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lukeswagner's review against another edition
3.0
The idea of modern day Platonic dialogues, featuring Plato himself, is interesting, but I found this book to be messy and simplistic. I can recommend this book to somebody that doesn't know anything about Plato, or who has never read him, (although I'd first recommend to just read Plato himself) but beyond that, there is not much insight from the arguments here. They are often times messy, lackluster, unconvincing, and I don't even think they disprove the "philosophy jeerers" that the author seems to take issue with. The people who Plato is conversation with are often times simply stupid to a point where the idea of Plato engaging in a modern setting becomes more annoying due to the fact that he has to teach these brain dead people that "No, its a bad idea for algorithims to be the moral authority" Or "No, money will not bring happiness." By forcing Plato to engage with these strawmen, the author misses out on the rich philosophical history that has come after and rejected Plato. For instance, seeing Plato address Nietzsche (or a Nietzschean), the post modernists, or even somebody like Neil Degrasse Tyson would provide a much more interesting and dynamic conversation to display the timelessness of Plato's ideas. Especially since these philosophers and scientists are in some way responsible for the moral relativism, the worship at the altar of science, or the uncertainty about philosophical progress, that the book tries to combat. There is a conversation with Plato and essentially Bill O'Reilly in which the author makes the Bill O'Reilly character say things that are so downright ridiculous, narcissistic, and ignorant that they just make the discussion seem pointless. The only reason I am giving it three stars is because I think I may not be the right audience. I can see it being useful as a very basic introduction to the lives and ideas of Plato and Socrates
aront's review against another edition
5.0
Goldstein has written an engaging book (almost but not quite 5 stars) about Plato and his philosophy.
I can't say I was totally thrilled by her conceit of Plato on a book tour, but it did allow her to engage Plato with issues of the modern world. And her main point is that Plato, the father of philosophy, and philosophy itself is still as relevant today as it was 3000 years ago. Plato, and Goldstein who channels him, are quite convincing, although I have to admit I was convinced even before reading the book!
Nonetheless, Goldstein's explanation of Plato and his thinking is compelling, engaging and at time thrilling. And just like the life worth living, this book is well worth the reading.
I can't say I was totally thrilled by her conceit of Plato on a book tour, but it did allow her to engage Plato with issues of the modern world. And her main point is that Plato, the father of philosophy, and philosophy itself is still as relevant today as it was 3000 years ago. Plato, and Goldstein who channels him, are quite convincing, although I have to admit I was convinced even before reading the book!
Nonetheless, Goldstein's explanation of Plato and his thinking is compelling, engaging and at time thrilling. And just like the life worth living, this book is well worth the reading.
adamchalmers's review against another edition
4.0
The Republic was the first philosophy I ever read, and it gave me a thirst for more. So I really loved this modern treatment of Plato. It's surprisingly funny. Recommended for anyone philosophical - not just students of philosophy - because it's so very accesible. Just like Plato's actual work, it's just written down conversations between clever friends.
cryo_guy's review
5.0
“Because there had been such a man as Socrates, Plato could convince himself that human life was worth caring about. But I suspect that for him it did take convincing.”
I heard about this book when it first came out and probably said something like, “Oh Pinker's wife wrote a book about Plato in the 21st century? Bah humbug!” I had read The Blank Slate in undergrad which was a less-than-inspiring read. And since, as was recently revealed to me by my mother, that I need to put on my tombstone the words (hers): “He usually guessed, but he was right” I assumed that here was another instance of my epitaph. But no, I found it not to be the case this time. Before I get into that, I'll also say that after that initial encounter, the book entered my life again when a former professor of mine asked me to do a write up on it. Of course that relationship could be characterized as fruitless at best, and I never received a copy of the book he offered nor any other sort of engagement at all. So let's leave that memory in the past, burned and charred. I was hoping to the read the book but fortune had laughed in my face. And then a year or two later, it came up in conversation again with someone I've really enjoyed getting to know over tea. He said he had greatly enjoyed the book and then, with a slight pause, gave me his own battered copy (along with some other books he was trying to get rid of) and said, “I'd like this one back though.” And so a year after that, I've finally gone and read the book for my own personal interest and so that I can discuss it with this gentleman. I like the book cover too. I think it has an abstract quality that lends itself to Plato.
