Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), the poet-scholar later called the “father of humanism,” spent his life in the shadow of one woman: Laura. Whether real or imagined, married or unobtainable, she became the axis of his Canzoniere — a sequence of over 300 poems where devotion and desire wrestle with faith and despair. His verses helped shape what we call lyric poetry itself: love transfigured into song, suffering made immortal. What follows is my Sonnet Crown for Petrarch, a contemporary echo of his voice, addressed to Laura, and through her, to the condition of all longing.

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My god, my god, forsaken how I love her so.

Love burns within, devouring all of me.

I cannot help it; I have lost all mastery.

Held fast, completely at her mercy,

And painfully, for she has shown me none.

A most chaste soul is she, undefiled, pure and true,

While I, a poet, sorrowful fool, sing of self-imprisonment, of freedom slain.

Can it be helped that I’ve resigned myself away?

That day the scales fell from my eyes:

At highest noon, the church bells chimed; ‘twas then I turned, beheld her.

Her radiant light unmade me whole

And set my soul to flame.

Oh, the fires of life! Her heat, no soothing for my burns.

Her eyes — her eyes!

Her glance pierced through, seared my soul entire.

For her, I shall smolder for all eternity.

Blessed am I in suffering, the gift she gave.

I keep my vigil in the void; her absence gnaws me bare.

My flesh consumed in sorrow’s ravishing flames,

As I hunger for bread and thirst for love.

Yet to my goddess, in famine, I remain steadfast.

O Laura, Laura — demonic, pure, angelic flame!

What need has she of dust and ash as I?

She is divine; I am but need itself.

So I wander the valleys of shadow, the allées of Vaucluse,

Bereft of her light, I find no rest.

Rudderless without her, in my sea of lonesomeness.

Yea, though the waters may bear me, no shore yields peace.

Yea, though I rise on eagles’ wings toward heaven, I am spurned.

She is my sun — blazing, terrible, divine.

I soar once more but fall, Icarus-bound.

A smoldering ruin, a sacrifice of unfulfillable longing.

I know not what I truly am to do,
Without a light or pathway to advance,
Defeated even ’fore she caught my glance,
There seems no way for me to see life through.
No miracle nor penance shall ensue,
My heart bleeds from the strike of Cupid’s lance,
As shadows swallow me in their expanse,
No hope remains to heal my wounds anew.

If I am cursed to love without requite,
Then this I must accept; there is no choice:
I’ll live in solitude, steadfast in love.
I shall resign myself, become Love’s knight;
My work shall grow and through it I’ll rejoice,
Until in death we reunite above.

Engraving from the New York Public Library Collection

This is the path: my fate revealed, my lot made clear.

It will be bitter, and remain so to the end.

My god, my god — how fierce her absence burns.

Yet I must keep my strength, preserve my faith,

Not in myself, but in the labor of my hands.

To beauty I bend my will, as fate allows.

I bare the record of my life:

My triumphs and defeats, my rivalries and reveries,

Dreams so vivid, visions of beauty unconsumed,

Ah! — my soul is nourished when my goddess graces me in sleep.

I have not been forsaken; nor will I despair, though my grief compels—

For thus it has been and so it shall remain.

The horizon holds its distance; the sun sinks lower every day.

My breath grows short, the body weakens — yet the spirit stands steadfast

…until I hear that she has passed…

My god, my god — would that I had clasped Death first!

Yet in some sense I have met him, tasted of the Styx:

My heart is sealed, all meaning in my life has breathed its last.

I hasten now unto my end, that I may join with Laura.

No reason binds me any more to Earth.

Life’s luster cleft, my poems have spread their wings — and I am proud.

What more remains? I have unveiled my soul, my secrets sung aloud.

In memory I abide, in hope of the world to come:

To reunite with her in paradise — and there at least find peace.

Sonetto 336 di Petrarca

Tornami a mente (anzi v’è dentrol quella
Ch’indi per Lete esser non po sbandita)
Qual io la vidi in su l’età fiorita
Tutta accesa de’raggi di sua stella;

Si nel mio primo occorso onesta et bella
veggiola in sè raccolta er sì Romita,
ch’ i’ grido: “Ell’ èben dessa, ancor è in vita!”
e ‘n don le cheggio sua dolce favela.

Talor risponde et talor non fa motto;
i’ comme uom ch’ erra et poi più dritto Estima
dico a la mente mia: “Tu se’ ‘ngannata.

“Sui che ‘n mille trecento quarantotto,
il di sesto d’aprile, in l’ora prima
del corpo uscio quell’ anima beata.

Here’s a translation of this sonnet:

She comes to mind (indeed she dwells within),
Whom Lethe’s stream can never drive away:
I saw her in her youth’s most radiant day,
All lit with starlight burning bright therein.

So in that first encounter, pure, serene,
She showed herself withdrawn, in holy stay;
I cried aloud: “’Tis she! She lives today!”
And begged her speak to me with voice unseen.

At times she answers, other times is still;
And I, like one astray who finds the way,
Say to my soul: “Deceived, thou art misled.

It was in thirteen hundred forty-eight,
at April’s dawn, the sixth day,
That blessed soul departed from her bed.”

Thus ends this Sonnet Crown for Petrarch,
with his own final word —
secrets sung aloud across the centuries.

I’ve been avoiding Thucydides for 15 years. There’s an arrogance in his aura, just from the name alone. Four syllables, tough to spell, weird, but not exactly difficult to pronounce once you realize the y doesn’t sound like the y in happy but rather the y in syllable. It is Greek after all. His vibe? Cold, distant, arrogant. That’s what I’ve gotten from him from the start. So I kept away.

Actually, this isn’t entirely true: I did open the History once a long time ago and read the first few paragraphs. They’re pretty famous sentences actually. In sum, he says that this war which he, Thucydides the Great, is about to recount amounts to the greatest of all motions (Book I, Chapter 1, Section 2). For those who have some familiarity with Ancient Greek, the word is κίνησις, which literal translation is motion.

Not just the biggest and most important war of his generation or in recent memory or in Greek history. No, he calls the Peloponnesian war between the Athenians and the Spartans and their allies, respectively, the greatest and largest motion — a war for all time. (See also Book I, Chapter 23.)

I’m sorry. It’s just too tempting: Erm — sorry dude, but war is a type of motion and there are many motions which take place every day that are always greater and always will be greater. Mmmm-kay?

At first blush, this sounds absurd. War does not encompass motion.

Sigh.

Why should I read this? Why do people read this self-aggrandizing guy?

He’s made a claim that’s so ridiculous and it’s literally the second sentence (in the original Greek) of the History. But this sentence has been taken very seriously for over 2,000 years and serves as one of the most important accounts of Western civilization at its peak.

It’s such an ostentatious claim, that I could not help but sense that there was more to it than the otherwise insane pronouncement.

What other types of writing begin with similar announcements?

Homer’s Iliad: The anger of Achilles is comparable to no other and occurs within the context of the greatest Greek war, over the woman who sailed a thousand ships, and opens with a conflict between history’s greatest warrior and the would-be greatest king. The maximalism is right there.

Or Herodotus’ Histories: recounting the greatest motions in human history so that the records of Greeks — and — non-Greeks, i.e. barbarians, are preserved.

Interesting.

Thucydides’ comment now makes more sense. He challenges both: His History is going to correct the record and take its rightful place as a true record of the cataclysmic event that shook all of Greece and its neighbors. (See Book I, Chapter 22.) The motion will also be demonstrated as incomparably greater than that of the Catalogue of Ships bound for Troy found in Homer, or the sometimes fictitious, sometimes incredible, sometimes true, accounts of motion in Herodotus.

At Book I, Chapter 10, Section 3 of the History, Thucydides openly criticizes the poets — Homer especially — and the other historian, i.e., Herodotus, for exaggerations, ornamentations and mischaracterizations that are composed to sway the crowds and stir up the motions of their souls.

This is fair, and it shows a silent alliance between Thucydides and Plato (for example, see Republic Books 3, 10), for their mutual criticism leveled at poetry. At the same time neither closes the door to making use of poetry in his own work. Gasp!

