Reflections on Eva Brann’s “Paradoxes of Education in a Republic”
Paradoxes of Education in a Republic. Eva T. H. Brann. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979. A few weeks back I suggested that Eva Brann’s Paradoxes of Education in…
Speech and Knowledge in Plato’s Hippias Major
Near the beginning of Greater Hippias, Socrates introduces an alter-Socrates (his intellectual conscience, we might say) who poses this question: “Socrates, how do you know what sorts…
Aristotle and Ethics
Ethics and Metaphysics Aristotle’s conception of ethics is consistent with Plato, his teacher’s notion that moral virtue is essential to human happiness and offers some useful and…
Katabasis in the Setting of Plato’s Symposium Revisited
Introduction In an earlier article (Steel 2004), I drew attention to the importance of descent imagery in the Symposium for building a more complete understanding of the…
Death or Tenure
Why Liberalism Failed. Patrick Deneen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Like Socrates in the Republic, my argument is about education or lack of education, paideia…
Political Consciousness and Polarization in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin
The Problem of the Debate An unquestionable premise of democracy: public decisions are affected by public opinion. Daily observation of the manifestation of public debate may, however,…
Plato’s “Symposium”: The Drama and Trial of Eros
Plato’s Symposium is one of the most iconic works of literature in the Western tradition. While The Republic may be more famous, Symposium is the most graphic,…
Plato’s Crito and the Crisis of Sovereignty
The common reading of the Crito asserts that the dialogue examines the nature of just and unjust laws with contingent concerns for how a person should respond…
The Sword of Damocles: No Friends for the Tyrant
The idea seems to be that even someone who has discipline, works hard, and is very active, will nonetheless still be unhappy if their own character is…
Birth of a Tyrant: The Dreams of the Mob
Plato gives an account in the ninth book of the Republic of how a tyrannical soul is formed. Socrates pauses and notes that, in order to proceed…
Plato’s Ring of Gyges: Power and The Divided Self
Given the fantastic premise of this myth, we are able to construct a thought experiment to test out the virtue of the two types of human beings:…
The Truth about Plato’s “Noble Lie”
What did Plato actually teach in the Republic about the so-called “noble lie?” For convenience, I shall refer to it by designating it as “The Plato Doctrine.”…
In Praise of the “Divine Madness”
When I first discovered Plato, I was delighted to learn that philosophy could be exciting, rather than boring. I learned that Plato wrote eloquently in praise of…
Losing Your Mind in Art
Plato’s Ion contains an unforgettable image describing artistic experience. In conversation with a rhapsode named Ion, Socrates likens the activity of poets to the operation of a…
Reconciling Plato and Berdyaev via the Phaedrus
Analytic philosophy is by the far the dominant tradition in the English-speaking world and many countries in Europe at this point, with a handful of “continental” schools,…