So with the preliminaries out of the way, this book was pretty good! After I read the prologue I thought I would hate it. Mainly because (and this is my main disagreement with Goldstein's interpretation) she ties the development of Plato's philosophy and ethics to the tragedians and before that Homer with a phrase she invents: the Ethos of the Extraordinary. I'm gonna be bringing that up again so let's call it the EE. The base idea is that the Greek's had an existential quandary: why did life or any individual's life matter at all? She explains that ancient Greek religion didn't fill that void (which it didn't), which spawned the EE in Homer. What made a person's life matter was whether they lived an extraordinary life. In the Homeric world this meant gaining kleos-as much as possible and she's not exactly wrong in that. The problem is that we only have Homer for a source whose poems are starring aristocrats so they're gonna present the ethics that way. The other problem is that even in Homer there are subtle hints and clues that may suggest being like Achilles is not the only way to get your life to matter. Perhaps the most glaring of these is the shift from alive Achilles in the Iliad “I choose a short life and eternal glory over a long but obscure life” and dead Achilles in the Odyssey “I'd rather be a living slave of a poor farmer than king of the dead.” But there are others from silent and brutal descriptions of near-nameless warriors slain one after the other in the Iliad to depictions of virtuous slaves in the Odyssey. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think it's safe to say that if the question is what made a person's life matter in the ancient/Homeric Greek world, while getting the most kleos as possible was the surest and best way, it was by no means the only way nor did it set the standard for ethical behavior (which is really the important thing here). Put another way, there were ways to make your life matter, even if (especially!) you weren't Achilles (dipped in the river Styx at birth, prophesied wunderkind of the world) and didn't seek eternal kleos. In the prologue she traces that EE from Homer, into the tragedians who modified it (slightly) and then into Plato's Athens where Pericles transformed it into collective or communal glory (cf. Pericles' funeral oration from Thucydides) and then against which Alcibiades fought with his charismatic flair for his own individual glory. This is all for the most part also correct and good way to see the development of thought. However, I might still disagree with her interpretation of the tragedians, but the book isn't really about that-so it's not that important for me to get into. (As a very brief aside, if for some reason that stands out to you, Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness is probably the place to go).
As a result of this thread of ethical thought, Plato was a variation on the tragedians' take on Homer and markedly different from Pericles, but nonetheless still EE where extraordinary=kleos is changed to extraordinary=intellectual kleos or something like that. Now the problem with my criticism, and the reason I'm starting this review by going on about it, is that in the rest of the book Goldstein does a pretty good job qualifying the summary I've just given you. But not enough for me so that I feel compelled to say no Plato's thing is not about being extraordinary, the very idea that only the extraordinary would have access to a meaningful life is antithetical to Plato and Socrates and a gross misinterpretation of that famous Socratic exhortation from the Apology “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The very point is that everyone has the ability to examine themselves. It is a skill that must be practiced and developed and there are undoubtedly some people who are more naturally skilled in that realm just as there are those more naturally skilled in music, athletics, or oration, but I for one strongly assert that the more important aspect to consider here is that humans all have the ability to do so and it is that ability that we must make use of. Personally, I don't even believe that it's as objective a matter as people interpret it as being. It isn't so much a matter of whoever most rigorously applies self-examination lives the most meaningful life. No, the situation is more like do your best to rigorously apply self-examination, those who don't are surely bound to decrease their own well-being. And I would put the result of applying such ideas of self-examination not in terms of a meaningful life but one that produces well-being and goodness. Now for Plato, that's the same thing, but for we moderns, we have a different idea of what “meaningful” means, what a “life that matters” is. This is where I think Goldstein needs to qualify her talk of meaningful and mattering lives. Nonetheless, she does specifically qualify the extraordinary part of the EE and what that means for Plato, perhaps not as explicitly as I would like, but certainly enough to assuage my disagreement. And since I've just now articulated the important part about viewing Plato as descending from this EE, I'm completely and utterly assuaged.
