Was Alexander the Great Oxymoronic?

The Persian Gate in Present Day Iran

You know hyphenations like Greco-Roman? They drive from Alexander the Great whose form of empire building involved blurring the lines. Sound familiar? The difference is Alexander studied with Aristotle. Was Alexander a philosopher-king or the prototypic benevolent (or not benevolent) despot? Did he invent the oxymoron as he conquered the Peloponnesus, Egypt, finally the Punjab. Would Alexander's hyphenation lead to Hegel and ultimately dialectical materialism? Empire makes strange bed fellows when you consider that the impulse to free the worker through Communism and the impulse to liberate the robber baron with free market capitalism would result in their own respective forms of tyranny? "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains," said Rousseau inThe Social Contract.

listen to Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" (1995)

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle