Socrates is credited as being one of the founders of Western philosophy. The most well-known of the Socratic dialogues is the Apology in which the character of Socrates defends his ideas against the charges of the Athenian court. The idea is that non-physical forms, or ideas, are the most accurate reality, and the marvels of the physical world are an imperfect reverberation of the ideal, perfect model that exists outside of reality. Plato believed that genuine knowledge could be gained from the wider universe.
For example, in his Socratic exchange Meno, Plato explains how a child can discover mathematical theories without prior knowledge of the world, reaching logical conclusions by asking questions and considering alternative responses.
Plato claimed that this was possible due to the memory of past lives or through learning by examination instead of perception. Plato recognized the need for humans to work together in society for mutual benefit and profit. He believed that everyone had different skills and attributes, and these could be combined to meet the needs of the whole of society.
Following on from the division of labor and the three main types of people in society, Plato was able to establish a political and economic model which worked for the benefit of all. In this society, people could work together for mutual gain, which would, in turn, lead to a prosperous and thriving political and economic structure. In his work Symposium, Plato attempts to explain adoration and excellence.
In this philosophical work, seven characters give addresses on the commendation of Eros, the divine force of affection and want. Plato investigates different perspectives through these characters.
The character of Socrates talks about how men should begin with an attachment to a specific individual, which then leads to love and admiration of their physical and moral excellence.
One should also adore an individual for their knowledge and, lastly, cherish and welcome their individuality. It is said that in this lies the first seeds of what we know as Platonic love; a sort of passionate and otherworldly camaraderie without a sexual element. It allowed him to take Socrates forward into his own development as a philosopher of genius by including Socrates so centrally in its exposition.
I was trained as a professional philosopher, but I've long moonlighted as a novelist. And one of the essential techniques of being a novelist is imagining characters so vividly that you can hear their voices.
It's not like taking dictation, at least not for me, though I know at least one novelist who describes it that way for lucky her. For me, it's halfway between taking dictation and totally making up words to put into their mouths. As a novelist, you know the kinds of things your characters would say, the kinds of things they wouldn't, their diction, turns of phrase, ellipses.
You can even interpret their silences, knowing their implications while the silences of real people drive you crazy with their indecipherability. And though they maintain their distinctness from you, the author, there's nobody with whom you're on more intimate terms than your characters. Part of the desolation of finishing the writing of a novel, at least for me, is letting go of that intimacy.
I'm never lonely when, as a result of the space of possibilities I provide for them, I can hear their voices. And so when it came to trying to draw closer to Plato I decided to use the same literary form that Plato himself had long ago devised.
I decided to write dialogues in which I could hear Plato speaking to us about issues that still concern and vex us. The conceit is that Plato is on a book tour. But first he gets into a dialogue with a software engineer over whether ethics can be crowd-sourced, and he also gets himself a Chromebook so that he can be brought up to speed on what's going on around him.
Needless to say, he's a quick study and he simply loves the internet. I have him at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, on a panel of child-rearing experts--one a Tiger Mom and the other a psychoanalyst--discussing how to raise an exceptional child. He gets a brain scan and discusses with two neuroscientists whether neuroscience has answered the question of free will once and for all and in the negative. He helps an advice columnist answer readers' questions about love and sex.
Example: I'm a grad student in a job-drained humanities field and my professor has offered to be my "professor with benefits. Believe it or not, Plato addresses an analogous question in one of his dialogues, the Phaedrus. Whenever I can I weave passages from his own dialogues into our contemporary dialogues. But I also do that thing halfway between taking dictation and putting words into his mouth. And to do that I had to recreate him as a character, the way he had recreated Socrates. And what is he like, my Plato, besides being constantly edified by the moral truths we now take for granted but which had to be philosophically argued for and politically fought for in the interim since he thought?
What, no slaves? Why should we read him? The Platonic dialogues have a special appeal as a very accessible type of philosophy. They use short speeches and clever repartee to explore philosophical topics and are refreshing to read if one struggles with longer philosophical essays. Their method of finding truth through debate and discussion, not assertion, suits our era of deconstruction and irony.
The focus in these dialogues is on the very process of intellectual exploration, not the end point of the inquiry. Here we find no flat assertions of a philosophical thesis but rather a tentative reaching after truth in a discussion among a set of friends.
Instead of a smooth statement of theory that one instinctively wants to pick holes in, one finds debate, disagreement, and even humor. One of the most important features of the Platonic dialogue is that the contention of various points of view are never fully resolved.
The process is more important than the conclusions. This literary quality is also advanced by the fact that the presentations of contrasting points of view are embodied in the specific characters who are discussing the topic.
We learn their histories and their intellectual perspectives in the course of the debate and see how they influence their philosophical positions. There is a natural heterodoxy in this kind of presentation.
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