François-André Vincent, Alcibades Being Taught by Socrates (1776)
François-André Vincent, Alcibades Being Taught by Socrates (1776)
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Greg Johnson is teaching a five-week course on Plato’s Gorgias on Counter-Currents Radio, and the last lecture is now available. See below. Topics discussed include:
1. How we can secure ourselves against doing injustice but not really against suffering it? (more…)
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Greg Johnson is teaching a five-week course on Plato’s Gorgias on Counter-Currents Radio. The last lecture will be aired this Saturday, July 29. The fourth lecture, on Plato versus hedonism, can be heard below. An accompanying text, “Four arguments against hedonism in the Gorgias,” is here. (more…)
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Greg Johnson is teaching a five-week course on Plato’s Gorgias on Counter-Currents Radio, which will continue for the next two Saturdays later this month (July 22 and 29). The third lecture, focusing on the first third of Socrates’ discussion with Callicles, can be heard below. The first lecture can be heard here, and the second 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…)
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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…)
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In Greece in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE, the sophists were highly-prized teachers of the art or craft (techne) of rhetoric. (The Greek word techne is the root of our words technique and technology.)
Socrates was widely seen as a sophist, for instance in Aristophanes’ Clouds. To a naïve bystander, Socrates certainly looked like a sophist. Like the sophists, Socrates spent a great deal of time arguing about ideas. Moreover, Socrates was seen arguing with known sophists, including the greatest sophists of them all, Gorgias and Protagoras, as depicted in the Platonic dialogues which bear their names. (more…)
Seated Socrates, fresco from ancient Ephesus
Seated Socrates, fresco from ancient Ephesus
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Greg Johnson began a five-week course on Plato’s Gorgias on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio, which will continue for the next four Saturdays (July 1, 8, 15, and 22). The first lecture, which both introduces the dialogue as a whole and also examines Socrates’ argument with the great Sophist Gorgias, can be heard below.
The theme of the course is “Might vs. Right.” Dr. Johnson will be 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…)
Seated Socrates, fresco from ancient Ephesus
Seated Socrates, fresco from ancient Ephesus
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Every educated person should be familiar with Plato, but higher education today is usually a barrier to understanding the great thinkers of the past. Hence the need for Counter-Currents, which Jonathan Bowden described as an online university of the Right.
In the next five Saturday Counter-Currents Radio livestreams (June 24 and July 1, 8, 15, and 22), Greg Johnson will lecture on Plato’s dialogue Gorgias. The theme of the course is “Might vs. Right.” (more…)
