Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Eugine Nier's avatar

As the dark side of inventing thought, the Athenians also invented deconstruction (under the name sophism), namely that one could use the infinite regress to deconstruct any institution and even the concept of truth itself. This ultimately destroyed the ability of the Athenian elite to cooperate among themselves, and resulted in Athens being defeated by Sparta.

A generation later this philosophy became fashionable among the Spartan elite, resulting in Sparta being defeated by Thebes. Then Thebes was defeated by the Macedonians, then Rome conquered the Macedonian successor states. Then the Romans got into the habit of having massive civil wars.

Eventually Christianity provided a system of morality that was not easily deconstructible, and buried sophism/deconstruction for nearly two millennia.

Expand full comment
Fabius Minarchus's avatar

Le Morte D'Arthur is plenty modern. It reads like a session of a text based adventure game, or a transcript from people playing a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. Just replace zorkmids with worship points.

Expand full comment
13 more comments...

No posts