Alain de Botton Tweets Short Course in Political Philosophy

Alain de Bot­ton has mas­tered the art of pop­u­lar­iz­ing great phi­los­o­phy. His books, lec­tures, tele­vised pro­grams and the Lon­don-based School of Life – they all help de Bot­ton get great ideas “out there.” And now he turns to Twit­ter. On Fri­day, @AlaindeBotton tweet­ed a short course in polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy in sev­en parts. The course, with each les­son pre­sent­ed in 140 char­ac­ters or less, begins like this:

1: Pla­to: We should be ruled not by lead­ers cho­sen by a major­i­ty, but by those who are most intel­li­gent.

2. St Augus­tine: We should not try to build par­adise on earth. Aim for tol­er­a­ble gov­ern­ment, true gov­ern­ment only pos­si­ble in the next life.

3. Machi­avel­li: Politi­cian must choose between serv­ing the inter­ests of coun­try and the inter­ests of Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty. Can’t have both.

You can fin­ish the course here, and start fol­low­ing us on Twit­ter here, where we post a steady flow of cul­tur­al good­ies through­out the day. If you like Open Cul­ture, you will love our Twit­ter stream (and our Face­book page)…