Since I'm on the topic of my disagreements, though, I will air the other actually serious grievance I have which is her depiction of Plato as the “ecstatic scholar” type. It's not her character Plato in her dramatic chapters I'm criticizing (I'll say some nice but measured things about that shortly), but her interpretation of Plato's philosophical project as culminating in mathematics. Plato had Pythagorean leanings, Plato liked numbers, Plato liked math, and he liked music as a sort of math, analogous mediums. He stretched that analogy further in many of his dialogues to great effect. But I'm afraid I side more with scholars who view these analogies as analogies rather than as the honest-to-goodness result of Plato's aspirations for philosophy that we see the beauty in the harmony of the math of the cosmos and then instantiate that beauty in ourselves. I'm not sure what any of that means except in analogy, but her character Plato says things like he believes them as truth. Now, to qualify my own statements a little bit, it actually isn't so ridiculous to attribute these things to Plato. He talks about the forms A LOT. He likes math A LOT. I would even listen to someone who told me he was in the cult of Pythagoras his entire life. Plato being a realist is not really a problem for me. Throwing Plato into a modern context and having him say something like just realize the harmony of the mathematical cosmos, friendo-I'm less keen on. But saying that might do a disservice to the Plato character Goldstein creates which is a (mostly) worthy one-if at times a bit too unsubtle. And to be a bit more pointed about my criticism here-its not so much that Plato couldn't have said these things or been a hardcore realist about the mathematical harmony of the cosmos, but that in his dialogues he doesn't particularly. In my opinion the evidence is not on her side. But hey that's what fiction is for and it might be very difficult to write a believable Plato without fleshing some of those details out in that way-I'm not trying to write a what if Plato were here in the modern world book, I'm just trying to talk about depicting Plato's ideas in the right way and having his character, who so deftly adapts to many other complicated features of the modern world, not adapt in some rather essentially philosophical ways. This is also just one way in which I think she gets things a tad bit wrong, her character Plato does so many other things the right way.
Okay so let's switch gears a little bit. I've ranted on what I wanted and I'll spend the rest of the review talking about the chapters, praising what's good, and then I'll finish with my recommendation at the end. The book is half dramatic chapters in the style of Plato (adapted) in modern settings and half-explanatory on historical/philosophical context. I say adapted because they are not dialogues exactly as Plato's dialogues were, but some are in different modern formats. Those two halves can also be split: the dramatic chapters are a third quaint modern Plato, a third citing from the dialogues, a third philosophical ideas in a modern form and context. And the explanatory ones- a third what philosophy is, a third Socrates/Plato sociohistorical context, a third Plato's “actual” beliefs.
Here are a handful of things Goldstein does remarkably well:
Contrary to the faults that I found in her thread of ethical thinking, her interpretation of the thread of philosophical thinking is spot on. She identifies the beginning of it all-the Presocratics-and puts a name to it: the Ionian Enchantment. This was the idea that it was possible for philosophical issues to be a matter of applying reason to figure things out. This is something that has not changed even today for human beings. There are theories that upend the principle of sufficient reason and there are ones that boldly state there can be no intelligibility to be found, but these theories are all subject to the fact that as humans we must employ our faculty of reason to understand them at all in the first place. I promise you that if it is true that the universe and life as we know it is entirely unintelligible, then we will still grasp at that unintelligibility with our meager human intellect. That's just how it works! And I'm not saying intuition isn't a real thing that holds true in certain situations, but it just cannot even come close to our faculty of understanding. I'm also not saying that reason is completely objective or even objective in any way; personally I believe objectivity is a dead concept. I think that Kant's idea of rationality has too much of a hold over our understandings of the human ability of understanding and that we need to return to Plato. But anyway this enchantment, as the fundamental insight of the Presocratics and Platonic philosophy in general, is brilliant and inexpressibly insightful and essential. I cannot put this clearly enough. It is essential to understanding philosophy and Plato's philosophical project.
