Posted: June 16, 2023

Plato: Six Great Dialogues

Plato

Review

I had a hankering for a philosophy book and decided to go with Plato based on a reference to Plato in Russell's The History of Western Philosophy as the most influential of ancient Greek philosophers.

I thought this would be a series of short dialogues but the last one, The Republic, is a lengthy monster.

During the end of the first day of reading this book I have to acknowledge that I had a rough time. I'm used to novels and non-fiction works, and a philosophy book, compared to these others, does not have that much "feel good" elements. The book is attempting to instruct rather than entertain. The next day, I felt it's impact on my mind. It's like my mind got exercised; which felt quite good.

One way to think about philosophy books is that they're like high-fiber, high-nutrition, bland food. You're munching this thing and it's not very enjoyable but it's good for you.

That said, I really had a rough time reading Plato: Six Great Dialogues. I finished this book by an effort of will. Since I'm not having an easy time so the question would be: Why did I not DNF (Did Not Finish) the book? Because it does not deserve to be DNFed. This is a tough book but it's a worthy one; and I felt that while reading it. This book is worth finishing.

One of the benefits of this book is that it invites you into the mind and thinking process of Plato. You are thinking with Plato in portions of this book. Say what you will of Plato but he is a first-rate, top-tier thinker. He is an analytical juggernaut. And experiencing his thought process, I can only hope, should improve my own.

Another wonderful quality of these dialogues is that the topics they tackle are the topics. The immortality of the soul, life after death, the nature of justice, love, happiness. These topics are related to questions that - I would hazard to assume - we have asked ourselves at one point in time, played around with or discussed about, and then set aside. I don't have the mental horsepower to tackle these questions and make significant headway but Plato does and its a wonderful experience to tag along while he takes on these "giant" topics.

Notes

When I read the first three dialogues in this collection I realized that I had pretty much read the ancient account of the death of Socrates. Here are my takeaways:

Apology

• Socrates says that the opinion of the majority does not matter; nor the opinion of other people. A person, irregardless of outside circumstances must identify what is righteous or good for him or her to do and to adhere to that.
• Socrates keeps referring to the oracle inside him and to omens and portents that he receives. He follows these things on the presumption that they are messages from God (more on this later). When I read the references to oracles I immediately connected it with intuition; the "gut feeling" that we sometimes get. It could be as simple as a "message" to do something or not to do something. I too, as I have grown older, have learned to be sensitive to these intuitive messages and I am careful to respect and heed them.
• Many, many times Socrates refers to God; not the Greek gods (although he refers to them too), but God. In fact, he states that his activities as a philosopher is something commanded by God. I am amazed how Socrates reminds me of the the prophets and the apostles of the Christian church when he talks this way. Like them, he gives utmost importance to the soul as opposed to earthly pursuits such as wealth and power.

Crito

• After the death sentence is handed down on Socrates, his friend Crito visits him in his prison cell. Crito has a plan of escape devised by Crito and some of Socrates's friends. The philosopher needs merely to accede and the escape plan will be embarked upon. Socrates does not accede. He goes back to his original argument that a man must identify the right path and stick to it. Here Socrates reveals his loyalty to Athens, specifically and, beyond that, his belief in the importance of respecting the State. To escape would mean that Socrates would wrong the State and he would also wrong himself, since doing so would go against his philosophical teachings.
• There is a wonderful discussion about life after death. Socrates says that he does not know what will happen but it could be one of two things: (1) a rebirth in a better place or (2) or oblivion akin to permanent unconsciousness. If the latter, Socrates says that in death "forever would seem to be simply one night" - I love this description.
• Socrates also talks about the origin of ghosts. These ghosts are spirits, who, in life, have become too attached to wordly things, and so, upon death, they linger in the world for a time - their souls having been corrupted by their bodies.
• Socrates talks about reincarnation; the same as the Hindu concept where souls are not confined to returning as people but may return in the form of animals; depending on how they have lived thier lives. There is a hierarchy of improvement until a soul is freed from the reincarnation cycle to at last join God in heaven.

