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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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Plato's Progeny: how Plato and Socrates still captivate the modern mind
Melissa Lane
2001 London: Duckworth,
pp. x + 165
ISBN 0-7156-2892 (pb), £9.99.
Practical Philosophy (Book Reviews) November 2001 Volume 4.2
Reviewed by: Trevor Curnow
As Melissa Lane says in her conclusion (p. 138): 'Socrates provides the model of someone devoted to philosophy, who asked incessantly how best to live, though we cannot be sure whether he believed that he had the answers; someone who died loyal to the behest of his democratic homeland, though we can never be sure whether he was loyal to it in his life and teachings.' Her book charts the West's fascination with Socrates and Plato, master and pupil, heroes to some, villains to others. Each nation, each age, each philosopher recreates them anew, giving us Socrates the martyr, Socrates the misfit, Socrates the ironist, Plato the mystic, Plato the educator, Plato the fascist... The list goes on.
The book focuses on three main themes: Socrates's life and its meaning, Plato's metaphysics and its relation to his ethics, and Plato's political principles. Each theme could easily occupy a book on its own, and the accounts on offer here are aimed more at the interested than at the advanced reader. Nevertheless, the amount of material that finds its way into these pages is impressive, as is the narrative skill with which it is handled. Familiar names such as Kant and Heidegger rub shoulders with seldom remembered figures such as Pater and Nettleship. If the book carries its scholarship lightly to some extent, the scholarship is still very much there.
While Practical Philosophy readers may find much to detain them throughout the book, it is probably the chapter on Socrates that will attract them most. This is entirely understandable, and may prove to be a salutary experience. Lane seeks to be fair to the available sources, neither privileging nor dismissing Plato. We are firmly reminded of how little is really known about Socrates, and of the strongly conflicting opinions held about him even during his own lifetime. Posthumously, if he has not exactly been all things to all people, he has certainly been many things to many of them. (Proponents and practitioners of Socratic Dialogue may wish to pause over the widely differing interpretations of 'Socratic' that have seen the light of day over the past twenty-four centuries.) Furthermore, since he wrote nothing, the few facts about his life concerning which there is agreement take on a disproportionate degree of importance, and they have been debated long and hard. Was he at heart a traditionalist seeking to preserve the culture of his time or a rebel trying to undermine it? For many, the key fact about his life was his death, and here again questions arise. Was it a supreme act of civic obedience, or was it more an expression of despair?
The answer to these questions, of course, is that there is no answer. What is significant is that they continue to be asked. While both Socrates and Plato have evoked a variety of responses from their philosophical successors, very few have felt able to ignore them. That, perhaps, is the ultimate measure of their importance.
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