The subtitle of this book is “why philosophy won't go away” and she spends a decent chunk of text talking about so called “philosophy-jeerers” who dismiss philosophy as an obsolete discipline altogether. Let's not indulge such thinking any more than we have to in this review. Suffice it to say, Goldstein marks the flaws in their thinking and points out that philosophy is quite useful and fully capable of progress. In her words:
“Progress in philosophy consist, at least in part, in constantly bringing to light the covert presumptions that burrow their way deep down into our thinking, too deep down for us to even be aware of them.”
Wonderful, brilliant. This is what I end up telling people most often. And it's also the message I find in every Platonic dialogue. “Fine if you don't like my arguments bad, good, or otherwise-if you don't like the stories I tell, then at least look at how our disputations have made certain flaws obvious and recognize that that is the true goal of dialogue and discourse.” The hope is to come to collaborative answers that move us forward, but the goal is to prevent us from continuing to make the mistakes we have always made and to rationalize them because we believe they are not mistakes. One more time: The goal is to not make the same mistakes because we actually believe, we have convinced ourselves and so it is true (yes true for us, but here true and true for us are the same thing are they not?), that we are not making mistakes. If you or anyone else ever wonders why I think Plato is worthy to be read, it is for this reason alone. Goldstein stresses this point excellently by condensing Plato's attitude:
“If you read these arguments without internalizing them, turning them uncomfortably against yourself, then you might as well not bother. That's Plato's attitude.”
You really might as well not bother.
She points out the divergence of Aristotle, Aristotelian philosophy, and how Plato became Aristotelized. She talks about how Plato's aim in his philosophical project is to find the best reason for things (which fits nicely with the aforementioned idea of the Ionian enchantment-the best human reason can get us to). Aristotle turned this into a teleological matter, one in which the best things are made so out of functionality. Goldstein rightly distinguishes this from Platonic intelligibility, which she attributes to Spinoza. I won't get into that either, but it has to do with Plato's affection for math which inspired other thinkers like Galileo and Spinoza. I'm willing to grant that, because I'd have to take a look at them to properly disagree. Nonetheless, the teleology/intelligibility distinction is a vital one.
And the last one I'll put on this list is that she does a pretty good job of bringing the character of Plato to life. Albeit her character, she pits a vivid portrait of the man against modern interlocutors and comes out with something of a success.
So what did I enjoy? Well I loved engaging with all these ideas even the parts I disagreed with. I would have given this book 5 stars, but well I think Plato could have been done in a modern context a little more to my liking so 4.5 stars, just short of a perfect score. But scores are dumb, the point is this is a good book and I enjoyed it. Out of all the dramatic chapters, the first one is probably my favorite because it is the most organically similar to Plato's dialogues. It features Plato chatting up two non-experts (or one who claims to be) and them not particularly reaching any conclusions. It's even properly framed as a story within a story! Well done. Plato at the 92nd street Y and Plato on Cable News (some Fox show parody) were good but frustrating. Sometimes her Plato descends into just quoting or paraphrasing Plato's own works without much more to them. She does a lot of extra stuff, but sometimes the dramatic chapters devolve into that. The Cable news one was probably my least favorite-talk about talking by one another. Perhaps very realistic, but not exactly stimulating. It also features Plato going on about the harmony of the cosmos, which as I've said, is not my favorite interpretation of the man. XxxPlato features Plato offering advice in an Ann Landers style advice column. It's a clever way to get Plato talking about love and he has some nice things to say, but that suffers from overcitation of the Phaedrus at times. Again, its just at times, probably because I've read too much Plato that I notice these things. But I wouldn't say it was a particular barrier to reading the book. The last dramatic chapter returns to the closer adaption of Plato's dialogues and is pretty clever.