What does this mean? Thucydides is an ancient historian, not a poet. What’s more, Sousarion, you’ve just cited the famous passage in which he criticizes the poets and the holy cow of Western poetry himself — Homer!

This is true but I’ve opened the door to consider the Thucydidean account with greater precision. For starters, despite claiming to begin at the beginning, Thucydides, in imitation of Homer, throws his reader into the thick of things, to the things already in motion. His History begins in medias res.

This is a truth inherent to all historical accounts. The beginning is not really the beginning. Beginning at the beginning, really means discovering the causes. Again, we see allegiance here not only with Plato, but also with Aristotle, who makes the claim that genuine knowledge is knowledge of the causes (cf. Metaphysics, Posterior Analytics, etc.). The implication here is that to know is to participate in the truth, and the fundamental causes reveal the truth of all things.

Seen in this light, Thucydides is suddenly no mere historian but prophet, philosopher, and poet. His accusation is a confession as well. He is claiming to do exactly what the poets and the philosophers claim in their respective works: to reveal what it means to be a human being. The History of the Peloponnesian War is for Thucydides the greatest motion and the greatest war because it reveals the character of what it means to be a human being.

And if this means that he will be willing to take some liberties in order to communicate what it means to be a human being, well then let it be so. For the value of this book is in the character it reveals, the portrait it presents. This book is a sort of test of one’s own character.

Or, to articulate my point a bit differently, the History is a way to reveal one’s own character to oneself, through the unflinching account of the immensity and tragedy of the motion — the Peloponnesian War. The book presents the speeches and deeds of groups, but especially of remarkable individuals; a cast of character types, whether Athenian, Spartan, or the menagerie of other Greeks and so-called Barbarians. Each of these individuals influences the outcome of this greatest tragedy of all the Greeks. In reading of these types, you, dear reader, are bound to connect with at least one of them.

Do you not see the necessary poetry?

Facts are certainly important, but they have to be constructed into a whole. This construction, a tapestry of interwoven detail, requires coherence and truth. And to reach that truth is to inevitably rely on poetic language and philosophical insight, neither of which remain mere historical facts or ahistorical records of speeches and deeds.

Thucydides repeatedly indicates this with almost each speech he recounts, by saying that Pericles spoke in this way, or Alcibiades spoke like this. (Compare Book 1, Chapter 22, Sections 2 and 4 with Book I, Chapter 31, Section 4 and many other instances, right before a speech begins.) For example, the most famous speech in the History and perhaps the most famous speech in all of ancient Greek history is the Funeral Oration. Thucydides makes no claim to have recorded it verbatim. In fact, he writes “in this way,” not “exactly like this, word for word” (Book II, Chapter 34, Section 8).

Thucydides utilizes the historical speech to reveal the truth of its meaning: That Athens was a genuinely unique and special polis (city-state) with a unique and beautiful character, a unique and special form of governing. And — that what is about to unfold will be Athens’ undoing. This outcome will be the greatest tragedy that could have befallen Greece. That is the point of the Funeral Oration speech.

Had Athens heeded the strategy of Pericles — had they followed the advice of their de facto king ruling a democracy that operated as such in name only — then the Athenians could have avoided the great tragedy and devastation that befell them.

But I’ve digressed, in a way. We’ve not yet spoken with sufficiency of the causes. I’ve jumped the gun and revealed the ending, which ending is foreshadowed at the beginning. So let’s get back to the beginning. To the causes.

Thucydides claims that it is fear which caused the war. That’s fundamentally it. So let’s explore what fear is, and how Thucydides presents it in his History.

Fear arises from a personal realization. It is feeling ill-at-ease about some future outcome. That something bad — likely violent or painful — is about to transpire. Whether at the hands of another person, or a judgment passed or the results of an event, etc. The desire to avoid this bad, or unjust, outcome is precisely when fear kicks in and compels the person to take action to prevent themselves from being inflicted by the otherwise impending outcome.

This is Thucydides’ core teaching on the cause of the war. How does he communicate this? Guys got scared and killed each other, the end? Isn’t this a history of the war between Athenians and Spartans, not a psychological analysis/inquiry into an individual’s experience of fear?

I’ll say this much before more fully presenting the universality of fear and its fundamentality to human nature: even the great Oedipus, archetype of the son who fucked his mother, king of Thebes, Mr. Embodiment of Courage, Mr. Truth-Seeker no matter the cost — even he quakes with fear before the news a blind soothsayer is about to communicate to him, regarding the identity of the murderer of his father.

Despite the noble and heroic commitment to the truth and the courage to face it, he still expresses fear.

He plucks out his eyes when convinced of his guilt.

His courage cracks and breaks. He loses the ability to literally face his actions head on, so heinous and tragic they have been. Crucially, Oedipus, post-self-mutilation, exiles himself to cleanse Thebes, his polis. For the city-state had suffered a plague, the result of his presence and defilement of the city.

Be this as it may be, we can see that Oedipus’ personal fears impacted the fate of the city he rules.

In contrast to Oedipus, Pericles’ speeches (three in total, including the Funeral Oration) assuage Athenian fear, inspire resilience and courage, and represent the famous innovative nature of the Athenians in the face of invasion, revolt, and the might of the Spartans.

It is very interesting, then, for the Thucydidean narrative that the de-facto king of Athens met his end by plague. At the time, a plague was understandably viewed as a mystery of nature that may or may not have had divine origins and thus a judgment on the people of Athens (from their perspective).

Divine or not, it should be crystal clear that an individual’s personal fear at the level of leadership impacts the destiny of the polis. And not merely in a mythical tragedy.

Fear is also connected inextricably to two other crucial themes of this work: justice and necessity. I already indicated these above, in that fear of the bad is the desire for justice, and actions taken are a compulsion to preserve oneself from otherwise certain doom.

These two thematic concepts emerge within the first 20 pages of the work and in a most interesting way: they are each the very first words announced out of the mouths of allied spokesmen, the one for justice from Corcyra and that of necessity from Corinth. The Corcyreans allied with the Athenians, while the Corinthians were bitter enemies of the Athenians and so allied with the Peloponnesians and Spartans.

In this way, we may introduce a decisive suggestion for the outcome of Thucydides’ work: a generation or so prior to the time of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians rose up to defend all of Greece from the invasion of the Persian Empire. This success opened a just permission structure for Athens to become an empire.

The Athenians had run the extra mile. They had put their lives on the line in ways no other Greek had been willing, rallied the Greeks to ally together, and successfully repelled the Persian invaders.

The origin of their empire was recognized as legitimate: they had justly earned it. After the Persian invasion, Athens expanded, continued to strengthen itself, constrain rivals and form enemies, require tribute and consolidate power unto itself. All of which are the hallmarks of an aggressor.

Across such a trajectory, fear was awakened in Athens’ rivals, as well as her friends. Aware of this, the Athenians reached an agreement with Sparta, the 30 Years Truce. In the lead-up to the war, the Athenians did not break the truce, maintaining the side of justice, more or less. (Thucydides does not fail to record the Athenian derivations from justice.)

And so, we can suggest further that, for Thucydides, up until and at least part-way through the Peloponnesian War, Athens, empire notwithstanding, should be seen as more just than the Spartans.

The primary reason for this suggestion comes in the form of the obvious: The Spartans broke the truce, took up their arms and began the war. The Spartan justification is typical of all warmongers who claim to prevent war: preemptive invasion was necessary to thwart Athenian domination of all of Greece.

While the Spartans may have committed the causal crime, once a war begins many other crimes may be committed. And the Athenians and Spartans violated justice with numerous horrors and blunders over the course of this war, which Thucydides took pains to document.

And, due to actions taken, others not taken, but especially the failure to pursue the strategy of Pericles, the Athenian fall became necessary.

Again: is this not a tragedy? — A tragedy in real life?

Tragedy bleeds the association of the hero with the monarch and the monarch with the empire. Each rests, ultimately on a crime. And each contains that fatal flaw which brings them to their knees and seals their doom. We saw this with Oedipus. Thucydides’ History demonstrates this.

