Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

by Rebecca Goldstein

Is philosophy obsolete? Are the ancient questions still relevant in the age of cosmology and neuroscience, not to mention crowd-sourcing and cable news? The acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provides a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today’s debates on religion, morality, politics, and science.
 
At the origin of Western philosophy stands Plato, who got about as much wrong as one would expect from a thinker who lived 2,400 years ago. But Plato’s role in shaping philosophy was pivotal. On her way to considering the place of philosophy in our ongoing intellectual life, Goldstein tells a new story of its origin, re-envisioning the extraordinary culture that produced the man who produced philosophy.
 
But it is primarily the fate of philosophy that concerns her. Is the discipline no more than a way of biding our time until the scientists arrive on the scene? Have they already arrived? Does philosophy itself ever make progress? And if it does, why is so ancient a figure as Plato of any continuing relevance? Plato at the Googleplex is Goldstein’s startling investigation of these conundra. She interweaves her narrative with Plato’s own choice for bringing ideas to life—the dialogue.
 
Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and embarked on a multicity speaking tour. How would he handle the host of a cable news program who denies there can be morality without religion?  How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a tiger mom on how to raise the perfect child? How would he answer a neuroscientist who, about to scan Plato’s brain, argues that science has definitively answered the questions of free will and moral agency? What would Plato make of Google, and of the idea that knowledge can be crowd-sourced rather than reasoned out by experts? With a philosopher’s depth and a novelist’s imagination and wit, Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us by allowing us to eavesdrop on Plato as he takes on the modern world.

(With black-and-white photographs throughout.)

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Science, Politics, Psychology, Unfinished

461 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein grew up in White Plains, New York, and graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving the Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy, and immediately went on to graduate work at Princeton University, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy. While in graduate school she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship and a Whiting Foundation Fellowship.

After earning her Ph.D. she returned to her alma mater, where she taught courses in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, the rationalists, the empiricists, and the ancient Greeks. It was some time during her tenure at Barnard that, quite to her own surprise, she used a summer vacation to write her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem. As she described it,

"To me the process is still mysterious. I had just come through a very emotional time, having not only become a mother but having also lost my father, whom I adored. In the course of grieving for my father and glorying in my daughter, I found that the very formal, very precise questions I had been trained to analyze weren’t gripping me the way they once had. Suddenly, I was asking the most `unprofessional’ sorts of questions (I would have snickered at them as a graduate student), such as how does all this philosophy I’ve studied help me to deal with the brute contingencies of life? How does it relate to life as it’s really lived? I wanted to confront such questions in my writing, and I wanted to confront them in a way that would insert `real life’ intimately into the intellectual struggle. In short I wanted to write a philosophically motivated novel."

The Mind-Body Problem was published by Random House and went on to become a critical and popular success.

More novels followed: The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind; The Dark Sister, which received the Whiting Writer’s Award, Mazel, which received the 1995 National Jewish Book Award and the 1995 Edward Lewis Wallant Award; and Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal, and Quantum Physics. Her book of short stories, Strange Attractors, received a National Jewish Book Honor Award. Her 2005 book Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, was featured in articles in The New Yorker and The New York Times, received numerous favorable reviews, and was named one of the best books of the year by Discover magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Sun. Goldstein’s most recent published book is, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity, published in May 2006, and winner of the 2006 Koret International Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought. Her new novel, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, will be published by Pantheon Books.

In 1996 Goldstein became a MacArthur Fellow, receiving the prize which is popularly known as the “Genius Award.” In awarding her the prize, the MacArthur Foundation described her work in the following words:

"Rebecca Goldstein is a writer whose novels and short stories dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling. Her books tell a compelling story as they describe with wit, compassion and originality the interaction of mind and heart. In her fiction her characters confront problems of faith: religious faith and faith in an ability to comprehend the mysteries of the physical world as complementary to moral and emotional states of being. Goldstein’s writings emerge as brilliant arguments for the belief that fiction in our time may be the best vehicle for involving readers in questions of morality and existence."

Goldstein is married to linguist and author Steven Pinker. She lives in Boston and in Truro, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plato on Goodreads

MANNY: Plato, welcome to Goodreads. I can't tell you what an honor--

PLATO: No, no, please, I find this fascinating. What a wonderful agora you have created for philosophical discussions! I have been exploring it all day...

MANNY: You have?

PLATO: I will come back again. I am still not accustomed to the extraordinary profusion of books that your time has produced. The site is quite helpful in locating the more interesting ones.

MANNY: Well, that's, ah, that's very nice to hear. But actually, I was hoping we could discuss one particular book, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's Plato at the Googleplex.

PLATO: By all means. I would be delighted to discuss Rebecca's book.

MANNY: Ah... good! Okay, ah, so what did you think of it?

PLATO: What did you think of it, Manny?

MANNY: I'm, um, I'm trying to decide where to start. First of all, the sheer chutzpah. It's not so easy to try and write your own Socratic dialogues--

PLATO: You would know that better than most people, I imagine?

MANNY: [blushing] Oh, did you come across my little pieces? I'm terribly sorry if--

PLATO: Really, there's no need to apologize. You have no idea how many people have parodied me over the last 2,400 years! I found your Euthydemus quite amusing.

MANNY: [blushes again] That's, uh, that's extremely gracious of you. I meet a lot of sophists.

PLATO: I can see you do. But why don't you tell me more about your impressions of Plato at the Googleplex?

MANNY: Uh, yes. So, I guess I thought it was pretty good. She seemed to have put a lot of work into it and she did a fine job of quoting your actual words whenever possible. That was clever.

PLATO: I also approved of her methods.

MANNY: It certainly helped me understand you better. I hadn't grasped the historical context at all - the Peleponnesian War, and the Reign of the Thirty, and the importance of Alcibiades. And, even more centrally, the way in which you and Socrates were trying to disentangle the notion of arete from that of kleos and turn it into our modern notion of "virtue". That was extraordinary.

PLATO: I know Rebecca thought a great deal about those parts.

MANNY: A lot of it was funny too. Your conversations with Cheryl the media escort, and the arrogant neuroscientist, and the thinly disguised version of Bill O'Reilly. She made sure people knew about your playful side.

PLATO: Why is it so seldom mentioned? Don't my jokes translate well?

MANNY: And, heck, all the stuff about eros and learning. How you can only really learn from the people you love. Dammit, she loves you and she's not afraid to admit it. That was, um, that was actually very moving. But--

PLATO: All this, and there's a "but"?

MANNY: I'm afraid there is.

PLATO: Go on.

MANNY: Well... she keeps telling us about how vitally important you consider mathematics. How you'd only let mathematicians into your Academy, and how the guardian caste in your kallipolis, your Republic, all have to study mathematics for decades. But here you were, in the twenty-first century...

PLATO: Yes?

MANNY: Okay... why weren't you talking more to the scientists? I mean, hard scientists, cosmologists and particle physicists? There are a few mentions here and there, but it's just a sentence or two in passing. In particular, why aren't you talking to people about quantum mechanics? If there's one thing in the modern age that I'm completely certain you'd want know about, it's quantum mechanics. Talk about escaping from the Cave. It could hardly be more literal. You'd find it astonishing, much more astonishing than seeing a low-resolution picture of your brain on fMRI.

PLATO: So you think the book should have had more about cosmology and quantum mechanics?

MANNY: Well... yeah! Of course it should. It's obvious. Why isn't it there?

PLATO: To be honest, I'm a little surprised to hear you asking the question.

MANNY: You are?

PLATO: Tell me, did you find the book dull?

MANNY: No, not at all.

PLATO: Did the lack of cosmology and quantum mechanics stop you from reading it?

