Athens Corner
These are previews from my website AthensCorner.com of in-depth discussions on the Western world's greatest books in philosophy and political philosophy. There are also occasional previews for my Fathers & Sons series on the website devoted to guiding and assisting fathers who themselves want to educate their sons in the great books, and so the emphasis is upon examples of excellence of virtue.
Athens Corner
Thucydides, Plato, Christianity (Intro)
This is the opening hour and a half of the sequel to my recording "Thucydides, Plutarch, Nietzsche" for my Technology and Nihilism series. Subscribers will have access to the full 4 hour recording soon.
Here I discuss the significance of Thucydides's turn to speeches after the "archaeology." In this recording I discuss Thucydides as the alternative to the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition, and how it is that Nietzsche sees in Thucydides the standard which we are to look towards going forward.
Among other things, what is at issue is the status of the divine in the life of man, particularly with respect to what we mean by "history" and how, if at all, we even have access to "history."
I include numerous and meticulous juxtapositions of Thucydides with Plato (particularly the dialogues of the Gorgias, the Republic, and the Laws) and Aristotle (particularly the Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics, and the Physics). I also draw upon specific examples from Montesquieu, Hegel, Nietzsche, William Butler Yeats, and Heidegger to connect everything that comes tumbling out from a very subtle and detailed reading of Thucydides and a representative sampling of the entirety of the great books of our Western tradition to emphasize the living relevance of them all for us today