From this fate, this rise, fall, and inevitable collapse, we shall see that there are lessons to be learned.

So what have we learned thus far?

That fear drives rivals to become enemies and foment revolt in the names of justice and necessity. This is a lesson as old as time.

Let me bring this to close with a series of questions. They increase in sprawl, pointedness, and arise as implications of my interpretation to Thucydides’ account:

Why do we see the tragedy play out, over and over, when we carefully assess the human record?

Do we learn nothing from these heroes? And they like us, also learn nothing? Have matters of war and peace always been so unique and alien to that which came before that the historical echo could not but go unnoticed?

Do these repeated failures not indicate that perhaps humanity is simply less apt and able than we think? Or are we simply unwilling to recognize and learn lessons of the past?

Should we not feel a deep sense of shame when facing these humbling suggestions — both of self and of society?

Today we no longer believe in heroes outside of Hollywood comics. We’ve handed over our body politic to shameless lobbyists who serve oligarchs. Are these so-called politicians not revealing themselves as even more inept and evil, while masking their evil and ineptitude behind the curtain of technocracy?

Is the governing process not being broken before our very eyes — with obvious intent to create the space for a despotic tyrant to spy on and control all aspects of our lives?

Thucydides supported such a regime: a nominal democracy, run by a wise and benevolent tyrant, in the form of Pericles. This makes Thucydides, fundamentally, an enemy, not an ally. I’m of the no-kings, anti-monarchist position.

Does this mean we should ignore his insights?

Absolutely not. A monarchist prick may still be an intelligent prick and the words he’s written offer much to learn. Lessons we can all apply and lessons the empire we are living in would also best apply. For the in medias res decline of our empire is no tragedy at all — rather it is taking shape as the demise of one evil into another.

I’ve discussed the causes, though not exhaustively. I will not do this. But I hope to have inspired your curiosity to approach the work and read it carefully. 2,400 years old with insightful lessons that remain applicable today.

I have yet to address Thucydides’ understanding of human nature. That will come later, perhaps when I take up how the war unfolds, and the acceleration of Americ—Athenian decline. More to come.

This is my first entry on a work by Plato.

So let me lay a few cards on the table:

In my view, Plato is the greatest philosopher — and the greatest writer — in the Western tradition.

That’s a high bar, and it makes the task of spilling ink on him feel daunting. Not least because so much has already been said by professionals with far more influence — and motion — than I have. Two and a half millennia of interpretation is a heavy weight. What could Sousarion possibly add?

Another layer of difficulty is Plato’s form. He wrote some 35 dialogues — dramatic conversations full of shifting moods, layered ironies, subtle but extensive character work, and narrative developments. And yet, he never appears.

Yes, he composes each word into the mouths of his characters, controls the logic, the pacing, the setting, the outcomes, the cosmos — but he himself is invisible. He’s both omnipresent and absent. This is essential to his art.

Most of the tradition, from Aristotle on down, treats Socrates as Plato’s mouthpiece. “Socrates says x, which really means Plato says x, now I will critique x.” XXX. But this rests on shaky ground.

Socrates is a character, not the real Socrates. He says different things in different contexts, to different audiences, for different purposes. If there is a teaching, it is never without caveats, never without a context, or without the conditions set by dialogue’s setting. Most importantly, never stated in Plato’s own name.

In this way, reading Plato is more like reading Shakespeare than reading the old Kant. Shakespeare doesn’t tell you what to think or feel about his characters or the myriad of positions they take, and actions they carry out. Surprise! Neither does Plato. They both disappear from their dramas, behind the voices of their characters.

That’s part of what makes them great — and what makes engaging with them so difficult. As such, I won’t be ascribing Plato’s words to him directly. I take all the words seriously. I raise my sensitivities and care to who says what, to whom, where, when, and how. Read the room. Vibes are crucial.

Let me add one more challenge to the pile: I’m not writing a dialogue.

What you’re reading now is a monologue — a reaction, from me to you, whoever you are. And however dear you may be, dear reader (and I’m sure you are), this is a different kind of communication.

Plato chose dialogue. He chose indirection, polyphony, conflict, seduction, silence. That form thinks in ways a monologue like this can’t. I’m not claiming to do what he does. From the jump, this won’t be as good or as insightful as engaging the dialogues themselves.

So — read them. They are masterpieces. Not only of philosophical thought, but of writing as such.

The Lovers is not the pinnacle of Plato’s output — not in terms of artistry, or craft, or philosophic depth. But it’s excellent in its own right.

Its ten pages offer a crisp introduction to the style of conversation and cross-examination — dialectics — that runs through nearly every Platonic work. (Except the Letters. For in Plato, there is always an exception.)

So, let’s get into it.

Lovers opens not just with philosophy, but with lust, with posturing, and a very thin veil separating erotic and intellectual dominance. Don’t blink.

Socrates, in this dialogue, is an open pederast. The curtain rises with him casually recounting a visit to a teenage boys’ school in pursuit of extending his male gaze to the young and beautiful.

It’s the human embodiment of the mystical gaze upon the Idea of the Beautiful.

He sees two boys who drive him “wild.” And he spots two others — rivals — who are also “wild” for at least one of the same boys.

The setup isn’t even disguised. And while Socrates narrates the scene casually, there’s a thick layer of predatory tension.

It’s perverse suggestion — and it’s intentional.

Socrates had overheard the teenage boys discussing the philosopher, Anaxagoras. Briefly: Anaxagoras was a natural philosopher who claimed that nous, mind, was the foundational principle of all things — and set the world in motion. He built a system around that idea.

The details of his philosophy aren’t essential here, but I mention him because Socrates, earlier in life, had also studied natural philosophy and been especially taken with Anaxagoras — at first.

But he later rejected it, seeing its inadequacy, and turned toward political philosophy — out of a realization that more important than the stars are the lives we live.

Better to live well than be ignorant of living while studying the heavenly bodies.

(Compare the Socrates of Aristophanes’ Clouds with Socrates’ biographical story in Plato’s Phaedo.)

Socrates wants to speak with the boys. But he doesn’t go straight for them, not yet. He sets his sights on one of the rivals.

Of these two: one is muscular, clearly an athlete. The other studies music (flute playing has always been viewed as effeminate) and is a bit more “delicate,” physically.

Naturally, Socrates approaches the more manly-looking one first.

Game-theory in motion: Identify the prize(s), catch their attention, but instead of going straight for the kill, target a known entity. It’s the old bait-and-deflect. (John Nash wasn’t original. Sorry not sorry.)

Socrates starts his conversation with the rival, knowing the boys are watching.

He elbows the beefier rival — an act that’s both familiar and aggressive — and tosses him a question designed to provoke.

It succeeds.

Now, it’s unclear whether these rivals are older men like Socrates or upperclassmen at the school. Plato doesn’t say. But the elbow is fascinating.

Socrates downplays it, massages the moment, but the action is hostile. A gentle shove, a veiled threat of assertion.

It’s also a probe. Not just of bodies, but beliefs. Philosophy, incarnate in the form of Socrates, has entered, aflame with desire and pushing to dominate. The staging is no accident. Neither is the tension.

The manly rival answers by dismissing the boys’ philosophical conversation, which prompts Socrates to pose a bemused question: does this rival think it’s shameful to philosophize?

Remember: Philosophy is also chasing after youngsters.

Before he can reply, the beefy guy is cut off by the less manly rival, who swoops in to rebuke Socrates for even asking him the question.

Shame for shame.

The logic? The beefy one is more likely to throw someone in a headlock than engage in dialectic, so of course he’d think philosophy is shameful.

And just like that, the manly rival is silenced. He doesn’t speak again in the dialogue.

What do we know of him? He’s thirsting after one of the boys. He’s muscly, athletic. He doesn’t mock or flatter Socrates (the presumed older perv), but postures just enough to appear traditionally manly — a man who thinks his body does the talking.

Socrates says nothing in his defense. Nor does he criticize the less manly rival who interrupted.

Instead, he shifts attention to this latter rival for the rest of the dialogue.
The dramatic weight now falls on their interaction.

