Tyranny and Wisdom

Plato's Greater Alcibiades and Gorgias

By: Greg Johnson

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Paperback | 20 October 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
276 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.58

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In the Ancient world, one began the study of Plato with two dialogues: the Greater Alcibiades and the Gorgias, which depict Socrates' first conversations with two famous men: Alcibiades, the Athenian statesman, general, and traitor-and the great sophist Gorgias, who taught ambitious young men like Alcibiades how to rise as their society declined around them.

Greg Johnson's Tyranny & Wisdom leads you carefully through these dialogues and demonstrates that the Ancients were right: together, they are an excellent introduction to Plato. Here we encounter Plato's most challenging ideas, threaded together by a highly dramatic conflict between two ways of life: the pursuit of power vs. the pursuit of wisdom.

Industry Reviews

"In Tyranny & Wisdom, Greg Johnson once again demonstrates the enduring truth and power of Plato's philosophy. Here we encounter the ruling ideas of our modern dystopia: technocracy, hedonism, nihilism, liberalism, individualism, and the reckless pursuit of wealth and power-as well as Plato's alternative, the road not taken. Plato's dialogues are plays, and Greg Johnson doesn't just analyze their arguments, he brings these dramas to life."

-Collin Cleary, author of What Is a Rune?

"What should one aim for in life? For many of our contemporaries, the answer would seem to be more: more money, more status, more power, more security, more choices, more interesting or pleasurable experiences, more health and longevity. Yet some are still capable of questioning whether this could really be all there is to life. Socrates, as unforgettably portrayed in Plato's dialogues twenty-four centuries ago, offered powerful objections to a life centered around the pursuit of ever more. They quietly await discovery by spiritual seekers today. Yet the Platonic dialogues are written in a subtle manner that for most contemporary readers will require some initial guidance. Greg Johnson's Tyranny & Wisdom is exactly the place to start."

-F. Roger Devlin, author of Sexual Utopia in Power

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