I teach the Great Books of our tradition ||Excellence in education: Intro through PhD level || SubStack @AthensCorner
Joined December 2020
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22 Dec 2025
You’re going to really enjoy this one — link in comment
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
Jun 13
The “exceptions” are Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Pufendorf, Grotius, Blackstone, Locke, Sydney, Montesquieu, Hume, Reid, Machiavelli, Milton, Shakespeare, Burke, etc.
The “History” the Founders read (Plutarch, Thucydides, Livy, Polybius) were more like philosophers than the stuffy pencil pushers we call “historians” today.
Jun 13
Note to poly sci types. The Founders read HISTORY not political philosophy. Montesquieu was the exception, not the rule.
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
If your background is beginner, then his most accessible writings will be his lectures on the history of philosophy—not to be confused with his lectures on the philosophy of world history
Then go slowly through his prefaces, they contain everything despite his contempt for them
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
13h
Subscribed to this one's substack check it out.
22 Dec 2025
You’re going to really enjoy this one — link in comment
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315 with the 50lb chains on each side
I should’ve gone lower, but it was the 5th set of these after 2 burnout sets without the chains, plus outside of the cage etc etc … so honestly no excuses — lower next time and more reps
White boy summer
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
Here I introduce the virtue of greatness of soul for better understanding the depths of:
— Aristotle’s entire Nicomachean Ethics
— Thucydides
— Plato
— Shakespeare
— Nietzsche
— Ourselves (!)
I also discuss the enormity of its problems for even being a virtue in Christianity
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In everything we seek and aspire towards today, there are examples of great men to assist us
The *only* question is whether we truly have it in ourselves to become such men or remain content with simply talking about our need for them
18 Nov 2023
Imagine if the West had a true man of iron: a man who scorned money and worldly pleasures, who could not be bought or corrupted, who was totally devoted to restoring his nation to power and prominence, who would excise the corruptors from the national body with a razor scalpel.
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Nietzsche knew how to make a booklist, unlike the endless superficiality hurled at us today
Take this entry from his notebooks
“Books for 8 years:
— Schopenhauer
— Dühring
— Aristotle
— Goethe
— Plato”
Spend 8 years on *only* 5 great authors before telling us your booklist
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
The purpose of reading —especially history— along with its obstacles and limitations according to:
— Thucydides
— Plutarch
— Montesquieu
— Nietzsche
This is very much worth your time
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
3 Dec 2025
To know the world of today you have to know the thought of Machiavelli
But to know the thought of Machiavelli you have to know Lucretius
Lucretius’s “De rerum natura [‘On the Nature of Things’]” was so important to Machiavelli that he wrote it in its entirety to have a copy
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Funny story
Every morning I blast classic rock while in the shower, and when I start singing the lyrics Nelson pokes his head in looking at me with shame for the violence my voice does to the original
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
Jun 12
on the purpose of reading. free listen/download
The purpose of reading —especially history— along with its obstacles and limitations according to:
— Thucydides
— Plutarch
— Montesquieu
— Nietzsche
This is very much worth your time
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The purpose of reading —especially history— along with its obstacles and limitations according to:
— Thucydides
— Plutarch
— Montesquieu
— Nietzsche
This is very much worth your time
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Roadrunners are fascinating creatures
They taunt Nelson daily. I can actually hear them saying to him:
“Yes, we can fly — but we will not, b/c the fact that you even dare to chase us is our motivation to smoke you on your four legs with our two”
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… and so I’m convinced roadrunners read Nietzsche
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
Jun 11
A lack of an innate sense for philosophy can be overcome with diligence, while a lack of passion for its wisdom is nearly always insurmountable.
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
12 Nov 2025
Honorable mentions:
— Machiavelli’s Mandragola
— Lucretius’s De rerum natura
— Descartes’s Discourse on Method
Combine all six and you’ve got the best 2 semester course on “Modernity” ever devised
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
12 Nov 2025
The three best, most meticulous commentaries on what we call “Modernity” —by far!— are:
— Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War
— Shakespeare’s Hamlet
— Bacon’s New Atlantis
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
28 May 2023
Calisthenics are exercises done with bodyweight, ie pull-ups and dips. The Greek used is instructive:
kalistos (most beautful) sthenos (strength)
That’s helpful in adjusting your mindset to *want* to improve your physique. Most men can’t even do any such exercises properly.
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Athenian Stranger retweeted
28 Nov 2025
Probably the greatest lesson from learning a language other than your own is the realization that if you had it to do all over again you would’ve started much sooner and learned others as well.
That’s how beautiful the unknown world is that such knowledge opens up for you…
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