From the age of Socrates (469-399BCE) though the age of Aristotle (384-322BCE). the political set-up all throughout the civilized Hellenic World was described through 2 sets of different paradigms.

The Socratic Age template was to simply divide the governments into “The Rule of the Few” (called Oligarchy or Social Oligarchy) and “The Rule of the Many” (called Democracy).  Only citizens, exclusively male and of citizen age (usually 21 for voting and 30 for positions of Authority), had legal standing.  (In…..

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On Tuesday, July 12, 2016, a radio talk-show host spoke on and on between 1:00 and 2:00PM EDT about the vast changes of Social Protocols (vis-a-vis citizen to police) and Higher Education from the Modern Era to the Post-Modern Era.  This enormously successful Radio Star is 5 years younger than I, comes from a middle-class Modern Times lawyer family in the Midwest – whereas I come from a NYC middle-class Jewish background (as did Bernard Sanders and the dramatic Talk…..

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Critical References and Chronological History

I.  Epistemology (and Human Nature) – The Core of Philosophy; The Quest for Knowledge and its Rational Association with Human Nature.

II.  Nine Philosophers who Moved the World and Two Institutions of Higher Education and Sets of Courses.

III.  Historical Inflection Points.

I.  Epistemology (and Human Nature)

Epistemology – the study or theory of the origin, nature, methods, and limits of knowledge.

I always take the Practical Meaning of…..

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The only fairly well-know fact about Aristotle’s (384-322BCE) personal life that pertains to the field of practical politics is the fact that he had been the tutor of the adolescent  Alexander (the future Alexander the Great) for several adolescent years before the prince ascended to the throne of Macedon and set off on a 13- or 14-year military and political conquest of everything and everyone east of Greece right on through the Persian Imperial rule over both Asia west of…..

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Sophistry prefers broad and colorful generalizations.  Rationally practical speech and patterns of thought build on reliable facts about nature, including human nature, without ignoring (i.e., “compartmentalizing” away) contradictions that appear as the logical inferences are constructed upward from the non-changing reliable facts at the bottom.  Plato loved those generalized theories about perfect goals.  Socrates could not stop asking questions about nature, especially when analogous to previously known ideas within nature.  Aristotle says Socrates invented “inductive reasoning” by means of all…..

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In my 70-year lifetime, as best I remember, the first ersatz-science to successfully fob itself off as a legitimate “natural science” was Economics.  [Today the most prestigious universities (i.e., Sophists) fob off all kinds of crazy sophisticated bullshit fields as if they too were legitimate sciences, sometimes even as if they were legitimate “natural sciences.” ]  Once an ersatz-science achieves the political status of a truly useful natural science, the (worldwide) Social  Oligarchy accepts its pronouncements as the factual equivalent…..

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Since Plato never felt the need to learn accounting for himself, he would not  have noticed any of the “loose ends” that made no rational sense at certain irrational financial moments in my “Socratic” reading of financial history.  Here are a few examples that would get Socrates’ attention.  (Not all directly involve Accounting.)

Several weeks after I, and countless others, watched a significant percentage of my modest investments dematerialize on “Black Monday” in October 1987, I read explanations of How…..

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If the questions were “Why” and “How” the American Economy was failing to offer a reasonable opportunity for earning a better life than one’s parents for most of America’s “middle-class” of common citizens, and failing to do so for at least one generation or more – Socrates and Plato would agree on the need for “transparent” and reliably truthful Accounting records to ensure the data about money was truthful and reliable.  No one can rationally reason without reliable data.

Whenever…..

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The only people who sincerely believe the American Economy is not really broken (but just requires superior tinkering or a better way of modifying the Social Protocols that govern human behavior, especially in the economic world) are delusional because they are not rationally learning from history. More than half a century of real history proves they are delusional.

[Socrates, like any other practical and rational man, would try to find “Why” and “How” things did not work out well for…..

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Western thought and philosophy was fundamentally founded by two real human beings: Socrates (469-399 BCE) and Plato (430?-347 BCE).

Socrates never wrote anything down.

Plato opened the most famous higher education institution in the history of the world (The Academy – 380’s BCE – 525 CE when closed by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian).

Plato left behind 47 dialogs of theoretical abstractions that constitute the basis for all philosophy and the derivative forms of higher education that followed. I have harbored…..

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