The Figure of Socrates and its Significance for Liberal Education in Asia
The question of how the Western ideal of liberal education fits with Asian cultures is longstanding.[1][2] Our present time is one characterized by an opening up between…
Knowledge, Sophistry, & Scientific Politics: Plato’s Dialogues. Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman
Knowledge, Sophistry, & Scientific Politics: Plato’s Dialogues. Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman. James M. Rhodes. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2020. Rhodes wants to see whether…
The Symmetrical House of Form: Aesthetics of the Lived-Experience (Part IV)
This life’s dim windows of the soul Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole, And leads you to believe a lie When you see with, no through,…
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…
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 Legacy of the Pre-Socratics
In the history of philosophy, what is the permanent achievement of the Pre-Socratics? Did they attain anything in thought that we can rightly credit to them? Or…
The Fantasy of Promiscuity
Periodically, some group of people come up with what seems to them to be the secret to human happiness; the end of marriage and the birth of…
On the Meaning of “Be Yourself”
“Stay true. Be you.” “Stay true to yourself.” “Be who you are.” “Just be yourself.” “You do you.” These slogans are part of the fundamental fabric of…
Socrates and Divine Revelation
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…
From Philosopher Kings to Philosopher Professors: Against the Relativists
Famously, Socrates caps off his preliminary account of the beautiful city in the Republic with a description of the primary condition – by his own admission a…
Socratic and Secular Irony
A Case for Irony. Jonathan Lear (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Today we often misunderstand irony for sarcasm, self-detachment, or cleverness instead as a source…
Jan Patočka’s Socratic Message for the 21st Century
I will be focusing on the following questions: What is the place of these texts in the corpus of Patocka’s works? How do they fit into the…
Modernity, Friendship, and the Purpose of Liberal Education
Thank-you Professor Cheng, the Lingnan University Office of Global Education, and the sponsors of this conference for inviting me to join you at this crucially important conference…
The Sophists and Socrates: A Complex Relation
The Sophists in Plato's Dialogues. David D. Corey. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015. Paperback, $85.00. David D. Corey's The Sophists in Plato's Dialogues examines the sophists…
Socrates Meets Kierkegaard
Socrates Meets Kierkegaard: The Father of Philosophy Meets the Father of Christian Existentialism. Peter Kreeft. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2014. In his essay on Hegel,…
