SELECTIVE BREEDING AND THE BIRTH OF PHILOSOPHY

By Costin Alamriu

Preface

Introduction

Breeding

Breeding and Human Inequality

The Argument in this Book

A Brief Detour into Politics

A Brief on Philosophy and Tyranny

I. The Problem of Tyranny

II. Origin and Statement of Thesis

CHAPTER ONE: BRIEF PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE PREPHILOSOPHICAL POLITICAL LIFE

Introduction to Chapter One—

I. General Features of the Prephilosophical Political Mind

a) Strauss, Hume, and Nietzsche on Necessity of Study of the Prephilosophic; Terror as Matrix of Prephilosophic Society

b) prephilosophic ubiquity of ancestral nomos; religious character of nomos

c) early society as a “fundamental democracy”; the impotent character of early kingship, the reduction of all primitive regime forms to “totalitarian democracy”

II. Emergence of the Idea of Nature out of Greek Aristocratic Morality

a) The Aristocratic Principle as Distinct from the Primitive “Fundamental Democracy”; Historical Origins of the Aristocratic Principle in the Greek World and Elsewhere

Appendix on Nature and Animal Similies in Homer

CHAPTER TWO: THE IDEA OF NATURE IN PINDAR

I. Introduction: Pindar’s Place in a Brief History of “Nature”:—

II. Nature as the Body

III. Nature and the Body as Blood and Heredity; Heredity as Truth

IV. Phusis as Heredity is Opposed to Nomos

V. Irrepressible Character of Nature as Opposed to Convention

VI. The Wise and Wisdom in Pindar

VII. The Possible Connection of Wisdom, the “Inborn Arts,” to Kingship or Leadership

CHAPTER THREE: COVERT TEACHING OF TYRANNY IN PLATONIC POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

I. Introduction: Concealment of Association Between Tyranny and Philosophy in Plato and the Meaning of “Political Philosophy”—

II. The Defense of Philosophy Against the Charge of Tyranny in the Gorgias—

a) An Introduction to the Gorgias and Callicles’ Radical Antinomianism

b) Structure of Gorgias and Callicles’ Introduction of the Standard of Nature; Escape from Convention—

c) Socrates’ bizarre replies to Callicles; the radicalization of Calliclean “political philosophy”—

III. Brief Note on Platonic Rhetoric and the Platonic Defense of Philosophy—

a) Restatement of the Rhetorical Aims of the Gorgias; the Inconsistency Between the View Presented on Rhetoric in the Gorgias and that in Other Dialogues

b) Birth and Meaning of Platonic Rhetoric Exposed in the Hippias Major

IV. Summary of this Chapter and Some Additional Circumstantial Evidence from Antiquity Regarding the Platonic and Philosophical Association with Tyranny—

CHAPTER FOUR: NIETZSCHE ON THE ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY AND TYRANNY IN THE DECAY OF ARISTOCRATIC REGIMES

I. Introduction—Nietzsche’s Fundamental Concern; Nietzsche’s Rhetoric and Esotericism

II. Nietzsche on Aristocracy and the Decay of Aristocratic Regime as Preconditions for High Culture, Philosophy, and Tyranny—

a) Aristocratic physical culture as precondition of philosophical life

b) Aristocratic regime and dissolution as precondition of philosophy; origin of the type of the philosopher and tyrant

III. Nietzsche on Platonic Political Philosophy

Appendix: Nietzsche in the Strauss-Kojeve Debate on Tyranny and Philosophy

a) Strauss on the problem of nature and history in Nietzsche

b) Strauss vs. Kojeve on nature and history

CONCLUSION