A peculiar self-congratulatory narrative runs throughout contemporary accounts of the history of Western philosophy. According to this narrative, philosophy is, by its very nature, co-extensive with a process of demytholigization. Whereas Greek poets attempted to explain the world mythologically by invoking the unseen operations of gods and spiritual forces, Greek philosophy, on this account, was …
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / and what I assume you shall assume, / for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself. 1. The Call of Hesiod Our knowledge of ancient Greek theology is, to a large extent, mediated by the mind of Hesiod, the eighth century …
In the classical world, human action was thought to transcend mere stimulus and response. While a captive dog might be conditioned to salivate at the ringing of a bell, genuinely human activity was held to be too rich to be reduced to such a model. Human activity, in contrast, is guided by reason, and so, …
In my previous essay, I examined Plato’s four arguments for the immortality of the soul set forth in The Phaedo. Through these arguments, Plato sought to justify a rational faith in the soul’s immortality. Yet Plato did not restrict himself to this rational approach, but also attempted to construct a mythological philosophy to bolster our …
The Soul and its salvation are central to various systems of religion and esoteric philosophy. Yet, despite its centrality, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is often implicitly assumed rather than explicitly argued for. Plato’s Phaedo, which recounts Socrates last dialogue before his execution at the hands of the Athenians, makes an important …
“No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre… not because the former is no hero, but because the latter is a valet.”—Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History. The concept of the Ascendant is pivotal to Western Astrology, representing the Eastern horizon over which planets and stars step forth into visibility. It marks the boundary …
“Now is the time that gods came walking out/ of lived-in Things…/ Time that they came and knocked down every wall/ inside my house. [Jetzt wär es Zeit, daß Gӧtter trätten aus/ bewohnten Dingen…/ Und daß sie jede Wand in meinem Haus umschlügen.]” –Rilke, Fragment. When we think of the future of technology, we no …
This essay concludes our discussion of the Republic by elucidating Plato’s closing arguments for the contention that justice is an intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, good. After setting forth a taxonomy of constitutions and the types of individuals that correspond to them, Plato is now in a position to return to the central question of the …
This essay examines books VIII-IX of the Republic and sets forth Plato’s account of the characterological decay of the individual soul. Just as city’s degenerate with time, falling from philosophical aristocracy to timocracy, timocracy to oligarchy, oligarchy to democracy, and democracy to tyranny, so too do the individuals who live within them. Indeed, Socrates notes …
In this essay I’ll examine Books 3 and 4 of the Republic and set forth Plato’s account of the cardinal virtues and his theory of the tripartite soul. After concluding his description of the guardians’ mental and physical education, Socrates observe that what has thus far been called “the guardian class” actually contains two classes: …