Philosophy Live: School of Philosophy and Economic Science
Dr David Horan begins to answer this question of why Plato matters by referring back to the trial of Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, in Jerusalem in 1961. Hannah Arendt, historian and philosopher who was present at the trial, observed that the problem with Eichmann was his inability to think. And in this present time the inability to think has as Dr Horan describes it, become a Malaise of disturbing significance. Plato he says 'will make you think, and give you the basis on which you think, and the framework with which to think.' His works are dialogues and they demonstrate how to talk with someone with whom you disagree, through understanding their point of view and not by arguing with them or saying they are wrong.
This project of providing a new translation, available in print and online, was brought about through the generosity and spontaneity of people who care about truth and wisdom above other considerations.
The Dialogues of Plato translated by Dr David Horan can be read online:
J.D. Vance ends his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, relating a recurring nightmare that had troubled him for nearly two decades, from the age of seven. After some years of respite it reappeared a few weeks after he had graduated from law school. But this time, instead of being chased by a monster, he was the monster chasing his dog with the intention of throttling it. When he caught the dog it turned and gave him such a look that his anger dissipated, and instead of throttling it he hugged it. He writes that the last emotion that he felt before he woke was relief that he had controlled his temper. Before he went back to sleep he was comforted by the domestic scene he was living within and the prospect of going to work the next day, taking the dogs to the park, buying groceries with his wife and making a nice dinner. 'It was everything I ever wanted,' he writes.
And isn't it all that most people want? To live in peace, to live with agreeable, loving people, to earn a living, to have free time to relax and enjoy simple pleasures. The American Dream surely? Most people do not want the world to fall at their feet. They want freedom to go about their business. They want good company. For that to become reality we need laws to protect it and good governance by responsible, knowledgeable people.
J.D. did not have peace as a child. A great many children in America do not have peace. As he points out in his memoir, when children suffer neglect, abuse and chaos they become permanently locked in fight or flight mode, and he gives many examples of how that continued to play out in his life as an adult.
The memoir was written at 31 years old when his biggest achievement was graduating from Yale Law School. In the introduction, and it is something he refers to constantly throughout the book, he points out that his future looked grim and it would have been, except for a few people who gave him the attention, love and support he needed. It was not the hard work, which would not have happened without encouragement, and he was not particularly talented either, it was other people who helped him overcome the legacy of feeling doomed to fail and the self-defeating fight or flight mechanism.
He states that he wrote the book because 'I want people to know what it feels like to nearly give up on yourself and why you might do it. I want people to understand what happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. I want people to understand the American Dream as my family and I encountered it. I want people to understand how upward mobility really feels. And I want people to understand something I learned only recently, that for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of the life we left behind continue to chase us.'
I don't know where that J.D. Vance has gone to. His brow sits in a constant angry furrow and his words are angry, and his arguments make no sense. If political expediency causes a person to align themselves with the wrong cause, can they escape and remember who they are, or will the monster devour them?
'Trump Envoy Has Financial Ties With Former Adviser to Putin’s ‘Money Man’ Now Leading Kremlin Peace Talks'
'Steve
Witkoff’s real-estate empire is bankrolled by a former adviser to
Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a key
architect of Moscow’s Ukraine negotiations.'
'Byline Times can reveal that Steve
Witkoff entered this meeting carrying two conflicts of interest: his
real estate empire has been financed, in part, by a former adviser to
President Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man on money and investment; and
several of his Florida and New York developments have drawn on
investment vehicles linked to post-Soviet networks now intertwined with
Russia’s political elite.
These financial entanglements starkly contradict the narrative that
Witkoff’s apparent willingness to support Moscow’s position stems from
inexperience. Long before he picked up the phone to Kremlin officials,
he was already moving through business circles shaped by the same
interests he was now claiming to mediate.'
'Witkoff did not need to cross a line in Miami. The line had already been erased long before he arrived.'
Two men, Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, come up with a peace plan, but they are two men who know a lot about financial deals and clearly not much about peace negotiation.
From The Atlantic, 22 November 2025, written by Anne Applebaum
'Why is the Trump White House pushing Ukraine to accept a Russian plan
that paves the way for another war? The document offers some hints,
declaring that the U.S. would also somehow take charge of the $100
billion in frozen Russian assets, for example, supposedly to invest this
money in Ukraine and receive “50% of the profits from this venture.”
Europeans, whose banks actually hold most of these assets, would receive
nothing. European taxpayers, who currently provide almost all of the
military and humanitarian support to Ukraine, are nevertheless expected
to contribute $100 billion to Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the United States and Russia would “enter into a long-term
economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of
energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data
centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other
mutually beneficial corporate opportunities,” according to the plan.
This is no surprise: Putin has spoken of “several companies” positioning themselves to resume business ties between his country and the United States.
In March, the Financial Times reported on one of these
negotiations. Mattias Warnig—a German businessman and former Russian spy
who has close links to Putin and is under U.S. sanctions—has been
seeking a back channel to the Trump administration through U.S.
investors who want to reopen the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline,
part of which was blown up by Ukrainian saboteurs early in the war. One
American familiar with the plan told the Financial Times that the U.S. investors were essentially being offered “money for nothing,” which is, obviously, an attractive prospect.
