William H F Altman
Biographic Data
| ID | 444965 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William H F Altman |
| GIVEN NAMES | William H F |
| FAMILY NAME | Altman |
| SIGNATURE | ALTMAN W H F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Film Independent |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9058-1050 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Plato's Reception of Xenophon
Beginning with Platonic dialogues presently considered to be inauthentic like Alcibiades Major and Theages (including the still embattled Hippias Major), proceeding through middle period masterpieces like Symposium, Meno, and Republic, and ending with late dialogues like Statesman and Laws—which famously and directly attacks “the education of Cyrus”—this article’s purpose is to disrupt the modern prejudice that Plato wrote before Xenophon in ever…
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Plato’s Laws
The passage about the flaws of Cyrus the Great in Laws 3 has led scholars both ancient and modern to conclude, accurately, that Plato was responding to Xenophon’s Cyropaedia but they have erred in assuming that this response was critical. Current scholarly debate is focused on whether Cyropaedia deserves a “sunny” reading, championed by Vivienne Gray, or a “darker” one, and this article aligns Plato with the “darker” reading: he was the first rea…
Xenophon, the Old Oligarch, and Alcibiades
Modifying the conjecture of Wolfgang Helbig (1861) by means of the distinction between Xenophon and his various narrators introduced by Benjamin McCloskey (2017), this paper uses the insights of Hartvig Frisch (1942) to show how drawing a distinction between the first-person speaker in pseudo-Xenophon’s Constitution of the Athenians and its author indicates that the former is Alcibiades and the latter is Xenophon himself
The Straussian Reception of Xenophon's Cyropaedia
In 1948, Leo Strauss wrote about Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: “This work has never been studied by modern historians with even a small fraction of the care and concentration it merits and which is needed if it is to disclose its meaning.” Thanks in part to his students, this is no longer true, and this article reviews the Straussian reception of the Cyropaediabetween 1969 and 2015. But it begins with Strauss, who could scarcely have recognized the diff…
Tacitus and C. Licinius Mucianus
Baseando-se nas ideias de Ronald Syme sobre a simpatia de Tácito por Marcelo Éprio, assim como no trabalho de Dylan Sailor, que revela a postura crítica do historiador em relação a Helvídio Prisco, este artigo mostra por que a descrição de Muciano é importante tanto para combinar quanto para confirmar essas duas vertentes interpretativas. Apresentado como “criador de reis” a Vespasiano, Muciano – ou melhor, o retrato que Tácito faz dele – revela-…
Nietzsche, the Philosopher of the Second Reich / Nietzsche, O Filósofo Do Segundo Reich
Just as Bismarck’s newly united Germany found itse lf forced to play “honest broker” in the geopolitical “great game” between Great Britain and Russia, so also did the thought of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche occupy a pressure-filled Zwischenreich between immoralist nihilism and evolutionary elitism; the self-styled “untimely one” is therefore better understood as “the philosopher of the Second Reich.” Assim como a Alemanha recém-unificada de Bisma…
David Corey and Plato’s Sophist
The Egyptian Question in Roman Politics (65-30 B.C.)