Of the explanatory chapters, I think Goldstein does a great job except for the last one that gets a bit too into the “ecstatic scholar” communing with the universe thing I mentioned at the beginning. I am sure Plato was a realist and did believe in something like the forms. However, I do not think that we can find it in the dialogues, i.e. I do not believe Plato advances a positive metaphysic in his dialogues. Feel free to disagree. The other chapters however are all pretty much on point, except of course the parts I've already disagreed with. There's incisive commentary on those opposed to philosophy and why they're mistaken. There's really wonderful sociohistorical explanation that covers Athens, Socrates, and Plato. The chapter devoted to Socrates called “Socrates must die” is a circumspect examination of all the factors that went into Socrates' death and Plato's understanding of it. The book as a whole is remarkably well-researched and, so it seemed to me, lucid and accessible. I had heard this book was written for a popular audience, but it really rides that line well-explaining many of Plato's more esoteric concepts in clear ways. The same is true for her sociohistorical context. I really can't praise that part enough. It might almost be worth it to read one of those chapters as a companion piece to reading the Apology it's so clear and encompassing.
So anyway, I enjoyed engaging with the ideas, I enjoyed disagreeing, seeing Plato come to life, seeing explanations that were familiar to me but presented well and thoughtfully and seeing them in a modern context.
I would recommend this book to...anyone! Haha I just love Plato so much and this is probably the most accessible book like this that I've encountered that I would recommend it just based on that. There are a few hiccups, but you know it wouldn't be so bad if you believed everything she said was true about Plato. Maybe if you ended up reading Plato's dialogues yourself, you'd form your own opinion just like I have. It's not particularly long and the chapter pacing is pretty moderate. Some might get bogged down in all the detail packed in (I'll confess a bias on this), but it's worth it.
I heard about this book when it first came out and probably said something like, “Oh Pinker's wife wrote a book about Plato in the 21st century? Bah humbug!” I had read The Blank Slate in undergrad which was a less-than-inspiring read. And since, as was recently revealed to me by my mother, that I need to put on my tombstone the words (hers): “He usually guessed, but he was right” I assumed that here was another instance of my epitaph. But no, I found it not to be the case this time. Before I get into that, I'll also say that after that initial encounter, the book entered my life again when a former professor of mine asked me to do a write up on it. Of course that relationship could be characterized as fruitless at best, and I never received a copy of the book he offered nor any other sort of engagement at all. So let's leave that memory in the past, burned and charred. I was hoping to the read the book but fortune had laughed in my face. And then a year or two later, it came up in conversation again with someone I've really enjoyed getting to know over tea. He said he had greatly enjoyed the book and then, with a slight pause, gave me his own battered copy (along with some other books he was trying to get rid of) and said, “I'd like this one back though.” And so a year after that, I've finally gone and read the book for my own personal interest and so that I can discuss it with this gentleman. I like the book cover too. I think it has an abstract quality that lends itself to Plato.
So with the preliminaries out of the way, this book was pretty good! After I read the prologue I thought I would hate it. Mainly because (and this is my main disagreement with Goldstein's interpretation) she ties the development of Plato's philosophy and ethics to the tragedians and before that Homer with a phrase she invents: the Ethos of the Extraordinary. I'm gonna be bringing that up again so let's call it the EE. The base idea is that the Greek's had an existential quandary: why did life or any individual's life matter at all? She explains that ancient Greek religion didn't fill that void (which it didn't), which spawned the EE in Homer. What made a person's life matter was whether they lived an extraordinary life. In the Homeric world this meant gaining kleos-as much as possible and she's not exactly wrong in that. The problem is that we only have Homer for a source whose poems are starring aristocrats so they're gonna present the ethics that way. The other problem is that even in Homer there are subtle hints and clues that may suggest being like Achilles is not the only way to get your life to matter. Perhaps the most glaring of these is the shift from alive Achilles in the Iliad “I choose a short life and eternal glory over a long but obscure life” and dead Achilles in the Odyssey “I'd rather be a living slave of a poor farmer than king of the dead.” But there are others from silent and brutal descriptions of near-nameless warriors slain one after the other in the Iliad to depictions of virtuous slaves in the Odyssey. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think it's safe to say that if the question is what made a person's life matter in the ancient/Homeric Greek world, while getting the most kleos as possible was the surest and best way, it was by no means the only way nor did it set the standard for ethical behavior (which is really the important thing here). Put another way, there were ways to make your life matter, even if (especially!) you weren't Achilles (dipped in the river Styx at birth, prophesied wunderkind of the world) and didn't seek eternal kleos. In the prologue she traces that EE from Homer, into the tragedians who modified it (slightly) and then into Plato's Athens where Pericles transformed it into collective or communal glory (cf. Pericles' funeral oration from Thucydides) and then against which Alcibiades fought with his charismatic flair for his own individual glory. This is all for the most part also correct and good way to see the development of thought. However, I might still disagree with her interpretation of the tragedians, but the book isn't really about that-so it's not that important for me to get into. (As a very brief aside, if for some reason that stands out to you, Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness is probably the place to go).