Other
details of the business negotiations carried out by Witkoff and
Dmitriev remain secret. Ukrainians and Europeans, who would pay the
military and economic price for this plan, deserve to know them. Above
all, American citizens should be asking for the details of any business
negotiations now under way. This plan has been proposed, in our name, as
a part of U.S. foreign policy. But it would not serve our economic or
security interests. So whose interests would it serve? Which U.S.
companies and which oligarchs would benefit? Are Trump’s family members
and political supporters among them? The arrangements on offer should be
public knowledge before any kind of deal is signed.
For
a decade, Russia has been seeking to divide Europe and America, to
undermine NATO and weaken the transatlantic alliance. This peace plan,
if accepted, will achieve that goal. There is a long tradition of great
powers in Europe making deals over the heads of smaller countries,
leading to terrible suffering. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
with its secret protocols, brought us World War II. The Yalta agreement
gave us the Cold War. The Witkoff-Dmitriev pact, if it holds, will fit
right into that tradition.'
The President, 'This is insanity.' 'No sir, this is reality,' General Brady, Stratcom commander.
The President to Lieutenant Commander Reeves, strike adviser: 'I always thought that having you following me around with that book of plans, for weapons like that, just being ready is the point, right? Keep people in check. Keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war, right?'
'It's
like we all built a house filled with dynamite. Making all these bombs
and all these plans, and the walls are just ready to blow. But we kept
living in it.'
A House of Dynamite directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by Noah Oppenheim.
The 2025 film depicts a nuclear attack scenario. Notably everyone, even though they are facing a potentially catastrophic situation, behaves rationally and follows protocols, keeping their emotions in check as much as is humanly possible. So, one can't help but wonder whether with this current administration and president, such a situation might play out more like Stanley Kubrick's satirical Dr Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, who sets in motion a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, is obsessed with purity and conspiracies about fluoridation, hilariously resembling current U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, while Dr Strangelove and his Nazi salutes made by his out of control hand, resembles Elon Musk.
There was a response to Bigelow's film from the Pentagon. An internal government memo that was obtained by Bloomberg, in which it was claimed that contrary to the portrayal in the film, current missile defence systems have a 100 per cent success rate. Which is why, if any such situation were to occur at present it would be Dr Strangelovish without the comedy. 'Principals need hard facts, not speculation,' staff were reminded by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in A House of Dynamite. With a president and administration readily propagating lies and disinclined to understand that lies are not facts, the Doomsday Clock currently sits at about 23 seconds to midnight.
Brigelow was pleased to get a reaction though, for as she said, 'culture has the potential to drive policy.' And, indeed, there is a very relevant example of that. During Reagan's presidency he watched the 1983 film WarGames while he was at Camp David. It is about a teenager who unintentionally hacks into the computer of the North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and nearly sets off World War III. Reagan asked Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if something like that could really happen. The General looked into it and a week later, told Reagan, 'the problem is much worse than you think.'A classified national security decision directive, NSDD-145, titled 'National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security' was signed 15 months later.
Meanwhile Trump entertains delusions of a Golden Dome, like back in the eighties when Reagan had dreamed of lasers in space shooting down Soviet missiles. However, back then, a citizens’ campaign came together behind the idea of a
verifiable, bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons development, deployment,
and testing.More than 200 city councils and nine state
legislatures passed resolutions endorsing the freeze and voters in nine out of 10 states passed freeze referenda. Although it was
sharply criticized by the White House, growing congressional and
popular support for the freeze proposal helped put public pressure on
the Reagan administration to initiate strategic arms talks with the
Soviets.
'At the end of the cold war global powers reached the consensus that the world would be better off with fewer nuclear weapons. That era is now over.' A House of Dynamite
'If a "nuclear deterrent" destroys all life on Earth, it is hard to say what exactly has been deterred.' Dr Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
When people turn against their best self, what do they become?
He mobilised the rage in people, not because he sought to show them a way forward on a more just and rewarding path, but to take the power they would give him and use it as a means to destroy all who dare to see him for what he is.
George Orwell through his experience in Spain during its civil war learned well the ways of these monster men. Let us please, not call them strong men, for they are deep inside very frightened men and what they most fear and rage against is their own mortality. What they really stand for and what they really intend is almost always the opposite in meaning to the words they use. The 'Big, Beautiful Bill' represents a 'death march' in GOP populist economist Oren Cass's own words, it is 'a total dud for the people who actually voted for President Donald Trump.' Tax cuts for those who don't need them to be paid for with cuts of billions to Medicaid, food assistance and environmental programs. There goes quality of life for anyone not super rich.
Now the military are urged to use Democrat cities as training grounds against the enemy within, that is anyone who believes in democracy, equality, love between our brothers and our sisters.
Because who are these people who have welded themselves to MAGA? They are frightened people who see life as a fight against others.
The American Revolution needed soldiers who would fight. They were promised freedom, democratic rights, the institutionalisation of the principle of equality. MAGA does not stand for freedom. It stands for winner takes all.
Those who value truth, and honour, need to refrain from making divisions worse. Differences in values and differences in how cause and effect are understood, are not so important as respect for each other.
The flattery though has to stop; it isn't a strategy, it is fawning. In Australia, our Indigenous people have a custom of turning their backs when someone has behaved in a way that makes them unworthy of respect.
