter 8
ICE AND HIGH MOUNTAINS

Nietzsche as Meta-philosopher

[M]any disapprove of all philosophers, because their aims are not ours; they are those whom I call “strangers to us.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (more…)

Plato’s cosmology as depicted by Calcidius in his commentary to his fourth-century Latin translation of the Timaeus.

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I am embarrassed by the world. I cannot believe that a watch exists and has no watchmaker. — Voltaire

Which of the patterns had the artificer in mind when he made the world? — Plato

Given the world we have created, or rather a world which has been created for us, whoever “we” are could do a lot worse than take advice from the Classical world. For the vast majority of us, our world is one we never made, and those who did are becoming intentionally isolated, remote from those whose lives they control, living as they do in a dry and ideological gated community. (more…)

Gorgias of Leontini

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Part 1 of 14 (Part 2 here)

An ancient commentator on Aristotle tells a story about a farmer who got ahold of Plato’s Gorgias and was so stunned that he gave up the life of farming, trudged to Athens, looked up Plato, and put his soul in Plato’s care.[1]

Like the Alcibiades I, the Gorgias offers a wonderful argument for pursuing the philosophical life. But there are differences. The Gorgias is twice as long as the Alcibiades I. Instead of speaking to a naïve young man, Socrates faces three formidable opponents, including one of the greatest of all sophists, Gorgias of Leontini, for whom the dialogue is named. But in the end, philosophy wins. Sorry for giving away the ending, but did you imagine it would turn out any other way given that Plato is our author? (more…)

Kristian Zahrtmann, Socrates and Alcibiades, 1911 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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Part 7 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here)

Wisdom vs. Tyranny

Having established that the true self is the soul and defended philosophical dialogue as the best path to self-knowledge, Socrates wraps up his argument. (more…)

John William Waterhouse, Psyche Opening The Golden Box, 1903

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Part 6 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 7 here)

The final part of the Alcibiades I deals with the self and self-knowledge. Most ancient commentators held that this discussion is the core of the dialogue.

From Self-Cultivation to Self-Knowledge

Socrates has finally gotten Alcibiades to admit that he needs to pursue self-cultivation. But what is self-cultivation? We must answer that question lest we mistakenly cultivate something other than ourselves. (more…)

Condordia on the Jubilee Column in Stuttgart (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

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Part 5 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 6 here)

In our previous installment, we examined the speech Socrates made to break Alcibiades out of his complacency and spur him to educate and cultivate himself if he wishes to attain world renown.

Back to Dialogue

To borrow a term from classical music, the Alcibiades I has a “sonata” form: ABA. The first part (A¹) consists of Socrates’ initial dialogue with Alcibiades. Part B is the speech about the Persian and Spartan queens. The third part (A²) is a return to the dialogue form. Socrates and Alcibiades first return to the idea of justice. Then they discuss self-knowledge. (more…)

Jesus Christ telling the truth about the Jews.

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

The Gospel of Christ

The Roman Army, led by Pompey, conquered Syria and the Levant in 63 BC. Less than three decades later, Julius Caesar conquered Egypt. The Romans indirectly ruled Judea through a client king, Herod the Great, an Idumean. As in Idumean, he was not racially Jewish and only nominally practiced the Jewish pseudo-religion. (more…)

2,771 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Gregory Delaney
The Monsters of Babylon: How the Jews Betrayed Mankind (Vols. 1 & 2)
Sspress, 2024

The subversive Jewish angle in Norman Lear’s tawdry sitcoms went mostly unrecognized in the 1980s and ‘90s. Few in mainstream American society recognized the treachery of Jews at the highest levels of the US government, either. Apart from some perceptive critics such as Paul Findley, (more…)

Xerxes I of Persia and his wife, Queen Amestris

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Part 4 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 5 here)

Socrates has convinced Alcibiades that he is ignorant of justice. Therefore, he should not go into politics until he is educated. But Socrates undermines his argument by pointing out that none of the other eminent Athenians, even Pericles himself, knows what justice is. From this, Alcibiades concludes that if his rivals for power are equally ignorant, he has no need to waste time on education, because he is confident that he can beat them based on his superior nature. (more…)

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Part 3 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 4 here)

Alcibiades admits that he doesn’t know what justice is. But he thinks he’s found a way around Socrates’ objection, since politics doesn’t really deal with justice (dike). Instead, it deals with the expedient or advantageous (sympheronta). The just and the expedient are different things, since one can benefit from unjust acts and be harmed by just acts.

Socrates suggests the example of a man who suffers injury or death by risking his life to save his kinsmen or countryman in battle. This is a just and courageous act, even though one is harmed by it. Conversely, if one avoids injury or death by being cowardly, one is benefitted by injustice. Therefore, the just and the advantageous are different things. (more…)

A seventeenth-century engraving of Diogenes Laertius (image courtesy of Wikipedia).

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The Milesian philosophers were wrong about everything, but they asked the right questions, and for the first time sought natural explanations instead. — Luke Mueshaller, Pre-Socratics: A Painless Introduction

The limit of all wisdom is in me. — Epigram on Pythagoras, Boundaries, Duris

Although the twilight is darkening around Western philosophy, she is still just visible through the gloom. She had already been demoted from her role as theology’s handmaiden and queen of the sciences to a kind of antiquarian pursuit, like collecting moths in glass-covered frames or old jazz records. (more…)

Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure, 1791.

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Part 1 of 7 (Part 2 here)

Author’s Note: I am typing up and editing my lecture notes on Plato’s Alcibiades I and Gorgias to incorporate them into a new book tentatively entitled Tyranny and Wisdom: An Introduction to Platonic Philosophy. The Phoenician neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus (c. 245–c. 325) placed the Alcibiades I first and the Gorgias second in his curriculum of Plato’s dialogues, and with good reason, for together they constitute an excellent introduction to Socratic moral and political philosophy.

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