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The lure of creating the philosopher king doesn't go away, does it? A few impressive philosophers have instructed a few impressive monarchs; but the latter didn
by cafard 6y ago
The lure of creating the philosopher king doesn't go away, does it? A few impressive philosophers have instructed a few impressive monarchs; but the latter didn't necessarily rule that philosophically. Aristotle taught Alexander, but apocryphal legends suggest that he many years later also mixed the strychnine that did Alexander in.
- imbnwa 6y agoThere's a giant difference between ideas of the good between Plato and Aristole. Plato understood right action as a consequence of right knowledge, the ascension from the cave into the heavens is this pursuit of right knowledge - and it got him sold into slavery by Dionysus I as a test. Aristotle is a radical empiricist next to Plato (he was a a zoologist after all): absolute Good is impossible because it isn't adaptable to the specific situation at hand, whatever that may be; but you can't be very adaptable if you practice excess or are intemparate, and these take training to manage - Nichomachean Ethics is a book on proper parenting. Thus I wager Plato saw himself as bringing right knowledge into the Sicilian courts, whereas Aristotle saw himself in a much more practical light in both Philip and Alexander's courts