The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought

Ryszard Legutko, a Polish philosopher, taught ancient philosophy and political theory at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He has also been a politician - a former Minister of Education, Deputy Speaker of the Senate, and Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the President of Poland. He is Chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament. He published many books in Polish, the most recent being The Presocratic Philosophy: From Thales to Democritus (2020). He translated four of Plato's dialogues into Polish: Apology, Euthyphro, Phaedo, and Crito. He is working on the translation of Plato's Republic. Among the books published in English are The Demon in Democracy (Encounter Books 2016) and The Cunning of Freedom (Encounter Books 2021). The Demon of Democracy, which explores the problem of totalitarian tendencies in modern liberal democracy, was widely reviewed and translated into several languages, including French, Spanish, and German.