In this week's "Spreading the Word", I share with you a short video. It is a provocative invitation to assess our uncritical value of democracy as the ultimate good. To what extent is it good, really? I found it interesting that both crucial achievements of Ancient Greeks - philosophy and democracy - were far from …
Continue reading Spreading the Word: Philosophy vs Democracy (and what Socrates thought about it)
Pre-Socratics in the history of philosophy are a group of Greek thinkers who lived and contemplated the nature of reality before the great Master of Western philosophy (a bit like Yoda from Star Wars), Socrates, was born. By the way, he was born in Athens in 469 BCE. Despite his monumental role, Socrates was not …
Continue reading 130 Years Before Socrates: Historical Exploration (Introduction)
Last week I wrote the first part of this article. In it, I started drawing the historical background leading up to the first recorded ancient Greek philosopher - Thales. In this second part, I finish the article and bring our time journey from its last stop (~10th/9th century BC) some 300-400 years ahead to the …
Continue reading Before Socrates – Origins of Western Philosophy (Part 2 of 2)
It is ironic, really - a man who made it his point to never write down any of his thoughts and claimed that he knew nothing is also the man who is among the most famous western philosophers. One of the "founding fathers", so to speak. I am referring to Socrates, of course. Luckily, his …
Continue reading Before Socrates – Origins of Western Philosophy (Part 1 of 2)
Many of us are in self-isolation these days and our freedom of movement (and socialising) is restricted. In most cases, it is because our respective governments decided this way. Although we understand the motivation, the reasoning and the purpose of these imposed measures, still - it is a limitation of some of our basic freedoms …
Continue reading Socrates in Prison and We in Self-Isolation