MANNY: Uh, to be honest, I couldn't put it down. I read it pretty much nonstop all weekend until I'd finished it.

PLATO: Despite the shortage of cosmology and quantum mechanics?

MANNY: Well, I guess so. But all the same, I kept thinking about them.

PLATO: I'm glad you did. Just one more question...

MANNY: Yes?

PLATO: Did you ever hear about a thing called a "sequel"?

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophizing With Plato And With Rebecca Goldstein

Philosophy is the love of wisdom. In her new book, "Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away" (2014) Rebecca Goldstein examines the continuous nature of philosophical questioning through a partly expository partly fictional presentation of the thought of the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato. The twentieth century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead observed that all Western philosophy basically constitutes a series of "footnotes to Plato".

Rebecca Goldstein serves as both author and guide in this latest "footnote to Plato". One can only be humbled by her range of learning and her literary skill. Goldstein, a MacArthur Fellow, has written philosophical studies, including a book about Spinoza, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (Jewish Encounters) and philosophical novels, most recently "36 Arguments for the Existence of God". 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (Vintage Contemporaries) She combines philosophy, fiction, and much else in this book. It is rare that a thinker can write with such scholarship and insight on diverse, difficult subjects such as ancient philosophy and history, popular culture, Spinoza, and the mathematical philosopher Kurt Godel. Goldstein does so with a breathtaking ease.

Goldstein aims to show how philosophy, in the face of its many detractors, remains of critical importance. There are many ways of approaching the question of the continued value of philosophy, but Goldstein here does so almost exclusively through a detailed consideration of Plato. She argues that Plato, who wrote over 2400 years ago did not have the best or final answers to philosophical questions. She finds Plato important in raising and formulating questions, showing their significance, pointing out directions, and in being open to differing points of view and to changing his mind. Broadly speaking, Goldstein's Plato asks readers and students to consider what makes life important and worth living. Goldstein argues that Plato's approach to this question led to the approach of modern secularism as opposed, most obviously, to the nearly contemporaneous writings of the Hebrew prophets, as well as to the teachings of the Buddha, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism. Again in a broad sense, Goldstein follows Plato in his emphasis on secularism, mathematics, science, and on thinking in a humanistic way about the value of human life.

There are books and jokes that begin with the line "Plato walks into a bar and ... " which Goldstein trades on to an extent. There is no mistaking, however, the serious, erudite character of this book. The book alternates two kinds of discussions. In the first, Goldstein writes as a philosopher discussing Plato's teachings and his character, in so far as they can be determined, his literary works, his relationship with Socrates. Her discussion is historically informed. When I first studied Plato in the 1960s, little attention was given to putting Plato's writings in the context of ancient Greek history. Philosophical study at the time tended to be markedly ahistorical. It focused almost exclusively on setting out and analyzing arguments. Goldstein, to the contrary, develops her Plato in the context of the Homeric poems, the Persian wars, the rise of Athens, and the war with Sparta. She tries to show how key Platonic concepts, such as that indicated by the difficult word "arete" changed in Plato's development of them from their historic background in Greek thought. Her expositions of Plato manage to be passionate, eloquent, and learned at once. She offers copious footnotes not only to Plato's texts but to a vast range of modern scholarship.

These expository chapters each alternate with a fictitious scene. Plato is brought to life in our contemporary 21st century, speaks English, and engages in discussion with a variety of characters. Instead of walking into a bar, Plato, when the reader first meets him in person walks into the Googleplex where he meets, becomes fascinated with, and masters the use of the Internet. He is at the Googleplex for a book signing. In the process, he has a discussion with a hostess, who questions the value of "elitist" philosophy and a young man. In subsequent chapters, Plato discusses education and child-rearing with a psychotherapist and warrior mom. He assists an Ann Landers-type columnist in responding to letters for help with love problems. He appears on a cable tv news program with an obnoxiously hostile host. Finally Plato has a discussion about the mind and body with a neuroscientist and his young assistant before submitting to a scanning of his brain.

These fictional present-day dialogues are carried out with panache and with a great deal of laugh-aloud humor. The discussions are tough and colloquial and display a surprisingly sure pulse on contemporary habits. Plato receives a convincing portrayal as Goldstein uses and refers to his own dialogues wherever possible. The discussions sometimes get bogged down. But these chapters compliment Goldstein's expository sections. She succeeds in her goal of showing the questions Plato raised about reality, ethics, knowledge, and the nature of a meaningful human life remain embedded in contemporary life and are ignored or brushed aside with peril.

This book touched me deeply. As a philosophy major in the 1960s, I became enamored of Plato. I studied classical Greek with the intent of understanding him better and reading his works in the original. I pursued a different career and returned often to Plato and to other philosophy, including Spinoza. Goldstein draws many parallels between Plato and Spinoza and has also written about him. In addition to the philosophical discussions, the book brought back memories about why I began to love Plato and philosophy and continue to study.

For all its literary flourishes in the fictional sections, this book is slow and difficult, both in the text and in the detailed notes which are essential for understanding. The readers of this book will likely be those who are already committed to the value of the philosophic endeavor. Such readers, and those new to philosophy but willing to engage with Plato and Goldstein, will find this book inspiring. It made me want to go back and reread Plato again. Books tend to find their own proper readers.

Robin Friedman

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plato was born in 428 or 427 BCE and died in 348 or 347 BCE at about 81, and, to Rebecca Goldstein's credit, he comes back to life in this book.

So do his times. The Greek city-states (poleis), and especially Athens, reached their peak after winning the Persian Wars. The way the author portrays the situation, they then no longer had to look back at an age of Homeric giants before the dark centuries. Instead, they--most particularly, the Athenians--saw themselves as giants and set out to express that with their sculpture and architecture, their democratic politics and luxury and cultural advances. Full of themselves they proceeded to knock themselves out, expending their energies in the Peloponnesian War in which all the poleis fought each other and among themselves, leading eventually to Athens coming under duress and, eventually, to its being conquered.

Plato's lifetime and the above events occurred during the time span that has been called the Axial Age, roughly 800-200 BCE--so called because the various alternative ideas envisioned then continue to radiate to this day. It seemed humanity all around the globe had come to a point where certain questions were being asked about the meaning of life and what makes a good life--in other words, normative questions. In Athens those questions were asked in human, not religious, terms. The Athenians also confronted the possibility that human life didn't matter, and they all, including Plato, believed that one had to do something extraordinary to make one's life worth living--something in this life. It was better to be a slave of the cruelest master than to be king over all the dead (the Odyssey).

And for Athenians, some lives were more extraordinary than others. Some lives mattered and some didn't.

The author sees Athens as having a certain politically framed answer to the question of what makes life worth living. Basically, society's answer was that it was being an Athenian that made life worth living--Athenian exceptionalism. So here comes Socrates the gadfly asking questions that undermined what everyone accepted as true, or Socrates as represented in Plato's dialogues, anyway. What looked so great through Athenian eyes gazing at the perfect Parthenon looked very different to a conquered person brought in as a slave to work the silver mines whose riches flowed to Athens--mines worked by 20,000 slaves, primarily captives of war, who, once entering the mines, never came out, never stood up straight again, and died within a year. Socrates--and through his Socratic dialogues, Plato--attacked and undermined the commonplaces, what everyone assumed to be true about the good life.

Kleos, or glory (or song) was the inherited answer to what makes a life worth living--fame, celebrity. In classical Greece culture was moving toward areté, but still imbued with kleos-like characteristics. From full-fledged kleos, unrestrained individualism, hubris, like that of Alcibiades, could break out; political areté was meant to subject kleos to the needs of the polis. Plato moved the meaning of areté closer to our term virtue, but that meant loss of control for the polis. With fame still involved, it continues to matter what others think. Once the concept of areté approaches virtue, that doesn't matter; one does the right thing no matter what others think. With that step, areté is no longer reducible to whatever is good for society, in other words, good politically, but now has the potential to bring one into conflict with society.

