Aristotle is an authority worthy of our attention. But our interest in his work extends beyond its historical significance. When we turn to his Nicomachean Ethics, we can readily see that Aristotle’s questions are also our questions. His inquiry into the human things is not bound by time or place, but speaks to what is basic and universal in our concerns, here and now.

Fundamentally, Aristotle wants to know how to live the best possible human life. What is the human good? How do we attain it? The stakes of these questions could not be higher. If we are honest with ourselves, there is nothing more pressing that we want—that we need—to know.

Our time together will focus on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, with each meeting being organized around a key theme.

Schedule

Seminars will be held on Tuesdays from 12:00pm to 1:45pm. Lunch is included.

1. February 24th — Happiness (Book I)
2. March 3rd — Happiness (Book I)
3. March 10th — The Question or Problem of Virtue (Books II-III)
4. March 17th — The Question or Problem of Virtue (Books II-III)
5. March 24th — Habit and Choice (Books II-III)
6. March 31st — The Moral Virtues (Books III-IV)
7. April 7th — Pleasure and Pain (Books III, VII)
8. April 14th — Friendship (Books VIII-IX)
9. April 21st — The Contemplative Life (Book X)

Location

Highland City Club
885 Arapahoe Ave
Boulder, CO 80301

Pricing

$600 for the series, or $75 per seminar (lunch included)

Registration

Registration is now closed. Reach out to founders@parnassus.house if you're interested in joining the wait list, or sitting in on a session.

Why choose to study with Parnassus House? First and foremost, studying with capable teachers will allow you to more fully access the depth and meaning of the texts and ideas we study. Secondly, meeting in person and engaging in dialogue will bring the ideas to life in ways that are hard to achieve otherwise. Lastly, you will meet new friends, and enjoy a delicious lunch on the beautiful grounds of the Highland City Club in downtown Boulder.

If you have any questions, please reach out to founders@parnassus.house.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the “Great Man Theory of History” has fallen out of favor as the principal means of explaining the past. Instead of understanding human affairs through the deeds and speeches of preeminent figures, today’s historians and social scientists look to the impersonal forces of commerce, trade, disease, food, colonialism, sex, etc.

Much of this democratizing in the social sciences and humanities is motivated by a legitimate impulse to tell a more complete story about our world. There are, however, at least three problems that attend this move—problems which require us to turn back to traditional modes as the appropriate corrective.

First, much of human history is shaped by elite players. To understand Athens and Sparta, you must study Solon and Lycurgus; Rome—Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus; France—Charlemagne and Napoleon; The United States of America—Washington, Lincoln, the Founding Fathers; and so on. And what is true in political history is often true in other domains. Each one has a pantheon of live players who shape and re-shape our sense of what is possible. To understand the history of science, religion, or the arts you need to study its greatest teachers, innovators, and practitioners.

Second, the democratizing tendency leads us to underestimate the significance of elite influence on the world. As Machiavelli argues, great founders establish the “modes and orders” that structure and inform civilization. This isn’t to say that all social phenomena are created on purpose. There is a role for emergence, local influence, change, and drift. The point is, rather, that all of the highest orders of complex social organization are the products of intentional design. Great founders don’t create their working materials, but they do shape their “clay” into forms that it otherwise wouldn’t take. Too often we forget, or take for granted, the purpose of the institutions we live within. But when we try to fully understand our social world, we are compelled to tell the story of these structures from the moment of their design.

Third, the study of great foundings helps us to better appreciate the nature and limits of collective enterprise. Great foundings allow us to see the “matter” in the light of the various “forms” that it takes. Any well-articulated social entity has its own order and principles—what we can call its “regime.” The regime is shaped decisively by the mind and will of its founder. It is then transmitted to his leadership corps, to be piloted and successively transmitted for as long as it continues to work effectively.

Our democratizing culture wants to do justice to the parts of history that it feels have been unduly neglected. Again, there is a legitimate motive here that we must respect. But when we steer away from understanding human life in light of the peaks of leadership, vision, and achievement, we cut ourselves off from a most useful window into human phenomena. To understand our world—to take stock of the promise and potential of our institutions—we need to climb to the higher altitudes of the great founders.

