The Republic

the first book that really set me thinking about the structure of society, about inequalities. And of course about stepping out of The Cave.

on HN, 2017

Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, most college grads (let alone non-grads) from traditional programs that weren't poli-sci or philosophy would receive a better "citizen of the world" education from reading and understanding the first couple books of The Republic than they evidently picked up in 17 or more damn years of formal schooling.

on HN, 2023

They could literally exceed all that education in a lazy Sunday afternoon, because despite all those years they somehow failed to appreciate what the questions even are and that those questions aren't as easy to dismiss as many pop-understandings and pop-philosophies suggest, so they end up with these embarrassingly-bad ideas about it (and are often weirdly confident that they know it all!).

on HN, 2023

The Allegory of the Cave (Plato; section in The Republic) — classic; some might say the basic idea underpinning all philosophical and scientific inquiry.

on HN, 2020

Hard to believe (I don't believe) that Thucydides could remember these lengthy speeches given by emissaries in various scenarios, but what is written is nonetheless riveting. It's great context for my current read, Plato's Republic, which was heavily influenced by the Athenian (democracy's) defeat against the Spartan oligarchy.

on HN, 2022

Can you draw some broader pictures here for the relatively uninformed how you would get a broadly humanistic view from, e.g., The Republic? If that's too broad an ask, could you draw a line from Plato (and others) to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

on HN, 2022

I somehow ended up mixed up with the ancient Greeks (Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, some stoics, some skeptics) on a daily basis for over a decade after that. I didn't agree with much of it, but it turned my world upside down and gave me some amazing thinking tools.

on HN, 2019