Still, subtle narrative hints suggest that Socrates likely holds the silenced one in higher esteem.

But let’s pause to make some increasingly obscene observations.

What exactly do these two rivals represent? And what does Socrates represent? What does Plato have in mind with this ménage-à-trois of rivals?

We’ve mentioned Socrates will lead the conversation toward political philosophy. And here, the seeds of that turn are already visible.

Much of the Platonic corpus unfolds under the shadow of Athens’ devastating defeat in the Peloponnesian War. There are countless references and structural nods to that conflict, which Thucydides famously described as world-historical.

In that framing, the muscly, beefy guy might represent Sparta — all brute force, taciturn pride, and physical dominance.

The other rival, more delicate, more verbal, more eager to argue — resembles Athens. Loquacious. Refined. A tad arrogant.

And Socrates?

He becomes the dialectical synthesis. The superior figure. Perhaps Philosophy itself in the flesh.

Secondly, note this: even if Socrates disrespects the manly rival less, the dude still folds.

Reduced to silence, he lets the other take over without a fight. A strong man who doesn’t speak, doesn’t flex, doesn’t pursue… he might as well not be there.

He’s been sidelined. Revealed as weak. Unmasked as dumb. Maybe too dumb to realize Socrates just entered the arena as a third rival.

Thirdly, Socrates juxtaposes shame with philosophy, which should strike us as strange. Today we apply shame to shameless individuals — especially politicians.

Bribery. Treachery. Debauchery. And yes, pederasty.

Such shameful qualities are as old as politics. And they lurk, eternally, in the shadows of the political arena.

Does Plato (through Socrates) mean to suggest that a practitioner of political philosophy must learn shamelessness? Up to and including predatory abuse?

Perhaps.

But let’s return to the drama: Brawn can’t compete with brains.

And with beefcake benched, the stage is now clear for the less manly rival. Does he have the brains? Or will Socrates dismantle him, too?

Spoiler: Socrates obliterates him.

The discussion turns increasingly technical — not dry, and not lacking in literary texture — but the action now unfolds through speeches, not elbows, gropes, or grabs.

Socrates turns his attention to the musical rival and rephrases his Philosophy x Shameful question into something more palatable: is philosophizing noble?

He receives a resounding yes. And with that, we’re off to the races.

Socrates is now positioned to cross-examine the musical rival with one of his signature What is X? questions. In this case: What is philosophy?

The rival takes the bait. He offers a definition: philosophy is about learning. A philosopher is one who wants to learn everything.

Socrates smiles and presses: let’s investigate what that really means. He follows with a sequence of pointed questions. The most important: consider the art of medicine. A philosopher may study medicine. Wonderful! But that doesn’t make the philosopher a doctor.

So, if one of us falls ill, should we ask the philosopher or the doctor what to do? Obviously, the doctor.

The philosopher might dabble in everything, but when it comes to actual expertise, the specialist wins. Always.

No one wants second-rate wisdom when they can get first-rate guidance.

The rival is silenced.

Socrates’ example of medicine doubles as a jab at Anaxagoras — the natural philosopher the boys had been discussing together. Anaxagoras taught that mind was the source of everything.

Like the youths, Socrates had once been taken by that idea. But now he exposes its hollowness.

Just because we learn with the mind doesn’t mean everything reduces to the mind: You don’t go to a metaphysician for medical advice.

(Ahead of his time by 1,800 years, Descartes’ cogito ergo sum is refuted.)

Nature requires specialists. Specialists who are doers. Not grand theorists of the All.

Socrates has now defeated both rivals.

He’s ready to step forward as the only real lover by redefining philosophy entirely. Real philosophy, he says, is not the study of nature, but of the soul.

Political philosophy, properly practiced, is the doctoring of the soul: revealing what life in society actually is, and showing how to live truthfully and best within it.

It peels back vulgarity, hedonism, and political delusion. It educates desire.

It’s a bold claim. And it lands… Sort of.

But let’s skip the academic analysis.

The real questions are:

Is Socrates right?

And does he get the boys?

The answer to both: a resounding no.

Yes, he dismantles Anaxagoras. Yes, he earns the rapt attention of the boys. But attention is not the same as conquest.

Even worse, political philosophy — his new offering — remains susceptible to the same objection he pinned on the natural philosophers:

If we want to understand politics, should we ask a philosopher? Or a politician?

A theorist? Or someone who’s held power, governed bodies, made hard decisions?

Even in Athens, there was a vast gap between political philosophy and political practice — between Plato and Pericles. (Note: Pericles received tutoring from Anaxagoras.)

History is full of political actors. It’s not full of political philosophers.

The latter advise, criticize, sometimes provoke; the former rule, fail, get murdered, get remembered. Many philosophers were jailed or killed for thinking out loud. And politicians? For acting too boldly, or not boldly enough.

Still, we look to political leaders as the experts. And when we consult the philosophers?

We find a graveyard of ideas, brilliant and largely ignored.

Plato’s Republic? Never built.

His Laws? Never attempted.

Aristotle’s Politics? Respected, but unused.

Machiavelli? Quoted more than followed.

Kant’s peace? Fiction.

Hegel’s monarchy? Outdated.

Marx’s communism? Misused.

Rawls’ veil of ignorance? Please.

The history of political philosophy is full of insight. But when its ideas do reach power, they arrive bastardized. No state has ever followed a philosopher’s work in full. Not even close.

Why?

Because politics depends on phronesis — prudence, or practical wisdom — and on luck. A philosopher might sketch the contours of wisdom, but can’t transfer it. Socrates admits as much in another dialogue, Protagoras: virtue can’t be taught. And phronesis is a virtue.

So what is Socrates doing?

He’s not educating.

He’s seducing.

He charms with contradiction and illusion, guiding — corrupting — the young into disillusionment. And then offering a second-best truth. He exposes, undermines, dazzles. Not to save, but to dominate.

And this is his game. His kink.

He makes a spectacle of it across dialogues — Charmides, Phaedrus, Symposium, to name a few.

Especially the Symposium.

That’s where the mask drops. Towards the end, the symposium is interrupted by a drunken Alcibiades, the infamous Athenian general, golden boy, and Socrates’ beloved, who recalls the night they shared a bed. Socrates remained so composed about it that young Alcibiades had to initiate the seduction himself. But Socrates just lay there. Unmoved. Unbothered. A limp noodle.

It’s not that he didn’t want him. It’s that he’s sterile.

The predator was a performance.

And in the Lovers, it happens again. He defeats the rivals. He redirects the boys’ minds. He reorients the conversation. But he doesn’t “get” them. They’re not conquered or converted. Their hearts remain untouched. All he offers is a change of method, not of love.

Is it better?

That’s debatable.

This is what I mean by Plato’s pornography. The erotic charge is everywhere visible, undeniable. But the climax never comes. The seduction halts at the edge. What’s offered is a tease. A fantasy.

We’re left with tension.

Left holding it.

Cut short.

Cut off.

Blue-balled.

Maybe eunuch’ed.

Still, instructive.

Plato never gives it all.

Editor’s note: No teenagers were seduced in the writing of this essay. (Probably.)

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Philosophy

Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (ca. 330 B.C.E.)

This book is the immediate sequel to Prior Analytics, which I sketched in the last two Reacts posts. That earlier work lays out Aristotle’s system of logic.

Here, he shifts to a deeper question:

When — and how — do we truly know something?

Or, to put it differently: we live, we act, and through experience, we form beliefs. Some of these are true, others false. So how do we sort them? Is there a solid method to discard the false and retain the true? If so, how do we apply it?

And even then, how do we move from a belief that happens to be true to something we can call genuine knowledge?

Aristotle’s answer lies in his method of demonstration. Very generally speaking, a demonstration is a kind of syllogism, grounded in first principles that are necessarily true, universal, and grasped by the intellect.

Yes, that’s abstract. It’s loaded with contestable terms. But it’s the most succinct summary I can offer of the book’s intention. And once you pause to consider the ambition behind it, it’s radical:

“I, Aristotle, am going to demonstrate how to prove whether you know something or not.”

