Tag: victory

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…)

The Battle of Rorke’s Drift, one of the unexpected victories of history.

731 words

Author’s Note: In a recent livestream, a long-time listener, Sutton, asked me, “Greg, what would you do if you decided that the cause is hopeless?” I revisited this question in a later livestream. Hyacinth Bouquet transcribed my answers, and I combined them and cleaned them up a bit. I want to thank both Sutton and Hyacinth. (more…)