Prologue I learned a few things about Plato in high school and in my university classes on ancient and medieval Greek history. I improved that meager ...

Strictly speaking, there can be no biography of Plato — only what Carol Atack calls a “biographical tradition.” Exactly when he was born, exactly where he traveled, and to what extent his famous ...

Sometimes, even the newest ideas have ancient roots. Take, for example, neoconservatism, the radical philosophy that supposedly guided the Bush administration’s ill-fated foreign policy decisions. Who ...

The Republic, the best-known work of ancient Greek philosopher Plato, authored around 375 BC, has shaped western political thought. Greece is now known as the “cradle of democracy”. Not only was the ...

One of my less than admirable traits is to attempt to categorize and organize everything into its simplest terms. All too often, simple devolves to simplistic as I keep trying to pound an unwilling ...

It’ll be the most entertaining Philosophy 101 class you’ve ever sat through. The sagacious writings of Plato, Bodhidharma, Karl Marx, Rene Descartes, Friedrich Neitzsche and Ayn Rand have been dumbed ...

Since Donald J. Trump first came onto the political scene, I have thought a lot about the philosopher-kings of Plato’s Republic. In a climate of norm-breaking politicians, increasing polarization and ...

When I was 21, I was trying to decide whether to become a doctor or a philosophy professor. My older brother, whose advice I usually followed, asked me why I wanted to study philosophy. I was evasive.