Often presented as inevitable, the fall of the Roman Republic is better understood in relation to the defeat of the republican solution to Egyptian Question: the annexation resisted by the Senate but achieved by Augustus in 30 B.C. was the result of a process to achieve dominatio (Tacitus Ann. 2.59) that began in 65 with M. Licinius Crassus. Because Herman Strasburger, Ronald Syme, and Erich S. Gruen have made it more difficult to appreciate the …
The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy
Less than two years before his murder, Cicero created a catalogue of his philosophical writings that included dialogues he had written years before, numerous recently completed works, and even one he had not yet begun to write, all arranged in the order he intended them to be read, beginning with the introductory Hortensius, rather than in accordance with order of composition. Following the order of the De divinatione catalogue, William H. F. Alt…
Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy
Index Locorum
Cicero and the Fourth Triumvirate
Preliminary Material
Select Bibliography
General Index
Self-revelation and concealment in Caesar’s De bello Gallico
Building on the work of others who have seen an allusion to the First Triumvirate in the tripartite Gallic conspiracy led by Orgetorix, this article shows how Caesar reveals himself as formidable between the lines of De bello Gallico, and particularly in its famous opening
Brill's companion to the reception of Cicero
Brill's Companion to the Reception of Cicero is a collection of essays by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars that situates Cicero in the context of his use and abuse from antiquity to the present, and is intended to provide readers with several good reasons to return to the study of Cicero's writings with greater interest and respect. Contributors are: William H.F. Altman, Elisabeth Begemann, Caroline Bishop, JoAnn DellaNeva,…
Why Plato Wrote Epinomis
Tarán’s case against the authenticity of Epinomis depends on the claim that it is incompatible with Plato’s Laws. Behind this claim is the uncritical assumption that the Athenian Stranger of Laws speaks for Plato. While the Athenian Stranger of Epinomis clearly does not do so, the same is equally true, albeit more difficult to detect, of the Stranger in Laws. Once the Athenian is recognized as both ambitious and impious, a reconstruction of the l…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
When careful consideration is given to Nietzsche's critique of Platonism and to what he wrote about Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, and to Germany's place in "international relations" (die Große Politik), the philosopher's carefully cultivated "pose of untimeliness" is revealed to be an imposture. As William H. F. Altman demonstrates, Nietzsche should be recognized as the paradigmatic philosopher of the Second Reich, the short-lived and equally complex…
Disturbing Proximity
Disturbing Proximity William H. F. Altman John J. Ranieri. Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. Pp. ix + 272. Benjamin Lazier. God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 254. John J. Ranieri. Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible. Columbia: University o…
Laches before Charmides
The Hindenburg Line of the Strauss Wars
Bringing continental sensibilities and skill to his project, David Janssens has abandoned the line of defense heretofore used by North American intellectuals to shield Leo Strauss from criticism: Janssens wastes no time trying to prove Strauss was a liberal democrat, frankly admits his atheism, and emphasizes the continuity and European origins of his thought. Nevertheless committed to defending Strauss even at his most vulnerable points, Janssen…
Leo Strauss in 1962
A refutation of the view recently advanced by his defenders that Leo Strauss moderated his youthful atheism and anti-liberalism after emigrating to the United States
A Tale of Two Drinking Parties
In accordance with Leo Strauss’s ingenious suggestion, the Athenian Stranger of Plato’s Laws is best understood as an alternative ‘Socrates’, fleeing from the hemlock to Crete. Situated between Crito and Phaedo, Laws effectively tests the reader’s loyalty to the real Socrates who obeys Athenian law and dies cheerfully in Athens. Having separated Plato from the Stranger, a nuanced defence of Karl Popper’s suspicions about Laws confronts the apolog…
The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues
This article offers a pedagogical reconstruction of the reading order of Plato's dialogues with particular attention to Menexenus, Symposium, and Lysis. Une reconstruction pédagogique de l'ordre de lecture des dialogues de Platon portant une attention particulière au Ménéxène, au Banquet, et au Lysis
Brill's companion to the reception of Cicero
Brill's Companion to the Reception of Cicero is a collection of essays by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars that situates Cicero in the context of his use and abuse from antiquity to the present, and is intended to provide readers with several good reasons to return to the study of Cicero's writings with greater interest and respect. Contributors are: William H.F. Altman, Elisabeth Begemann, Caroline Bishop, JoAnn DellaNeva,…
The Egyptian Question in Roman Politics (65-30 B.C.)
