Athens Corner

Jun 28 2024 40

Athens Corner Podcast artwork

These are previews from my website AthensCorner.com of in-depth discussions on the Western world's greatest books in philosophy and political philosophy. There are also occasional previews for my Fathers & Sons series on the website devoted to guiding and assisting fathers who themselves want to educate their sons in the great books, and so the emphasis is upon examples of excellence of virtue.

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Athena's Plan in the Odyssey: On Teaching and Learning

Jun 28 2024 38 mins

This is the preview to my second discussion of Homer's Odyssey for the "Fathers & Sons" series on my AthensCorner.com website. It's the sequel to my previous discussion on the Odyssey titled "The Beautiful, the Good, and the Just in Homer's Odyssey. At issue in this is the status of Odysseus's son, Telemachus. More than merely an entryway into the Odyssey, the opening account o

Thucydides, Nietzsche, and Plutarch

Apr 28 2024 230 mins

This is my entire discussion of the opening to Thucydides's Peloponnesian War for the Technology & Nihilism series on my website (AthensCorner.com). In this recording I read in its entirety, and discuss in very meticulous detail, the first twenty-two paragraphs of Thucydides's Peloponnesian War (commonly referred to as "the Archaeology" of the text). At issue is just how much w

Christianity, Philosophy, and "Modernity" (part 1)

Mar 23 2024 77 mins

Broadly speaking, the theme of the series that I provide in philosophy on my website, AthensCorner.com, center around the various relationships in which philosophy and divine revelation have existed together in the Western philosophical tradition, whether for the Greeks, the medieval Scholastics, the Moderns with their "Modern" science, or the Postmoderns with their technology and

Aristotle: Slavery and the Entirety of Philosophy

Feb 20 2024 25 mins

In preparing to begin an entire series on Plato's longest dialogue the "Laws" for my website AthensCorner.com, I use an almost casual comment by Aristotle in his discussion (or logos) on slavery in the Politics to discuss the way in which inquiry into the art of politics unfolds, and almost immediately (!), into the entirety of philosophy. Among other things, I place great emphasis

About AthensCorner.com and the "Athenian Stranger"

Feb 13 2024 20 mins

If you're enjoying the recordings I've been providing here and you're curious about my larger project with AthensCorner.com and my own story, then I think you'll find this brief discussion interesting and hopefully as enjoyable as the others.

Eros, Honor, and The Shield of Achilles in Homer

Feb 08 2024 199 mins

This is my discussion in its entirety of The Shield of Achilles from the Technology & Nihilism series on my website (AthensCorner.com). The purpose of this discussion is to reveal the teaching in Homer's Iliad on this thing we call "technology." This is particularly important for us because of the way in which we tend to mistakenly believe that the most urgent questions concern

Imagery, Poetry, and Natural Right in Homer's Odyssey

Jan 20 2024 57 mins

This is my second discussion on Homer's Odyssey for the Fathers & Sons series on my website (AthensCorner.com). I've provided the entirety of the discussion here because I believe that what Homer provides us with is still so very urgent and relevant for us today and, in particular, for fathers seeking to have a direct involvement in educating their sons toward virtue. A few of

The Meaning of the "Overman [Übermensch]" in Nietzsche

Jan 14 2024 45 mins

Talk of Nietzsche is almost always synonymous with talk of the "Overman [Übermensch]," and so what I do in this discussion is introduce a number of the most definitive themes in Nietzsche's thought by way of an introduction to the Overman in his thought. To achieve this goal, I begin with the importance of Goethe's Faust for Nietzsche, and then I canvass such diverse but thematic

Postmodernity, Technology, and PreModernity (part 1)

Jan 08 2024 46 mins

This is the first half of a discussion in which I broadly but rigorously introduce the most definitive characteristic of Postmodern philosophy and how that characteristic is inherently related to what we refer to as "technology" and PreModern philosophy. Specifically, I discuss the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Jünger, Martin Heidegger, and Leo Strauss, all in relation to:

The Poetry of Being: Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1.3 (part 2)

Jan 04 2024 23 mins

This is the trailer of a discussion for the series I'm doing on the entire text of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the entire discussion is available on my AthensCorner.com website for subscribers). At issue here is Zarathustra's turn from the critique of the hinterworldly to the metaphysical concept of "being" and, for Zarathustra, the psychology at the core of both (i.e. all