Goldstein's picture is that the polis could tolerate Socrates when they were strong and on top, but when they had fallen on hard times, Socrates the gadfly became intolerable.

Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods the city believes in, and of introducing other divinities (daimonia) and he is guilty of corrupting the young. The penalty is death. (pp. 300-301, from 2nd and 3rd century CE sources)

The author says the charges themselves were accurate. Socrates was undermining Athens' norms. Athens, though, had fallen from its glory days. Athens itself had been out of control. In the conduct of war and in the matter of their alliances there had been atrocities and massacres. They preferred to look at Socrates rather than at themselves. The resulting execution was traumatic for Plato. She doesn't think Plato was a traitor to the democracy, but he was someone who found it difficult to have a high regard for people.

After Socrates' execution, Plato spent a decade with the Pythagoreans, who were mathematicians and mystics. In one of his works (the Phaedo) he explores the concept of immortality of the soul in a way that morphed into the Christian view of heaven, but the author thinks he was exploring the concept, not reifying it. In various of his myths Plato used the concept of a soul able to survive the body, but in the Timaeus, for example, we become immortal to the extent we can resist absorption by our appetites and ambitions and instead cultivate learning and wisdom, and shape ourselves as much as possible into accordance with the music of the spheres--expanding ourselves to hold more of infinity while we are alive.

One of the concepts I have difficulty with is the "divine braid," the true, the beautiful, and the good. I can grasp the first two parts, truth and beauty, but as for the good, and the best reason as explaining why there is something rather than nothing, I'm coming up empty.

Another challenging area is the morality of sexuality in the Athenian polis--not the homosexual aspect, and not the use of eros to break through to new learning and insights (I have some affinity for that concept)--but the combination of power and sex with mentoring. It's not that I don't grasp the concept, but that it's so opposed to what we consider moral today--that a person in a position of authority is not to use that influence to obtain sex with someone under his or her authority. So in today's moral thinking a student is no longer considered able to consent to a sexual relationship with his or her teacher. In the Athens of antiquity, then, an older person would intentionally exploit erotic activity with a youth for the sake of his own development. That shakes my notion of the evolution of morality. It is just different, not something that's going to evolve into today's beliefs!

I can understand why science can't get rid of philosophy, given that science rests on philosophical underpinnings.

This book isn't all exposition. Each explanatory chapter is followed by a chapter with Plato in a modern setting and, of course, in dialogue. I won't tell you what each setting is; that could be a spoiler.

It was my husband who first found this book and wanted to read it. We rushed out, brought it home, and plunged right in. It was only then that I discovered the author is married to Steven Pinker--a fact which made me feel better about Pinker. But now that I've read this book, I think he's rubbed off on her, too. It's not pronounced, but there's a little tendency on her part to diss religion and look at all religion as fundamentalism. Likewise, there are indications of a political slant toward identifying segments of society she may consider not-like-her with the the mired-in-exceptionalism Athenian population. Because, certainly, once we become political, everyone can play that game; it isn't limited to those we consider out opponents.

But I liked this book. The going did get a little rougher toward the end, but it was a good trip overall. I was glad to make Plato's acquaintance and get to know him better, and likewise for Rebecca Goldstein.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I finally went with a 2-star rating for this book.

Strike that. Reading through this review as part of putting some old books on new bookshelves a decade later, and seeing hubby Steve Pinker's later writings and belling her with that, and another decade's thought about the problems with Platonism? One star it is. Other reasons? Most her own writing history is novels, which explains more about this book. And, in her one other philosophy book, about Kurt Gödel, I have little doubt that she attributed items to his Incompleteness Theorum that really belong to Tarski's Undefinability Theorem. Stephen Budiansky made the same error and I trust his insight more than hers.

I will note that Goldstein did stimulate my thought at times, albeit half the time to take notes on how she was wrong, and did get me to modify somewhat the harsh take I’ve had on Socrates since reading Izzy Stone, but, the book is still not that good.

First, a couple of overarching issues.

I am discomfited by a professional philosopher diving into the tank of commercial toutery. Plato can’t just have a laptop, he has to have a Chromebook. He can’t just like the Internet, he has to like Google for searches rather than using a generic term for Internet search. He has to like Google’s cloud-based services. He has to like Google so much that, per one chapter that gives the book its title, he does indeed visit Google’s Googleplex, where much of the chapter’s dialogue is taken up by a Google PR flak.

Frankly, it made me want to vomit. Strangely, even among “negative” reviewers, I’m seemingly the first to hit that much on this issue.
The second overarching issue, is despite all the puffery on the blurbs and on some five-star reviews, Goldstein is not that good of a writer in my opinion. The book lacks some coherence, including exactly how she’s trying to make Plato relevant for today and why. Plus, some specific writing tricks do not float my boat.

On page 192, she says in a footnote: “I’m not sure whether Plato is just managing Munitz here or is really implying that she’s guardian material.” Bulls***. Don’t go Stanley Fish on me. You know full well what your conscious intention was with the passage you footnoted.
I'm skipping around a bit, in part to get more feel for the book, and in part because it hasn't floated my boat that much so far, despite all the advance touts it's gotten.

First, Goldstein, while noting Whitehead's observation about all later philosophy being but footnotes to Plato and Aristotle, then noting many modern philosophers disagree, doesn't explain why she, essentially, comes down on the side of Whitehead. And, as a philosopher, she knows that for a philosopher not to “argumentatively” justify one’s decision or stance on something like this is …. Unphilosophical!

Second, some of her specific stances related to Platonism are ones that are also contentious. The idea that there’s no single character in Plato’s dialogues that truly represents him? I know that’s nowhere unanimous. One need not believe that Socrates is Plato’s sole voice to nonetheless believe that he is his primary one, and certainly so in his early and middle dialogues.

Third, she buys wholeheartedly and blindly into Plato’s description of who the Sophists were. Plenty a critic of this position has noted that the elitists like Socrates, and arguably, Plato, disliked the Sophists not because they proposed to teach “sophistry” in its modern English terms, but because they proposed to, relatively inexpensively, teach the basics of rhetorical tools that would help level the social and legal playing field between the rich and the non-rich.

Fourth, she’s not proven at best, possibly wrong at worse, on the background of “Ivriim,” which may be the root the Hebrew word for “Hebrew.” Yes, it does mean “pass over,” or “pass through,” in its verbal root, but, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Hebrews applied it to themselves as “over the Jordan.” First, no ancient people are likely to define themselves this way, in terms of another culture or nation’s geographic point of view. Nor are the Jews likely to have said this about themselves because their mythical ancestor came from Transjordan and beyond. And, her interpretation starts with the noun form.

Better understandings of the root of this word are that as people “passing through,” it can mean immigrants, without geographic reference. Again, though, would a people likely refer to themselves that way? Interestingly, the verb is used in Genesis 15, where the torches pass between the cuts of meat during the Abrahamic covenant ceremony. That is one possible alternative etymology.

Another? “Hebrews” may well instead be a patronymic from alleged ancestor Eber (same consonantal Hebrew). And, the older attempts to connect them to the Egyptian “Hapiru,” while left by the wayside today, may not be totally dead.

Anyway, the fact that Goldstein, in a book about Plato, feels the need not just to talk about “Hebrews,” but the Hebrew etymology more than once, and possibly getting it wrong each and every time, is also disconcerting.

That’s from the first chapter.

