Athenian Nights

                My mind is blown right now from reading Theaetetus. This is without a doubt the most difficult dialogue that I’ve tackled yet, and it’s up there with the most difficult readings I’ve ever done in my life. Even Plato himself (Socrates) said that epistemology is one of the hardest questions (148d). I’m not entirely certain I’ve understood it. I will have to come back to it once I’ve read the Enneads of Plotinus, Lloyd Gerson’s Platonic trilogy, and some commentaries. I guess one of the biggest debates within the Platonic corpus in general, and Theaetetus in particular is unitarian vs. revisionist views. I must say that after first reading Lloyd Gerson’s books, I am a committed unitarian unless I learn more that changes my mind, which I find unlikely. It seems revisionism is now the majority view, but never was until the 19 th and 20 th centuries due to the historical critical method invented by the Ger...

  I started reading through Plato’s dialogues at the beginning of the year for about a month. I just started back up again and I’d like to share my thoughts on them. The one I just finished reading was Cratylus . Previously I’d read Alcibiades I, Gorgias, and Phaedo. This one was very different from the others in certain respects. While it does have a central focus on some ideas, this is the only one I’ve read so far that sort of dragged on without engagement in mind-numbing ideas to the uninitiated. This is because the middle section is a very prolonged search for the etymologies of various “names” of things starting with gods, going onto celestial bodies, heroes, and then down to random everyday objects. Especially if one does not know Greek, this is an especially boring part, but it makes for a quick read and there are some interesting things I learned here – that Orestes means mountain man, for instance. I read up on this one in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy and fou...

  The Inescapable Love of God by Thomas Talbott is an excellent book and I heartily recommend it to all Christians – in fact, to all non-Christians too. I have been fascinated with the topic of universal salvation for the past few years. Of course, you often hear the cries of heresy and even more frustratingly the idea that universalism is some fringe doctrine that we shouldn’t spend much time on—there are more pressing issues. But what could be more important than the ultimate and eternal fate of the souls of all the creatures of God? It’s hard for me to imagine something more important, especially since this reveals the character of the God we believe in. Anyways, this book must definitely be on the reading list of all those who think the demonic picture of God that has prevailed in the Church gives one pause. Talbott writes well and makes complex philosophical arguments palatable for the uninitiated – no mean feat. The overarching idea that runs throughout the text is the ide...

  This past weekend, I went hiking in the mountains with my wife for the first time in 4 years. The last time we went to this beautiful hike in Modoc County in Northern California called Patterson Lake. That time we went with full packs and camped at the end of the hike, stayed one night and came back. This time we stayed out for 3 days and 2 nights in various campsites and brought our two dogs with us. We went to Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming. All in all, it was an excellent trip and I would highly recommend everyone I know to visit these majestic and gorgeous mountains. It did remind me of the mountains in Northern California. As a plus, there is a lot of solitude to be found at this location, which I always appreciate, especially more so as the pandemic rages on. The weather was absolutely perfect when we went highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s and 30s. The first place we went to is the Laramie mountains area, specifically at Curtis Gulch campground. This was witho...

 I stumbled upon this little-known sermon of St. John Chrysostom's yesterday and I just had to share it, since it moved my heart in a way I was not expecting. I have been reading up on the history of heresy in the church and it was comforting to see something far removed from what we see in Augustine's Correction of the Donatists and Aquinas' Summa -- namely that heretics deserve death. This homily is very apt for today, even when not dealing with specifically religious "heresy." Our nation and the world is very divided and I believe this applies to all ideas and those who would be too eager to react with zeal against ideas foreign to their way of thinking. May these words inspire you: 1. Recently I have treated and developed, in a long discourse, the question of divine incomprehensibility; I proved by scripture, just as by natural reasoning, that comprehension of the divinity remains inaccessible even to the heavenly powers, that is, those beings who, detached fr...

  Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy by Stephen R.L. Clark is one of the best contemporary books on ancient philosophy I’ve ever read. In fact, I’ve become a real fan of his work in general, he seems to me to be one of the greatest living philosophers. His style may be somewhat of an acquired taste; reading his work is highly enjoyable for me, but it is difficult work and he makes you work hard as a reader. Clark doesn’t spoon-feed the reader, it’s often difficult to discern what he really thinks and where he is taking you next As I said, this for me is highly enjoyable since he is by no means predictable, but you can, in the end see the logic in why he went through such seemingly byzantine meditations. He strikes me as a writer who believes that substance and style, content and creativity cannot be divorced and it shows in his eloquent and often, humorous, prose. Above all else, the sense one gets from reading Clark’s work is that we too often make easy distinctions in order to org...

  WARNING! SPOILERS! I had higher hopes for this book before I began it, to suddenly find that they’d been dashed away. My review is definitely biased since I am convinced by the Platonic tradition that the views here are absolute rubbish and nonsensical, but even if I find a premise illogical, if the story is entertaining or explores the option in an insightful way, I generally can suspend my disbelief. Sadly, that was not the case here. For those who do not know, I guess the author was somewhat of an occultist and spiritualist who believed in strange doctrines, like that of Nietzschean eternal recurrence (which is put on display here). It seems like me like the Stoic idea that the universe keeps on reforming itself and the exact same things happen over and over again for all eternity going from the beginning to the Great Conflagration and back again. It’s not exactly the same and I’m also not very familiar with Nietzsche so I can’t compare and contrast them.   ...