These days to tell a student that Plato was an idealist condemns him to utter irrelevance.
Chapter Eleven: Eidos.
The Philosopher Monarchs.
Category: Theory
Chapter Ten: Aristocles (Plato).
Plato and Aristotle on King Street, Newtown.
What can a mere mortal say about Plato.
Chapter Nine: Enter Socrates and exit Sol.
What is worse is that Socrates proposed ridiculous ideas like the equality of women!
Life, meaning, and death.
Continue reading “Chapter Nine: Enter Socrates and exit Sol.”
Chapter Eight. Lysistrada et al.
Thucydides is a great, but a serious reader should also try Donald Kagan’s four volume study of the war.
The war that never ends continues.
Chapter Seven. Melos.
The war that never ended took a turn for the worse at Melos.
Chapter Six: Thucydides and that war.
His debauchery was an open secret.
My essay “Cracking the Thucydides code” has appeared recently in the Antioch Review, a literary magazine of some note. It is the kind of publication many large libraries have.
Chapter Five: a little Aristotle, please.
Alexander the Great sent Aristotle an elephant. Imagine the Brown UPS agent who had to deliver that. Imaigne what Aristotle had to pay to house and feed the thing.
Aristotle was something of a character in his own time, an omnivore with an appetite for all knowledge, collecting mollusks, geodes, plants, animals, and books. He is credited with the first private library so large was his collection of books (scrolls). Any foreigner visiting Athens, whether theorist-tourist or not, might sell to Aristotle artifacts collected on the voyage.
Continue reading “Chapter Five: a little Aristotle, please.”
Chapter Four: Starting at endgame. Just like in chess.
Plato’s Step Children in Star Trek: the Original Series
What is the best life?
Continue reading “Chapter Four: Starting at endgame. Just like in chess.”
Chapter Three: Going to class.
Image if Qantas Airlines had a 50% error margin in passenger reservations! That is the margin of error in our student record system class lists.
The adventure of going to class with little idea of how many students there will be.
The very word “theory”
A theorist is a tourist who travels both literally and figuratively to see other ways of living and is changed by the experience.
What does the very word “theory” mean?