#exemplarism

Podcast:          https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/KgqKdMJ2QMb

Alexandrian Exemplarism.—Conquerors have imagined their legacy as the empire that they leave to their descendants, but empires rarely endure as imagined by their founders. Alexander the Great’s life was short, and his empire did not survive his death, but his legacy as being among the great conquerors of human history has survived every ephemeral empire since his time and continues to the present day. Alexander the Great endures as an exemplar, but Alexandrian exemplarism isn’t a mere accident of history. The lives of conquerors are liberally embroidered in later tellings, remembered with advantages as Shakespeare had Henry V say, and Alexander’s life as well, but even if the accretions of poets and historians are stripped away, some lives remain remarkable. While short, Alexander’s life was marked by great triumphs—experiences shared by only a handful of men through history—such as most of us can only attempt to imagine, and that poorly. Thus the shortness of Alexander’s life cannot be counted against its lived value, which extended in non-temporal dimensions of greatness. The lived value of Alexander’s life was an essential component in the eschatological value of Alexander the Great as a figure of history. Without his greatness in lived value, including the greatness of his flaws, his Achilles’ heel that was his undoing (hubris is the other side of the coin of greatness, and the two are minted in a single strike of fate), the eschatological value of his life would corresponded to nothing exemplary. Exemplary lived value is a condition of exemplary eschatological value. Lived value is the primordial fons et origo of value, which may overflow into further forms of value that transcend the individual life and become exemplars.