As a result of this thread of ethical thought, Plato was a variation on the tragedians' take on Homer and markedly different from Pericles, but nonetheless still EE where extraordinary=kleos is changed to extraordinary=intellectual kleos or something like that. Now the problem with my criticism, and the reason I'm starting this review by going on about it, is that in the rest of the book Goldstein does a pretty good job qualifying the summary I've just given you. But not enough for me so that I feel compelled to say no Plato's thing is not about being extraordinary, the very idea that only the extraordinary would have access to a meaningful life is antithetical to Plato and Socrates and a gross misinterpretation of that famous Socratic exhortation from the Apology “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The very point is that everyone has the ability to examine themselves. It is a skill that must be practiced and developed and there are undoubtedly some people who are more naturally skilled in that realm just as there are those more naturally skilled in music, athletics, or oration, but I for one strongly assert that the more important aspect to consider here is that humans all have the ability to do so and it is that ability that we must make use of. Personally, I don't even believe that it's as objective a matter as people interpret it as being. It isn't so much a matter of whoever most rigorously applies self-examination lives the most meaningful life. No, the situation is more like do your best to rigorously apply self-examination, those who don't are surely bound to decrease their own well-being. And I would put the result of applying such ideas of self-examination not in terms of a meaningful life but one that produces well-being and goodness. Now for Plato, that's the same thing, but for we moderns, we have a different idea of what “meaningful” means, what a “life that matters” is. This is where I think Goldstein needs to qualify her talk of meaningful and mattering lives. Nonetheless, she does specifically qualify the extraordinary part of the EE and what that means for Plato, perhaps not as explicitly as I would like, but certainly enough to assuage my disagreement. And since I've just now articulated the important part about viewing Plato as descending from this EE, I'm completely and utterly assuaged.
Since I'm on the topic of my disagreements, though, I will air the other actually serious grievance I have which is her depiction of Plato as the “ecstatic scholar” type. It's not her character Plato in her dramatic chapters I'm criticizing (I'll say some nice but measured things about that shortly), but her interpretation of Plato's philosophical project as culminating in mathematics. Plato had Pythagorean leanings, Plato liked numbers, Plato liked math, and he liked music as a sort of math, analogous mediums. He stretched that analogy further in many of his dialogues to great effect. But I'm afraid I side more with scholars who view these analogies as analogies rather than as the honest-to-goodness result of Plato's aspirations for philosophy that we see the beauty in the harmony of the math of the cosmos and then instantiate that beauty in ourselves. I'm not sure what any of that means except in analogy, but her character Plato says things like he believes them as truth. Now, to qualify my own statements a little bit, it actually isn't so ridiculous to attribute these things to Plato. He talks about the forms A LOT. He likes math A LOT. I would even listen to someone who told me he was in the cult of Pythagoras his entire life. Plato being a realist is not really a problem for me. Throwing Plato into a modern context and having him say something like just realize the harmony of the mathematical cosmos, friendo-I'm less keen on. But saying that might do a disservice to the Plato character Goldstein creates which is a (mostly) worthy one-if at times a bit too unsubtle. And to be a bit more pointed about my criticism here-its not so much that Plato couldn't have said these things or been a hardcore realist about the mathematical harmony of the cosmos, but that in his dialogues he doesn't particularly. In my opinion the evidence is not on her side. But hey that's what fiction is for and it might be very difficult to write a believable Plato without fleshing some of those details out in that way-I'm not trying to write a what if Plato were here in the modern world book, I'm just trying to talk about depicting Plato's ideas in the right way and having his character, who so deftly adapts to many other complicated features of the modern world, not adapt in some rather essentially philosophical ways. This is also just one way in which I think she gets things a tad bit wrong, her character Plato does so many other things the right way.
