Tag: hedonism

Jan Davidsz de Heem, Still Life with a Glass and Oysters, ca. 1640

2,185 words

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 12 here, Part 13 here, Part 14 here, Part 15 here)

In our last installment, Callicles has admitted to being a hedonist. Hedonism is the view that happiness (eudaimonia) is pleasure. In other words, pleasure is the good that all men seek. If pleasure is the good, that means that the distinction between good and bad things boils down to the presence or absence of pleasure. If pleasure is present, then something is good. This implies that there are no bad pleasures, for pleasure is what makes things good. Thus if pleasure is present, so is goodness. (more…)

Karl von Blaas, Allegory of Self-Control, 1859

2,703 words

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 12 here, Part 13 here, Part 14 here)

Thus far, Callicles has maintained that it is right and just  by nature for the strong to rule the weak and have more than their inferiors. Socrates has badgered Callicles to be specific about what, exactly, the “strength” of the natural ruler is. (more…)

Alejandro Mayorkas helps us by showing just how ridiculous the Left’s positions really are. (Photo from the Department of Homeland Security website.)

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Missouri Senator Josh Hawley grilled US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas about the crisis on the Mexican border on February 2, stating in part that Mayorkas’ performance was “despicable” and that his unwillingness to provide answers was “absolutely atrocious.” Mayorkas attempted to deflect blame by stating that he is the child of a holocaust survivor, thereby implying that he, and by extension most Jews, should be above criticism.

It was hard to tell if he was being devious or if this is what he actually believes. Mayorkas’ blunder was so egregious I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonathan Greenblatt gave him a call afterwards about feeding “problematic anti-Semitic tropes.” (more…)

221 words / 1:41:56

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…)

7,940 words

Peter Gatien
The Club King: My Rise, Reign, and Fall in New York Nightlife
Seattle: Little A, 2020

Driving with my father one day, we passed an imposing building, the Cornwall headquarters of the Orange Lodge, the Grand Order of British North America. “What’s that, papa?” I asked.

“It’s like a club,” he answered dismissively. (more…)

Alexey Nechvaloda’s reconstruction of a Yamnaya man

2,130 words

Europe’s distinct ancestral heritage can be traced to the Yamnaya culture, an equestrian martial patriarchy that formed in the Caspian region and moved into what is now Northern India, Western China, Persia, and Europe. The cultures that were the offspring of the Yamnaya migrations are referred to as Indo-European, due to their linguistic, cultural, and genetic connectedness.

Indo-European peoples include the Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Persians, Hittites, and the Celtic and Germanic peoples indigenous to the British Isles. (more…)

Canaletto, The Return of the Bucentaur to the Molo on Ascension Day, 1730.

1,648 words

On the train ride home this weekend, I ended up talking with a drunk woman about the concept of happiness. Although brief, the conversation reminded me of Giacomo Casanova’s memoir The Story of My Life. As I have gotten older, this memoir has reminded me not to let certain vices ruin my life. While each person (more…)

4,673 words

To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

I grew up in the final years of the Cold War. If you aren’t old enough to remember the Cold War, let me tell you that it was a trip.

(more…)

Bust of Epicurus

1,291 words

Trans. Guillaume Durocher

Translator’s Note:

The following is drawn from Pierre Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique ? (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 191-96. Some non-English secondary sources have been removed from Hadot’s footnotes. The title is editorial.

To achieve the healing of the soul and a life in accord with the fundamental [Epicurean] choice, it is not enough to have learned the Epicurean philosophical discourse. (more…)

2,055 words

The other day, as I was wandering through an IKEA store as family members were finishing up shopping, I saw a young white woman with a striking T-shirt. She wasn’t overtly pretty, nor was she ugly. She wasn’t skinny and she wasn’t fat. But during the five or six seconds we shared in the same section of the store, I could determine a few things about her. (more…)

1,549 words

Imagine a world where people live so devoid of happiness that it becomes a popular pastime to compensate by simply watching recordings of people smiling. The need is so severe that when making these recordings, no one even bothers to build in a plot—they just get right to the action of depicting images of people smiling, utterly devoid of any further context or deeper meaning. (more…)

1,299 words

Translated by G. A. Malvicini

A frequently discussed issue among Right-wing circles is the new generation and its relations with the previous one; “revolutionary” youth in relation to the men and ideas of the Fascist period. Some, in this regard, believe that the same phenomenon is met with here that can be observed more generally: the new generation no longer understands the generation that preceded it, the accelerated pace of events having interposed between the one and the other a mental distance much larger than that which in other times normally would have separated them.  (more…)

40:21 / 156 words

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Beginning in August of 1999, I gave a series of eight lectures on “The Pursuit of Happiness: Philosophies East and West,” (more…)