On talking about the Republic, she made me realize that, of course, Plato’s ideas for youth education founder on Piaget’s stages of development. Pre-adolescents wouldn’t have been ready for his program. Surely, somebody else has mentioned that somewhere. But, she doesn’t.

Related?

I just realized that Plato's Allegory of the Cave has two holes in it as an analogy. First, if all we see our shadows, each of us has to be in our own cave; we can't be in one common cave because, of course, other people have to be shadows, too. Of course, to write it that way would wreck some of its force. Second, Plato talks about one person **being freed*** then **compelled** to re-see things. Plato doesn't mention a persona agent, but the language sure implies one. And, of course, no other person can compel new knowledge. Even if an agent is not intended, the passivity of the allegory, the "being freed," is just wrong.

Also, one need not agree with Izzy Stone’s attributing Socrates’ death entirely to legitimate politics to nonetheless say that it was part of it.

What I got from all of this is a Goldstein who largely believes in the largely idealized picture of Socrates that Plato has handed us.

So, I guess she stimulated my mind to reject the Whitehead idea that the rest of philosophy is but footnotes to Plato and Aristotle.

Besides the Googleplex chapter, one other one rings very false. That’s the one about Plato appearing on a would-be Fox News with an ersatz Bill O’Reilly.

It all adds up to the fact that she is NOT a skilled writer, period and end of story, despite the fluffy touts from A.C. Grayling and many another. She needed an editor with a good understanding of both philosophy and classics, and a firm and heavy hand, and got none. (Sic semper the decline of the modern book industry.)

Finally, from all this, no matter my interest in philosophy, I won’t be reading another book of hers.

And, I know now more of why it's that bad. Goldstein is Steve Pinker's wife. Something must have rubbed off or cross-pollinated. http://www.theguardian.com/culture/20...

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب يقديم أهم القضايا الفلسفية المؤطرة للفكرة الفلسفي كالخير و الأخلاق و المعرفة و العدالة مكتوبة بنفس طريقة محاورات أفلاطون حيث يعود هذا الأخير مرة أخرى الى الدفاع عن الفلسفة و عن بقائها و قدرتها على الاستمرارية و التجديد من خلال محاورات في القرن الواحد و العشرين في إطار ثقافة الغوغل.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plato’s back!

Reading Plato was by far my favorite part of studying philosophy in college, and it was sheer delight to encounter him again in this book. Author Rebecca Goldstein, both a philosophy professor and a novelist, poses an interesting question: Now that the sciences have advanced so far in explaining the inner and outer worlds of our universe--from the subatomic level to the farthest galaxies, and from the genetic codes for life to the structures of the brain that support thought, emotion, and morality--is there any role left for philosophy? Some scientists think there is not, but it won’t be giving away much to say that Goldstein disagrees. Then there is also the question: Has philosophy since the time of Plato made the same kinds of advances as other fields of knowledge? And: What would Plato make of our modern world--would he have anything to tell us, or, since we’re talking about Plato, it might be more accurate to phrase that question what would Plato ask us to think deeply about?

Goldstein approaches these questions with two methods, used in alternate chapters. First there are the expository chapters, well written discourses examining the questions that have been posed, including any new questions that come up along the way, and also providing some fascinating background history. These take a satisfying amount of mind exercise and it felt good to rejoin the philosophical discussion around a theoretical seminar table, but it’s the chapters following the expository ones that are the real reward for all that thought work. Because in them Plato is back, here in our modern world, and like Socrates he is engaging everyone he meets in dialogue, allowing them all to take another look at their unexamined assumptions.

Plato doesn’t do one-sided lectures, of course, and in these back and forths he is learning too--how to avoid using sexist language for instance. People Plato delves into discussion with include a Google software engineer who thinks crowd-sourcing is the most reliable way to attain information which he equates with wisdom, a book tour escort who is sure she knows how best to live her own life, a Fox news host who’s proud of his rigid beliefs about religion and morality, a neuroscientist who doesn’t believe in conscious free will, and a tiger mom and psychoanalyst who debate with each other and Plato about how best to raise a child. These sections are as substantive as the expository chapters, but they are also sometimes laugh out loud funny. Goldstein has put the fun back into philosophy while making a strong, well reasoned case that it still has relevance in today’s world.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca Goldstein is a novelist, a philosophy professor, and a formerly Orthodox Jew, so it is no wonder that I, an aspiring novelist, a former philosophy major, and a currently Orthodox Jew, am a fan of hers. Her first novel was assigned in one of my college classes, and when another of my professors saw it, he said, “Philosophy fiction. That ought to be a genre, like science fiction.” Now that “The Good Place” has been such a phenomenon, perhaps the genre is coming into its own.

This book alternates between fiction and non-fiction. The non-fiction sections explain the philosophy of Plato and the history of ancient Greece. They’re necessary to understand the fictional sections, but they can be as dry and dull as any philosophy textbook. It’s not to everyone’s tastes. But the fictional sections make the book worthwhile. The premise is that Plato is alive in the 21st century and is doing an American book tour. He speaks at Google (hence the title) and the 92nd Street Y (my favorite chapter). He has an interview on what seems to be Fox News. And in the final chapter, he gets an MRI of his brain, so the mind-body problem gets a high-tech upgrade.

One of the interesting tidbits I learned about Plato was that before becoming a philosopher, he wanted to be a poet and playwright, which of course, was high art in ancient Greece. The book cites one historian’s opinion that the Dialogues were read as plays in Plato’s academy, which makes me want to see them adapted now. How about a “Good Place” spin-off set in the Cave? It might be Chidi’s idea of Heaven.

I’ll definitely be reading more of Rebecca Goldstein, but I have to say the genre of philosophy fiction is hard to pull off. Parts of this book were entertaining and even made me laugh out loud. But some of it was just a slog, and when you’re talking about something as complex as philosophy, I don’t think there’s any other way. Depth is good, but achieving depth through engaging storytelling takes incredible mastery. Unfortunately, this book only hits that peak part of the time.

[Alan Johnson]

I have given this interesting book a five-star rating, because it is an excellent introduction to Plato, philosophy generally, and ancient Greek history. In explaining Plato's historical context, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein consciously—and I think successfully—attempts to find a golden mean between historicism (assuming that a writer's thought is merely a product of his/her time) and what she calls "philosophical insularity" (pp. 161-62). One might add that a golden mean also exists between historicism and anachronism/presentism (interpreting an earlier author solely from the current reader's own historical-cultural-ideological perspective, a characteristic defect of postmodernism as well as historical triumphalism). By resurrecting Plato from the dead and placing him in our own time, Goldstein shows how our philosophical ideas have progressed—and often not progressed—from Plato's deep understanding. She uses Plato's own dialogue format (and other literary devices) to situate him in contemporary circumstances. Goldstein's dialogues are masterpieces of art, wit, and philosophical insight. Like Plato, Goldstein has a literary bent that is in service to her love of wisdom, and, like Plato, she does not hesitate to satirize contemporary popular culture when appropriate. I found myself literally laughing out loud at many of her depictions of twenty-first-century characters. And her dialogues are interspersed with helpful nonfictional expositions regarding Plato, philosophy, and history. Several of these are outstanding.

I do not, however, agree with all of Goldstein's statements and interpretations. The following are two examples of such disagreement.

First, in discussing Plato's test in The Republic for young people to be advanced to the educational track of philosophers and eventual guardians/rulers, Goldstein has her fictional Plato state the following (pp. 198-99): "What I proposed was having our children be told glorious tales to stir their imaginations, very much stressing all the time that these tales were true, and then seeing which among the children can resist them, can see the logical inconsistencies within these tales, and see all their inconsistencies with other truths that they have been told (Republic 413c-414a)."