Now, he doesn’t mean any and all knowledge. This isn’t a manual to unlock God-mode for living your life.

He’s after a specific kind: knowledge that can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. This is what he calls episteme, i.e., scientific knowledge. If something can’t be demonstrated, it may still be true, but it doesn’t qualify as knowledge. It remains belief — even true belief — but not knowledge in his strict sense.

Aristotle would say (and I’d agree): most of us act as though we know things. But at bottom, we trust what we believe is true. We can’t prove it, can’t demonstrate it, but it’s worked so far, it holds up to surface-level scrutiny, so we go with it.

Most of us don’t live lives suited to the rigorous examination of truth claims. We live lives of belief and trust. And for Aristotle (here, I’d mostly agree) only the contemplative life, the slow, calm, methodical, necessarily rational and intellectual life, is the one through which genuine episteme is attainable.

The Posterior Analytics is a difficult treatise. It doesn’t present the task of demonstration as something easily grasped or readily attainable.

Still, here’s my quick attempt at a sketch.

We begin with the foundation: first principles. These cannot themselves be demonstrated, not because they’re mysterious or evasive, but because they are self-evident. They are grasped directly by the intellect (Aristotle’s word is nous) and intuited as true.

First principles lie deeper than ordinary assumptions. For example, someone might assume that outcomes are what matters most in life and then build an ethical theory around achieving the best results for the greatest number. That’s a typical assumption, often associated with utilitarianism or consequentialism. There are so many more examples.

But Aristotle’s first principles are more basic: they are the conditions that make intelligibility possible at all. Like the ability to recognize meaningful language. Or the intuitive understanding that another person is capable of being communicated with.

These are not built from argument — they are what argument builds on. And they enable us to construct demonstrations: reasoned accounts of why something must be the way it is.

All demonstrations aim to explain why something is the case, not just that it is.

And to answer a “why” question, we must identify the cause.

Aristotle outlines his famous four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. (For a full discussion of Aristotle’s causes, check out Book B, Chapter 3, of his Physics.) To oversimplify, a cause is the answer to why something is the case. A proper demonstration seeks to uncover one or more of these underlying causes.

Take language. We recognize an innate human capacity for it. But what’s its cause? We might say: to communicate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. To bond with others. To build communities. To raise children. To express the soul. There are multiple valid reasons, and we might intuit most of them.

But is that enough? If we want a scientific understanding of language — if we want to explain why we have this capacity, and what it is — then we need to investigate it in full. Not just its utility, but its nature. Its logic, structure, and ontology.

To ask why we speak is to ask what it means to be human.

These questions are worth exploring in their own right.

But they also serve a deeper purpose: when we take the logical tools from the Prior Analytics — deduction, induction — and apply them systematically to causal inquiry, we begin to move toward the essence of the thing we’re investigating. Its necessary features. Its internal structure. And eventually, a complete and coherent explanation of what it is — and why it must be so.

That’s the goal of all philosophical inquiry. And it’s why episteme stands as one of the fundamental pillars of philosophy itself.

The Posterior Analytics outlines how the philosophical inquirer might attain genuine knowledge, a kind of perfect certainty. But it offers no shortcuts. The path must be walked slowly, carefully, and alone. And anyone who begins to walk it will, inevitably, encounter problems, paradoxes, and doubt.

It’s this uncertainty, not as theory, but as lived struggle, that we turn to next.

Literature:

Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (1952)

I have nothing but praise and admiration for this novel.

I’m going to set aside the ingenious way Kazantzakis threads the episodic events of the Gospels into a naturally flowing narrative of Jesus’s life. I’m also not interested here in the various points of contention between his account and particular Gospel verses. These topics are fascinating, but not my focus.

I also won’t be going over the plot. I’m not concerned with evaluating the validity of Jesus’s teachings, analyzing the shocking contradictions, or interpreting his parables. Nor will I offer private reflections on the doctrines themselves.

Because I don’t think that was Kazantzakis’s aim, either.

This novel is not trying to substantiate, delegitimize, or proselytize Jesus. Yes, it attempts (quite successfully in my view) to arrange the known events of Jesus’s life into a coherent narrative. But its exploration runs much deeper.

As I see it, Kazantzakis has written a novel about uncertainty. About the absence — even the impossibility — of episteme. And therefore, a novel about struggle.

The world of this novel is saturated with uncertainty. Life choices abound, but no outcomes are guaranteed. Characters make decisions they believe, or at least hope, will prove to be for the best, whether out of selfish instinct or love for others. But the consequences remain mysterious.

Everyone is caught in their own struggle. Everyone battles their demons. Everyone suffers in body and spirit. Uncertainty and suffering are among the book’s first principles.

And yet decisions must be made. Even without certainty, the characters choose. Sometimes rationally, sometimes instinctively. But always in the dark.

Life in this novel is depicted as a journey into the unknown. Not entirely blind, but dimly lit at best. Each step forward reveals new ambiguities. The uncertainty is never overcome. But something else begins to grow: self-understanding. Through the process of struggle and choice, the characters learn who they are — and just as often, who they are not.

They also learn that they are not fully in control. Circumstances impose themselves. Forces greater than them shape their paths. They are drawn toward certain fates, pushed away from others. There is no pure autonomy here.

This is a novel of coming to terms with the unknowable — and finding the strength to act anyway. To believe, even in the face of danger, doubt, and darkness. To take the leap of faith into the unknown — not because the leap solves anything, but because life still demands it.

Life will remain mysterious. But trust is placed in a teaching for how to live, conduct oneself, and treat others.

And then, hope against hope, the choices made will prove to have been good — for oneself, and for one’s neighbor.

That’s a rough-and-tumble distillation of a book I think is exceptionally written.

Kazantzakis has studied the biblical and apocryphal texts, as well as commentary both theological and historical, to construct a portrait of perhaps the most important individual in human history. But more than that, he has, in earnest, confronted and wrestled with life’s most fundamental questions.

He offers a beautiful and profound meditation on the gravity of choice, on the weight of responsibilities that follow, and the necessity of living and dying by those choices, even when their ultimate consequences remain uncertain.

It might sound ironic to say this about a novel steeped in uncertainty, but one of the main reasons I love The Last Temptation of Christ is that Kazantzakis is utterly in control as a writer. He navigates the intersection between the divine and the human, yet never dissolves into a belief system, never collapses the mystery into doctrine, never imposes a tidy moral conclusion.

The divine remains mysterious. Miracles don’t resolve; they disrupt. Each one raises more questions than it answers. And the answers we do receive — when they come — arrive in the form of parables. Stories that move us but resist certainty. They illuminate without clarifying. They’re not proofs. They’re revelations of something that cannot quite be known.

And yet the parables are moving accounts. They connect the suffering of the noble and the peasant, the Roman and the Jew, the rabbi and the prostitute — they all pass through the same fire. Each life reveals something. Not everything, but something.

And perhaps that’s enough.

Philosophy is the attempt to overcome uncertainty — through rigorous inquiry, the use of reason, and the disciplined pursuit of knowledge. When successful, it lifts the philosopher toward the superhuman — toward something like God-mode.

By contrast, theology begins not with the conquest of uncertainty, but with its acceptance. The world is fundamentally mysterious. And so we place our trust in a teaching — in the words of a spiritual teacher. A Jesus. A Buddha. Someone who shows how to live.

Their teachings are not proofs. They are practices.

This is the disjunction non plus ultra.

Poetics

Petrarch, Il Canzoniere (ca. 1330-1374) , 1-100

The Canzoniere, or Songbook, is a collection of 336 poems written over the final four decades of Petrarch’s life — from around 1330 until his death in 1374. Most of the poems are lyrical and compact, composed in his distinctive 14-line sonnet form. But the collection also includes longer pieces — 29 canzoni, which give the collection its name.

The poetry is exquisitely crafted. Formally rigorous, but rich in feeling. Its language is direct, musical, and full of emotional complexity.

