In his desire to come up with objective definitions of concepts such as “justice”, “virtue” and “beauty,” Plato (as Socrates before him) struggled with the reality that the definitions of those terms seemed, at least on the surface, to vary a lot from one culture to the next – and even from one individual to the next. That seemed to loan the expedient ethics of […]
Go tell the Spartans
The works of the Seven Sages (regardless of the exact names on the list) inspired Greek thinkers for centuries, afterwards, and some of those most inspired appeared in Classical Athens. However, the greatest works of the Athenian philosophers, ironically, took place during one of the city’s darkest periods, following a defeat by a league of enemies led by the city-state of Sparta. So, before we […]