Okay so let's switch gears a little bit. I've ranted on what I wanted and I'll spend the rest of the review talking about the chapters, praising what's good, and then I'll finish with my recommendation at the end. The book is half dramatic chapters in the style of Plato (adapted) in modern settings and half-explanatory on historical/philosophical context. I say adapted because they are not dialogues exactly as Plato's dialogues were, but some are in different modern formats. Those two halves can also be split: the dramatic chapters are a third quaint modern Plato, a third citing from the dialogues, a third philosophical ideas in a modern form and context. And the explanatory ones- a third what philosophy is, a third Socrates/Plato sociohistorical context, a third Plato's “actual” beliefs.
Here are a handful of things Goldstein does remarkably well:
Contrary to the faults that I found in her thread of ethical thinking, her interpretation of the thread of philosophical thinking is spot on. She identifies the beginning of it all-the Presocratics-and puts a name to it: the Ionian Enchantment. This was the idea that it was possible for philosophical issues to be a matter of applying reason to figure things out. This is something that has not changed even today for human beings. There are theories that upend the principle of sufficient reason and there are ones that boldly state there can be no intelligibility to be found, but these theories are all subject to the fact that as humans we must employ our faculty of reason to understand them at all in the first place. I promise you that if it is true that the universe and life as we know it is entirely unintelligible, then we will still grasp at that unintelligibility with our meager human intellect. That's just how it works! And I'm not saying intuition isn't a real thing that holds true in certain situations, but it just cannot even come close to our faculty of understanding. I'm also not saying that reason is completely objective or even objective in any way; personally I believe objectivity is a dead concept. I think that Kant's idea of rationality has too much of a hold over our understandings of the human ability of understanding and that we need to return to Plato. But anyway this enchantment, as the fundamental insight of the Presocratics and Platonic philosophy in general, is brilliant and inexpressibly insightful and essential. I cannot put this clearly enough. It is essential to understanding philosophy and Plato's philosophical project.
The subtitle of this book is “why philosophy won't go away” and she spends a decent chunk of text talking about so called “philosophy-jeerers” who dismiss philosophy as an obsolete discipline altogether. Let's not indulge such thinking any more than we have to in this review. Suffice it to say, Goldstein marks the flaws in their thinking and points out that philosophy is quite useful and fully capable of progress. In her words:
“Progress in philosophy consist, at least in part, in constantly bringing to light the covert presumptions that burrow their way deep down into our thinking, too deep down for us to even be aware of them.”
Wonderful, brilliant. This is what I end up telling people most often. And it's also the message I find in every Platonic dialogue. “Fine if you don't like my arguments bad, good, or otherwise-if you don't like the stories I tell, then at least look at how our disputations have made certain flaws obvious and recognize that that is the true goal of dialogue and discourse.” The hope is to come to collaborative answers that move us forward, but the goal is to prevent us from continuing to make the mistakes we have always made and to rationalize them because we believe they are not mistakes. One more time: The goal is to not make the same mistakes because we actually believe, we have convinced ourselves and so it is true (yes true for us, but here true and true for us are the same thing are they not?), that we are not making mistakes. If you or anyone else ever wonders why I think Plato is worthy to be read, it is for this reason alone. Goldstein stresses this point excellently by condensing Plato's attitude:
“If you read these arguments without internalizing them, turning them uncomfortably against yourself, then you might as well not bother. That's Plato's attitude.”
You really might as well not bother.
She points out the divergence of Aristotle, Aristotelian philosophy, and how Plato became Aristotelized. She talks about how Plato's aim in his philosophical project is to find the best reason for things (which fits nicely with the aforementioned idea of the Ionian enchantment-the best human reason can get us to). Aristotle turned this into a teleological matter, one in which the best things are made so out of functionality. Goldstein rightly distinguishes this from Platonic intelligibility, which she attributes to Spinoza. I won't get into that either, but it has to do with Plato's affection for math which inspired other thinkers like Galileo and Spinoza. I'm willing to grant that, because I'd have to take a look at them to properly disagree. Nonetheless, the teleology/intelligibility distinction is a vital one.
