Madness: a form of love

“ Significance of madness in the history of morality . - When in spite of that fearful pressure of ‘morality of custom’ under which all the communities of mankind have lived, many millenia before the beginnings of our calendar and also on the whole during the course of it up to the present day (we ourselves dwell in the little world of the exceptions and, so to speak, in the evil zone):- when, I say, in spite of this, new and deviate ideas, evaluations, drives again and again broke out, they did so accompanied by a dreadful attendant: almost everywhere it was madness which prepared the way for the new idea, which broke the spell of a venerated usage and superstition. Do you understand why it had to be madness which did this? Something in voice and bearing as uncanny and incalculable as the demonic moods of the weather and the sea and therefore worthy of a similar awe and observation? something that bore so visibly the sign of total unfreedom as the convulsions and froth of the epilep...

Why Study Philosophy? There are many reasons to study philosophy, from moral, to practical, to hedonistic/Epicurean (the philosophy of pleasure associated with 3rd century B.C. garden philosopher, Epicurus), to scientific, to even religious. Once we recognize that we don't know the ultimate answers to the most ultimate questions about how we should live, and the nature of the Divine and reality in general, the remaining desire to live a morally good life, a pious life, a happy life, of even simply an honest life, seems to compel us, as the great philosopher, Socrates, (who said 'All I know is I know nothing') famously maintained, to devote ourselves to this quest. In fact, as Plato famously argued, our ordinary, pre-philosophic beliefs are similar to living in a dark cave never having once glimpsed the light; we simply grow up acquiring beliefs much like an uncleaned shelf acquires dust over the years, never inquiring into the their ultimate basis. We are like a tree al...

This  essay is a rendition, mostly word for word, of Leo Strauss' (a Jewish emigre American scholar-philosopher influenced by Nietzsche) own writings on the subject. It is primarily intended to make his thought, which I believe to be largely true and important, available to a new or wider audience; occasionally though, I have made additions or alterations  at certain points in order to offer some of my own reflections, which appear in bold. PLATO 427-347 B. C. Thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters have come down to us as Platonic writings, not all of which are now regarded as genuine. Some scholars go so far as to doubt that any of the letters is genuine. It seems then Plato never speaks to us in his own name, for in his dialogues only his characters pseak. Why Plato proceeded in this manner is not easy to say. Perhaps he doubted there can be a philosophic teaching proper, and, too, thought like his master Socrates that philosophy is in the last analysis knowl...