In defense of the Ancient Greeks and Romans

“In the most pure democracies of Greece, many of the executive functions were performed, not by the people themselves, but by officers elected by the people, and REPRESENTING the people in their EXECUTIVE capacity … Prior to the reform of Solon, Athens was governed by nine Archons, annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE AT LARGE. The degree of power delegated to them seems to be left in great obscurity. Subsequent to that period, we find an assembly, first of four, and afterwards of six hundred members, annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE; and PARTIALLY representing them in their LEGISLATIVE capacity, since they were not only associated with the people in the function of making laws, but had the exclusive right of originating legislative propositions to the people.”

– Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, in the Federalist Papers (Federalist No. 63)

Western culture now seems to be falling out of fashion today. People understandably want to praise the other cultures of the world, and note that they made significant contributions to the arts, sciences, and philosophy. They thus feel that we somehow have to downgrade the contributions of the West. They seem to feel that elevating other cultures requires us to knock Western culture off of its pedestal – a problematic proposition. The legacy of the Ancient Greeks and Romans is one of the casualties of this problematic way of thinking. The Ancient Greeks and Romans may have been “great,” say others, but they were just two cultures among many – and they were no more “great” than any other cultures, says this group. They may have been “special,” this group admits, but all cultures are “special” – depriving this word of any real meaning.

The Pynx in Greece, the meeting place of the people of Athens

So what did the Ancient Greeks and Romans really leave us, you might be wondering? Oh, nothing much: just democracy … and maybe a few other important things. This post will try to explain why the Ancient Greeks and Romans were different. I should note that, to my knowledge, I don’t have a single drop of Greek or Italian blood in me. Thus, to me, this is not about genetics or “privileged bloodlines.” Rather, I see this as being about ideas – with freedom, possibly, being the very greatest of those classical ideas. By creating popular government, the Ancient Greeks and Romans both left us a legacy of free inquiry and pursuit of truth. To me, that is their greatest legacy. It needs to be remembered today, and it needs to be reverently (and thoughtfully) taught today.

The “Forum Romanum,” better known as the Roman Forum

How psychology became a separate discipline

Disclaimer: I am writing here as a philosopher and as a historian, not as a psychologist. That is, I freely admit that I am not an “expert” in psychology, although I do have some minimal exposure to the subject. My intent here is only to show how psychology fits into the broader history of philosophy, by talking about how psychology became a separate discipline in the last two centuries.

Psychology has long been one of the most popular majors in the United States. By some measurements, it is second only to business in its popularity among college students. And it’s easy to see why the subject is so popular. It has a strong human interest element, and helps you to understand all kinds of human behavior. Classes focused on psychological disorders are often so popular that there are waitlists to get into them. Many want to enter the mental health professions, and use their training to help people in the most personal way. And it has long drawn students interested in the scientific side of things, who want to do research – or, at least, to benefit from the prior research of others. But psychology as we know it has only been around since 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt’s Laboratory was founded in Leipzig. And the discipline has many predecessors from back in antiquity, in various attempts to make a distinction between the mind and the body.

Wilhelm Wundt

Great naval conflicts: From the Seven Years’ War to the Napoleonic Wars

Many pirate movies take place in this general time period, and so do many history movies

I grew up on pirate movies like “Treasure Island,” a classic story that takes place in the early eighteenth century. Most modern pirate movies seem to take place in this much-romanticized era of sailing ships and pirates. In this century, we have seen Disney’s fantasy-oriented “Pirates of the Caribbean,” which combines this eighteenth-century historical backdrop with elements of curses and magic. But there have also been more “serious” works of historical fiction, about the naval conflicts of the late eighteenth (and early nineteenth) centuries. For example, there has been the “Horatio Hornblower” franchise (with a TV series starring Ioan Gruffudd), and the Russell Crowe movie “Master and Commander.” (Pity that only one movie was made in that particular franchise, because it was a promising one.) These movies may have some fictional characters in them, along with references to real people like Lord Horatio Nelson. But they may still be “serious” historical movies anyway, in my opinion, since they dramatize the fighting at sea during the Napoleonic Wars.

The wars covered here were all part of a broader struggle between Britain and France

I’m much interested in the naval fighting of the Napoleonic Wars, in part because of the influence of these movies on me personally. But, today, I would like to look at naval fighting in the eighteenth century more generally. The Napoleonic Wars are traditionally dated to the early nineteenth century, and I promise the reader that I will also be giving some serious coverage of that conflict in this post. But, in order to understand the Napoleonic Wars themselves, one has to look at some prior conflicts in the eighteenth century. Most importantly, one has to look at the much broader struggle between Britain and France, and how they duked it out in one maritime conflict after another. Our story begins in 1754, with a frontier conflict in the distant European colonies of North America. Americans today remember it as the “French and Indian War,” but it would soon lead to the broader “Seven Years’ War,” and to many another great naval conflict for the Europeans.

