Dr. David Butterfield
speaker
616 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 22 Jul
Dr. David Butterfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It's hollow.
There's this concept of the kalos thanatos, the beautiful death.
Well, what's that?
Well, for a start, it's death.
So it's the end of your life.
And secondly, it's dying on the battlefield in the middle of a killing spree.
Why is that good?
Because you will win kleos.
And kleos literally means being talked about.
People will hear of that moment.
But you have to die to win that, which creates this Catch-22 almost paradox, which is the best thing a man fighting a war to defend his family can do is to die in that war and not return to the family he was fighting for.
One of the most moving scenes in Homer's Odyssey, which is such a powerful poem in all manner of ways, is when Odysseus confronts the ghost of Achilles in the underworld.
And Achilles says, you've just been praising me about being a great fighter, saying I'm a great fighter now down in the underworld.
Well, I'll tell you this.
I would rather be the lowest level serf serving as a slave on the poorest estate possible than be the king of the whole of Hades.
It means nothing to have lost your life.
You need to live and thrive.
And the reason that's so resonant for Achilles is his mother told him early on in the Iliad, he had a choice.
Very unusual that a Greek hero can have any say over their fate.
It's all predetermined.
Showing 281–300 of 616 · page 15 of 31
← Previous
Next →