No. 27: Propaganda, knowing yourself, and Atlantis

Arendt/Aristotle/Aquinas/Confucius/Dewey/Euclid/Emerson/Lenin/Mao/Marx/Plato/Russell/Schopenhauer/Socrates/Whitehead

Here's some things other people have been writing. My own opinions probably differ.

When Marx met Confucius is a TV show made by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department. It paints its namesakes as enthusiastic supporters of modern China. Guest appearances by Lenin and Mao. economist

Aristotle, Aquinas, Emerson, Schopenhauer, and Sartre all thought about how to “know yourself” or “know your essence”. Some thought you have an essence and need only to find it, others that you need to make it. theatlantic

Socrates, is missed in today’s political discourse, but you can find people like him in podcast-land. wsj

Plato’s Timaeus and Critias are the first mentions of Atlantis—the mythical lost city—we know about. That doesn’t necessarily mean he invented the idea. news.ycombinator

Dewey declared education to be democracy’s lifeline. Now, as higher education’s pillars wobble, I fear democracy itself might crumble. theatlantic

Euclid’s Geometry showed that mathematics hangs on logical reasoning. Russell and Whitehead expanded on it in Principia Mathematica, despite grappling with logical paradoxes. Though it seems esoteric—who thinks about logic during the day?—the things we believe in everyday life hang on subtleties that are worth thinking about. aeon

Arendt thought loneliness to be when others don’t see your human dignity or unconditional worth as a person. It can happen even when people love you unconditionally, but why? aeon

Aristotle’s sense of civic republicanism runs deep in Jewish political culture. Netanyahu is betraying that tradition. newrepublic

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave asks how we know what we think we know—a question that hangs heavy in classroom debates about the war in the Levant. nytimes