Tag Archives: Plato

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I propose an inquiry into what Hans Jonas once called the “built-in, automatic utopianism” of our thought and actions. Jonas suggests that this “utopian drift” inheres in technology itself, or, more precisely, in human life lived in that always strange because always new world of endless technological innovation.[1]  It is this “drift” that I am calling ‘technological utopianism’. My effort…

The discussion which follows is intended to provide more evidence for what  a number of scholars have recently been contending about Lawrence’s fundamental ontological vision. It derives support from and provides support for the claims of Michael Bell, Graham Martin, Anne Fernihough, Fiona Becket, Robert Montgomery, Peter Fjågesund, Michael Black and others.[1]
Just as no philosopher would simply say that Lawrence’s…

Logos and Mythos in Plato’s Dialogues
Metaphor and analogy are a preparation for examining the status and function of mythos in Plato. What does it mean that philosophy is the love of wisdom?[1] If philosophy is primarily and essentially logos, then what is its relationship to mythos? The following series of questions bear upon the status of mythos vis-à-vis Plato’s philosophical…

Plato’s Mythoi: The Political Soul’s Drama Beyond. Donald H. Roy.  Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.
 
In Plato’s Mythoi, the Political Soul’s Drama Beyond, Donald H. Roy aims to place Plato’s use of mythoi in the context of his dialogues as a whole. He challenges the philosophical interpretation of Plato’s myths from interpreters such as Bambrough and Vlastos, rejecting their interpretations as…

Probably the most famous letter writer of the ancient world was Cicero. In 59 B.C., Cicero wrote to Gaius Scribonius: “There are many sorts of letters. But there is one unmistakable sort, which actually caused letter-writing to be invented in the first place, namely the sort intended to give people in other places any information which for our or their…

A recurring theme in Plato’s dialogues, including his Seventh Letter, describes the education of a young man who wants to achieve the highest things, which he considers to be achieved primarily through his ruling the polity. He wants to be a tyrant. This desire, he explains to others, means that he wants to “do good” and thereby receive high honors.…

Socrates and Divine Revelation. Lewis Fallis. Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2018.
 
In the landscape of political philosophy today, one is fairly hard-pressed to find any serious consideration of the significance of the divine. Dismissing it as absurd or at least unknowable, there is instead a turn to the exclusively “human things,” as though they could be separated from considerations of…

Socrates describes the “Ideal City” early in Bk. II of the Republic. Glaucon is not satisfied with the constitution. He says that “you make the people feast without delicacies” (372c).[1] Socrates adds some delicacies, but Glaucon challenges the Ideal City on the same grounds. It is too austere. He says, you have founded a “city for pigs” (372d). Socrates responds…

I thank Steven McGuire for organizing this symposium and Lee Trepanier for publishing it here on Voegelinview. Away from the friendships unfriendly that dominate the internet and social media, Voegelinview is an online forum for serious discussion open to anyone who wishes to participate. I am grateful to the contributors—Carol Cooper, Rudy Hernandez, James Greenaway, and Joshua Bowman— for taking…

In The Form of Politics, John von Heyking directs his readers to the critical importance of friendship in the political thought of Aristotle and Plato. The title nicely captures the key finding of the book: true friendship between individuals was thought by Aristotle and Plato to provide an analog for the harmony that might be achieved in a political community.…