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Understanding Life and Death through Plato and Socrates : Philosophy as a Confrontation with Eternity

It fills in a gap by outlining the ways that Plato and Socrates talk about life and death. There is also a lengthy discussion of how Aristophanes responded with satirical exaggerations of their positions. This author focuses entirely on how death and eternity are integral thematic components of the Platonic dialogues. The contribution is in drawing on copious secondary material to make the argument that all great philosophy must serve as a confrontation with eternity. It must make the audience resolve the issue of their own mortality by confronting our precarious place in the cosmos. Eternity.The first book to argue that the preoccupation with eternity is foundational to all philosophy. It fills in a gap by outlining the ways that Plato and Socrates talk about life and death. There is also a lengthy discussion of how Aristophanes responded with satirical exaggerations of their positions. This author focuses entirely on how death and eternity are integral thematic components of the Platonic dialogues. The contribution is in drawing on copious secondary material to make the argument that all great philosophy must serve as a confrontation with eternity. It must make the audience resolve the issue of their own mortality by confronting our precarious place in the cosmos. Eternity is a prescient theme in Plato and Socrates, which is important for bolstering their place in the Western canon.

Online EBSCO Academic Comprehensive Collection

Executing truth : public policy and the threat of social science

With the increasing use of algorithms to govern public life, a proliferation of promises surrounding `big data, ' and an ever tighter union of academic specialists and the state bureaucracy, we are, it seems, on our way to an administrative utopia. At what cost, though? Executing Truth critically appraises this reformation of politics by way of the social sciences. It argues that what is lost with this reformation is a deeper consideration of the problematic relation of truth to politics; a problem which cuts deeper than any social science might plumb. In seeking to recover what is lost, this book offers a comprehensive study of the problem. The author works his way back from the debates in politically applied social science (or policy science) to the foundational thinkers. These include Harold Lasswell, John Dewey, Max Weber, and Georg Hegel. At the end of this journey, Executing Truth calls for a return to the everyday (or the most comprehensive basis for distinguishing between theoretical perspectives), and outlines the implications of this return for those political advisors - state executive actors - tasked with `speaking truth to power.'.