Bleak Political Implications of Socratic Religion

Shadia B. Drury is Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada at University of Regina, CN. She is author of Aquinas and Modernity (2008), Terror and Civilization (2004), Leo Strauss and the American Right (1997), Alexandre Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics (1994), The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (updated Edition, 2005), and is a regular contributor to Free Inquiry.

“This book is a provocative, polemical variation on the Nietzschean themes that Socratic philosophy was the will to power of an ugly man against a culture of beauty and that Christianity was Platonism for the masses. … The book is a helpful reminder to contemporary scholarship that the ironic Plato also had a reformist side to elevate democracy’s apolitical focus on bodily needs. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” (W. J. Coats, Choice, Vol. 55 (5), January, 2018)

• 1. The Political Case Against Socrates.- 2. The Religious Case Against Socrates.- 3. The Defense.- 4. How Plato Legitimizes the Case for the Prosecution.- 5. Plato’s Critique of Homer Repudiated.- 6. The Tragic Poets Defended.- 7. Socratic Mischief.