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Philoctetes is not the best-known Sophocles tragedy, but its questions stick with me. When the title character insists on his dignity as a man of war, he runs afoul of the Odysseus of Sophocles, who could not care less about the wounded warrior’s sense of being wronged, so he enlists Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, who insists that abstract virtues of war must govern everything that concerns the struggle. I won’t spoil the ending of Philoctetes today, but I will say that conflicting values have not become any less interesting in the two and a half millennia since. Dr. Valerie Tiberius has brought that conversation off the mythological battlefield and into the very real tensions between money and reputation and peace of mind and different kinds of abstract principles in her recent book What Do You Want out of Life, and Christian Humanist Profiles is glad to welcome her to the show.
Some intellectuals are famous, and some are intellectual-famous. N.T. Wright appeared on The Colbert Report, and Reinhold Niebuhr testified before Congress, and Cornel West...
Nathan Gilmour interviews Stephen Prothero about his recent book "Why the Liberals Win the Culture Wars, Even when They Lose Elections."
Nathan Gilmour interviews Francis J Beckwith about his recent book "Never Doubt Thomas."