As a young man, Petrarch fell hard for an impossible love — a woman named Laura. He idealizes her throughout the collection. The concept isn’t far from Dante’s Beatrice and, in many ways, Petrarch borrows that idealization from his poetic forebear. But Laura wasn’t a child or a heavenly figure — she was already married. And she died prematurely. Which made his love not only impossible, but deeply, irrevocably sad.

Reading the Canzoniere genuinely shocked me. I was not prepared for a 14^th century text to be so openly and intensely personal, almost confessional. Petrarch reveals his inner life without flinching. His bleeding heart, his wounds, the ache of unrequited love. His poems don’t resolve the pain — they report it. He lusts, he loves, he despairs, curses his fate, and he sings beautifully of his longing.

And yet this is no mere diary. Petrarch stands at a crossroads in Western thought. He is both a child of the medieval tradition of philosophical inquiry and a Christian. And what makes him truly important, beyond the sweetness of his language or the accessibility of his forms, is a genuine innovation: he applies the Christian emphasis on the motions of the heart to the literary and philosophical life.

That is, he insists that our inner experiences — our feelings, beliefs, opinions — arise from within and define who we are. They shape how we act. They matter, decisively.

And he gives them voice.

Aside from Augustine’s Confessions, and Socrates’ passing references to his daimonion (cf. Apology, Phaedo, Charmides), Petrarch is among the first in the Western tradition to truly explore the inner life. He treats it as a category of consequence, as something that must be listened to, shaped, and expressed. He precedes Pascal by three hundred years; Kierkegaard by five.

In the Canzoniere, as in his prose, Petrarch lets us overhear that interior conversation. He writes from within his own soul, and we listen as he struggles with longing, despair, hopelessness. The feeling of being trapped in a love he cannot relinquish. A love that weighs him down — and yet he cannot do otherwise.

Petrarch knows Laura is unattainable, just as he knows that time, memory, and death will undo even what he holds most dear.

Yet he continues — not in despair, but in a strange, luminous sorrow.

His resignation is not anchored in a faith that all will be redeemed; of this, he is certain, especially after Laura’s untimely death. And though his sorrow persists, he persists as well.

Why?

Because he knows there is beauty in the sadness of his expression. And he must carry that beauty forward, even as he loses everything.

There’s something profoundly honorable in the face of the certainty of failure.

There is no Aristotelian syllogism Petrarch can use to wriggle out of his fate. In fact, the opposite abides. Want the demonstration? Countless lines from his poetry. Metered conversations with himself about the longings and sorrows of his life. These simply reaffirm the certainty of loss.

Petrarch belongs to the unhappy many — the ones for whom redemption is not extended.

And yet he does not fall into nihilistic despair.

Instead, he writes.
He gives his suffering form.
He transforms it into music.

Aristotle, Prior Analytics (ca. 330 B.C.E.), Book II, Chapters 1-27.

As I outlined in my first Sousarion Reacts, Prior Analytics lays the foundation of logic: defining the structure of a logical argument, the construction of a syllogism, the principles of consistency and validity, and the analytical tools needed to break down claims and evaluate their soundness. While highly technical, the text is relatively straightforward and intelligible – especially for Aristotle. In sum, Book I establishes the theoretical groundwork.

With Book II, Aristotle shifts from theory to application, testing the strength of his logical framework. Calling it “applied” is a bit misleading; he’s not taking these models into a courtroom or laboratory. Rather, he applies syllogistic reasoning to other theoretical problems. Among the many topics he investigates are necessity (e.g., given objects A, B, and C, does B necessarily follow from A?), possibility, hypothetical reasoning (e.g., if we assume X, does Y follow?), direct and indirect proofs, and the distinction between induction and deduction as methods of acquiring knowledge.

From the first word to the last, it’s dense, technical, and difficult. And yet, it’s also undeniably nerdy. I can picture Aristotle standing before his students at the Lyceum, grinning as he lectures – famous lisp and all – on whether the major premise of a perfect syllogism can be converted into a negative syllogism while remaining perfect. That’s the flavor of Prior Analytics. It’s a nerd’s paradise. (Pushes glasses up nose ridge.)

Does any of this sound fun? Probably not – I’ll grant that. But there’s something remarkable about this book, something more fundamental than its logical precision. Here’s what I mean:

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Take the classic syllogism:
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Reading it doesn’t make you feel more logical. You don’t need to reflect on it. Why? Because the answer is intuitive. You already know Socrates is mortal before you even finish reading the syllogism. Aristotle presents numerous such examples, and in many cases, the conclusion is so obvious that analysis seems unnecessary. But this is where his genius lies – he walks you through the reasoning step by step, proving why your intuition is correct. He provides the proof for why we rely on intuition in the first place.

Think of learning to ride a bicycle. At first, you have to focus on each element: balancing as you push forward, gripping the handlebars correctly, sitting in position, pedaling at the right pace. But once you master it, you no longer need to think about every step. It becomes intuitive. You simply ride. It would be exhausting (to say the least) to stop and relearn the mechanics each time you got on a bike.

Aristotle does this exhaustive work for logic. He shows you why you intuit what you know, revealing the underlying structure behind what feels immediate and natural. And, of course, he doesn’t stop there: he sprinkles in logical puzzles, lacunae, and paradoxes to challenge you, to captivate and frustrate you, and to test your own ability as a logician.

That’s what makes Prior Analytics – even in its most tedious moments – ingenious and special.

Keep Your Friends Close

Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now (2020).

Yanis Varoufakis’ Another Now is an enjoyable read. I now better understand why he chose to present his ideas in the form of a novel rather than a formal political economy treatise. Fiction makes his vision more immediate, more accessible – closer to the level of the everyday. More importantly, it allows him to sidestep the rhetorical and structural constraints of academic argumentation and instead illustrate his ideas through a world that, while speculative, feels plausible. This is the book’s core conceit: Another Now isn’t just an imagined alternative – it’s an adjacent one. A version of the present that, given a different set of historical choices, could very well have been or could still become our own.

The novel follows three main characters, each brilliant in their own way, each shaped – if not outright defeated – by the political economy of neoliberalism. One of them, a tech genius, inadvertently develops a machine that opens a wormhole between parallel realities. Through this device, they communicate Q&A messages with their existential doubles in an alternate timeline – one where the 2008 financial crash set history on a radically different course. Instead of reinforcing the structures of global finance as it did in our world, the crash in the Other Now became a catalyst for systemic reform, upending corporate dominance and reshaping economic and political life in ways our protagonists can scarcely imagine. Through their conversations, we, as readers, are given a window into this alternate reality – one that Yanis suggests is not just different, but achievable.

And that, folks, is the plot – if you can really call it that. I'm going to be blunt: it’s silly. Hollow. The premise is contrived, and it begs the question – did we need 50 pages or so of setup for this? Probably not. But if you read it with an open mind, you can let yourself be carried along. These pages serve a purpose: they create a conceptual space where Yanis can introduce his economic vision without immediately bogging the reader down in dense theoretical arguments. By constructing a world identical to ours up until 2008, he makes his alternative feel tangible. This isn’t utopia in the abstract – it’s a version of reality that could have existed and, by implication, still could. That’s certainly Yanis’ hope (though, of course, he’d likely call it a thought experiment, hedging his bets).

I’m stepping into hot-take territory here, but I have a strong suspicion about the ideal reader and ideal reading environment for this book: it’s adult bedtime reading. Hear me out. Picture yourself at the end of a long day. Your boss has been on your ass over something utterly mundane, which somehow escalated to a crisis. After putting out the fire, you trudge home, eat something simple, zone out for an hour in front of Netflix, then wash up and slide into bed. You grab Another Now, lean against the headboard, and Yango Varo (Yanis’ narrative stand-in) spins up an alternate timeline where neoliberalism is no longer king, and your boss no longer wields the pettiest of all petty power over you. It’s a sweet idea, coated in just enough sugar to go down smoothly – but it’s also a tactical decision. Another Now isn’t meant to be dense, academic, or footnote-heavy. It’s designed to be palatable.