In this series, we will study examples of great founders from antiquity to the present. Our main concern will be to make sense of what it means to create a regime—an order of rules that instantiates a mode of life—and how regimes inform collective enterprise, including cities, nation states, companies, and firms.

Schedule

What is a Great Founder?
Tuesday, October 21, 12:00pm-1:45pm

Plutarch on the Spartan Regime
Tuesday, October 28, 12:00pm-1:45pm

Livy on the Dual Founding of Rome
Tuesday, November 4, 12:00pm-1:45pm 

America’s Great Constitutional Founders 
Thursday, November 13, 12:00pm-1:45pm
* meeting on Thursday due to Veterans Day closure on Tuesday

Lincoln’s Refounding of America
Tuesday, November 18, 12:00pm-1:45pm

– Off for the week of Thanksgiving –

Great Founders of Industry and Finance (Henry Ford, Ray Dalio)
Tuesday, December 2, 12:00pm-1:45pm

Great Founders of Futurism and Technology (Walt Disney, Steve Jobs)
Tuesday, December 9, 12:00pm-1:45pm

Contemporary Founders and Leaders (Lee Kuan Yew, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk)
Tuesday, December 16, 12:00pm-1:45pm

Location

Highland City Club
885 Arapahoe Ave
Boulder, CO 80301

Pricing

$600 for the series, or $75 per seminar (lunch included)

Registration

Registration is now closed. If you would like to join the wait list, please reach out to us at founders@parnassus.house.

Why choose to study with Parnassus House? First and foremost, studying with capable teachers will allow you to more fully access the depth and meaning of the texts and ideas we study. Secondly, meeting in person and engaging in dialogue will bring the ideas to life in ways that are hard to achieve otherwise. Lastly, you will meet new friends, and enjoy a delicious lunch every seminar on the beautiful grounds of the Highland City Club in downtown Boulder.

If you have any questions, please reach out to founders@parnassus.house.

Before addressing the question at hand, we must acknowledge that the impulse to place ourselves beyond Machiavelli is provoked, at least in part, by the shocking character of his teaching, and in particular his realism. On the one hand, we might sympathize with the practical criticisms of classical idealism that we find throughout The Prince. On the other hand, we might be distressed by his narrow picture of human motives and his ejection of morality from strategic considerations. There is no doubt that Machiavelli’s teaching is distinctly and sympathetically modern. But, at the same time, he makes us want to believe that we have moved beyond the framework that he introduced. We want to think that our situation has progressed. If we are honest about this reaction, the only way to test its value is to assess whether we still see ourselves in Machiavelli’s teaching, and whether, or to what extent, arguments for progression beyond his realism stand up to scrutiny.

Returning, then, to the question of Machiavelli’s enduring relevance, we must confront the sense that the world he helped to introduce has undergone various kinds of progress. First and foremost, advances in technology have reshaped many of the industries and institutions that underpin political life, including (but not limited to) agriculture, manufacturing, military arms, and communications. Coinciding with this expansion of technological power, the world has undergone revolutionary changes in the spheres of politics, religion, and economics. Modern nation-states, which are generally secular and claim exclusive territorial sovereignty within recognized borders, have largely replaced the prior order, which was characterized by religious influence, dynastic rule, and fluid borders. Furthermore, over the last several decades the United States and its allies have sought to formalize international relations among nation-states into a “rules-based order” that integrates sovereign powers into a global system of trade and governance oriented towards peaceful cooperation, over and against aggressive use of power. It bears mentioning that within the sphere of international relations, a certain brand of Machiavellian realism characterized by “picking the less bad as good” is still recognized as more or less strategically sound (XXI). Yet, given the aforementioned political, military, economic, and religious transformations of the last 500 years—along with the fact that core features of Machiavelli’s teaching pertain to commanding political power, wielding military arms, acquiring worldly goods, and conducting spiritual warfare against the Catholic church—it would seem reasonable to assume that the relevance of his teaching has, in general, declined commensurately.

