An Empire of Reason – Greek Logic

American Political History · Jul 4, 2023 · 32m

In 585 BC, the sun went dark over a battlefield — and one Greek had said it would, not by reading the will of the gods, but by working out that the heavens run on a pattern the human mind can grasp. That was the revolution: the discovery of reason itself, the first pillar under “we hold these truths to be self-evident.”

This is the story of what Athens gave the American founding, and what it could not. A method, from Socrates, who drank poison rather than stop following an argument. A danger, from Plato, whose philosopher-king is the seed of every utopia that ever ruled without consent. A…