In his Travels in England Nikos Kazantzakis talks about “rhythm.” “Τι είναι λοιπόν ρυθμός; Μια κεντρική κίνηση όλο αρμονία, που κυβερνάει το στοχασμό και την πράξη μας.” “What is rhythm, then? A single central movement, all harmony, that governs our goals and actions.” My first response to this is that Kazantzakis’s “rhythm” is equivalent to will. [...]

Love – romantic, passionate, erotic love – is often portrayed, understood, or lived as a type of madness. Scientists reveal chemical imbalances, psychologists classify it with various disorders, but while reading an old interview with Martha Nussbaum called “The Ethics of Literature” (sorry, no reference, it just exists as a dog-eared photocopied text found in [...]

Public schools in Sratford (Connecticut) have discarded their old “cutesy, feel good” motto of “Children First – Whatever It Takes” and adopted words straight out of the Stoic philosopher’s mouth, reports Fred Musante via the Stratford Star. The new motto Tantum eruditi sunt liberi or Only the educated are free is what public school children [...]

So, I’ve been thinking about Nikos Kazantzakis’s “Askitiki” ever since that previous post of mine about it being on a top five besteller list over at Greekbooks.gr. I downloaded the Kimon Friar translation, even though my partner has the original Greek on his bookshelf, which happens to be right behind me. Anyway, the PDF file [...]

Professor Theodosios Pelegrinis has written a new dictionary of philosophy in Greek (Λεξικό της Φιλοσοφίας, Εκδόσεις Ελληνικά Γράμματα, 2004). The last dictionary of its kind was published around 80 years ago. Pelegrinis began work on his dictionary in 1999. The finished book is 1512 pages long. It spans 25 centuries of philosophical thought, via 15,000 [...]