A few years ago now, somebody at Quora asked the broad and fascinating question, "How has Greek philosophy influenced Christianity?" I gave a brief answer, and one that I think is pertinent to this time of year. Let's begin with Hanukkah, which actually begins at sundown on Christmas Day this year. Hanukkah -- this is a quick and rough statement -- celebrates an uprising against Greek influence, as it manifested itself in the "abomination of Desolation" (pagan sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem). So my answer brings in the Jews of the Second Temple period, the early Christians, and of course as requested ... the Greeks. In one mix. I hope I have stirred your curiosity. Here is the answer: Very deeply. And from the beginning. After all, the two cultures (of Judea and Greece) were merging already in the time of the Seleucid Empire. In the second century BCE the Hellenizers pressed too hard ...
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The Greek philosopher Xenophanes said that if horses could hold pencils they'd draw gods that look like horses. Question: suppose Xenophanes could test his hypothesis. Suppose, say, a horse could be fitted with relevant prosthesis and taught how to draw. How would Xenophanes know which resulting figures is a horse and which is a god that is supposed to look like a horse? Would the horsey artist put halos above some of the drawn horses, like medieval artists identifying the saints?
Puzzling about a matter of translation. Lucretius, the great Latin poet, wrote ON THE NATURE OF THINGS some time around 58 BC, giving us a book-length rendering of the views of the Greek atomists. The matter of translation I have in mind is Lucretius' decision to refer to "atoms" as "primordia." That word in turn gets translated into English as "first beginnings." This is odd. "Atom," as even a flunk-out of languages like Christopher Faille knows, means "indivisible." Isn't there some word in Latin that would be a better translation for that then "first beginnings"? Oh, I don't know (he looks up the etymology of the English word "indivisible") -- indivisibilus? Well, "primordia" has only four syllables and "indivisibilis" has six. That may have made it easier to use in verse -- easier to rhyme, and to work into the meter as necessary. A further investigation of that would take wa...
Who was Socrates' teacher? Is there someone (historical) who bears the same relationship to him that he bears to Plato and Plato bears to Aristotle, so that we can extend the line of apostolic succession one link further back? The SYMPOSIUM, Socrates said that he was taught about Love (and, it seems, about other conceptions basic to his philosophy) by a woman named Diotima. There is room for debate about how historical this bit was. Plato may have invented her for expository purposes. One consideration though is the placename associated with her. She is called “Diotima of Mantinea,” and Mantinea was a city in the Peloponnese affiliated with Sparta. Plato, I think, would not have invented this detail. In the climate after the execution of Socrates, he would not have encouraged the notion that “perhaps he had the hemlock coming because he was consorting with the enemy.” So … maybe she is historical and the right answer to our question. (The above is the image assigned to he...
In its own way this is the most puzzling of Plato's many dialogs. The PARMENIDES establishes that Plato was fully aware of the standard arguments against the "Theory of the Forms." He puts them into the mouth of the elder Parmenides who is supposed to have met a young Socrates. What is supposed to be the take-away? I would guess that it is that the views expressed at the start of this dialog are those of the YOUNG Socrates, and that we're supposed to contrast this decisively refutable stuff with some more sophisticated version of the theory of the Forms we could attribute to the older man, and to Plato himself. But I don't understand of what the implied and later-acquired sophistication consists.
"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility." The book this is from is, unsurprisingly, named THE FRAGILITY OF GOODNESS. It's subtitle is perhaps a little less predictable: LUCK AND ETHICS IN GREEK TRAGEDY AND PHILOSOPHY. Publication year, 1986.