And the last one I'll put on this list is that she does a pretty good job of bringing the character of Plato to life. Albeit her character, she pits a vivid portrait of the man against modern interlocutors and comes out with something of a success.
So what did I enjoy? Well I loved engaging with all these ideas even the parts I disagreed with. I would have given this book 5 stars, but well I think Plato could have been done in a modern context a little more to my liking so 4.5 stars, just short of a perfect score. But scores are dumb, the point is this is a good book and I enjoyed it. Out of all the dramatic chapters, the first one is probably my favorite because it is the most organically similar to Plato's dialogues. It features Plato chatting up two non-experts (or one who claims to be) and them not particularly reaching any conclusions. It's even properly framed as a story within a story! Well done. Plato at the 92nd street Y and Plato on Cable News (some Fox show parody) were good but frustrating. Sometimes her Plato descends into just quoting or paraphrasing Plato's own works without much more to them. She does a lot of extra stuff, but sometimes the dramatic chapters devolve into that. The Cable news one was probably my least favorite-talk about talking by one another. Perhaps very realistic, but not exactly stimulating. It also features Plato going on about the harmony of the cosmos, which as I've said, is not my favorite interpretation of the man. XxxPlato features Plato offering advice in an Ann Landers style advice column. It's a clever way to get Plato talking about love and he has some nice things to say, but that suffers from overcitation of the Phaedrus at times. Again, its just at times, probably because I've read too much Plato that I notice these things. But I wouldn't say it was a particular barrier to reading the book. The last dramatic chapter returns to the closer adaption of Plato's dialogues and is pretty clever.
Of the explanatory chapters, I think Goldstein does a great job except for the last one that gets a bit too into the “ecstatic scholar” communing with the universe thing I mentioned at the beginning. I am sure Plato was a realist and did believe in something like the forms. However, I do not think that we can find it in the dialogues, i.e. I do not believe Plato advances a positive metaphysic in his dialogues. Feel free to disagree. The other chapters however are all pretty much on point, except of course the parts I've already disagreed with. There's incisive commentary on those opposed to philosophy and why they're mistaken. There's really wonderful sociohistorical explanation that covers Athens, Socrates, and Plato. The chapter devoted to Socrates called “Socrates must die” is a circumspect examination of all the factors that went into Socrates' death and Plato's understanding of it. The book as a whole is remarkably well-researched and, so it seemed to me, lucid and accessible. I had heard this book was written for a popular audience, but it really rides that line well-explaining many of Plato's more esoteric concepts in clear ways. The same is true for her sociohistorical context. I really can't praise that part enough. It might almost be worth it to read one of those chapters as a companion piece to reading the Apology it's so clear and encompassing.
So anyway, I enjoyed engaging with the ideas, I enjoyed disagreeing, seeing Plato come to life, seeing explanations that were familiar to me but presented well and thoughtfully and seeing them in a modern context.
I would recommend this book to...anyone! Haha I just love Plato so much and this is probably the most accessible book like this that I've encountered that I would recommend it just based on that. There are a few hiccups, but you know it wouldn't be so bad if you believed everything she said was true about Plato. Maybe if you ended up reading Plato's dialogues yourself, you'd form your own opinion just like I have. It's not particularly long and the chapter pacing is pretty moderate. Some might get bogged down in all the detail packed in (I'll confess a bias on this), but it's worth it.
maastaar's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
realz's review against another edition
5.0
A very entertaining guide on Plato and importance of Philosophy.
mark_lm's review against another edition
2.0
I think you could learn a lot of philosophy from this, but if you're going to write a dialogue, I think you should punctuate it so that I can tell who is speaking.
samantha_winkel13's review against another edition
2.0
I DNF’d this book because I’m sick of reading the paragraph long footnotes in order to understand what the book is about.
bookwarm_220's review against another edition
Slog. Valiant try. Too few rewards. Not as brilliant as 36 Arguments for the Existance of God, which I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend.