Critias

Platonic Dialogue: Protagoras and Socrates Debate: Can Virtue Be Taught?
Philosophy

Platonic Dialogue: Protagoras and Socrates Debate: Can Virtue Be Taught?

09/29/2023 Bruce Strom 0

Socrates wants his students to think for themselves, so we cannot assume that Socrates really believes that virtue cannot be taught. After all, at the end of the dialogue, Socrates asserts that true knowledge leads to virtue. Perhaps he seeks to dissuade the youths in Athens from studying under the Sophists, who claim to be able to teach anything, for a fee, a generous fee, of course.
What example comes to mind if we assert that virtue can be taught? We need to go no further than the Book of Judges, which is filled with horrible stories that atheists love to parade as proof that God is not a loving god. We must keep in mind the constant theme of the Book of Judges: Everyone in Israel did what was right IN HIS OWN EYES. Which is the slogan of the Sophists. […]

Greek and Roman History

Summary of the Peloponnesian Wars Between Athens and Sparta

11/25/2022 Bruce Strom 4

Why study the Peloponnesian wars? One main reason is: You cannot understand the Platonic dialogues without first understanding the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, because so many of the leading figures of this period are referenced in the Platonic dialogues, and we can learn many moral lessons from the war, which changed the Greek city-states forever.
The history of the war includes many interesting personalities, including Pericles, the founder of the radical democracy of Athens who died in the first years of the war, and Alcibiades, the ladies’ man and charismatic personality who was a leader of all three sides of the antagonists of the war, and we have the Spartan general Lysander who spared Athens from destruction when she lost the war. […]

History

Thirty Tyrants Ruling Athens After Spartan Victory in the Peloponnesian Wars

07/29/2022 Bruce Strom 0

After the end of the Peloponnesian Wars, the victorious Spartan commander Lysander insisted that, as part of the terms of peace, the Athenians set up an aristocracy under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. Although the previous tyrants in the sixth century BC were benevolent tyrants, the Thirty were Tyrants of the worst kind, dominated by the vicious Critias, a tyranny that quickly descended into an orgy of bloodshed directed first against their enemies, and then against their fellow aristocrats so they could seize their property. This misrule preceded the reestablishment of the Radical Democracy of Athens, and the events of the Thirty Tyrants cast a long shadow over Athenian history and the Platonic dialogues. […]