Before we get into today’s essay on Ancient Greek ideas of education, heroism, mortality, and much more, I would like to announce the return of the Q&A series. Fill out the following form to get a response to any question you have in its own blog post: link.
Let’s get on with the show.
We will try something new with this article. Lately I have yearned to take the blog in a new direction—if only to keep myself entertained, which for us means it must become more rigorous. I have not failed to notice that my ‘favorite’ articles tend to be the ones that get passed over in silence by the readership; no matter. A chef is not the summary of his ingredients, but rather his ability to seduce the receiving palate into new, uncharted territories. Who was the first chef to dream of the barbaric and, (can we admit this?) delectable meal that is now known, infamously so, as the Ortolan dish? This staple of haute French cuisine was the last meal of the former president of France, François Mitterand—the leader of an empire, surrounded by loved ones, engaged in one final act of transgression: the ingestion of a twisted and wild songbird, flushed and gorged with grains and cooked in Armagnac. This dish, while illegal now, continues to be to the culinary scene what sex is to the virginal: a landmark moment. That such an act, such a dish, remains constituted primarily of a barbaric practice carried out by the most refined among us is of no matter to them. It has occurred to me that this is what the blog should be like.
I quote Nietzsche liberally, and routinely work with the continuation of his ideas, but perhaps I should be more of a Nietzschen, ‘in practice.’ Which is to say, willing and able to engage directly with philosophers (without poetically skirting around them), and with a rigorous cross-movement in terms of methodology—in other words, to think across disciplines, and to flay them alive before an audience, just as Shakespeare set up his tragedies as the process of eliciting blood from the collision of two entities for the audience. This is how one ought to do philosophy—and so attempts will be made.
If the form changes in some regards, as you might see exhibited below (but will primarily be let loose in a more refined fashion going forward, as I’ll have more time to deliberate on specific dialogical arguments and source scholarly texts), then that will be why. If I demand more from you, if I make it necessary for you to engage with primary texts and revisit these posts for further elucidation, if I cut, with a machete, a path through the jungle and let you deal with the bugs on your own, then this is why—if we’re going to ‘do it,’ then let’s do it. There are no safe, simple, and easy ways to the top of the mountain (even if you have a sherpa): is that enough to dissuade you? Or are you of that wild and noble breed of man who accepts the mountain’s terms, simply because it is known: the air is purer up there, and the sights are for the gods. What else could there possibly be to move you to action than that?
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