"Western thought has produced some monsters" - Dr Athena Potari on reviving the non-duality of ancient Greece
24th Feb 2026 | Dialogue with Bernardo Kastrup
Bernardo & Athena agree: the root of Western culture is a spirituality fully engaged with life. If nature is an illusion, it is nevertheless a sacred one.
2000 years before Shakespeare, Democritus observed, "The world is a stage, life a passage: you came, you saw, you departed."
Reality is thus acknowledged as ephemeral play. But this play is divine, and realisation is not to be postponed for another realm.
Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to discover who you really are and to play your role with gusto. To become permeable enough to hear the creative urge "that manifests through each one of us as specific divine tasks in the world." To be lit up by the inner fire which is your daimon.
If Apollo signifies transcendent unity and Dionysus the multiplicity, depictions of them shaking hands carry deep significance.
Western thought has produced some monsters
Bernardo & Athena both admire Peter Kingsley for correcting so many misunderstandings and mistranslations of Hellenic philosophy. But they take his diagnosis of Western culture having irrevocably failed as a personal challenge.
"Perhaps Western thought has produced some monsters" says Athena, like those we see in mythology. But she believes these monsters are doomed to fail because they "don't tap into what is eternal, to what can never die."
In contrast, there are aspects of Western culture rooted in a timeless source. If we clear away the delusions of materialism and reductionism, we'll find the fertile ground "to give birth to something even more luminous than before."
After a sojourn through Eastern traditions, an impressive academic career (2020 Academy of Athens Award of Philosophy, Oxford PhD, roles at Harvard), Athena awoke to this luminosity in her indigenous philosophy.
She is now part of a broader movement in modern Greece that is reviving Ancient Hellenic culture. Her school, Athenoa, is a place where Hellenism can be approached as a living wisdom tradition.
I'm convinced you'll find this talk as inspiring as I did, and be warmed by Athena's exchange with Bernardo. It's totally updating my understanding of stories and terms I thought I knew...
You can see my earlier discussion with Athena, some other thoughts I shared in the linked substack article, and of course, the full dialogue with Bernardo all linked below.
We also discussed:
- Plato on seeing without eyes
- The colonisation & revival of Hellenic culture
- Many forms of logic and their role in realisation
- Direct vs gradual paths in Hellenic philosophy
- The daimon is your inner fire
As always, I look forward to your thoughts and reflections,
Amir
Substack
About Athena
Dr Athena Potari founded Athenoa in 2019, a School of Hellenic Philosophy based in Greece where Hellenism is approached as a living wisdom tradition whose core consists in the inextricable synthesis of scientific reason and spirituality.
She was previously Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University, where she explored possibilities for an expanded practice of Philosophy by re-integrating elements and histories of the feminine.
She received her PhD from the University of Oxford specializing in Political Philosophy, and her MA in Political Theory with Distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
She is recipient of the Academy of Athens Award of Philosophy (2020), author of “A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities” published by the Galileo Commission, and Member of the Galileo Commission Steering Committee.
Her work aims to revive the deeper spiritual and experiential dimensions of Hellenic Philosophy as a living spiritual lineage, combining discursive rigor and embodied meditative practices, with the aim of awakening to the ever-present mystery of being – our true Self.
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Recording
Timestamps
0:00:00 Opening
0:06:00 Athena introduction
0:08:00 The heart of the Platonic academy
0:09:00 Academic vs living philosophy as a path of love
0:13:00 Athena's heart opening, daimon & new role
0:17:00 The colonization & revival of Hellenic culture
0:18:00 Spirituality engaged with life
0:26:00 Apollo & Dionysus
0:30:00 Living an awakened life
0:33:00 Traditional vs academic etymology
0:37:00 Names as sacred signifiers
0:44:00 Hercules in Denmark
0:46:00 On Peter Kingsley
0:55:00 Nous & Logos; Awareness gives birth to logic
0:59:00 Parmenides & the role of reason
1:06:00 Defending Plato's nonduality & rebirth in Greece
1:10:00 Esoteric information storage for future generations
1:17:00 Analytic philosophy a bridge to intuitive wisdom
1:24:00 Plato on eyes: receiving and emitting light
1:35:00 Kastrup = castle
1:36:00 Parallels with Advaita Vedanta
1:44:00 The daimon is an internal inspiring fire
1:50:00 Reconciling deception, spontaneity and purpose in nature
1:58:00 Plato & Aristotle on telos & spontaneity
1:59:00 The ineffable beyond consciousness