And I think this approach is smart. It allows him to reach the widest possible audience. Rather than exhaustively arguing for his utopian model over 700 pages, he meets the reader at a minimum viable product level from a storytelling perspective: a novel structured as a Q&A. And Yanis is a generous conversationalist – he articulates his ideas with enough clarity and internal logic that they pass the plausibility test, not just within the Other Now but in our world as well. The book is also digestible, such that, as you sit against the headboard, you can actually picture yourself in a world that has stamped out the techno-feudal enslavement we currently endure.

In Another Now, institutions exist to maximize freedom, ensuring that people can follow their passions without fear of financial ruin. The state isn’t just a safety net; it’s an active force enabling human flourishing. Institutions work for everyone, not the monopolists. The market remains, but it operates in the service of every individual, investing in every person rather than tilting the scales toward those who already control capital. There’s still failure – business ventures crash and burn – but failure is never synonymous with ruin.

I won’t go into further details here, in part because I think Another Now is worth reading for yourself, and in part because I’m studying Yanis’ economic works more deeply for future writing projects. But for now, I’ll just say this: the book is engaging, imaginative, and – if you let it – deeply thought-provoking.

Keep Your Enemies Closer

Julius Evola – Ride the Tiger (1961), Chapters 16 – 30.

Ride the Tiger is a dangerous book. Here’s why: it is ruthlessly insightful about aspects of modern life, its style is compelling (at times intoxicatingly so), and its critiques, though often severe, are laid out with such clarity that it’s easy to find yourself nodding along.

To be fair, there are areas of agreement. Evola critiques the dissolution of personhood, the widespread disbelief in the soul, the universalization of modern science as the sole arbiter of truth, the reduction of art to commercial trends, and the increasing reliance on recreational “drugs” as an escape from the meaninglessness of modern existence. Many of his conclusions falter under scrutiny, but his diagnosis of contemporary spiritual malaise – both individual and collective – rings true.

It is certainly the case that many today are less equipped to cope with modernity, despite the material improvements of the last two centuries. Few of us will starve to death. Few of us will spend our lives in a desperate struggle for physical survival. But with these fundamental threats removed, we are left with more time – to think, to dwell, to fixate on what unsettles us. We are atomized, lonely, raised in broken homes and leading broken lives, often carrying a quiet disappointment in ourselves, an unease we struggle to name.

We seek solace in consumerism, entertainment, curated distraction. But these, too, have been commodified, hollowed out, stripped of the meaning they once held. Even our artistic passions – music, film, painting, poetry – are no longer refuges; they are market-tested products, reflections of a past we never lived, designed to provoke nostalgia rather than renewal. Simply log onto Instagram or TikTok. The result is not only dissociation but a growing bitterness: toward others, who appear absorbed in their own curated illusions, and toward ourselves, as passive spectators in lives we no longer truly live.

Evola, writing long before social media, nonetheless exposes the same forces of decay. His descriptions of a society strangled by its own rottenness remain unnervingly relevant.

His solution, however, is both limited and inhumane. He rejects what we would today call humanism, or even basic compassion for one’s fellow man. Humanity, in his view, is a lost cause. With the death of God, the abyss opened, and humankind fell in.

As the slow or swift collapse of civilization unfolds (Evola, no doubt, would have seen AI as an ominous catalyst), Ride the Tiger offers no promises of salvation – only survival. And not for all. In Evola’s view, physical existence is irrelevant; true survival is spiritual, and it is reserved for the rare “traditional” man. While his broader commentary places this figure within a social context, his explicit recommendations are solitary. The traditional man does not rebuild the world. He does not thrive. He merely endures.

One of the keys to the traditional man’s survival, according to Evola, is through his intrinsic separation from the decay of society. This does not necessarily require retreating into the desert, the rainforest, or a Buddhist monastery. He may reside anywhere – a city, a town, a farm – because his separation is spiritual rather than physical. He maintains a “traditional” outlook, privately preserving the belief systems of the ancient past. To “ride the tiger” is to live within society without being consumed by it. This teaching bears a striking resemblance to certain Christian and Buddhist principles: to be in the world but not of it, or to exist within impermanence while freeing the spirit in pursuit of enlightenment.

On its own, this notion of spiritual resilience is neither particularly controversial nor harmful. But Evola does not stop there. His traditional man is not simply detached from modernity; he is defined by his rejection – and at times, outright contempt – for modern values. Racial and gender equality, cultural pluralism, and social progress are not mere aberrations in his view but evidence of civilization’s decline. As anticipated, Evola’s traditional man is a racist, a misogynist, and an opponent of universal dignity beyond his own nation or people (e.g., Italians for Italians, Germans for Germans, Japanese for Japanese). He rejects modern music – jazz, for instance, he decries as primitive and animalistic, an art form unworthy of tradition because of its Black, i.e., African, origins. He likewise dismisses sexual liberation, arguing that it has stripped women of their natural essence, leaving them hollowed-out shells of their former selves.

Evola’s view of women is particularly revealing. For him, female liberation is not an expansion of agency but a corruption of femininity. In stepping outside the confines of the demure, subordinate homemaker, he argues, women have been forced to model themselves after men, erasing the very qualities that once defined womanhood. Unlike his broader critiques of cultural decay, Evola’s perspective on sexuality cuts to the heart of both the physical and the spiritual. Here, in the most intimate of human connections, he sees modernity’s corrosion at its most acute. In his view, the modern woman must confront the hollow, purposeless existence that modern men already endure. Thus, she comes to hate herself even more than her male counterparts – who, in turn, have become weak and undesirable. This collapse of identity, he claims, has stripped women of their very essence, leaving them as soulless vessels. And the implication is clear: to restore the feminine, women must return to the traditional order, with all that entails.

Evola’s critique of modernity is both piercing and deeply troubling. He accurately diagnoses many of the spiritual and societal ailments that plague us – alienation, atomization, the loss of cultural meaning – yet his “solutions” are not only inhumane but fundamentally regressive. And yet, his analysis of rootlessness, disenchantment, and cultural decline remains unsettlingly relevant. The challenge, then, is to extract the useful critiques without succumbing to the allure of reactionary despair.

That, in the end, is why Evola is worth reading: not to adopt his worldview but to sharpen one’s own against it. Ride the Tiger is not a guide to retreating from the world but a study in how to exist within it – without surrendering to either decay or hatred.

Conclusion

Aristotle teaches us how to think. His logical analysis shaped intellectual history for 1,600 years, laying the foundation for the Enlightenment – and even today, his influence endures.

Yanis, another Greek, challenges us to imagine an alternative to the techno-feudal dystopia in which we find ourselves. He not only critiques the present hellscape but dares to chart a way out, one that promotes both freedom and equity.

Evola presents a third category: the cautionary thinker. His critique of modern decay is incisive, yet his solutions collapse into the very nihilism he claims to resist – only dressed in the language of tradition. Ride the Tiger is a case study in the dangers of extreme reactionary thought, a lesson in how valid critiques can curdle into destructive ideology.

To ride the tiger, in my view, is not to retreat into an imagined past but to stand firmly in the present – without surrendering to either despair or domination. Meaning, connection, and the refusal to become either predator or prey: these are what matter.

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Philosophy:

Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Book I, Chapters 1-46.

The Prior Analytics is the first of Aristotle’s two works on logic. The other, titled Posterior Analytics, I’ll be reading as soon as I finish the current volume. Both of these works comprise the third and fourth books, respectively, in what is traditionally known as Aristotle’s “Organon.”

This volume, the Prior Analytics, is itself divided into two books. Book I consists of 46 chapters, all relatively short, which lay out the foundations of logic. Logic is a process, comprised of the construction, presentation, and analysis of arguments. The best construction of an argument Aristotle calls syllogisms. Syllogisms consist of two premises leading to a conclusion, all based on clearly defined terms and relationships. The most crucial (and famous) component of the syllogism is the “middle term,” which connects the premises together to the conclusion. The glue of the middle term performs much of the work to determine whether the syllogism is true, false, or indeterminate. Other important frameworks include the identification of universals or particulars, affirmative or privative premises, major and minor extremes, belonging or not belong to all, to some, or to none, to name a few of them.