What Plato actually wrote at this precise location of The Republic was the following ("Socrates" is the narrator; paragraph breaks are omitted, and the entire quotation is not indented due to the technical limitations of the present format):

[413C] “And I imagine that you too would claim that people are bewitched who change their opinions when they’re either entranced by pleasure or in dread of something frightening.” “Yes,” he said, “it’s likely that everything that fools people is bewitching.” “Then as I was just saying, one needs to find out which of them are the best guardians of the way of thinking they have at their sides, that the thing they always need to do is to do what seems to them to be best for the city. So they need to be observed right from childhood by people who set tasks for them in which someone would be most likely to forget such a thing or be fooled out of it; anyone who remembers it and [413D] is hard to fool is to be chosen and anyone who doesn’t is to be rejected. Isn’t that so?” “Yes.” “And laborious jobs, painful sufferings, and competitions also need to be set up for them in which these same things are to be observed.” “That’s right,” he said. “Thus a contest needs to be made,” I said, “for the third form as well, that of bewitchment, and it needs to be watched. The same way people check out whether colts are frightened when they lead them into noisy commotions, the guardians, when young, need to be taken into some terrifying situations and then quickly shifted [413E] into pleasant ones, so as to test them much more than gold is tested in a fire. If someone shows himself hard to bewitch and composed in everything, a good guardian of himself and of the musical style that he learned, keeping himself to a rhythm and harmony well-suited to all these situations, then he’s just the sort of person who’d be most valuable both to himself and to a city. And that one among the children and the youths and the men who is tested and always [414A] comes through unscathed is to be appointed as ruler of the city as well as guardian, and honors are to be given to him while he’s living and upon his death, when he’s allotted the most prized of tombs and other memorials. Anyone not of that sort is to be rejected. It seems to me, Glaucon,” I said, “that the selection and appointment of rulers and guardians is something like that, described in outline, not with precision.” “It looks to me too like it would be done some such way,” he said.

Plato, Republic, trans. and ed. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2007), Kindle ed., Kindle loc. 2651-70.

Goldstein's Plato did not, therefore, accurately quote or summarize what the historical Plato actually wrote in the referenced discussion of The Republic. Goldstein may be getting at a meaning of the historical Plato that is deeply concealed in what he actually said. However, that interpretation of Plato, albeit quite interesting, would be highly speculative. More likely, Goldstein has her resurrected "Plato" provide an updated account of what he wrote millennia ago. Although this verges on the presentist fallacy, it is nevertheless interesting. The updated test would be a clever way to identify philosophic minds in our present culture, with its long history of scriptural traditions. For example, the writings of Professor Bart Ehrman (who began life as an evangelical Christian) are recent specimens of a centuries-long rational/historical critique of the Christian New Testament. Similar critiques of the Jewish scriptures go back at least to Spinoza. It is possible that an individual growing up in a religious milieu might be able to detect such contradictions even before becoming aware of the modern scholarship, and this may well have been Goldstein's own personal experience (it was certainly mine). Her updated test would, however, be less obviously applicable in ancient Athens. Plato elsewhere disposed of the gods of Greek mythology on mostly ethical grounds. Their antics were so ridiculous that the sophisticated method devised by Goldstein would probably not have been necessary for any thinking Athenian to reject the pagan gods outright (though not publicly). Accordingly, I don't object to Goldstein modernizing Plato in this manner, but, literal textualist that I am, I would have preferred that she mention her procedure in a note (as she did so well in other instances).

Second, in discussing the character of Thrasymachus in The Republic, Goldstein states (p. 155): "Thrasymachus speaks for an unregenerate Ethos of the Extraordinary that licenses unmitigated individualism. He’s an Athenian Ayn Rand." However, Thrasymachus argued that justice is the advantage of the stronger, specifically, the advantage of those who hold ruling political power. (Republic 338b, 339a). This was virtually the opposite of Ayn Rand's political philosophy. It happens that I have read most of Rand's writings—some of them (for example, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem, along with many of her essays) several times. Rand's bedrock principle was the rule of noninitiation of force, a position that Thrasymachus would vehemently have rejected. Rand applied this principle universally, especially to government. Thus, for Rand, taxation and some other governmental laws and regulations violate the principle of noninitiation of force. Rand's problem is not that she is like Thrasymachus. In fact, she emphatically rejected Thrasymachean ethics and politics. Rand's problem is that she failed to recognize that it is simply impossible to apply the principle of noninitiation of force to all governmental activities without dismantling all government, which would result, as Hobbes put it, in the war of all against all. Murray Rothbard, whom Rand expelled from her inner circle, took Rand's political theory to its logical conclusion, anarchocapitalism. Rothbard's radical libertarian approach (with competing armed private insurance companies replacing governmental police and military forces) would inevitably result in rival militias fighting for control, as in many areas of the Middle East and Africa today. Rothbard would apparently have welcomed what we now call "failed states." Rand, who accepted limited government, ridiculed anarchocapitalism and wrote that libertarianism, having no ethical principles, was destined to become a hippie movement. If she were alive today, Rand might have been surprised to see that libertarianism has degenerated not into a hippie movement but into a right-wing tea-party movement. Elitist that she was, she probably would not like what she would see. She routinely denounced the Republican Party of her day and said, in reference to Ronald Reagan, that anyone who did not believe in the right to an abortion did not believe in any individual rights at all. Unlike many tea partiers, she was a proud and public atheist. But Rand repeatedly condemned the distinction between theory and practice (she rigorously opposed the dictum that something may be true in theory but not in practice). Once upon a time, the formulation of "pure" but impractical ideologies was a preserve of the Left. For example, Marxism was applied by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao to create totalitarian states. The attempt to apply theoretically pure principles, without regard to practical consequences, now seems to be a preserve of the Right. What has been lost is the practical wisdom of Aristotle and the American Founders. As James Madison said in the Constitutional Convention on June 26, 1787, "In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce." The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422.

But, like Plato (see Plato at the Googleplex, p. 44), I digress. Notwithstanding my disagreements with some of Goldstein's statements and interpretations, her book is an original and important contribution that should be read by all those interested in philosophical inquiry. One of the many themes of the book is the present-day rivalry between science and philosophy, with some scientists arguing that there is no need or use for philosophy. Goldstein's final chapter is a thoughtfully constructed dialogue between a neuroscientist and Plato on this issue, with the neuroscientist's graduate assistant, Agatha, supporting Plato with excellent arguments. Plato and Agatha make a rational and convincing case for philosophy as a pursuit that is not invalidated by science. Indeed, philosophy will never die as long as it has such eloquent and knowledgeable advocates as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

(Originally posted June 10, 2014; italics added October 11, 2014; accidentally resaved without any changes on December 14, 2015.)

[Malola · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was beautiful. Just amazing.
It's stunning the power of Socrates rethoric Rebecca Newberger Goldstein manages to convey to the reader. I had to re-read some parts not because they're difficult (though, this is not an introductory book nor an academic one either... would Aristotle be proud of her mean?), but because they were beautifully written... with such care, love and an obvious attention to detail. (So good that it made my eyes welled up with tears.)
It describes some historical occurances as well as some cultural aspects of Ancient Greece.
I love the fact on how she uses Plato (Socrates) as a trampoline to discuss the not-solved issues related to ontology, epistemology... the whole metaphysical shebang.
A person needs some level of intelligence in order to understand complex subjects... and even more intelligence is needed if one is to make complex subjects easy to understand for the layreader. RNG is really didactic and she clearly understands deeply Plato/Socrates' soul.
Definitely worth reading for anyone who likes philosophy or is into Plato.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice survey of Plato--a philosopher I've always really admired and still think about a lot, though I'm not sure I agree with a single one of his main points. Unfortunately, there's not as much new material here as I'd hoped; and I'm not sure I was convinced of Goldstein's main argument about the usefulness of philosophy in the age of science. (The part of me that almost majored in philosophy years ago was hoping sort of blindly to be convinced.) But Goldstein has achieved something nice here: an intro to philosophy that finally isn't a chronological history, which instead just digs into everything at its source, while also being a nice history of golden age Athens. I dont love this book but I do think it's pretty cool for what it is.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 1 out of 5]

At the start of this long book the author states that Plato is elusive. He holds himself "aloof," she says. She warns us that "It is almost as naive to reduce the dialogic Socrates to a mere sock puppet for the philosopher Plato as it is to reduce Plato to a mere notetaker for the philosopher Socrates. Plato floats fugitive between these two reductions." This does not stop Goldstein, however, from telling us what Plato - in her words, "My Plato" - is saying.