Often presented as inevitable, the fall of the Roman Republic is better understood in relation to the defeat of the republican solution to Egyptian Question: the annexation resisted by the Senate but achieved by Augustus in 30 B.C. was the result of a process to achieve dominatio (Tacitus Ann. 2.59) that began in 65 with M. Licinius Crassus. Because Herman Strasburger, Ronald Syme, and Erich S. Gruen have made it more difficult to appreciate the …
Leo Strauss on ''German Nihilism
The year Leo Strauss published "Persecution and the Art of Writing" (1941), he prepared a lecture ("German Nihilism") that he never published. An analysis of this lecture shows that Strauss hadn't fully mastered the art of writing he'd discovered in others: his secrets are too exposed. In the context of "German Nihilism," it becomes clear that "Persecution and the Art of Writing" is about liberal persecution of authoritarianism, no the reverse, a…
The Alpine Limits of Jewish Thought
Writing in 1935 as "Hugo Fiala," Karl Löwith not only connected Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt to an apparently contentless "decisionism" but drew attention to the fact that his correspondent Leo Strauss (1899-1973) had attacked Schmitt-like Heidegger an open Nazi since 1933-from the Right in 1932. In opposition to the views of Peter Eli Gordon, Heidegger's bellicose stance at the Davos Hochschule of 1929 is presented as "political" in Schmitt…
The Hindenburg Line of the Strauss Wars
Bringing continental sensibilities and skill to his project, David Janssens has abandoned the line of defense heretofore used by North American intellectuals to shield Leo Strauss from criticism: Janssens wastes no time trying to prove Strauss was a liberal democrat, frankly admits his atheism, and emphasizes the continuity and European origins of his thought. Nevertheless committed to defending Strauss even at his most vulnerable points, Janssen…
The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues
This article offers a pedagogical reconstruction of the reading order of Plato's dialogues with particular attention to Menexenus, Symposium, and Lysis. Une reconstruction pédagogique de l'ordre de lecture des dialogues de Platon portant une attention particulière au Ménéxène, au Banquet, et au Lysis
Tacitus and C. Licinius Mucianus
Baseando-se nas ideias de Ronald Syme sobre a simpatia de Tácito por Marcelo Éprio, assim como no trabalho de Dylan Sailor, que revela a postura crítica do historiador em relação a Helvídio Prisco, este artigo mostra por que a descrição de Muciano é importante tanto para combinar quanto para confirmar essas duas vertentes interpretativas. Apresentado como “criador de reis” a Vespasiano, Muciano – ou melhor, o retrato que Tácito faz dele – revela-…
Why Plato Wrote Epinomis
Tarán’s case against the authenticity of Epinomis depends on the claim that it is incompatible with Plato’s Laws. Behind this claim is the uncritical assumption that the Athenian Stranger of Laws speaks for Plato. While the Athenian Stranger of Epinomis clearly does not do so, the same is equally true, albeit more difficult to detect, of the Stranger in Laws. Once the Athenian is recognized as both ambitious and impious, a reconstruction of the l…
Exotericism after Lessing
This study shows that despite the fact that Leo Strauss published little about Jacobi, the misunderstood thinker about whom he wrote his doctoral dissertation exercised a crucial influence on what is often thought to be Strauss's most enduring achievement: his rediscovery of exotericism. A consideration of several of Strauss's writings that do mention Jacobi but remained unpublished at the time of his death—in particular his studies on Moses Mend…
Leo Strauss on ''German Nihilism
The year Leo Strauss published "Persecution and the Art of Writing" (1941), he prepared a lecture ("German Nihilism") that he never published. An analysis of this lecture shows that Strauss hadn't fully mastered the art of writing he'd discovered in others: his secrets are too exposed. In the context of "German Nihilism," it becomes clear that "Persecution and the Art of Writing" is about liberal persecution of authoritarianism, no the reverse, a…
The Alpine Limits of Jewish Thought
Writing in 1935 as "Hugo Fiala," Karl Löwith not only connected Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt to an apparently contentless "decisionism" but drew attention to the fact that his correspondent Leo Strauss (1899-1973) had attacked Schmitt-like Heidegger an open Nazi since 1933-from the Right in 1932. In opposition to the views of Peter Eli Gordon, Heidegger's bellicose stance at the Davos Hochschule of 1929 is presented as "political" in Schmitt…
Laches before Charmides
The Hindenburg Line of the Strauss Wars
Bringing continental sensibilities and skill to his project, David Janssens has abandoned the line of defense heretofore used by North American intellectuals to shield Leo Strauss from criticism: Janssens wastes no time trying to prove Strauss was a liberal democrat, frankly admits his atheism, and emphasizes the continuity and European origins of his thought. Nevertheless committed to defending Strauss even at his most vulnerable points, Janssen…
Leo Strauss in 1962
A refutation of the view recently advanced by his defenders that Leo Strauss moderated his youthful atheism and anti-liberalism after emigrating to the United States
A Tale of Two Drinking Parties
In accordance with Leo Strauss’s ingenious suggestion, the Athenian Stranger of Plato’s Laws is best understood as an alternative ‘Socrates’, fleeing from the hemlock to Crete. Situated between Crito and Phaedo, Laws effectively tests the reader’s loyalty to the real Socrates who obeys Athenian law and dies cheerfully in Athens. Having separated Plato from the Stranger, a nuanced defence of Karl Popper’s suspicions about Laws confronts the apolog…
