Author: Shadia B. Drury
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331954442X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
This book poses a radical challenge to the legend of Socrates bequeathed by Plato and echoed by scholars through the ages: that Socrates was an innocent sage convicted and sentenced to death by the democratic mob, for merely questioning the political and religious ideas of his time. This legend conceals an enigma: How could a sage who was pious and good be so closely associated with the treasonous Alcibiades, who betrayed Athens in the Peloponnesian war? How could Critias and Charmides, who launched a reign of terror in Athens after her defeat, have been among his students and closest associates? The book makes the case for the prosecution, denouncing the religion of Socrates for inciting a radical politics of absolutism and monism that continues to plague Western civilization. It is time to recognize that Socrates was no liberator of the mind, but quite the contrary—he was the architect of a frightful authoritarianism, which continues to manifest itself, not only in Islamic terror, but also in liberal foreign policy. Defending Homer and the tragic poets, the book concludes that the West has imbibed from the wrong Greeks.
Author: Raschke Carl Raschke
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474454585
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
Neoliberalism has become the operative buzzword among pundits and academics to characterise an increasingly dysfunctional global political economy. It is often - wrongly - identified exclusively with free market fundamentalism and illiberal types of cultural conservatism. Combining penetrating argument and broad-ranging scholarship, Carl Raschke shows what the term really means, how it evolved and why it has been so misunderstood. He lays out how the present new world disorder, signalled by the election of Trump and Brexit, derives less from the ascendancy of reactionary forces and more from the implosion of the post-Cold War effort to establish a progressive international moral and political order for the cynical benefit of a new cosmopolitan knowledge class, mimicking the so-called civilising mission of 19th-century European colonialists.
Author: Russell E. Gmirkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000578429
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520
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Book Description
Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts argues that the creation of the world in Genesis 1 and the story of the first humans in Genesis 2-3 both draw directly on Plato’s famous account of the origins of the universe, mortal life and evil containing equal parts science, theology and myth. This book is the first to systematically compare biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek creation accounts and to show that Genesis 1-3 is heavily indebted to Plato’s Timaeus and other cosmogonies by Greek natural philosophers. It argues that the idea of a monotheistic cosmic god was first introduced in Genesis 1 under the influence of Plato’s philosophy, and that this cosmic Creator was originally distinct from the lesser terrestrial gods, including Yahweh, who appear elsewhere in Genesis. It shows the use of Plato’s Critias, the sequel to Timaeus, in the stories about the Garden of Eden, the intermarriage of "the sons of God" and the daughters of men, and the biblical flood. This book confirms the late date and Hellenistic background of Genesis 1-11, drawing on Plato’s writings and other Greek sources found at the Great Library of Alexandria. This study provides a fascinating approach to Genesis that will interest students and scholars in both biblical and classical studies, philosophy and creation narratives. .
Author: James Beckman
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
Author: Mark L. McPherran
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
This study argues that to understand Socrates we must uncover and analyze his religious views, since his philosophical and religious views are part of one seamless whole. Mark McPherran provides a close analysis of the relevant Socratic texts, an analysis that yields a comprehensive and original account of Socrates' commitments to religion (e.g., the nature of the gods, the immortality of the soul). McPherran finds that Socrates was not only a rational philosopher of the first rank, but a figure with a profoundly religious nature as well, believing in the existence of gods vastly superior to ourselves in power and wisdom and sharing other traditional religious commitments with his contemporaries. However, Socrates was just as much a sensitive critic and rational reformer of both the religious tradition he inherited and the new cultic incursions he encountered. McPherran contends that Socrates saw his religious commitments as integral to his philosophical mission of moral examination and, in turn, used the rationally derived convictions underlying that mission to reshape the religious conventions of his time. As a result, Socrates made important contributions to the rational reformation of Greek religion, contributions that incited and informed the theology of his brilliant pupil, Plato.
Author: James Gustin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Platonic love
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Author: Peter J. Ahrensdorf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107699120
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In this book, Peter Ahrensdorf examines Sophocles' powerful analysis of a central question of political philosophy and a perennial question of political life: Should citizens and leaders govern political society by the light of unaided human reason or religious faith? Through a fresh examination of Sophocles' timeless masterpieces - Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone - Ahrensdorf offers a sustained challenge to the prevailing view, championed by Nietzsche in his attack on Socratic rationalism, that Sophocles is an opponent of rationalism. Ahrensdorf argues that Sophocles is a genuinely philosophical thinker and a rationalist, albeit one who advocates a cautious political rationalism. Such rationalism constitutes a middle way between an immoderate political rationalism that dismisses religion - exemplified in Oedipus the Tyrant - and a piety that rejects reason - exemplified by Oedipus at Colonus. Ahrensdorf concludes with an incisive analysis of Nietzsche, Socrates, and Aristotle on tragedy and philosophy. He argues, against Nietzsche, that the rationalism of Socrates and Aristotle incorporates a profound awareness of the tragic dimension of human existence and therefore resembles in fundamental ways the somber and humane rationalism of Sophocles.
Author: Kevin L. Bradshaw
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780355118902
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Two lines of argumentation characterize Plato's critique of religion. The first line concerns the existence, being, and nature of the divine. The second concerns religion as a political and social phenomenon. This thesis explores how these themes are presented in the Euthyphro, Republic, and Laws. While all three of these dialogues treat religion as a political phenomenon, the latter two contain complex theological and cosmological accounts. According to the political critique, religious myth is necessary to the transformation of cities into the vast technologically advanced cities that Socrates describes as "feverish" in book 2 of the Republic. In the Euthyphro, this theme is presented in microscale through its title character, whose reliance on traditional authority undermines his own traditional duty of filial piety. In the Republic, several lines of argument presented by Socrates lead to the conclusion that religious myth and innovation are necessary to the genesis, decay, and alteration of political regimes. The poets, as disseminators of supernatural myths and other "noble lies," are necessary to the genesis and alteration of all political regimes, whether tyrannical, oligarchic, or democratic. Noble lies conceal the unjust origins of civil societies and unjust distributions of wealth and power. The political critique of the Laws concerns the role of religious innovation in the deterioration of theocratic societies and the practical limits that preclude the prevention of such innovations. One can infer from the piety law pronounced by the Stranger at the end of book 10, when considered in light of the general themes of the Laws , that, ultimately, theocratic laws intended to prevent religious innovation will be undefined by natural limitations. The Stranger also echoes several important aspects of Socrates' critique of poetry, assigning to the poets the role of enabling tyranny. Critical theology is a major theme of both the Republic and the Laws.
Author: Ronald Beiner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139492616
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. It examines four important traditions within the history of modern political philosophy. The civil religion tradition, principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau, seeks to domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of politics. The liberal tradition pursues an alternative strategy of domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant reaction against liberalism, reversing the relationship of subordination asserted by civil religion. Finally, a fourth tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of political philosophy itself.
Author: Robert Frodeman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1783483113
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
This book diagnoses a crisis facing philosophy – and the humanities more broadly – and sketches a path toward institutionalizing socially engaged approaches to philosophical research.
