Eric Voegelin on Plato’s Laws (Part II)
The Substance of Plato’s Efforts to Communicate The great theme of the Laws is the God who governs the processes of order and history, who obliges, but…
Eric Voegelin on Plato’s Laws (Part I)
Scholars and students of the work of Eric Voegelin, the twentieth-century political philosopher and historian who often called for a renewed engagement with classical Greek thought, will…
Eric Voegelin’s Plato
Eric Voegelin was a first-rate scholar whose many writings span disciplinary divisions to speak to concerns ranging from politics and history to philosophy, psychology, and theology. Although…
New Journal: The Kosmos
The Kosmos is an independent Chinese quarterly of history and ideas. Launched in early 2017, the journal aims at exploring the spiritual and intellectual history of various…
Alasdair Macintyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism
Alasdair Macintyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism. Review of Jason Blakely. Notre Dame University Press, 2016. Jason Blakely’s Alasdair Macintyre, Charles Taylor, and the…
The Laws Most Beautiful and Best
The Law Most Beautiful and Best: Medical Arguments and Magical Rhetoric in Plato's Laws. Randall Baldwin Clark. Lexington Books, 2003. The analogy of politics and medicine…
Knowing Persons
Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato. Lloyd P. Gerson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. On the debate whether in antiquity the concept of the person is…
Plato, Metaphysics, and the Forms
Plato, Metaphysics and the Forms. Francis A. Grabowski III. New York/London: Continuum, 2008. Grabowski approaches the Platonic theory of the Forms as an epistemological problem where…
Why We Still Need Plato
Along with a growing number of my fellow evangelicals, I have learned to qualify the Reformation cry of sola scriptura by asserting the foundational authority of the…
The Poetic Rhythms Correlated with the Five Constitutions in Plato’s Republic
I In the Republic, Socrates holds that there are correlations among the poetic rhythms and the constitutions of state and soul. He does not explicitly tell us…
Caution and Clarity in Thinking About ISIS and Apocalyptic Activism
The many horrifying actions undertaken under the auspices of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) are well known to almost all who don’t deliberately avoid news reporting, so…
Why Plato Wrote
Why Plato Wrote. Danielle S. Allen. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. As part of the Blackwell Bristol Lectures Series on Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition, Danielle S. Allen has…
Raymond Barfield’s The Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry
The Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry. Raymond Barfield. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2011. From its beginnings, philosophy’s language, concepts, and imaginative growth have been heavily…
The Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues
The Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues. J.B. Kennedy. Acumen Press, 2011. J.B. Kennedy’s The Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues seeks to establish that Plato divided some, if…
Savagery, Irony, and Satire in Plato’s Republic
Plato’s Republic stands in contradistinction to Aristotle’s Politics, indeed, it stands in contradistinction to almost all other works of political philosophy because Plato never speaks in the…