Christopher Bruell on Plato’s “Cleitophon”
The trap in commenting on the specific work of a specific scholar is that the audience can become hopelessly lost. So I know it’s important to make a few remark...
Category: philosophy
On the First Line of Nietzsche’s “On the Pathos of Truth”
Nietzsche begins “On the Pathos of Truth” with a sentence that merits an essay: “Is fame actually nothing but the tastiest morsel of our self-love?” When I firs...
Descartes’ Insulting Language in the Preface to the Meditations on First Philosophy
“The Meditations will inevitably be read by weak minds who will believe and be consoled by the promise of immortality, but it is addressed to les plus for...
Socrates, Money, and Virtue: Apology of Socrates 30a-c
What I would like is success. I’d like to do a thing well, get something good, and feel secure about what I can accomplish. Maybe “success” is the wrong w...
Giuseppe Ungaretti, “I am a creature”
At the battle, where one maneuvers around life and death, the mountain comes into view over and over. The mountain, “this stone,” breaks the sky, bu...