Tag: wisdom

Socrates

3.754 palabras

English original here, Traducciones: Francés, Polaco

Capítulo 1 aquí, Capítulo 5 aquí

La más reciente reproducción de este ensayo fue una charla el 14 de octubre de 2012 en Seattle. Quiero dar las gracias por la estimulante discusión a todos los que estuvieron presentes. La presentación original tuvo lugar en mi lección de apertura de las clases sobre Introducción a la Filosofía que daba en la década de 1990 en la universidad. (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…)

1,882 words

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…)

Part truthteller, part alien from They Live advertising conspicuous consumption.

3,723 words

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

Popular YouTube shorts personality Andrew Tate is a man of contrasts. He claims to be a man of God, yet persists in earning income as an OnlyFans tycoon. He implores women to have children as they did in the past, but advocates for men to make outrageous displays of wealth to attract them. Because of these extremes, he’s part sage and part pied piper. (more…)

148 words / 56:25

Greg Johnson did a new solo Ask Me Anything on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio, and it is now available for download and online listening. (more…)

8,770 words

The following essay on Plato’s Theages is based on a transcript of a taped lecture, which I revised based on notes for two later lectures on the same dialogue that offered a more complete interpretation. I want to thank V.S. for the original transcript.

The Theages is a short Platonic dialogue that can be read as a response to Aristophanes’ Clouds. In both texts, Socrates is approached by a country gentleman to educate his son. In the Clouds, the father is insistent, the son reluctant. (more…)

7,590 words

1. Knowledge of the Right Use of All Things

To explain what philosophy is, we always have to go back to the beginning. Pythagoras (ca. 570-495 BC) is said to have been confronted by Leon, the tyrant of Philius, who demanded to know if he was wise. He responded that he was not a wise man, but merely a φιλόσοφος (philosophos), a “lover of wisdom”; a practitioner of φιλοσοφία (philosophia). Φίλος (philos) means “love,” and σοφῐ́ᾱ (sophia) means “wisdom.” (more…)

Allan Ramsey, David Hume, 1766.

5,513 words

A Very Bad Year

2020 was a bad year for David Hume (1711-1776). Leftists in the United Kingdom, eager to get in on the feast of outrage that followed the drug overdose of George Floyd, complained that David Hume was a racist and should therefore not be revered. And then things went more or less as you would expect. (more…)

William Powell Frith (1819-1909), A May Day Celebration (private collection)

6,740 words

Throughout Europe and the United States, the chill mornings and blossoming trees of spring are giving way to summer’s warmth and abundance. As the midway point between spring and summer, the month of May has historically been a season of great importance to the peoples of Europe, a joyful time of sowing, revelry, feasting, and courtship. (more…)

First page and inset of Ernest Hemingway’s War Department-issued overseas visa

1,173 words

As I stroll lackadaisically through life’s pollen-belching daffodil fields, it occurs to me that I’ve never seen a depressed person with Down syndrome. No matter how sad their lives may look to outsiders, down to the last pumpkin-headed man and woman they seem blissfully ignorant of how they may appear to others. They happily embrace life as if they are clutching a fistful of multicolored balloons. (more…)

“Off with her head!” An original illustration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1864)

7,655 words

The Sphinx-riddle. Solve it, or be torn to bits, is the decree.

— D. H. Lawrence

A question, readers: what is the most profound of all human activities? With the previous sentence, I’ve already provided the answer, for it is the question itself — the thing that drives all exploration and philosophy. How can philosophy (or any knowledge) exist without first the riddle, the profound need for the answer? (more…)

3,128 words

English original here

Tytuł tego eseju jest poniekąd mylący, ponieważ zamierzam dowodzić, że filozofia ma znaczenie dla wszelkiej ludzkiej aktywności, nie tylko dla polityki. Filozofia jest nie tylko metapolityczna, ale „meta-wszystko”[1]. Ale wiem, że moi czytelnicy zainteresowani są zmianą polityczną, zatem był to mój wybieg, aby zachęcić Was do lektury. Co więcej, twierdzę, że filozofia nie jedynie znacząca dla życia, ale jest sprawą najwyższej wagi.  (more…)

3,898 words

English original here

Le titre de cet essai est quelque peu trompeur, puisque je vais arguer que la philosophie est pertinente pour tous les efforts humains, pas seulement la politique [1]. La philosophie n’est pas seulement métapolitique, mais méta-tout [2]. Mais je sais que vous vous intéressez au changement politique, donc c’était mon hameçon pour vous faire lire. (more…)