Plato, her argument runs, is all about our access to the intelligible world through reason. That world is not this world. It's another world of perfection, harmony, and beauty that is manifested in the astronomical heavens and mathematical truth. This is embedded in our material world as "an immanence rather than a transcendence." Within this world there is "the permanence within the flux, the very permanence that provides the explanation for the flux."

This is the true world. We benefit from knowing of its existence and modeling ourselves after it. Moral excellence "demands that the excellence of the cosmos be assimilated into oneself," Goldstein writes. This is the world of truth, real truth, real reality where "the distortions of the cave [are] corrected." Once we know this world, we are drawn to it by love, and "it's love of an impersonal kind, not love for persons, that reforms one's moral being." For the philosophers who are able to reach these heights, they achieve a kind of immortality in their mortal world. "We are immortal only to the extent that we lose ourselves in the knowledge of reality, letting its sublimeness overtake us. We are immortal only to the extent that we allow our own selves to be rationalized by the sublime ontological rationality, ordering our own processes of thinking, desiring, and acting in accordance with the perfect proportions realized in the cosmos."

This perfection is good for society as we avoid the discord that results from subjectivity. We avoid subjectivity by debating, dialoging and achieving a "radical objectivity where reason stands outside itself," where we can see a truth that applies to all. We do this because we are drawn by the image of the perfect. "To fall in love with the impersonal beauty of objectivity, which doesn't love us back," the author writes, "is moral achievement in itself."

Plato's relevance, the author says, is that his vision of true reality transforms us and gives us an extraordinary standing. The privilege few ("the mattering class"; "mattering" is a favorite expression of the author's), "do philosophy," which is to say, "do reason." In what might be news to Nietzsche,* the author has Socrates as the model for the ages. Alcibiades, she states, "describes what is so extraordinary about Socrates in terms that are implicitly Nietzschean, an exaltation of the extraordinary individual precisely because he is irreducibly and irreplicably individual." Socrates' types then formulate conclusions for the "non-philosophical masses" who are not able to do "reason" and must be told what to do.

Addressing those who question the relevance of Plato's philosophy, Goldstein calls those who doubt, "philosophy-jeerers," another favorite term. These are the science types who question Plato's relevance. Boiled down, Goldstein sees the jeerers taking on religion as well as philosophy, lumping both together as "philosophy-theology." Religion she says rests on the authority of God-figures who tell us what is right and wrong. That's not Plato she says. Plato has us use our reason to determine right from wrong. After centuries of "theological reason," Goldstein says that Spinoza in essence rescued Plato from the God-spinners and gave us secular reason to do what Plato had intended all along. Then she states her bottom line on the question of Plato's relevance to contemporary life. Plato is all about "unpacking" the truth and "Anyone who denies this ongoing process, arguing that such normative concerns as Socrates was urging can never make a difference and thus have produced no consequences in the way of life has been lived over the centuries, has an affinity with the Athenians that summer day [the trial of Socrates] over two millennia ago, unwilling to give Socrates his due, shouting him down as he strived to be heard over their jeers."

Is the message here that "a correct reading" of Socrates or Plato (this in itself is a challenge when Goldstein and others say that Socrates is not Plato, and that Plato is not Socrates, and that Plato wrote only or primarily through Socrates and that Socrates wrote nothing) cannot be questioned? While Goldstein says that Plato's "artistic philosophy" gets us to think for ourselves, part of thinking for oneself is to read the dialogues (Plato, Socrates, Plato-Socrates - does this really matter?) directly, to think about what is being said and to form an opinion without going through filters that tell us how Plato should be read. In reading the dialogues it is possible to arrive at an alternative perspective compared to what Goldstein puts forward. More specifically, it can be difficult to read Plato and the body of his work directly and not come away with a feeling that his philosophy was driven by a religious cosmology and a phantom world. There was and is another world, with real beings, floating spirits who are judged about their relative perfection and whether they are worthy of escaping transmigration and whether they can obtain immortality. Our material life, the life of the body, our tangible reality, is not real. It is secondary and an illusion. It is life in the cave. Socrates' task was to have us form a union with the divine. Socrates task was to save souls. Plato's task was to tell us this story and to set up the state's apparatus to mold us into better beings even if we must be forced to.

Goldstein doesn't read Plato this way. Timaeus (a detailed description of the non-material world) is a myth she and others say, despite Socrates' statement right up front that he agrees with the account of what Timaeus puts forward, as opposed to the Allegory of the Cave and the Myth of Er and the chariot myth, which are clearly myth. But even if Timaeus' account were not true in all respects, it is not particularly relevant. Why is Plato providing us with all of this detail? The twin horses and the charioteer myth in Phaedrus relay a Platonic truth. If it's made up, there's still an eternal world out there someplace that is central to Plato's thought and central to our lives. This all sounds "unscientific" and is not particularly believable. Goldstein addresses this concern by stating that all of this afterlife business can be blamed on the Christians in whose theology "the good moved out, and God moved in," and who found it necessary to "replace this idea of the good, the ordering principle immanent within the cosmos, with a cosmos-transcendent God." Yet, it could very well be the other way around. Socrates' notions may have been fodder for Jesus and the Christians four centuries later.

The stuff about immortality is explained away by Goldstein in lofty-sounding words as, for example, the quote above (e.g., we are "rationalized by the sublime ontological rationality"). Other problematic parts of Plato are also explained away, reinterpreted, or not mentioned. The divine voices heard by Socrates are inspired "intuitions." The extensive references to sexual love with youth may not be what they seem as we don't really know the age of a "boy" even if we do know the best ones had peach fuzz. I don't believe that the transmigration and recollection elements are covered. The stuff of our biology that makes us feel alive is replaced by "radical objectivity," which is a perfection that makes us fake and not real. The totalitarian elements in Plato and Bertrand Russell so strongly criticized are non-issues for Goldstein, as are the elitist notions.

Clearly Goldstein is taken by Plato's being and his message. In her attempt to bring Plato into contemporary life to relay his relevance - he visits Google headquarters and such - she has Plato speaking "softly," "quietly," and "gently" in one of her dialogues. But she miscasts the position of her Plato opponents and then closes down the debate. She puts the science types into a corner by having them equate religion and philosophy. She then pulls Plato out of that fray by saying that religion is about God telling people what to do whereas Plato tells people to think for themselves, at least the philosopher types. But this is not why scientists might oppose Plato. Scientists are about this tangible, empirical world, the very world that Plato casts aside as secondary and illusory, in favor of an ethereal reality that, to many, is nothing but inspired animism. Scientists question what is meant when it is asserted by Platonic philosophers that unchanging essence explains flux. The scientists tie knowledge and reason to this world but for Plato knowledge is about a non-material world and reason is the way that world is accessed. She and others proclaim Plato's love of philosophy, wisdom and knowledge and truth. But does this itself verge on myth making? These terms are tied up with a non-material world cosmology, not this world as we are led to believe. We know about the laws of our physical world that can be understood through mathematics and the use of our rational faculties. But that's different than postulating the existence of a separate, non-material world that also includes moral laws, even if there are no gods involved.

