The guy who taught me about the ancient Greeks was Dr Shapiro at San Jose State. He was one of my best professors ever.
He not only taught about the Greeks in a totally honest way, he understood their thinking and curiosity.
I was sooo rough in those days I could barely spell my name. But he saw I had an understanding and curiosity about the Greeks and he gave me an A despite my terrible English.
He judged me on my understanding of the ideas.
Guy sort of changed my life. San Jose had a fine philosophy Dept as they had many fine philosophy professors. Birds of a feather, clinging together, sort of thing.
He should me there was a much larger world to understand.
SJS had a fine eastern philosophy dept too. Eastern philosophy is different and deeper, but esoteric.
The Greeks thought about how to organize a society.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=29436971
| To: koan who wrote (247331) | 3/12/2014 10:34:44 PM | | From: Sam | Read Replies (2) of 247379 | | | Good grief, Koan--the Athenians exiled Thucydides, Xenophon and Euripides, they killed Socrates for allegedly teaching the young subversive ideas, and Plato was always on the outs with mainstream Athens society, writing his Socratic dialogues as his only means of protesting against their continued injustices. Aristotle fled from Athens, leaving the school he had founded years earlier, saying that he wouldn't let them sin against philosophy yet another time (killing yet another philosopher). Sophocles was put on trial for mental incompetence as a 90 year old man because his son got tired of waiting for him to die, although fortunately he was not committed--supposedly he read parts of Oedipus at Colonus at the trial, the last play of his Oedipus trilogy. They fought a devastating war for nearly 40 years with Sparta, where a quarter or more of their population died either in battle or due to sickness. They were a slave society, where a quarter to a third of their citizens were enslaved (OK, not their citizens, because slaves couldn't citizens, but they weren't even 3/5 of a person in Athens, lol), and they had an empire where they effectively enslaved other societies as well, forcing them to pay tribute that they couldn't really afford, and using parts of their population as slaves in Athens. Athens and Sparta were both pretty much hated and feared around the Mediterranean world that came into contact with them.
This is the society that you love so much?
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=29437037
| To: Sam who wrote (247335) | 3/12/2014 11:12:10 PM | | From: JohnM | Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 247379 | | | I've never seen all that put together so forcefully. I was aware of each of those items and didn't care enough about the conversation here to drop one or two in. Which was all that popped to mind. But your list is the best I've seen. All of it together. In one place. A very large tip of the hat, sir.
If there was ever a longish version of refrigerator pasting material, this post is certainly it.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=29437101
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