Whether my distillation of Aristotle’s framework was haphazard or clear, the reason for his framework is to ready the would-be logician to answer the most important question in logic: is the syllogism, true or not? Aristotle then introduces the deductive method to analyze and test the truth, falsity, or indeterminacy of any syllogism. There are three primary types of deductions, which he calls Figures. Aristotle spends the majority of Book 1 performing deductions of different types of syllogisms (affirmative, privative, belonging to all, belonging to some, and more variations) and applying the deductions to the respective Figures. All in all, this book operates very much like a manual to equip the reader to conduct rigorous analyses.

While that might not sound very riveting, I do find the Prior Analytics to be a breath of fresh air in the Aristotelian corpus. I have spent the past year studying Aristotle; reading him is a chore at times. He’s dry, elliptical, can zig-zag through complex and abstract arguments, writes in a 2,300 year old way, and presents a world that is sometimes completely foreign to how we experience the world today. Very often, he’ll introduce puzzles, problems, questions, contradictions and new concepts on the drop of a dime. Sometimes, he’ll (intentionally?) misquote other writers or make what seem like important references to works contemporary of his age that are lost to us. Other times he will begin to make an argument, digress to another topic, while promising to to return to the original argument later on but never returns to it. I’ll grant that some of these criticisms might not be his fault, but it all too often makes for a frustrating, toilsome, and uninspiring slog of a read. (If you really want to torture yourself with Aristotelian inscrutability, take his Metaphysics or, especially, de Anima for a test drive. They’re also two of the most important texts in the history of Western Civilization.) By contrast, I’ve found the Prior Analytics to be refreshingly straightforward. I think If you are going to lay down the foundations of logical reasoning and analysis, you will have to write with clarity, straightforwardness, and thoroughness. Aristotle delivers.

To take it a step further, Aristotle also spills the ink at several points with several contradictions in his definitions, rules and even deductive outcomes. Academic commentary (which I have not bothered to consult with too much care) faults him for this, but I have a different take: I am more under the impression that these apparent contradictions were written by Aristotle on purpose. I cannot prove this assertion beyond a reasonable doubt, and doubting my comment is reasonable. And I’m not inclined to tumble down the rabbit hole to study this text carefully enough, but…. Even on a more superficial level, there is so much demonstrable care, painstaking clarity, and step-by-step explanation abounding in the text. A sudden ‘mistake’ warrants calling into question whether the mistake is, in fact, a mistake or placed for some reason or another. One reason might be that Aristotle is interested in training his readers to think more carefully. Learning how to conduct a rigorous analysis is one of the most powerful ways to achieve this, and Aristotle is at pains to share the tools. So why not test his readers with puzzles and contradictions, bringing the would-be logician to take the next analytical steps on their own, thinking for themselves more deeply, and grasping more profoundly the foundations Aristotle has so systematically presented. Food for thought.

The Prior Analytics is an incredibly helpful book for thinking and analyzing with greater rigor and precision. This is the first systematic document of the foundations of logic that we have, and it was a core part of the trivium for 1,500 years. Communication and logic still rest on many of the principles which Aristotle lays out here. Incredibly valuable, even if it’s technical and very meta.

Keep Your Friends Close

Yanis Varoufakis – Another Now, Forward.

I read Yanis’ most recent book publication, Technofeudalism, and was impressed with and convinced of many aspects of this book. Toward the end of the work, wherein he sketches a way out of the techno-feudal slavery in which humanity finds itself, Yanis references his novel from a few years ago, Another Now. He states that this novel presents a fuller picture of his vision. As a result, I wanted to investigate Another Now. (I am leaving his more rigorous and academic works in Economics for later.)

I have only read the Forward of Another Now, which amounts to a few pages. Still, I can confirm that it is not a well-written novel. I do not like Yanis’ writing style. It’s sloppy, overuses cheap turns of phrase, and the storytelling/foreshadowing is just less than stellar. It’s unclear why he chose to write a novel. Yet, even with these flaws, I’m not reading the book for his qualities as a novelist – Yanis is a public intellectual, an economics nerd, and one of the best commie professors in the world. I’m reading him for the presentation of his ideas for a more equitable and genuinely open world, free of exploitation. A world in which humanity can truly thrive. Do I expect him to be perfect? No. Is this former finance minister of Greece a pie-in-the-sky utopian? Also no. Am I excited to read this book and consider his vision of a society of the future? Absolutely, yes!

Keep Your Enemies Closer

Julius Evola – Ride the Tiger, Chapters 1 – 15

This book is what Evola himself calls a “survival manual” for the contemporary man. Woman not included. Evola’s manual serves as a sort of spiritual guide for the right kind of man to awaken and adopt his (Evola’s) system of values. He reappropriates values into the more old-fashioned term, virtues. By virtues Evola really means an aesthetic. The dissolving of values (and politics) into aesthetics is a move so typical of far-right thinking. Still, what interests me and what I anticipate (having only read the first half of Ride the Tiger), is that Evola will apply the aestheticization to his ideal man, whom he calls the traditional man.

The values, or virtues, Evola describes belong not to the era of totalitarian fascism or even divine right monarchy, but the aristocracies (read: oligarchies) of the ancient world. This is the tradition, and it is a return to this tradition that Evola’s traditional - his so-called higher men - must return. Such a return requires a rejection, if not outright erasure, of all essential aspects of modern society. In other words Evola dreams of the re-subjugation of women, the reinstitution of indentured servitude, if not slavery, and an aestheticization of the men, reborn with “strength,” to name a few. Of course, Evola knows that such a return is implausible, not to say impossible, so he narrows the scope of his wish for a societal change to that of a change within the individual, man, of course.

Evola studies the individual man through the prism of an analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, especially the consequences of the credo from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “God is dead, and we have killed him.” The consequence of the death of God is nihilism. Man has therefore opened up the abyss and fallen in. Setting this context, Evola goes on to analyze, criticize, and sparingly praise the various flavors of existentialist philosophy, especially Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. (Evola critiques others as well, but praises Kierkegaard, who is close to my heart.) His critique of Existentialism may be summed up as follows: in facing the reality that human life is meaningless, our existence is degraded, reduced to animalism. Without God, humans are “free.” But in their freedom they choose to pursue animalistic pleasures, from plastic goods to cheap sex to mind-numbing entertainment. As such, traditional values are completely ignored, forgotten, and lost. This sets the stage for the post-human, AI-governed hellscape we find ourselves hurtling towards.

I expect that in the second half of the book, Evola will begin to share his positive doctrine, insofar as this is possible, the tools whereby the individual man may fend off the animalism around him. He will be empowered to pursue the aesthetic life of “virtue,” whatever Evola exactly means by this.

Many of Evola’s recommendations are, frankly, horrific in their implications. However, as a man of the far right’s aesthetic fetishisms, he is an excellent writer. He meets the lofty standards he sets for art and authorship.

The criticisms Evola has of modern society, that it has been corrupted by existentialist thinking, especially by Nietzsche, are very powerful and contain elements of truth. They are therefore worthy of further thought and reflection. I anticipate that Evola’s recommendations to combat the trajectory humanity is on, will require the very debasement of most of humanity he writes in opposition to throughout his critique of existentialism. In his framework it very much looks like the indentured servant, the slave, the illiterate and baby-producing housewives, are all as good as regarded as animals. They cannot have virtue, for virtue is embodied solely by his traditional man. On the one hand the world has become animalistic; on the other hand is an envisioned world in which almost all of the very same animals remain animals but conduct other animalistic activities, only this time in service of a few men. The difficulty is so baldly obvious, but it does not appear Evola will address it. We’ll see.

Wrap it Up

To wrap up this first Sousarion Reacts post, I noticed a tentative theme that links these texts together: the power and perils of foundational thinking. Whether it’s Aristotle’s logic, Varoufakis’ alternative futures, or Evola’s aestheticized traditionalism, each asks us to question our assumptions and consider new (or old) ways forward.

What are your thoughts? Have you read any of these? Share them in the comments. I’d love to discuss them further with you.

Or, until next time, keep exploring and questioning—happy reading!