The disordered souls of the tyrannical mob, in projecting their power through the individual tyrant that they select as their leader, will all suffer by being betrayed and disowned by the tyrant. And what more could be expected? Plato gives an account in the ninth book of the Republic of how a tyrannical soul is [...]
Plato tried to act as a political advisor to the tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse. Famously, it was a fiasco. What are the sources of this failure? Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, has an interesting section on Dionysius. He tells us how Dionysius ruled over the Syracusans for thirty-eight years, beginning his rule when he [...]
The film “Gladiator” imparts a feeling of what living according to Stoic virtue might be. One of the best Stoic lines of dialogue in the film is given to Maximus, who says: “I knew a man who once said, ‘Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.’” In Ridley Scott’s [...]
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 magnet. Ion’s own professional expertise lies in the recitation of the poetry of Homer, and so Socrates says: “The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer [...]
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 must they forever be seen as precursors to something greater? The very name used by scholars to classify them seems to condemn them forever to the status of [...]
Heading out to see the new Leonardo DiCaprio film, The Revenant, my friend joked, “Get ready for The Edge — Part Deux!” Mr. DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, inspired by the actual frontiersman of that name. The Revenant tells the story of how, in 1823, a bear attacks Glass, who is then left for dead by [...]
For the ancient Greeks, a pig was “the cheapest sacrificial animal,” easily raised in large quantities. Not only that, but “pig-sacrifice for Demeter was the most common feature of all forms of the Demeter cult.”[1] In particular, we should consider that the pig was the animal that died in the place of the initiate at [...]
There is, in myth, a recurring structure that, once deconstructed, indicates how myth is generated. Myth hides the truth about its “missing link” to reality: namely, the real and innocent victims of a sacrificial crisis.[1] In the myth of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, one key element of this recurring structure is the role that [...]
What can a philosopher’s metaphysical “intuition of being”[1] offer to society? I think the root philosophical difficulty, whenever we speak of politically contentious things, is that we have few resources with which to resist “modern philosophy’s ideological approach to politics.”[2] How can one cultivate the right personal disposition such that one might avoid the pitfalls [...]
French filmmaker Eric Rohmer (1920-2010) created an impressive oeuvre of fine films. I first encountered him through the DVD box-set from The Criterion Collection containing six of his films known as the “Six Moral Tales.” The set also contains a 262-page paperback book of the six stories that Rohmer originally wrote, upon which he later [...]
Many have mistaken Marshall McLuhan for being a prophet of postmodernity. But McLuhan himself said, “I am a Thomist for whom the sensory order resonates with the divine Logos.” Postmodern intellectual culture is perhaps best characterized as adhering to the thesis that all reality is socially constructed. Many have mistaken Marshall McLuhan for being a [...]
“The death of the spirit is the price of progress. Nietzsche revealed this mystery of the Western apocalypse when he announced that God was dead and that He had been murdered. This Gnostic murder is constantly committed by the men who sacrifice God to civilization. The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the [...]
As another year draws to a close, the high quality problem of a personal library, one that never stops growing, is all around me. I am surrounded on all sides. This is not just a metaphor. In my home study, all bookshelf space has already been filled. I have doubled it up with that familiar [...]
Wolfgang Smith, commenting on the temporal modality of the Garden of Eden, points out that “Aeviternity, properly so called, may be characterized as the temporality proper to the celestial or angelic order. But whereas ‘Paradise’ is situated ‘below’ the celestial state and may be subject to time, it yet partakes of aeviternity; as St. Chrysostom [...]