The famed dialogic method is said to be the road to truth when it can be argued that it is nothing of the sort. Rather, Socrates' dialogue in Plato is a one-way vehicle to lead a "conversation" where he, Plato the writer or Socrates the dialogist, wants it to go. The interlocutors in the dialogues serve too conveniently as props, uttering over and over, "Yes," "It seems so," "How could it be otherwise?" Then she pulls rank for philosophy. Truth is the role for Plato and his philosophers of today. Anyone who argues otherwise and disputes Plato's relevance is linked to the Athenians of Socrates' time and dismissed as "philosophy jeerers." In our world, truth comes from honest, open give and take. It results from critical inquiry. It is science and it should be philosophy. But Plato in the dialogues stakes out the claim for sole truth. How does one have a fair debate with that?

Standards for the Good and all of that for Plato have validity because they are immortal, universal, perfect and, for good measure, they are enshrined with Beauty. But what if we don't accept that kind of afterworld? What then? Where is the anchor point now for objective standards? Do we have a relativistic free for all? Are we left with only a "might makes right" argument?

It is not just philosophers who take umbrage at lying, deceit, spin and, in general, the "Bullshit" (Henry Frankfort) argument that Goldstein refers to (as another reason for Plato's relevance for today). No one likes to be taken advantage of, to be used, and manipulated. But as an alternative to Plato's problematic philosophy, might we turn inward instead to explore another foundation for moral values? Might we more believably look to biology and affirm our role as free beings, for example? Might an objective standard for our good and the good of all lie within our very being: our need to be free, the other's need to be free, and the proper line that respects the freedom of each? Is there a moral logic embedded within the very biological being that Plato wants to cast aside? And, by anchoring these values within ourselves, biology can give us the motivation to follow those standards: We respect the freedom of others because it's in our interest to do so. Plato, though, doesn't go there. Our animal being is and always will be a problem. It is the embodiment of imperfection. Perfection in this world if not for the next world, not freedom, is Plato's vision for humanity.

While we can look inward and find the perfect standard that promotes the freedom of each and protects social order, the real challenge is defining that standard in practice and then following and enforcing it. It is easy enough to envision perfection, but it's a perfection that exists in an imperfect world. Could it be that we are doing Plato-like work now, in this world, even though we will always fall far short?



*See Nietzsche's critique of Socrates-Plato in "The Birth of Tragedy." In a footnote to his paper on the Phaedo, James A. Arieti states that "Nietzsche...saw the figure of Socrates as charismatic or inspirational," citing another author who wrote: "'As Nietzsche has so aptly put it, this figure of the dying Socrates became the new ideal to which the noblest of the Greek youth now dedicated themselves instead of to that older heroic ideal, Achilles.'" In my reading, Nietzsche was heavily critical of Socrates - for suppressing instinct in favor of other worldly "reason," which is precisely the opposite of what is conveyed by the footnote above and Goldstein's quote. There is no doubt that Socrates was inspirational but the full quote tells the rest of the story: "...the new ideal of the noble Greek youths, - an ideal they had never yet beheld, - and above all, the typical Hellenic youth, Plato, prostrated himself before this scene with all the burning devotion of his visionary soul." I don't believe Nietzsche was being complimentary here.

[Ross Blocher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish I could say I enjoyed this, as there is a lot to like. Unfortunately, the negatives far outweighed the positives for me. Rebecca Goldstein is hoping to make Plato compelling and relevant to the modern reader by adding him to current, topical conversations. That's the premise, anyhow. She starts out defensively, with a summary of arguments from philosophy's detractors (she calls them "philosophy-jeerers", a term that gets old very quickly). To her credit, Goldstein makes their case well, as you begin to wonder, "Yeah, just what exactly does philosophy have to offer?" The argument, boiled down, is that philosophy asks a lot of questions, but those are really only placeholders for ignorance - it's science that provides all the interesting and useful answers. Philosophy has stagnated such that Plato COULD jump into a modern conversation, whereas pioneers in the fields of math and the hard sciences would have a LOT of catching up to do.

The rest of the book never manages solid rebuttals to these accusations. Instead, gentle pokes are made at science's lack of complete knowledge, and philosophy plays the role of Jiminy Cricket, keeping scientists humble and providing them perspective. Plato is pulled into modern situations: a long hallway conversation at Google, a panel on child rearing, a right-wing pundit's show, and a neuroscientist's office. The conversations are somewhat forced and at times contrived, but are interesting. Plato adapts to modern brain science and excitedly totes his Chromebook and completes Google searches, and often speaks in quotes pulled directly from his written works.

This would have been a great template, if (as advertised) this had been the main content of the book. Sadly, those conversations only fill a relatively small fraction of its 433 pages. The bulk is spent betwixt these conversations, following random rabbit trails of thought and detailing the thoughts of ancient Greeks. Goldstein wafts from one philosophical question to the next, to historical detail, to philosopher's viewpoints, to the nature of democracy, to the question of what is true. There is no real direction to these wanderings, and I was constantly left wondering: "Wait, what are we talking about now? Why is this important?" It is repetitive and filled with abstract language, making it almost unreadable for long stretches. An example of the kind of sentences that need to be read three or four times:

"What is in need of changing for progress to be made are convictions constitutive of points of view."
"But what he holds firm to is that whatever reality turns out to be like, it is like that because the best of reasons makes it so, and we are led to those best of reasons by our own sense of intelligibility-maximizing beauty: 'Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful then [sic] they'."
"It also produces the sense of proper proportion between ourselves and others. Once the distortions in our perspective are corrected, we're confronted with the 'proportionate equality' that ought to reign no less in the world of people than in the cosmos itself."

Say what? There is no way to read this quickly, and so often I felt completely frustrated trying to glean the meaning from a passage. There's only so many abstractions one can cram into a single sentence and maintain any kind of coherence. In a chapter about Socrates, Goldstein gets about 10 or more pages in before she ever mentions his name. The ambiguity of trying to withhold the identity of the person she is talking about is maddening.

This is a good book if you're trying to fall asleep (as I did many times), but it hijacked my reading process for far too long. There are many interesting observations, but they are buried... this could have been a far better 100 page book. I can't say I'd recommend it.

[Troy Blackford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book. I am very unfamiliar with the topic of philosophy, and approached this book in a mindset where I felt the need to be convinced of the relevancy of the topic. While a lot of the discussion did seem to be beyond me at times, I definitely feel better for having read this. Most of the book is framed as a fictional dialogs between Plato and modern day folks ranging from his book tour publicity agent to a neuroscientist, though my favorite was probably his TV interview on the 'Real McCoy' - it's pretty easy to tell who McCoy is supposed to represent.

These exchanges are fictional, but Plato's words are often quotes from his writings and are all attributed. This was a very interesting way to make sure that the author didn't get too carried away putting words into Plato's mouth. At times this felt more like work to me than a lot of books that I read, but it was good work and I feel better for having done it.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goldstein can sometimes be a bit long-winded, but I love the schtick of having Plato visit 21st century America. Recommended for any fan of Plato and/or philosophy.

(See also my blog review: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...)

The book alternates between traditional non-fiction chapters and playful fictional chapters. The non-fiction chapters deal with Plato (of course), but also a surprising amount of his historical context as well as Goldstein's defense of philosophy and an intriguing notion of philosophical progress. In the fictional chapters, Plato is transported to the 21st century (having learned English apparently), visits Google Headquarters (the "Googleplex"), is a guest on a talk show about raising children, is a guest author for an advice column, is interviewed by a thinly veiled Bill O'Reilly clone, and visits a neurologist's lab to get an fMRI.

