Out of all the thick treatises and skinny "Aristotle for Dummies" overviews in this section, the only book that appealed to me was Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away. Rebecca Goldstein, the author, exposits five aspects of Plato's work, and then places him in five settings that allow him to expound-- or rather to inquire-- on these topics in contemporary context, supporting the thesis of her subtitle. It's more fun than Sophie's World, which, sorry pretentious millennials everywhere, I could not finish, and more inviting than, say, The Story of Philosophy, of which I may not have read every word.
Philosophy is, by definition, the love of wisdom, and Plato believes that it is inherently a Good Thing that leads to goodness. In fact, Plato says truth, beauty and goodness are the braided heart of the universe, the cause and purpose of the world's existence. Goldstein summarizes this way: "Simply to care enough about the impersoal truth, devote one's life to trying to know it, requires disciplining one's rebellious nature, which is always intent on having things its own way..." Our lower natures don't want objective truth, but only the knowledge that will support our own agendas, so simply seeking reality is a corrective to that egocentric self-indulgence. Goldstein portrays Plato as a huge fan of Google.
Goldstein's Plato would also be a huge fan of Nerd Night: Research Speed Dating Edition, which I attended last night. Researchers sat at tables, prepared to give the elevator pitch for their projects, while our mission was to pepper them with questions. I learned about everything from bumper sticker archives to whether Neanderthals wore jewelry (probably). So I was made to pay attention to things I thought I didn't care about and facts that did not fit tidily into my preconceived worldview, and apparently Plato did recognize great value in that practice. I wonder if the real Socrates would have been as enthusiastic about this event, though, or about Google for that matter, since the vision of Truth, Beauty and Goodness portrayed in the dialogues seems to take a lot of time to uncover and experience-- time that just about anyone who has to work for a living will be hard pressed to find.
In fact, Goldstein does bring up and never satisfactorily dismisses the charge that Plato was an elitist, setting up requirements for the Good Life that could only be met by the small percentage of the population that had the aptitude and the leisure to spend hours a day mooching around chatting. (Ironically, the Socratic method was very important to the developers of the Paideia Proposal, built on the decidedly non-Socratic principle that “All children deserve the same quality of education, not just the same quantity.”) Goldstein also devotes a whole chapter to the practice of pederasty in Athens, which strikes me as being a perfect example of elitism in the form of institutionalized sexual exploitation.
I am the first to say that we can't usually judge or even label ancient behavior by modern sensibilities, but the very parameters of this Athenian mentoring system with a sexual component demonstrate that it was oppressive to children. The boys are actually instructed to, for all practical purposes, lie still and think of Athens while their mentors do what they like to their bodies. And I say that any time a person is told up front that his best bet is to dissociate, that is not a healthy situation. It's always been very difficult for me to take the Dialogues seriously when they tend to be framed with chitchat about so-and-so's hot new slave, and I think it's because that kind of talk just reminds me that the Athenians did not think that all their high ideals were for everyone. They believed that the mass of men, and certainly of women, existed only to serve them so they could have the leisure to contemplate said ideals. I believe that people of all income levels and IQs can be valuable and can live a good life.
Yet I agree that Plato does still matter, and philosophy does still matter. It is my experience that, although not everyone is constantly tormented by questions like, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" or "How can we know that we actually know anything?" the existence of people who work on such questions is just as vital to our society's functioning as is the existence of people who know how to operate hydroelectric plants or the Federal Reserve. I wish that the inquiries of Plato's friend Socrates had pushed a little further into practical ethics and led that little group to advocate a more equitable society than the one they found themselves in, but Goldstein does make an excellent case that they were asking important questions and starting to pave the way to some useful answers. They did not remain bound by their society in every respect.
For example, Goldstein talks a lot about the question of "mattering." She references the "axial age," a time from 800-200 BC when peoples all over the world began asking themselves what it was all about. What is the meaning of life? What's the point if we're just going to die in the end? (The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible will get you inside the head of one axial age philosopher's questions, if you don't really understand what we are trying to solve here.) Many ancient peoples concluded that they mattered because of the tribe they belonged to. That was part of Athenian thinking on the subject: Athenians mattered because they belonged to the greatest polis on earth, and thus their glory and their virtue came largely from their participation in political life. Socrates, however, refused to participate in politics. Despite Plato's violent distaste for Homeric poetry, Socrates seemed to subscribe more to the Homeric view that "mattering" was a matter for the individual, and that 100% of one's significance came from one's own personal excellence-- in any field, whether athletics, intellect, war, or whatever endeavor might offer an opportunity to be outstanding.
Obviously, both these definitions of mattering are unacceptable to my democratic impulses. If significance comes from group affiliation, there is no hope for those born on the outside. If significance is only for the outstanding, there is no hope for the vast majority that must form the field in which the exceptional stand. The monotheistic answer-- that significance comes from being made in the image of God, being in relationship with God, fulfilling whatever role God put you in-- is the only one on offer in the Axial Age that contained the seeds of equality. I think too often, though, that modern believers still fall into the traps of tribal or personal exceptionalism. We think that we all have to be special, we all have to find our spectacular callings, or God will be displeased. Or we think that we are already special because of our denominational, political or national affiliation. I, for one, would like to live by what I profess to believe: that every person matters, every person deserves an education, every person deserves to be free, every person contributes, every person is important, regardless of his or her ability to excel or his or her membership in any particular tribe.
Although I don't agree with Plato's (or Goldstein's!) answers to some of the questions posited in this book, I appreciate the spirit of inquiry that marks it and the thoughts it provoked. By the way, Plato at the Googleplex had the additional and rare virtue of being a page-turner about philosophy! Recommended!
