Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"This theory would come easily to the mind of a rationalzing Greek, for in his literaure from Homer onwarda he would find the name of the appropriate god used for the substance itself" - this whole discussion doesn't really escape our own conception of 'God' which is obviously different to the Greeks.

"We do not have the ideal world, such as we like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy"

"Astronomers (say Plato) got the name of athiests because some ... thought that the heavenly bodies were carried around by necessity. But [others] ... decided that although the stars themsleves might be lifeless clods and stones, there was a mind behind them directing their movement and the whome cosmic order." - the key word is behind, when do we draw back the last veil?

"As 'enlightenment' grows, it shows itself under two main aspects ... first, the determination to believe only in what is reasonable ... secondly a genuine concern ... with the amelioration of human life and the elimination of cruelty" - and when Greco-Roman civilization became Christian, was that enlightenment?

"This question-answer approach, by the way, was turned into a fine art...in a handbook...edited by Alan Hornsey" - Handbook for Modern Language Teachers (1975)

"This book is written for teachers...who mainly work in high schools." - At last! Every ELT book I've read starts with the assumption I teach in a language school.

"We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. Falling into an interminable ennui." - Dick anticipates the impact of the internet

"'But,' said Paul, 'it deals with alternate present. Many well-known science fiction novels of thst sort'." - Dick's as well?

"If those Nazis can fly back and forth between here and Mars, why can"t they get television going?" - good question!

"In their conclusions Gorgias and Protagoras were at one, and if there is anything that may be spoken of as a general sophistic view, it is this, that there is not 'criterion'. You and I cannot, by comparing our experiences, correct them..." - isn't this at odds with their educational missìon?

"The Sophists, then, were not the pioneers of rhetoric, but they were certainly ready to step in and supply the demand for it which accompanied the development of personal freedom all over Greece" - cause/effect?

"Down to the time of Plato and Aristotle, HOMONOIA was mainly conceived as within the polis, being in fact the virtue by which it kept its unity and maintained itself against outsiders, a preventative of that STASIS which so bedevilled the life of the Greek city states." - presumably humanity will have to await Space Invaders before it experiences HOMONOIA.

"DEMOS means the whole state, oligarchy only a part; secondly, that the wealthy may be the best guardians of property, but the best counsellors are the intelligent, and the best at listening and judging arguments are the many. And in a democracy all these, whether acting separately or together, have an equal share." - Athenagorus, democratic leader of Syracuse

"No, Rome became a city for me only when I chose, as did many before me, to give it a sense and for me Rome can exist only in so far as I shaped it to my idea ... We are not in relationship to anything until we have wrapped it in a meaning, nor do we know for certainty what that meaning is until we have costingly laboured to impress it upon the object" - the politician as poet

"People affect now to be shocked by the fact that their mothers and grandmothers appear to have been repeatedly married and divorced simply for reasons of political expediency. They forget ... that the bride was in herself a political general." - This seems to be the theme of these 20th century fictions of 1st century Rome: women in public life. A reflection of the source material, or the contemporary rise of women?

'It cannot be said too often that Caesar is unhappy in the society of capable men - or, rather, of men who are possessed of both ability and character." - a corollary on Caesar's view on the role of corruption in government?

"Perhaps the first thing to note is the widespread acceptence at this time of the historical theory of the evolution of society from a primitive state in which everyone was for himself alone..." - Rousseau too; did we have to wait for Darwin until it occurred to us that we might be social creatures? Are all traditions the same on this issue?

"Theseus, condemning tyranny in the SUPPLICES of Euripides ... says that 'under written laws justice is meted out impartially to the feeble and the wealthy, the lesser man overcomes the greater if his cause is just'. This happens 'when the DEMOS is master in the land'." - Ooh, look! A definition of democracy that says nothing of majorities, and everything about the rule of law.

"[Callicles's] eloquence ... convinced the young Nietzsche, while Socrates's reasoning left him cold." - I thought Nietzsche specifically rejected Christian morality as a slave morality. Callicles' argument pedates Christianity and is stronger: all morality turns men into slaves.

"Office in Rome is won by bribes in one hand, threats in the other; and in the mouth, quotations from Ennius" - in our times, we've abandoned Ennius.

"...the most recent practice has been to consider all possible alternatives as they appear to a philosopher today...Such clarification can be most valuable, yet may err by neglecting (as it is never wise to do with Plato) the dramatic situation and emotional tension between the speakers, and the fact that the driving-force behind Thrasymachus is passionate feeling rather than philosophical inquiry."

"...the extent to which one must compromise with the greed of capable men, to the antagonism always present in one's subordinates, to the differences that distinquish conquered lands from those long incorporated in the Republic, and to the methods one employs in assisting headstrong men plunge to their own ruin." - Caesar accounts for corruption.

"The swaggering self-assurance of the middle part of the century gave way to fear and anxiety about the future now that Britain had so evidently passed the peak of its industrial, commercial and political power" - From 'Cool Britannia' to 'Brexit Britain'?

"Technologies that had promised peace were harnessed as the means of waging a new form of high tech, industrialised war." - likewise internet and mobile technologies become a means of digitising propaganda.

"The [1860s] belonged to Lincoln, Bismark and Garibaldi with their brand of romantic nationalism, state activism and democracy" - reaction to the technology and trade driven globalisation of the 1850s. It seems we're in a similar period now, one that belongs to Putin, Orbán and Trump? Strange tp see Lincoln in such company.

"Aware of the hardening international mood, Abraham Lincoln knew that 'a distinct anti-slavery policy would remove the foreign danger'." - suggests here that the Emancipation Proclamation was a product of foreign policy.

"In [Ulrika Wheeler's] days of sainthood she was held up as an icon of pure British womanhood; in her disgrace it was remembered that she was not British at all: she had an Indian mother."

"There were, in fact, strikingly few cases of rape or torture committed by mutinous Indian sepoys...Official inquiries also affirmed that rumoured atrocities did not stand up to scrutiny." - interestingly, I find this hard to believe, what will historians of the future make of recent press coverage of ISIS?

"As to [Protagoras's] own claims as a Sophist, given that virtue can be taught, and is continually being instilled in an infinite variety of ways simply by the experience of being brought up in a well governed state..." - I find this a profoundly 'modern' idea: obviously, I'm wrong.

"They didn't teach us nationalism as such, but by creating that atmosphere where we all Iraqis by default, and the values we had were based on the ability to compete and learn and not on who you belonged to and where you came from, it was implicit." - interesting take on nationalism as promoting egalitarianism, whereas nowadays it is primarily used to as an argument to preserve privilege.