Even if we grant that the modern world has come to look very different from the world of Machiavelli’s time, close reading and careful consideration of The Prince reveals that the sense he has become outdated is mistaken. Machiavelli’s insights are as relevant today as ever. Furthermore, proper study of The Prince provides a corrective view of politics and humanity, leading us to a vantage point from which we are able to see beyond the contemporary prejudices that diminish the persisting relevance of his teaching. In particular, we may gain a higher perspective for evaluating our own situation, as well as the human situation, as such, by turning to the distinction he draws between maintaining existing states and founding altogether new ones.

In the second sentence of The Prince, Chapter I, Machiavelli writes that “principalities are either hereditary, in which the bloodline of their lord has been their prince for a long time, or they are new” (I). This classification, between old and new regimes, is the very first statement he makes regarding kinds of principalities. With old principalities, or “hereditary states accustomed to the bloodline of their prince,” the modes and orders of governance are inherited from prior generations, such that the people grow attached to their form of rule, and even the familial lineage of their rulers (II). We might say that people become naturalized to a longstanding regime. For the prince seeking to maintain his power, inheriting ancestral orders is an advantage. Over generations his people will have grown to prefer the stability and way of life associated with his family’s rule. As long as he does not exhibit “extraordinary vices,” e.g. by committing egregious crimes against his people, he should enjoy secure rule (II). This means that it requires tremendous force to overthrow a hereditary prince. Furthermore, such a prince, if he is overthrown, will stand a decent chance of reacquiring his principality. His people will retain a fondness for the ancestral rule of which he is the living manifestation. The thrust of Machiavelli’s teaching, here, is that regimes which exist for a long time grow to have a stable, almost inertial quality because they shape the attachments and judgments of the people under their rule.

With altogether new regimes, on the other hand, there is no inherited memory of modes and orders upon which the prince can rely, and in which the people can believe. The founder must introduce “new orders and modes,” requiring extraordinary virtue, and must bring his people to believe in them, whether by persuasion or else by coercion (VI). That is, because the people belonging to a new state are not habituated to the order of the founder’s new regime, and people in such a position are “variable”—both easily persuaded and easily lost—Machiavelli teaches that “things must be ordered in such a mode that when they no longer believe, one can make them believe by force” (VI). Machiavelli’s emphasis on the use of force discloses that what he means by virtue (or rather virtú) departs from the classical meaning of the word. Whereas the classical meaning refers to human excellence, broadly understood, Machiavelli narrows the meaning to refer to manly spiritedness that makes one capable of raising armies, conquering lands, and willfully gathering power, by force when necessary. Virtue, in this sense, is epitomized by “the greatest examples” of founders: Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus. According to Machiavelli, these men began with essentially nothing, except for the opportunity to exhibit their virtue, and forged not just new states, but new and distinct peoples—often by violent means. (Consider, for example, Moses’s command to the Levites in Exodus 32.) Rather than trying to be simply virtuous, in the classical sense, Machiavelli suggests the founder must, by necessity, use both virtue and vice according to what is most prudent. In summary, for Machiavelli, the great founder must be able to see and act beyond the horizon set by preexisting modes, and beyond the constraints and rules of ordinary morality.

By dividing regimes into old and new, and teaching that the old is characterized by a loyal adherence to inherited modes, while the new is characterized by the prudent and virtuous establishment of new modes, Machiavelli provides a crucial insight into the contrasting psychology of the people and the founder. Generally, people inhabit a view from within an inherited regime which takes for granted the existence of the regime, its modes and orders, and the way of life it supports. As people grow attached to the ways of their regime, they become accustomed to seeing things as they appear from within the regime’s horizon of opinion (XVIII). In contrast, the perspective of the greatest founders can take nothing for granted. It must strive to see the world as it really is, not as it appears based on conventional opinions. Only then can such a founder successfully exercise prudence, exhibit virtue, and lay a firm foundation for his enterprise, by whichever means necessary. Furthermore, if it is true that all regimes were once new enterprises, then Machiavelli gives his careful readers cause to reevaluate their own opinions and perspectives. That is, he encourages us to ask:  how are our own attachments, perceptions and judgments shaped by the modes and orders that we have inherited?

