Tim Blake Nelson explains how his new play "Socrates" parallels the modern-day dynamics of democracy. Tim Blake Nelson's 'Socrates' Draws Parallels Between Modern American Democracy And Ancient Greece ...

Four years ago, while filming Fantastic Four, Tim Blake Nelson began writing a play. "Especially when doing a superhero movie, I find myself in need of intellectual succor," says the writer, filmmaker ...

Socrates’ method was to clear his students’ minds of abstractions and assumptions, so that they might attain self-knowledge and learn the practical wisdom of living well. His pupil Plato, however, ...

How would you define democracy? The word democracy comes from the Greek words “demos,” meaning people, and “katos,” meaning power. So democracy can be thought of as the “power of the people,” a way of ...

You could be forgiven (but what’s the fun in that), if you were to think. Looking at Jacques-Louis David’s neoclassical painting The Death of Socrates, you could believe you’re seeing Socrates giving ...

In her review of “Plato Goes to China” by Shadi Bartsch (Bookshelf, Feb. 27), Martha Bayles rightly defends Leo Strauss against the charge that the professor was an antidemocrat who would have favored ...

Socrates was criminally charged, convicted by a jury, and sentenced to death in 399 B.C. He was accused and found guilty of two crimes: corrupting the youth of Athens by criticizing its democracy and ...