Tag: freedom

4,431 words

Meister Eckhart

Part 14 of 15 (Read all parts here)

The Concealment of Concealment

An authentic experience of beings is one that acknowledges that when beings present themselves to us in their meaningfulness, this presencing is always accompanied by absence. Whatever we may learn about beings, something else always holds itself back. We never completely penetrate things to know them in their entirety, thus there is always an element of mystery to beings. (more…)

1,702 words

Part 6 of 14 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 7 here)

Socrates the Pugilist

After Socrates outlines why he thinks that rhetoric is not an art but rather merely a “knack” for pandering and corrupting, he apologizes for lapsing into speech-making, but he explains that it was necessary because Polus was incapable of answering short questions. (more…)

Jan Miense Molenaer, A Quack and His Assistant (1830)

3,159 words

Part 5 of 14 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 6 here)

Setting the Stage

Socrates’ conversation with Polus deals with three important philosophical issues.

First, Socrates explains the true nature of rhetoric, which requires that he contrast it with philosophy. This discussion requires several important distinctions: soul vs. body, art vs. quackery, edification vs. corruption, and friendship vs. flattery. (more…)

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

2,356 words

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

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.

Statesmanship & Moderation (more…)

George Grant

1,844 words

George Grant’s Lament for a Nation was most obviously wrong in its immediate predictions about Canada. He thought that Anglo-Canada would seek direct annexation by the dynamic American Republic. Many of his errors stem from a conflation of economics with cultural and political destiny.

Even now that Canada is almost entirely economically absorbed into the United States, annexation remains a fringe position. Most Canadians opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s; the draw of consumption could not overcome national attachment, even one as meaningless as ours. (more…)

The Duggar family in 2021, from their official Facebook page.

1,723 words

Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (2023)
Directed by Olivia Crist & Julia Willoughby Nason

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. — Psalm 127:3-5 KJV (more…)

John Singleton Copley, “The Copley Family,” 1776

2,340 words

Part 2 here

Christopher Lasch famously described the family as a “haven in a heartless world.”[1] How is the world heartless, and how is the family a haven? For Lasch, the heartlessness of the world has everything to do with the increasing liberalization and economization of life. (more…)

“Those who oppose Chairman Mao: We will crush their doghead.”–Red Guards poster

2,580 words

In our country we wish to substitute morality for egotism, probity for honour, principles for conventions, duties for etiquette, the empire of reason for the tyranny of customs, contempt for vice for contempt for misfortune, pride for insolence, the love of honour for the love of money… that is to say, all the virtues and miracles of the Republic, for all the vices and snobbishness of the monarchy. — Maximilien Robespierre, “On Virtue and Terror” (1794) (more…)

3,604 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

1. Introduction: An Extremely Impious Book

Perplexed, as so many of us are, by the utter mindlessness and malevolence of today’s Leftists, I decided several years ago to undertake an ambitious project: developing a comprehensive theory of their psychology. I assembled an extensive reading list, including Dostoyevsky’s The Devils (which delighted me). When I reread Friedrich Nietzsche, however, I realized that I had almost nothing to add to what he had already said. (more…)

The holistic society of the Middle Ages, as embodied in the “Three Orders of Mankind,” began to be broken down by the coming to prominence of the marketplace with the rise of nation-states.

4,142 words

Part 3 of 3 (Introduction Part 1 here, Chapter I Part 2 here)

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

This strictly economic representation of society has considerable consequences. Finishing off the process of secularization and “disenchantment” of the world that is characteristic of modernity, it results in the dissolution of peoples and the systematic erosion of their particularities. At the sociological level, the adoption of economic exchange leads the society to be divided into producers, owners, and sterile classes (such as the former aristocracy) at the end of an altogether revolutionary process. (more…)

The Scottish economist Adam Smith, who understood the ways in which the market would transform human relations already at the dawn of liberalism.

3,287 words

Part 1 of 3 (Introduction Part 1 here, Chapter I Part 1 here, Chapter I Part 3 here)

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Liberalism must, however, recognize the fact of society. But instead of asking why the social realm exists, liberals are mainly preoccupied with understanding how society is able to establish itself, maintain itself, and function. Society, as we have seen, is for them nothing but the sum of its members (the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts). It is nothing but the contingent product of individual wills, a mere assemblage of individuals all seeking to defend and satisfy their particular interests. (more…)

The early philosophers of liberalism postulated the “noble savage” as the type of man encumbered by social problems who had existed prior to the advent of civilization, and who still prevailed among the primitive peoples Europeans encountered in the rest of the world. (Detail from Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1771.)

3,856 words

Part 1 of 3 (Introduction Part 1 here, Introduction Part 3 here, Chapter 1 Part 2 here)

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Not being the work of a single man, liberalism has never presented itself as a unified doctrine. The authors who have laid claim to the name liberal have sometimes given divergent and even contradictory interpretations of it. Yet there must have been enough points in common between them to consider them liberal authors. It is precisely these points in common that allow us to define liberalism as a school. (more…)

361 words / 1:41:51

Greg Johnson is teaching a five-week course on Plato’s Gorgias on Counter-Currents Radio, which will continue on three Saturdays later this month (July 15, 22, and 29). The second lecture, which dealt with Socrates’ discussion with Polus from 461b to 481b, can be heard below. A visual aid that accompanies the lecture is here.

The theme of the course is “Might vs. Right.” Dr. Johnson is using Donald J. Zeyl’s translation of the Gorgias published by Hackett as both a separate book and as part of their Plato Complete Works volume. (more…)