Now we can return to reevaluate the question of Machiavelli’s enduring relevance, in light of his insight into the questionable quality of the perspectives of people deeply influenced by their own political environment. Earlier we said that the view that Machiavelli is a relic of the past is grounded on a particular perspective—namely, that of the inhabitant of the modern nation-state, in the late modern rules-based order. From that perspective, the apparent advances in technology, science and civility of the reigning modes and orders (i.e. the nation-state and rule-based order) seem to rebuke certain unsavory elements of Machiavelli’s teaching. But does not Machiavelli, himself, give us good reason to step back and examine that perspective? Could our sense of our own situation—including the “progress” we seem to have achieved—arise not from an accurate account of the world, but rather from influences of our political environment? In other words, if the judgment that Machiavelli is antiquated arises from the perspective of an inhabitant of the modern nation-state and the rules-based order; and if founding these very political structures required acts of prudential realism, extraordinary virtue, and overwhelming force; then Machiavelli’s teaching on the foundations of political life explains, and thus is vindicated by, the very perspective of his would-be critics. Those who would seek to diminish Machiavelli have not so much escaped his unsettling teaching by progressing beyond it, as they have insulated themselves from feeling its sting—and for reasons Machiavelli, himself, understood all too well. We find, then, that by making our way back through a careful reading of Machiavelli, we can return to the present with a deepened understanding of our own situation, which establishes the argument in favor of Machiavelli’s enduring relevance.

There remains, however, one more question to address. Why does any of this analysis matter to us? What is it that motivates us to recover an adequate understanding of Machiavelli’s teaching? For one thing, we live in a world that he and his most influential readers helped to shape, i.e., the modern world. Machiavelli’s break with ancient and medieval thought in many ways precipitated the development of our contemporary mode of politics. And, given the fact that we are creatures which rely on politics for our very survival, we should welcome any understanding that helps us to navigate the problems of political life—especially in this age of awesome and terrifying technologies. Furthermore, we should try to understand Machiavelli because we are creatures that tend towards idealism and self-delusion, which can lead to disastrous outcomes if left uncorrected. As he writes in XV, “many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth; for it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation.” Precisely when we want to imagine that our time is better—that we can successfully employ new and better ideologies toward the perfection of man—we can turn to Machiavelli for a corrective view that, although it sounds harsh, may prove to be less cruel than the ruin that attends the uncorrected path.

The best way to gain a perspective that corrects for modern prejudices is to read the greatest works with care, and preferably with the guidance of capable teachers. We can only understand where we are, and where we are heading, in the winding river of history by first making the difficult journey upstream. The mission of Parnassus House is to make just such a journey, and in doing so, to educate ourselves so that we may become better teachers, better students, and better leaders. We invite you to join us.

But the various traditions that comprise our civilizational legacy do not speak in one voice on technology. The myths of ancient Greece warn of technological and intellectual hubris in the figures of Daedalus, Prometheus, and Oedipus. The book of Genesis, similarly, warns of the false promise of empire and technology. Greek philosophy, especially the work of Plato and Aristotle, explores the positive and negative effects of techne (craft intelligence) within the horizon of the city state. Even later thinkers like Francis Bacon and Adam Smith, both proponents of a new vision of science and politics, see the dangers entailed by unrestrained technological power.

We stand now, with one foot planted in the age of AI, both hopeful and concerned about our technological future. Having barely understood the lessons of the Industrial Revolution, we find ourselves needing to grasp new layers of “tech” forming around labor, industry, art, politics, warfare, and commerce.

How should states prepare for the age of AI? How should our leaders form their plans and strategies for our new digital era?

Thinking seriously about our technological future requires us to recover the wisdom of the past. Parnassus House’s series on technology and statecraft proposes such a recovery. Together, over nine seminars, we will read various works and explore the perennial problems identified by some of the greatest minds in our tradition as they illustrate how to best come to terms with the promise and problems of technological dependence.

July 22: Innovation vs. Stability

• Plato, Phaedrus (the myth of Theuth and Thamos)
• Aristotle, Politics (2.8: the critique of Hippodamus)
• Plutarch, Life of Marcellus (the practical genius and self-censoring of Archimedes)

July 29: Enhancement vs. Dependence

• Plato, Phaedrus (the myth of Theuth and Thamos)
• Plato, Protagoras (the myth of Prometheus)
• Jean Jacques Rousseau, Second Discourse (excerpts)
• Neil Postman, Technopoly (excerpts)

August 5: Industry vs. Decadence

• Plato, Republic (Book 2: The True and Healthy City)
• John Locke, Second Treatise (Ch. 5 on Property)

August 12: Adaptation vs. Domestication

• Charles Darwin, Descent of Man (excerpts)
• Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist (excerpts)
• Christopher Ryan, Civilized to Death (excerpts)

August 19: Spontaneous Order vs. Centralized Control

• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (excerpts)
• F.A. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society"
• Davidson & Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual (excerpts)

August 26: Social Technology and Civilizational Collapse

• Samo Burja, "Social Technology"
• Samo Burja, "Intellectual Dark Matter"

September 2: Exploration of Core Themes in The New Atlantis

• Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (Weinberger ed.)

September 9: Exploration of Core Themes in The New Atlantis (cont.)

• Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (Weinberger ed.)

September 16: The Future of Western Civilization: Progress or Return?

• Ross Douthat, “The Age of Extinction”
• Marc Andreessen, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”

Schedule: Tuesdays, 12:00pm-1:45pm, July 22nd through September 16

Location: Highland City Club, 885 Arapahoe Ave, Boulder, CO 80302

Price: $600 (lunch included)

Readings:

• Various excerpts, which we will provide (see above)
• Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (Weinberger ed; Amazon)

Registration: Closed

Why choose to study with Parnassus House? First and foremost, studying with capable teachers will allow you to more fully access the depth and meaning of the text. Secondly, meeting in person and engaging in dialogue will bring the ideas to life in ways that are hard to achieve otherwise. Lastly, you will meet new friends, and enjoy a delicious lunch every seminar on the beautiful grounds of the Highland City Club in downtown Boulder.

If you have any questions, please reach out to founders@parnassus.house.

From March 4th through April 22nd, Parnassus House will host an eight-part seminar series on Machiavelli’s The Prince. Registration is now open, and there are 10 spots available. We hope you will join us.

Reading: The Prince, trans. Harvey Mansfield (find it on Amazon)

Schedule: Tuesdays, 12:00pm-1:30pm, March 4 through April 22

Location: Highland City Club, 885 Arapahoe Ave, Boulder, CO 80302

Price: $600, or $75 per session (lunch is included)

Why choose to study with Parnassus House? First and foremost, studying with capable teachers will allow you to more fully access the depth and meaning of the text. Secondly, meeting in person and engaging in dialogue will bring the ideas to life in ways that are hard to achieve otherwise. Lastly, you will meet new friends, and enjoy a delicious lunch every seminar on the beautiful grounds of the Highland City Club in downtown Boulder.

If you have any questions, please reach out at questions@parnassus.house.

We first encounter Socrates walking with Glaucon back to town from a religious festival at the Piraeus. The pair are stopped by Polemarchus and Adeimantus, and although Socrates protests, he and Glaucon are roped into joining the interlopers for an evening of speeches and dinner. Thus we first observe the political community encroaching on the plans and desires of individuals, subordinating them to collective interests. From the very outset of the drama, we are brought to see that the numerical majority has the capacity to create a “regime” which makes claims on individuals that may or may not align with their aims, and which are not easily rebuffed.

In the conversation that follows Socrates raises the theme of justice, which proves sufficiently interesting to replace the evening’s plans. Proceeding from questions first posed to Cephalus, the interlocutors engage the questions:  what is justice, and why is it of any concern to a man with money and power? If a man can commit crime with impunity, and in so doing can take many desirable things for himself at the expense of others, would such a life be preferable to a life of moderation and restraint? What, ultimately, is the best way of life—the life that affords the surest path to happiness?

Socrates, in a puzzling maneuver, promises to address the question of justice by “watch[ing] a city coming into being in speech” (369a). He begins by acknowledging that the city comes together, in the first place, because “each of us isn’t self-sufficient but is in need of much” (369b). The impetus for the city is, thus, human vulnerability and need, in the sense of our basic requirements for food, shelter, and clothing. Given the immediacy of such requirements, it follows that humans seek to organize around their optimal fulfillment, with the principle of organization, “one man, one art,” informing mankind’s first conception of the common good (370b). In accord with this principle, we watch the naturally moderate, yet undeniably primitive, city in speech coming into existence. The city needs each individual to dutifully perform a task for the sake of the common good, and in return the individual counts on the city to supply what he needs to live and, perhaps, to thrive.

But Glaucon objects that such a city would be a “city of sows,” unfit to meet the many desires of men such as himself (372d). And so the action of the conversation quickly shifts toward a different concept of political economy, the “feverish city” that is capable of supporting luxurious living, replete with meats, cakes, courtesans, and gold (372e–373a). We come to see that such a city requires growth. And for growth it requires a new art, the art of war, and thus a new class of citizen, the warrior, to form a standing army for the sake of both conquest and defense. This development, though necessary, comes at a cost. The ability to use force to dominate foreign populations is inseparable from the ability to use force to dominate the local population. Once there is a class of heavily armed soldiers capable of such force, despotic political rule by a military faction becomes a threat. Recognizing this problem helps us to see that, although the individual needs the city, and the city needs the individuals to perform their trades and practical arts, it is emphatically not the case that all functional political arrangements afford spontaneous harmony among all inhabitants. As a direct consequence of the development of the city out of what might reasonably be called a “state of nature” and into “civilization” the quest for harmonious living becomes deeply problematic. If the systems we can’t help but build in order to fulfill our needs do not harmonize with all aspects of our lives, then what are the prospects for our achieving happiness? And if our prospects for achieving happiness through fulfilling our needs turn out to be questionable, then what are we to make of broader questions pertaining to the human situation, e.g., that of divine providence?

If Socrates is going to locate perfect justice in the perfect city, then he must address these problems. He does so throughout Books III, IV, and V, demonstrating what would be required of a regime that sought to fully and perfectly harmonize the demands of political life with the lives of each of the human beings that constitute the regime. Education would have to be overhauled by driving out the fractious and tragic character of the gods of Homeric mythology, in favor of a more rational and moderate education. The division of labor, which elevates some individuals to positions of power and authority while subjecting others to necessary but menial tasks, would have to be justified through the widespread belief in a myth—a noble lie—that establishes and legitimates a stable caste system. The possession of private property, which tempts the powerful to gratify their desires through acquisitiveness at the expense of others, would have to be outlawed. The traditional family structure, which causes people to care for their own relatives more than they care for others, would have to be abolished. To that end, the citizens would have to be indoctrinated into believing that they are all one family, and traditional procreative practices would have to be replaced with an elaborate centralized program of eugenic human breeding. Finally, and most laughably according to Socrates, an all-knowing philosopher-king would have to rule over this perfect regime. 

The brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, become deeply invested in Socrates’ founding of the city in speech over the course of the conversation. They are enamored with its noble perfection, owing to their idealistic hopes, ambitious inclinations, and erotic longings. But the careful reader, aided by common sense as well as some awareness of the complex motives behind Socrates’ questionable moves, understands that the utopia Socrates has constructed is not only untenable—for such an elaborate scheme could never practically work—but it is also undesirable.

The human condition is characterized by inherent tensions that resist resolution. Our souls are filled with erotic longings and thumotic attachments. We want to have more than the natural order seems to provide of its own accord, and somehow feel justified in demanding that the world meet our desires. We seek to become more than the natural order seems to support. To complicate matters, we have capacities for speech and techne. We organize into complex political communities and shape natural materials into surplus goods, which permits us to expand civilization in order to gratify these outsized desires. Such gratification leads not to some ultimate harmony, but rather to expanded desires, disordered appetites, and factionalized conflicts. To attempt to resolve these fundamental problems is to create not a utopia (“no place”) but a dystopia. In the final analysis, man seems destined always to exist in some degree of fundamental tension with his regime.

Still seeking definitive proof that the just life is choiceworthy for its own sake, over and against the tyrannical life, Socrates goes on to classify the parts and types of the human soul. Comparing the types of soul to types of regime, he shows the tendency for decadence to arise as a function of the shift from noble and prescriptive ways of life into base and permissive habits. Humans are creatures of habit. We are not purely rational beings, capable of understanding the causes and effects of our choices and actions at every moment. We depend heavily on routines to shape our behavior. Once we have habituated ourselves to gratifying our desires—for only necessary goods, at first, but then for unnecessary ones, and finally even harmful pleasures—the soul manifests a kind of corruption that makes it difficult or impossible to live well. Desire is, at once, essential to our being, and a spectral plague that threatens the possibility of our flourishing. Or, as Cephalus puts it in Book I, eros is a “mad master” (329c). Thus, Socrates emphasizes the importance of the virtue of moderation. Through moderation, we can tame our desires like a master taming a wild beast, and in so doing we can live as harmoniously as our nature and our politics permits.

But we have come to understand that mankind is not naturally endowed with the virtue of moderation, and so the pressing question becomes: how does one cultivate it? Returning to the beginning, we see that Socrates has been suggesting and demonstrating the answer to that question all along. From the refutations in Book I, through the poetic reforms of Book III, through the allegorical imagery of Books VI and VII, to name only a few examples, Socrates emphasizes the crucial importance of education. Only though good education can man properly structure his soul. Only through good education can he adequately habituate himself to a way of life that affords flourishing, insofar as flourishing is permitted by his circumstances. The best life is only possible with the right kind of education. Insofar as the teaching of the Republic aims to guide careful readers in pursuit of the best way of life, it makes its greatest theme that of the pursuit of a proper education.

A proper education is one that liberates us to lead good lives. We all live in political regimes, due to necessity. Political regimes support the possibility of living nobler and better lives than could be lived without them. But they also burden us with tasks that exhaust us, laws that coerce us, pleasures that tempt us, pains that sting us, and various other dynamics that chafe against our natural longings. The uneducated soul—or, worse, the badly educated soul— will not naturally find its way towards higher and better possibilities because it will be snared and crippled by the tyranny of vice. But through good education we stand a chance of seeking the best of what is possible for us, and avoiding the worst.

We founded Parnassus House to provide such an education—the kind that makes us better learners, better teachers, better leaders, and better friends. There could scarcely be a more important task than to prepare ourselves and our friends for the pursuit of the good life. Studying Plato’s Republic is only the beginning, but it is the best possible beginning we could imagine. We invite you to join us as we continue to learn and to teach in the spirit of care and friendship.

Why choose to study with Parnassus House? First and foremost, studying with capable teachers will allow you to more fully access the depth and meaning of the text. Secondly, meeting in person and engaging peers in dialogue will bring the text to life in ways that are hard to achieve virtually, or alone. Thirdly, you will have a unique opportunity to meet and connect with Boulder locals in a convivial atmosphere.

Who leads Parnassus House seminars?

Parnassus House was founded by Niko Kovacevic and Paul Diduch.

Niko Kovacevic holds a BS in Mathematics from Pennsylvania State University. He has been studying and leading seminars on philosophic texts for several years, with a particular interest in ancient political philosophy and technology. He also has several years of experience as a founder, or founding member, of multiple successful companies. He currently works as a software engineer.

Paul Diduch is Teaching Associate Professor in the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society at CU Boulder. His teaching interests include leadership, ancient philosophy, the history of philosophy, moral psychology, the history and philosophy of science and technology, and contemporary issues in science, ethics, and society. He holds an MA in Political Science/Political Theory from the University of Alberta and a PhD from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas, where his doctoral work focused on Plato's ethics and moral psychology.

Seminar series details

• Reading: Plato’s Republic, translated by Allan Bloom
• Pricing: $85 per session, or $600 for all eight sessions. Lunch is included.
• Timing: Tuesdays 12:00-1:15pm (October 22nd through December 17th)
• Location: Highland City Club, 885 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, CO 80302