Ray Childs
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In the Deep South of the 1950s, a color line was etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. The author, a journalist decided to cross that line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. What happened to him, from the outside and within himself, as he made his way through the segregated Deep South...
3) Iron Thunder
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After his father is killed fighting for the Union, thirteen-year-old Tom Carroll takes a job at a Brooklyn ironworks to support his family. He quickly learns that they are building an iron-clad, "unsinkable" ship to be called the Monitor to finally sink the Confederates' "unsinkable" ship, the Merrimac. This is a brilliantly written description of a major sea battle through the eyes of a teenaged boy who both helped build the Monitor as well as fight...
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Hippias of Elis travels throughout the Greek world practicing and teaching the art of making beautiful speeches. On a rare visit to Athens, he meets Socrates, who questions him about the nature of his art. Socrates is especially curious about how Hippias would define beauty. They agree that beauty makes all beautiful things beautiful, but when Socrates presses him to say precisely what he means, Hippias is unable to deliver such a definition. The...
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Aristotle's Poetics is best known for its definitions and analyses of tragedy and comedy, but it also applies to truth and beauty as they are manifested in the other arts. In our age, when the natural and social sciences have dominated the quest for truth, it is helpful to consider why Aristotle claimed poetry is more philosophical and more significant than history. Like so many other works by Aristotle, the Poetics has dominated the way we have thought...
6) Plato's Ion
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Socrates questions Ion, an actor who just won a major prize, about his ability to interpret the epic poetry of Homer. How does an actor, a poet, or any other artist create? Is it by knowing? Is it by inspiration? As the dialogue proceeds, the nature of human creativity emerges as a mysterious process and an unsolved puzzle.
© Agora Publications
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The Athenian court has found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death. While he is waiting to be executed, his friend, Crito, comes to the prison to persuade him to escape and go into exile. Socrates responds by examining the essence of law and community, probing the various kinds of law and making distinctions that go far beyond the particular issue of whether or not Socrates should escape.
© Agora Publications
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Socrates is on trial for his life. He is charged with impiety and corrupting young people. He presents his own defense, explaining why he has devoted his life to challenging the most powerful and important people in the Greek world. The reason is that rich and famous politicians, priests, poets, and a host of others pretend to know what is good, true, holy, and beautiful, but when Socrates questions them, they are shown to be foolish rather than wise.
©...
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In Euthyphro, Socrates is on his way to the court, where he must defend himself against serious charges brought by religious and political authorities. On the way he meets Euthyphro, an expert on religious matters who has come to prosecute his own father. Socrates questions Euthyphro's claim that religion serves as the basis for ethics. Euthyphro is not able to provide satisfactory answers to Socrates' questions, but their dialogue leaves us with...
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These works articulate the most fundamental principles of Kant's ethical and political world-view. "What is Enlightenment?" (1784) and Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) were written in the period between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Taken together they challenge all free people to think about the requirements for self-determination both in our individual lives and in our public and private institutions....
12) Dao De Jing
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The Dao De Jing exists on the border between poetry and philosophy, embracing both mythos and logos. Its poetic form can stand alone, but it is enriched when its timeless ideas are analyzed and explained through careful scholarship. For example: He who knows others is knowledgeable. He who knows himself is wise. These words resemble Socrates' account of his own quest in Plato's Apology.
Ancient philosophy, both in China and in Greece, places self-knowledge...