HoP 020 - Virtue Meets Its Match - Plato's Go...

An interview on the surprising comforts to be found in the philosophy of pessimism, focusing on Bayle but looking all the way forward to Schopenhauer. 

In the last of five episodes to celebrate reaching the episode 500 mark by looking at things he skipped in earlier series, Peter talks to Daniel Watson about philosophy in early medieval Ireland. 

On the Platonic dialogue written around 380 BCE about an encounter between Socrates and one of the leading Sophists of his day.

What is virtue ("the political art" according to Protagoras), and can it be taught? What are the relations of the various virtues to each othe ...

This part of the text is a re-evaluation of what morality is, or can be, for the philosopher of the future. Nietzsche is a bit sneaky here, by implying the free spirit, or philosopher of the future, to be admirable from the perspective of our own moral intuition. Nevertheless, he ...  Show more

The symphony of virtues.  

Socrates was a famous opponent of the Sophists, the teachers of rhetoric instead of truth - and yet, in his legal defense, he employs the techniques of rhetoric and displays a mastery of oratory. In a society that distrusted irony and regarded it as a form of dishonesty, Socrates ...  Show more