Classical Philosophy Reading Group

This is the third in a series of discussions for people wanting to get to grips with Classical Philosophy – the foundation of Western philosophy. The Ancient philosophers, as taught at British universities, are now too regularly the focus of politicised revision. They are considered elitist and a colonialist impostion, a cypher for hostility to Greece and Rome as the founding narrative of much despised Western civilisation.

Since we started this series, Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education, has seen fit to cancel the Latin Excellence Programme for state secondary schools. The mess this has made of Classics and Latin teaching is near catastrophic. This is explained in detail by Holmes-Henderson, Arlene, Steven Hunt and Alex Imrie in their article for Languages, Society and Policy - 'Ancient Languages in UK Schools: Current Realities and Future Possibilities'. It makes for dire reading.

This series of discussions aims to reinvigorate an interest in Classical Philosophy by looking at the enduring themes and ideals of Western civilisation, from freedom to democracy, which emerged in Ancient Greece and Rome. Surely, an understanding of Classical Philosophy has never been more presicent. This course – open to all, consisting of about five online discussions / seminars over 2025 – will act as an introductory guide to tackling the ideas of Socrates and Plato.

In the first two discussions we have seen Socrates face his detractors and defend himself against the accusations of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. In the last of the four opening Socratic dialogues looking at the death of Socrates, we see him face his death with remarkable calm, carrying on with his philosophy until the very end.

But Plato gives us clues to his wider ideas about the soul and how we can know anything. This is continued in more depth in the Meno. In this dialogue Plato gets Socrates to take on the search for knowledge directly. This lays the foundations for Plato's epistemology and will challenge anyone to answer the question how do we learn something new about the world.