Tag: moral philosophy

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Eric read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged at the age of sixteen and decided that Rand was right. So he resolved to live his life by the ethics of rational self-interest. This meant that he only did things that served his self.

From that point forward, Eric cut a straight line through life. He knew what he wanted. He chose a career that felt right for him. He only studied things that advanced his goals. He only listened to music, read books, and watched movies that suited him. He associated with people who made him feel good about himself and avoided people who made him feel bad about himself. (more…)

You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Trial of Socrates here.

3,821 words

“Knowledge is not wisdom.”

—Frank Zappa

Plato’s Lovers is one of his shortest dialogues, but it deals with one of his weightiest topics: the nature of philosophy.

The setting is the school of Dionysus the grammarian. Socrates encounters two attractive young men from good families along with their two older male lovers. None of these characters are named.

The lovers are described as “rival” lovers, but ambiguously so. Was one of them also interested in the other’s lad? Or do they represent rival loves, i.e., rival ways of life? (more…)

Bust of Pericles

2,714 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, Part 16 here, Part 17 here, Part 18 here.)

Good Statesmen & Bad (513c-520e)

Socrates claims that Callicles resists his arguments due to “love of the demos,” the people of Athens, a reference to Callicles’ political ambitions. (more…)

Titian, Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence, c. 1550–1565

3,275 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, Part 16 here.)

The Refutation of Licentiousness (499c–508c)

Once Socrates has refuted Callicles’ hedonism, he turns his attention to refuting his defense of self-indulgence and licentiousness (akolasia) and upholding its opposite, moderation (sophrosyne). (more…)

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…)

Gorgias (Image source: Wikimedia Commons, from an Italian book published in 1818)

1,878 words

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

Ethics as an Afterthought (456d–457c)

Is Socrates right that sophistry is essentially amoral and technocratic? After all, the sophists were widely seen as not just teachers of rhetoric but also as teachers of morals. However, as we shall see, both Polus and Callicles strongly embrace the amoral and technocratic idea of sophistry. Moreover, in the Meno—which is set in 402 BCE, after the Peloponnesian War and the latest possible date of the Gorgias—Meno tells Socrates: “I admire this most in Gorgias, Socrates, that you would never hear him promising this [to teach virtue]. Indeed, he ridicules the others [other sophists] when he hears them making this claim. He thinks one [the sophists] should [only] make people better speakers” (95c).^[1] (more…)

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

2,907 words

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…)

Absolute Equality, a mural in Galveston, Texas commemorating Juneteenth.

2,316 words

Part 1 of 4 (Part 2 here)

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

In 1977 I published a thick book called Viewed from the Right which received the Grand Prix de l’Essai from the French Academy the following year and has since been reprinted a number of times. (more…)

2,640 words

To regard the immorality of the will as an imperfection of it would be a fundamentally false point of view. — Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (more…)

1,368 words

Like many of you, I got caught up in the 2020 US presidential race. From Tuesday to Friday of election week, I was glued to the internet, biting my nails and hitting refresh like a rat in a Skinner box. (more…)

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In the fall of 2000, I taught an adult education class entitled Philosophy on Film, where we discussed The Matrix, American Beauty, Ground Hog Day, Network, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Gattaca, and Crimes and Misdemeanors.

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You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Trial of Socrates here.

2,151 words

Author’s Note:

The following text is based on a transcript by Rollo Walker of a 1999 lecture on “Objectivity, Relativism, and Well-Being.” This text only includes the first half of the transcript, and it has been massively condensed and rewritten.

Socrates is famous for arguing that all human beings pursue happiness; (more…)

Gerrit van Honthorst, Croesus y Solon, 1624

2,271 words

English original here

Los dos ensayos de Carl Schmitt sobre “La Tiranía de los Valores” (1959 y 1967) son típicos de su trabajo. Contienen simples e iluminadoras ideas las cuales, sin embargo, son complicadas de poner en conjunto porque Schmitt las presenta sólo a través de conversaciones complejas con otros pensadores y escuelas de pensamiento. (more…)