The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues
This article offers a pedagogical reconstruction of the reading order of Plato's dialogues with particular attention to Menexenus, Symposium, and Lysis. Une reconstruction pédagogique de l'ordre de lecture des dialogues de Platon portant une attention particulière au Ménéxène, au Banquet, et au Lysis
Disturbing Proximity
Disturbing Proximity William H. F. Altman John J. Ranieri. Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. Pp. ix + 272. Benjamin Lazier. God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 254. John J. Ranieri. Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible. Columbia: University o…
Why Plato Wrote Epinomis
Tarán’s case against the authenticity of Epinomis depends on the claim that it is incompatible with Plato’s Laws. Behind this claim is the uncritical assumption that the Athenian Stranger of Laws speaks for Plato. While the Athenian Stranger of Epinomis clearly does not do so, the same is equally true, albeit more difficult to detect, of the Stranger in Laws. Once the Athenian is recognized as both ambitious and impious, a reconstruction of the l…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
When careful consideration is given to Nietzsche's critique of Platonism and to what he wrote about Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, and to Germany's place in "international relations" (die Große Politik), the philosopher's carefully cultivated "pose of untimeliness" is revealed to be an imposture. As William H. F. Altman demonstrates, Nietzsche should be recognized as the paradigmatic philosopher of the Second Reich, the short-lived and equally complex…
Index Locorum
Cicero and the Fourth Triumvirate
Preliminary Material
Select Bibliography
General Index
Self-revelation and concealment in Caesar’s De bello Gallico
Building on the work of others who have seen an allusion to the First Triumvirate in the tripartite Gallic conspiracy led by Orgetorix, this article shows how Caesar reveals himself as formidable between the lines of De bello Gallico, and particularly in its famous opening
Brill's companion to the reception of Cicero
Brill's Companion to the Reception of Cicero is a collection of essays by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars that situates Cicero in the context of his use and abuse from antiquity to the present, and is intended to provide readers with several good reasons to return to the study of Cicero's writings with greater interest and respect. Contributors are: William H.F. Altman, Elisabeth Begemann, Caroline Bishop, JoAnn DellaNeva,…
The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy
Less than two years before his murder, Cicero created a catalogue of his philosophical writings that included dialogues he had written years before, numerous recently completed works, and even one he had not yet begun to write, all arranged in the order he intended them to be read, beginning with the introductory Hortensius, rather than in accordance with order of composition. Following the order of the De divinatione catalogue, William H. F. Alt…
Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy
David Corey and Plato’s Sophist
The Egyptian Question in Roman Politics (65-30 B.C.)
Often presented as inevitable, the fall of the Roman Republic is better understood in relation to the defeat of the republican solution to Egyptian Question: the annexation resisted by the Senate but achieved by Augustus in 30 B.C. was the result of a process to achieve dominatio (Tacitus Ann. 2.59) that began in 65 with M. Licinius Crassus. Because Herman Strasburger, Ronald Syme, and Erich S. Gruen have made it more difficult to appreciate the …
Nietzsche, the Philosopher of the Second Reich / Nietzsche, O Filósofo Do Segundo Reich
Just as Bismarck’s newly united Germany found itse lf forced to play “honest broker” in the geopolitical “great game” between Great Britain and Russia, so also did the thought of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche occupy a pressure-filled Zwischenreich between immoralist nihilism and evolutionary elitism; the self-styled “untimely one” is therefore better understood as “the philosopher of the Second Reich.” Assim como a Alemanha recém-unificada de Bisma…
The Straussian Reception of Xenophon's Cyropaedia
In 1948, Leo Strauss wrote about Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: “This work has never been studied by modern historians with even a small fraction of the care and concentration it merits and which is needed if it is to disclose its meaning.” Thanks in part to his students, this is no longer true, and this article reviews the Straussian reception of the Cyropaediabetween 1969 and 2015. But it begins with Strauss, who could scarcely have recognized the diff…
Tacitus and C. Licinius Mucianus
Baseando-se nas ideias de Ronald Syme sobre a simpatia de Tácito por Marcelo Éprio, assim como no trabalho de Dylan Sailor, que revela a postura crítica do historiador em relação a Helvídio Prisco, este artigo mostra por que a descrição de Muciano é importante tanto para combinar quanto para confirmar essas duas vertentes interpretativas. Apresentado como “criador de reis” a Vespasiano, Muciano – ou melhor, o retrato que Tácito faz dele – revela-…
Philosophy (17 works) · Art (10 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (10 works) · History (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Cicero (8 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (8 works) · Classics (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works)