Nelson admits researching Socrates for the play changed how he thinks — and opened him up to how Socrates’ philosophies parallel the ways democracy works and doesn’t work today.

Misreading Plato’s ‘Republic’ on Democracy Apologists for tyranny hardly needed Leo Strauss to show how a superficial reading could be used to justify the denial of freedom. Share Resize ...

Tim Blake Nelson's New Play Reveals How Socrates Predicted Donald Trump—And the Tyranny of Democracy. Apr 17, 2019 at 6:10 PM EDT ...

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by Almost 2,500 years after his death, Socrates continues to fascinate. The Greek thinker is seen, by some, as the father of philosophy, a martyr for ...

The classics are called classic because of their enduring value. A case in point: Plato’s several dialogues in which he records Socrates’ battle against the Sophists. The Sophists, you might ...

Viacheslav Lopatin/Shutterstock But Socrates does not focus on the injustices of Athenian democracy. His argument is simpler and more general. Ruling is a skilled trade.

Plato’s well known skepticism of democracy seems the result of his fear of what happens when you put things to a vote. That’s how Socrates died — voted into a death sentence when his case was ...