Tag: Socrates
A number of the heavy-weights of Roman literature were freed slaves. Terence, for example, was an African slave, brought to Rome by a senator. His master became impressed with his literary talent and, insensitive to the demotion in quality of life and pay it would mean, freed him from slavery to become a playwright. Horace, … Read More
A.D. Nuttall, the Oxford literature professor, has observed that ancient philosophy falls into two periods–the first being that of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the second being the generation that followed: Epicurus, Zeno (father of Stoicism), skeptics like Pyrrho, and others. Socrates died in 399 B.C.E., but the rest lived and wrote mostly in the 4th … Read More
The Republic is amazing in that it contains inchoate within it many of the major arguments later put forward by Descartes, Hobbes, Bacon, Mill, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Wittgenstein, and many others. Because of the style–elenchus, or Socratic dialogue–Plato’s many profound insights are embedded in a rambling river of desultory, all-night sort of conversation between … Read More