Socratic Method and Recollection in Plato and Kant
Liberal education is struggling to maintain its place in the contemporary university. In some ways, the challenges it faces are as old as liberal education itself. Plato’s…
Socratic Method and Socratic Existence: Comedic Elements in the Apology
The most popular understanding of Socratic method, portrayed in the 1973 movie, The Paper Chase, amounts to sophistic intimidation and the abuse of authority. A gentler version,…
The Soul Writ Large
Plato wrote a dialogue on political justice. In English it’s titled The Republic. Besides Socrates, the major speakers are Plato’s two brothers. They are trying to solve…
Two Types of Intelligence
We’ve been in California this past week. That’s where I go periodically for neuropathy treatments. This time, the improvements weren’t merely measurable but also experiential. For example,…
Philosophy and the Beyond
"The philosophies of this world are blind to true divinity—the living God”. This introductory proposition summarizes a traditional indictment of Christianity as represented most notably by Saint…
Socrates’ Homer in the Republic: Retaining the Poetic Past and Preparing for the Philosophic Future
Homer is acknowledged by Socrates as the educator of Hellas, “the most poetic of the poets and the first of tragedians” who provides the model around which…
The Soul and the Mind-building potentates, or on the irrationality of Artificial Intelligence
This is a follow-up article to the one published in VoegelinView on 20 September 2021. The question concerned whether a sudden emergency situation can lead to or…
Finding Unity in the Diversity: Aristotle’s Theory of Civil Harmony
The notion of civil harmony has often featured prominently in works of political philosophy, but its significance has not always been appreciated. To the ancient Greeks, peace…
The Spartan Drama of Plato’s Laws.
The Spartan Drama of Plato’s Laws. Eli Friedland, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. Eli Friedland’s The Spartan Drama of Plato’s Laws is not an easy read. That…
My First Teaching Non-Anxiety Dream
I don’t know how many academics and former academics have teaching anxiety dreams, but mine followed me even after stepping down from active faculty status. You can…
Belief vs Knowledge and Plato’s Tripartite Soul
Plato suggested that if a person were to be cut open a homunculus,[1] a lion and a many-headed beast would be revealed. These creatures represent the three…
Truth and Appearances
The following interview with Emma Cohen de Lara — editor of the new collection of Dutch language essays titled Plato en den sofisten — was conducted by Alvino-Mario…
Towards a Participatory Historiography Pt. II: The Liturgics of an Erotic Polis
With Plato’s terming of philosophy as the pursuit of aletheia, the disciple is concerned primarily with the retrieval and conservation of memory. In other words, philosophy is…
Towards a Participatory Historiography Pt. I: The Erotic Teleology
As Socrates rounds off his palinode to Eros in the Phaedrus, he reiterates that this effort has been made as an atonement for Lysias’s sacrilege against the…
Music and the Idea of a World: Part I
“Music, too, is nature.” —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol This lecture explores the differences between two perspectives on music: one ancient, one modern. The texts I…