Happiness is freedom and freedom is courage. Callicles and Glaucon. Brasidas and Demosthenes.
Joined March 2022
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'Il conflitto Callicle-Socrate nel Gorgia, non è il conflitto tra due individui, ma è un conflitto che si presenta nell’interno di una stessa anima (Callicle e Socrate, cioè, sono due tendenze o visuali del medesimo spirito); ed è un conflitto insolubile e ineliminabile.' G Rensi
Alex Leone retweeted
Thucydides said it better: for the weak (Melos) hope as a future help from gods and friends can be a ruinous relief from danger. For the strong (Athenians) hope as a present force of a large army, technology and money can be a comforter in action. Hope loves power.
''L'impero è per Tucidide Il supremo compimento dell'uomo; e la moderazione è appunto il modo d'intelligenza di chi ha impero. Nell'impero è Il supremo compimento, nella moderazione la suprema forma dell'lntelligenza, la virtu suprema..'' - Antonio Maddalena
Thucydides vs Socrates. Socrates condemns those who do wrong, choosing suffering wrong. Thucydides justifies doing wrong - the choice between doing wrong and suffering it is inevitable, anyone who wants freedom and security, profit and glory, cannot avoid doing wrong to others.
In Thucydides Brasidas is Achilles - he never loses a battle and dies in majestic glory. Demosthenes is Odysseus, a man who knows pain and suffering, who learns from his mistakes, and achieves the greatest Athenian triumphs (Pylos and Sphacteria) by the power of his intellect.
''Elena è greca ed è, insieme ad Achille, il mito della Grecia intera: l'eroe più forte, la donna più bella.'' MG Ciani
The superman Callicles is among men what the supercity Athens is among cities, they're both driven by Thucydidean philosophy.
''Moderation is in a way the key term in Thucydides, and takes the place of justice because unmitigated justice is impossible, some injustice is inevitable. The criterion cannot be justice, therefore, But rather the degree of injustice, and that is moderation.'' (Leo Strauss).
Alex Leone retweeted
Cf Aristotle - a man who refuses politics is either a god or a beast. Calypso is a woman who can make you a superman, godlike, Circe makes you subhuman, a pig. Homer shows us the best of women, Calypso, and the worst, Circe. Odysseus refuses Calypso because he's a political man.
Alex Leone retweeted
There are 2 types of history: 1) Marxist, an impotent, slave moralistic outrage due to looking back at humiliation, weakness, trying to repair in the present the evil of the past. 2) Thucydidean, the past as a lesson and a light to understand the present and predict the future.
''If Thucydides challenged Homer, if he believed that his wisdom should supersede Homeric wisdom, he must have believed that by understanding the nature of war one understands the nature of human life.'' Leo Strauss.
Alex Leone retweeted
Lethe (oblivion) and mnemosyne (memory) are two sources that can produce in the soul either forgetfulness or the revelation of the past as a truth for the present, and a foresight for the future (Thucydides). Helen is virtually a form of Platonic wisdom, unchangeable.
Alex Leone retweeted
The best part of that dialogue is the masked intervention of Xenophon himself who says that they only have arms and virtue, and they're ready to fight the Persians at once, but without arms virtue is useless. Aristotle would later say that virtue without armament is nil.
Alex Leone retweeted
Not through senses, but through intellect. Thucydides believes that the historian's hindsight can be the politician's foresight - to polish his xynesis. Thucydides is more actual now than ever before - interpret the world through insight, intuition and tested experience.
Alex Leone retweeted
Depends on the book, not all the old books are useful. Cf Thucydides: investigating the past is useful to determine the present evil, to find a way to predict the future (by eliminating evil). The past as a light to shine on the present in order to predict the future.
Alex Leone retweeted
Courage is best defined by Thucydides and Plato, although Plato gives a Thucydidean definition of the virtue, both in the Laches and the Republic - the union between the Spartan and the Athenian character. Thus, courage is both moral (Spartan) and scientific (Athenian). Rep 430B.
Alex Leone retweeted
This is what Antiphon says. If you bury a wooden bed, after some time the 'physis' of the wood would manifest itself, and it will give birth not to a bed, but to another wood/tree. What this means is that physis (human nature) is stronger than nomos (education or 'lion taming').