Alan Jacobs


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Phil Christman:

You cannot finally justify yourself to nihilists. Plato’s Socrates tries at least twice – in the Gorgias and in the Republic. It makes for thrilling reading in both cases. But all he really manages to do to his antagonists – Callicles in the first dialogue, Thrasymachus in the second – is to press them on the points where they are still capable of shame. Which is to say, points on which they are insufficiently committed to the nihilistic principles they have espoused. I’m not sure all Silicon Valley types have that problem.