Why you should be concerned about postmodernism

I have long had a fair number of friends who identify as “Marxist” or “socialist.” But I freely admit that relatively few of my friends have described themselves to me as “postmodern” or “postmodernist.” Chances are that your experience is much the same. That is, you probably don’t know too many people who identify themselves as “postmodern” or “postmodernist.” But, if we undertake to define what “postmodernism” is, we may find that we have a fair number of friends who fit this description. We may find that postmodern ideas underlie many other belief systems – from transgender ideology and identity politics, to feminism and critical race theory. We may thus find that a fair number of our friends are influenced, in one way or another, by various postmodern ideas. And, if we take the trouble to examine these ideas carefully, we may see that they cannot stand up to serious intellectual scrutiny. Postmodernism is (and remains) intellectually bankrupt. Thus, it may be worth the time to define this philosophy, then to gauge its prevalence, and finally to take the trouble to debunk it. Perhaps, then, we will be better able to arrive at philosophical truth.

Richard Rorty, postmodern philosopher

Learning the basics of Biblical Hebrew from a book

“Our knowledge of Biblical Hebrew is directly dependent upon Jewish oral tradition and thus on the state of that tradition during and following the various dispersions of the Jews from Palestine. This dependence arises from the peculiarly deficient orthography in which the biblical text was written: it is essentially vowelless, or at most, vocalically ambiguous (see below, §8). The actual pronunciation of the language was handed down orally … The written consonantal text itself achieved a final authoritative form around the end of the first century A. D.”

– The introduction to Thomas O. Lambdin’s “Introduction to Biblical Hebrew” (1971), pages xiii-xiv

For nearly three years, I have read Thomas O. Lambdin’s “Introduction to Biblical Hebrew” – some 284 pages of it. Specifically, I read it from 14 August 2022 through 25 July 2025, at which time I completely finished it – excepting the appendices, index, and the entirety of the glossaries (although I read many parts of these glossaries). I did this completely from a book, and never had the benefit of a classroom, a professor, or a native speaker – or even a recording of one, for that matter! I’ve never heard so much as one hour of audio of the language, even from non-native speakers, and this made it somewhat daunting at times. It may have increased the difficulty level in at least some ways, and I don’t recommend it to others unless other options are not available (as they were not for me).

Why I believe that critical race theory is unscientific

Scientific theories must be testable. But if both results are believed to “prove” one right …

Suppose I told you that something really crazy happened last night. Specifically, at midnight last night, everything in the universe “shrank to one-half its original dimensions.” If you were to get a yardstick, you’d see that the size of certain nearby objects has changed in the manner claimed. If so, then that would prove me right. But, if the yardstick appeared to show that the size was the same as before, then it’s because the yardstick also “shrank” as well. Thus, my hypothesis has still not been disproved – in fact, it gets “proved” either way! If you test something scientifically, then this has to be “valid” science, after all. To get a “valid” scientific hypothesis, all you have to do is to test that hypothesis, right? I mean, that’s “all” that’s required for something to be scientific.

… then it’s still not science, because there has to be some possible result that could prove it wrong

The problem with this argument is that testability alone is not sufficient. The hypothesis also has to be falsifiable. That is, you have to be able to conceive of a scenario where your hypothesis could be proven false – that is, where it could be “falsified.” If you believe that either of two opposite results would “prove” your own point of view, then you’re still not doing science. Your hypothesis may still be testable, but the test is unscientific, because its advocates cannot conceive of a result that disproves the hypothesis by their own standards. If you’re trying to determine which of two movies is “inherently better,” this kind of thing doesn’t have to be scientific. Subjective claims like this are allowed to be unscientific – not to be confused with being anti-scientific, which means something else. The problems come when theories that are not scientific are claiming to be such, like the earlier claim about the universe shrinking. This is a different kind of claim from one movie being “inherently better” than the other. The shrinking-universe hypothesis claims to be objective, and thus crosses the line into the territory of pseudoscience. The shrinking-universe hypothesis is much more deserving of censure than those theories that never claimed to be “scientific” in the first place. When you claim to be “scientific,” you need to be able to back up this claim.

The “French Revolutionary Wars”: A great European cataclysm

“Do you hear in the fields

The howling of those fearsome soldiers?

They are coming into your midst

To slit the throats of your sons and consorts.

To arms, citizens!

Form up your battalions!

Let’s march, let’s march!

May impure blood soak our fields’ furrows!”

– English translation of “La Marseillaise” (1792), originally written in French during the French Revolution – now used as the national anthem of France

The French Revolution sucked much of Europe into a decade of bitter warfare

In 1789, a French mob stormed the Bastille on the 14th of July. This is the most famous date of the French Revolution, with its anniversary today celebrated in France as “Bastille Day.” This is actually the national holiday of France today, much as “Independence Day” is the national holiday of the United States. But there’s more to the story than this domestic revolution, although that is a critically important part of it. The French Revolution also sucked much of Europe into a decade of bitter warfare. The later years of the French Revolution were thus set against the backdrop of warfare. That is, there was an overlap between the later “French Revolution” and the early “French Revolutionary Wars.” This post will cover the often-forgotten conflicts that were associated with the French Revolution. I have saved my coverage of the Napoleonic Wars for another post, even though these two topics are intimately connected. Thus, I will instead be focusing here on the “French Revolutionary Wars,” which lasted for ten years in all. In so many ways, they were a great European cataclysm.

Storming of the Bastille, 1789