Phaedo

In Phaedo, Socrates is about to die by state-administered poison, but before that, he has one last talk with his friends.

• One of the questions is: Before we were born did our soul already exist? Answer: Yes. Socrates points out that all who are born have a pre-knowledge of the essence of things against which we make judgement on the form of things - such as beauty, example. These could only have come about because our souls existed before we were born.
• Second question: Does the soul survive death? Answer: Yes. The soul is the source of life and cannot contain and be contained by death. It is immortal and survives death.
• Pain is born from joy and joy is born from pain is another eye-opening concept. Eye-opening because it's true, even though I never noticed it before. Not only is it true, but now that I am aware of it, I find it very implementable: I can go into hard times with the comfort that good times will follow. I can go through good times and not be surprised that I feel a bit "down", or even very depressed, after experiencing a high point.

Another note I want to make is that Socrates (and by extension Plato) is a super-analyzer, a super-thinker. He really goes into the detail level and takes things apart and makes them simpler so that he can discuss them and figure them out. He would be right at home in our current world where knowledge-based workers are expected to have the same attention to detail.

Phaedrus

• Phaedrus begins with a discussion on the merits and demirits of passionate love vs compassionate love. Those arguing for the superiority of companionable love are the ones I am in agreement with. The defense of passionate love has its attractions in its celebration of madness.
• After the discourse on love, Socrates and Phaedrus talked about other matters that went over my head. I got lost until they talked about rhetorics. Socrates outlined the requirement for a person to become an expert rhetorician and I was impressed by it's comprehensiveness. Not only is one required to know th art of rhetoric but to be an expert on "the different kind of souls" that could potentially be the target audience for communication. Once again Socrates thinks deeply on things and, in terms of knowledge, he is very strict and exacting.

The Symposium

The Symposium welcomes us into a gathering of friends, who, after feasting, decide to dispense with a drinking bout and to amuse themselves with conversation instead. Each one is to make a discourse, and the topic is about love.

• The strangest discourse was from Aristophanes. Maybe "strangest" is not the right word, "fantastic" would be a better one. Aristophanes talks of a time when men and women were fused together into three classes of creatures: a double-man creature, a double-woman creature, and a man-woman creature. And the wierdness goes on from there.
• Socrates, unsurprisingly, has the best discourse, when he talks about love in a very artful way; outlining the transcendent nature of love. It's the only discourse that I think is worth re-reading.
• I am struck by the fact that when these men are talking about love they seem to referring more to homosexual love rather than heterosexual love. Obviously, in their society there is an absence of the onus for this kind of love when compared to our own societies. In fact, towards the end of The Symposium a drunken Alcibiades came in and confessed of the time he had tried to seduce Socrates.

The Republic

The Republic attempts to answer interesting questions: Why must we be good when we can see that bad people are flourishing around us? Wouldn't it be better for us to be at least slightly bad? Isn't a bad or unjust attitude simply practical? Are just or good people chumps?

The initial discussion on this subject was a fail but Socrates and his friends make another attempt. This time, in order to "see" the just and unjust man Socrates decides to make a model "in the large" in the form of a just state - and thus The Republic.

• The second most important question answered is: What is justice? Justice is defined as all elements in a state and in a person playing its proper role. In particular, man's animal nature must be subject to his intellectual nature.
• The most important question answered is: Is the just man happier than the unjust man? The answer is, yes, because the just man, being "well-sorted" internally does not experience the "internal war" that is the lot of the unjust man.
• Plato is a big adherent of the concept of formative years and how these years must be the target of the right education.
• The right education for Plato is very controlled to the point that lying and book-banning are sanctioned in order to guard the purity of the minds of the denizens of Plato's ideal state.
• Education is defined as a combination of gymnastics, music, mathematics, plane geometry, solid geometry, and astronomy. But the king of education is dialectics - essentially the Socratic method.
• Five forms of government are discussed: royalty, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. Royalty being judge the best and tyrrany the worst.
• The end of The Republic is a look at the afterlife and the process of reincarnation. Among others, Plato shows familiar characters from Homer choosing what they want to become in the next life.