“We’re all doing the best we can.” – Brene Brown, Rising Strong, 118 “No one who has knowledge or thought of other actions as better than those he is doing, and as possible, will do as he proposes if he is free to do the better ones.” – Socrates, Plato’s Protagoras, 358b–c Everyone is doing…
In this article, I want to discuss some parallels between Plato’s Socrates and Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. First, I will look at the trial (or “trial”) of each, and second I will look at how each analyzes honor and the underlying psychology of those views, particularly the relation between honor and envy. Critics over the…
In this article I want to explore some common ground between the thinking of two ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Epicurus, about the nature of pleasure and how it fits into the good life. Then, I will add a new coat of paint to some terminology hopefully to make these useful ideas feel a bit…
“But how lovely and how fitting the sound of the lively and impressive I of Socrates! It is the I of endless dialogue, and the air of dialogue is wafted around it in all its journeys.” — Martin Buber, I and Thou, 46 (Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith) Martin Buber was a 20th century Austrian-Israeli philosopher…
In this article I want to continue my discussion of Plato’s Philebus, a fascinating work in which Plato lays out his recipe for the good life. The passage I want to focus on today relates to Delphic ‘self-knowledge.’ In ancient Greece, an important religious temple at Delphi had on it the inscription, “know thyself” and this…
What would you give to hear perhaps the world’s greatest philosopher share his personal recipe for the good life? This is exactly what we get in Plato’s The Philebus, one of his final works and his ultimate say on the question of how an individual can live a good life. This dialogue, unfortunately, has a reputation…