Tag: Plato
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11. History, Suffering, and Sin
Suffering is simultaneously one of the most manifest facts of history and its greatest offense. Therefore, any schema of history must offer an account of suffering, if it is to be in any way satisfying. I wonder a little bit here, consider this a meditation. Ancient history was essentially cyclical, seeing suffering as baked into…
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Emma and the Philosophers
Fragments on reading Austen’s Emma through the lens of various philosophers. Emma and Kierkegaard Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Kierkegaard stresses that the second half of the command is just as important as the first: love of neighbor is grounded in and equal to (to exceed would be idolatry) our love of ourselves. …
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A Brief Note on Method
Socrates: I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want…
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The Weltbild of Justin Martyr, pt. 2
As previously discussed, Justin developed intellectually in a rather free-wheeling philosophical milieu, a ferment just prior to the emergence of the schools that would come to dominate the next few centuries, indeed the next millennium, of thought. Consequently and particularly because of his own rather eclectic journey through various philosophical schools on his way to…
Dan Yingst 