From our UK edition
My Ancient & Modern column has banged on long enough about the glories of the only democracy the world has ever known: that of Classical Athens, where the citizens (Athenian males over 18) were the legislature, making all political decisions by a show of hands after public debate in the Assembly. However, those same citizens
From our UK edition
It is astonishing how ancient thinkers chanced to anticipate certain developments in our understanding of the nature of the universe. From atoms to swerves to strings, Greeks got there first — after a fashion. Ancient Greeks were the first people we know to propose that a single basic stuff lay at the heart of all
From our UK edition
The refusal of his patients to assume responsibility for their own actions is a recurrent theme of Dr Theodore Dalrymple’s columns. He and Aristotle see eye to eye on the matter perfectly. In Nicomachean Ethics III, Aristotle (384–322 bc) begins by arguing that a man can wish for what really is good, or merely for
From our UK edition
The Tory leader Michael Howard has published a list of his ‘beliefs’. If this was a political move, Athenians would have found it baffling. The 5th-century bc thinker Protagoras defined ‘excellence’ as ‘proper management of one’s own business … and of the city’s too, so that one can make the most effective contribution to its