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juliaschweitzer's review
challenging
informative
medium-paced
3.75
I enjoyed reading Socrates' musings about the meaning of piety, the purpose of religion, corruption, and loyalty to laws. They brought up some fun thought experiments, especially Euthyphro.
jeryljoseph's review
4.0
The Euthyphro is particularly interesting because it poses the question: Is something pious because it is loved or is it loved because it is pious? This question of intrinsic vs extrinsic is incredibly thought provoking.
mkquillen's review
4.0
The Apology is by far my favorite piece of writing I've ever read. This book was by far the most difficult, challenging, and interesting read I've had.
tfredenburg's review
3.0
This was a required reading for a (college) Freshman philosophy/Western history course. We originally only read Apology and Crito, but I came back to finish the whole book.
This is a good collection to read for those looking for more context on Socrates’ life and how the public received him. Although I found Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito to be vastly more interesting than Aristophanes’ Clouds, I still appreciate the inclusion of Clouds because it helpfully illustrates what’s meant by the accusation that Socrates makes “the weaker speech the stronger.” Still, this play is taxing to read, and Aristophanes himself comes off as a ridiculous character when he chastises the audience for disliking his plays.
While Thomas G. West makes some insightful points in the introduction (which make the rest of the reading easier to understand), some of his comments unnecessarily glorify the past. In the process of arguing against kinds of moral relativism, he refers to the way that disregard for objective truth played a role in the emergence of the Holocaust. This is a legitimate and, frankly, scary point (what with the hack running my country); however, another consequence West warns against is the “most predatory passions” which are “celebrated in rap music and the nastier varieties of rock.” (p. 10-11) He’s pointing to stereotypical versions of certain genres of notably black music as a source of whatever “predatory passions” he’s referring to. Giving West the benefit of the doubt would lead me to hope he’s referring to misogyny, but that’s present in EVERY genre of music. West should try to be more aware of hypocrisy; one’s historically-supported warnings against racism are diluted when that person turns suddenly and says something that’s… racist.
West mentions, “We see a growing coarseness in the relations between men and women” (p. 11) as though these relations were somehow better in the past. Ask any woman with a bit of sense in her head, and you’ll find that this is a bad argument altogether. The “chivalry” of the past—which still exists today, by the way— involved treating women like objects to be placed on pedestals rather than like real, rounded people. It’s a totally unnecessary and inaccurate argument for West to make. Soon after, he states that the belief that “all men are created equal” is now “dismissed as the quaint ideology of eighteenth-century America.”(p. 11) The very founders who pretended to support this notion knew very well that they were treating anyone non-male, non-white, and non-land owning as inferior. Eighteenth-century America didn’t believe in the very philosophy for which West credits them.
All of this is just to say that I think West makes some good points about Socrates’ relevance to contemporary readers, but it's unwise to present this claim as a problem that only some of our ancestors struggled with. What a paradox it is to be both cynical about modern prejudices and celebratory of the ancestors who first put these unequal systems in place.
This is a good collection to read for those looking for more context on Socrates’ life and how the public received him. Although I found Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito to be vastly more interesting than Aristophanes’ Clouds, I still appreciate the inclusion of Clouds because it helpfully illustrates what’s meant by the accusation that Socrates makes “the weaker speech the stronger.” Still, this play is taxing to read, and Aristophanes himself comes off as a ridiculous character when he chastises the audience for disliking his plays.
While Thomas G. West makes some insightful points in the introduction (which make the rest of the reading easier to understand), some of his comments unnecessarily glorify the past. In the process of arguing against kinds of moral relativism, he refers to the way that disregard for objective truth played a role in the emergence of the Holocaust. This is a legitimate and, frankly, scary point (what with the hack running my country); however, another consequence West warns against is the “most predatory passions” which are “celebrated in rap music and the nastier varieties of rock.” (p. 10-11) He’s pointing to stereotypical versions of certain genres of notably black music as a source of whatever “predatory passions” he’s referring to. Giving West the benefit of the doubt would lead me to hope he’s referring to misogyny, but that’s present in EVERY genre of music. West should try to be more aware of hypocrisy; one’s historically-supported warnings against racism are diluted when that person turns suddenly and says something that’s… racist.
West mentions, “We see a growing coarseness in the relations between men and women” (p. 11) as though these relations were somehow better in the past. Ask any woman with a bit of sense in her head, and you’ll find that this is a bad argument altogether. The “chivalry” of the past—which still exists today, by the way— involved treating women like objects to be placed on pedestals rather than like real, rounded people. It’s a totally unnecessary and inaccurate argument for West to make. Soon after, he states that the belief that “all men are created equal” is now “dismissed as the quaint ideology of eighteenth-century America.”(p. 11) The very founders who pretended to support this notion knew very well that they were treating anyone non-male, non-white, and non-land owning as inferior. Eighteenth-century America didn’t believe in the very philosophy for which West credits them.
All of this is just to say that I think West makes some good points about Socrates’ relevance to contemporary readers, but it's unwise to present this claim as a problem that only some of our ancestors struggled with. What a paradox it is to be both cynical about modern prejudices and celebratory of the ancestors who first put these unequal systems in place.
holtfan's review
4.0
Apology felt a bit over my head (hopefully we will go over it more in class) but I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed Crito. It was quite thought provoking. I was already familiar with Aristophanes but it was fun to go back. Euthyphro was also nice, but also hard to sink my teeth into.
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