Socrates and Aspasia: Prof. Armand D'Angour (450 – 416 BCE)
Bertrand Russell wrote that ‘the achievements of Athens in the time of Pericles are perhaps the most astonishing thing in all history.’ And of all Athens’s great figures at this time, few are better remembered than Socrates. Commonly acknowledged as the founder of Western philosophy, he pioneered a new method of constant questioning, famously arguing that ‘the unexamined life' is not worth living at all.
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In this episode of Travels Through Time we venture back to meet Socrates with the Oxford academic Professor Armand D’Angour. We meet Socrates as the young son of a stonemason, as the intelligent scholar and as the wise old philosopher. Most of all Armand introduces us to a revolutionary new figure into the story of Socrates’s younger life. This is the lover and partner of the statesman Pericles: Aspasia.
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Click here to order Armand D’Angour’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Listen to the podcast here
Show Notes:
Scene One: Ancient Athens in 450BC when Aspasia, aged 20, arrives from Miletus
Scene Two: The Temple of Apollo at Delphi in 445 BCE, when Socrates visited and was told by the prophetess that no one was wiser
Scene Three: The Symposium in 416BCE when Socrates and his friends discuss the meaning of love.
Memento: The shield of Alcibiades
People/Social
Guest: Professor Armand D’Angour (@ArmandDAngour)
Presenter: Peter Moore (@petermoore)
Producer: Maria Nolan
Titles: Deft Ear
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