The non-fictional chapters sometimes go on a bit longer than they need to, but I found them to be worthwhile. It's not at the level of professional specialists in ancient Greek philosophy, but it's maybe a bit closer to that than casual non-academic readers might like (yes, there are footnotes and an extensive bibliography).

Goldstein sets up a contemporary debate between "philosophy cheerers" and "philosophy jeerers," and she does an admirable job defending the cheerers. I particularly like her articulation of what it might mean to say that philosophy progresses, a concept that has helped me in teaching Plato, not to mention lots of other historical philosophy, Western and otherwise. According to Goldstein, philosophical progress is often invisible precisely because yesterday's philosophical accomplishments become ideas with which we see everything today - what was arrived at through brilliant intellectual imagination and torturous argument and in the past can become today's common sense. This isn't to say that Plato can't be quaint or downright despicable today (e.g., the ancient Greeks' acceptance of slavery), but he had such a large influence on ethics, science, mathematics, religion, and politics in the cultures his work has come into contact with that it's almost impossible to measure how extensive that influence is, since his influence would be part of the measure.

Goldstein has a PhD from Princeton and she sometimes exhibits a bit of upper-class US coastal snobbery, which is perhaps fitting as Plato was an elitist himself. All of the characters Plato meets are in the tech industry, media, or academia. Goldstein admits - in a moment of embarrassment - to have been "addicted" to science fiction as a child, which is only a segue for her to say that just as in a lot of those stories you need to change just one thing about the world to make the story work, so for her fictional chapters to work, you need merely to accept that a 2,400 year old philosopher could come to life in the 21st century. But, much like the Margaret Atwoods of the world, saying you're not writing science fiction doesn't mean you aren't. Goldstein is just a short paragraph of handwaving time travel or quantum mumbo jumbo from having written a collection of science fiction stories herself. This is admittedly a pretty minor point all things considered, but as a science fiction fan this kind of dismissive attitude always strikes me as a bit snobby.

My favorite of the (science) fictional chapters is probably the first one where Plato visits the Googleplex on a book tour (although I also really enjoyed Plato's stint as an advice columnist and his dialogue with a scientistic neuroscientist). Plato has a dialogue with his "handler" Cheryl and one of the Google programmers. The programmer thinks ethics is a quaint atavism: if you want to know the right thing to do, the programmer says, you should just create a database of people's opinions and go with the most popular one! This initially sounded completely ridiculous to me, but in this age of Big Data and blind faith in technology and Google as Source of All Knowledge, I suppose there must be a lot of people who believe something like this (I recently had the misfortune to watch an episode of a TV show called "Wisdom of the Crowd" where crime fighting is crowdsourced, a show that wouldn't be made without faith in technology as Solver of All Problems - these days there's an app for everything apparently, even solving murder).

Plato's "handler" Cheryl isn't so sure, and Plato agrees with her. The point is subtle, but Goldstein has the characters deliver it well. She puts it better than this, but to put it bluntly: computer databases of ethics will only tell you what people have *said* is the right thing to do, but it won't tell you what the right thing to do *actually* is. This is precisely the kind of point I try (perhaps unsuccessfully) to get across to my philosophy students (who often try to Google their way out of philosophy assignments!). Google is great for what it is, but ultimately all it does is tell you what other people have said, whether those people are worth listening to or not.

If you want to decide for yourself what really is right, how anyone really knows anything, what it means to exist, what are the best things to want in life - that is, if you want to arrive at well-reasoned views about the deepest issues of value, humanity, and our place in the universe, then you need philosophy. As Plato might say, Google can give you a shadowy world of opinions, but only philosophy - arduous, slow, and often inconclusive at it is - can give you genuine knowledge of the true and the good.

[Fred Forbes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some background. I had to take a philosophy course in college and for the final exam my paper was along the lines of the futility of studying the topic at all - like the old Bill Cosby comedy piece "Why is there air?" The paper came back with a big C- and a note that others took the same topic and did a much better job with it. But, somehow, this book caught my eye - probably the thought of Plato visiting the Googleplex, participating in a panel discussion at the 92nd Street Y, Plato on Cable News, assisting a columnist to the lovelorn, and Plato in the MRI. And those parts of the book are extremely well done - imaginative, excellent writing, and fun.

However, in between those parts, the authors imparts to us the history and narrative of philosophy along the lines of this goody on page 142 - "These Socratic/Platonic departures from the kleos-centered notions of arete, which carry with them a sophisticated moral theory, signal a limit to the control that others - that a whole polis of others - can exert over your sense of your life and what it is ultimately about."

Evidently this is the idea that led to Socrates being put to death, but what it said to me was "Run, Fred, run!" The book has some great moments, but parts are also a real slog. So for the parts of Plato in today's world, let's give a 4 star rating, for the traditional history of philosophy, lets got with a 2 and split the difference with a 3 overall.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept for the book was to show Plato engaged in a dialog with various people and in modern settings, an idea that appealed to me immediately. The structure was to alternate between expository sections where the subject for the dialog is presented directly from Plato's writings and set pieces where the current-day dialogs occur.

There are five such venues: the Googleplex; a panel discussion on raising, or not, exceptional children; a cable talk show; acting as a consultant to an advice columnist (a deviation from the dialog concept) and a Neuroscientist's lab where Plato's brain was to be scanned.

The expository sections are very well done with ample footnotes and citations to flesh them out. Sadly, at least to my taste, the "dialogs" were mainly a failure with only the one at Google and the panel discussion done seriously. The talk show host was an ass (that seemed to be the real point of including him), and the Dr. running the lab was not much better. Those "dialogs" tended to be mainly weak attempts at humor/derision. The advice columns were OK, but not really what the book purported to deliver. On balance, color me disappointed.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I'm reading this article, also written by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, on The Chronicle of Higher Education's website, and I'm wishing Goldstein had spoken more of—actually, I wish she had at least mentioned—Henri Bergson & Wilfrid Sellars in the course of her book Plato at the Googleplex (and as another commenter on the site mentions, I, too, feel that Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is overly critical of Leon Wieseltier. After I read his piece when it first published in, I believe, The New Republic, I thoroughly enjoyed what he had to say!). The article is a tidy companion piece to the book, summarizing a large thesis that is certainly deserving of its space—a space greater than that which an internet periodical can provide—and it all boils down to a simple sentence which can be pulled from that article: Philosophy exists "to render our human points of view ever more coherent." Philosophy has made progress, and it continues to do so; Plato at the Googleplex is a great example, in & of itself, of exactly that.

The book, in a couple of words, is pretty neat. What Goldstein does right is transform what many often consider murky (read: esoteric) philosophic language into language that is anecdotal & accessible—something that Plato himself does! After her prologue, Goldstein opens her book with a concise description of the historical context surrounding the development of things like Socrates's elenctic method & the very roots of philosophy, which she traces back to much older ancient thinkers such as Anixamander (sp??). Then in the next chapter, she utilizes her fiction-writing skills in order to envision a modern scenario in which a character, "Plato," finds himself striking up an accidental philosophical conversation with both a bright but arguably pretentious young man & a preoccupied media escort. What Goldstein accomplishes in this moment is a contemporaneous example of what happened all those millennia ago when Socrates did very much the same thing, and in doing so, Goldstein also calls attention to such problems as the acceptance of certain threads of knowledge (Are we content to crowd-source information through search engines like Google? Should we rely on the few elite experts to decide on what is true & real in this world?). It is in this same style that Goldstein continues her book, alternating chapters devoted to providing historical/thematic context & then to providing that context's corresponding real world application.

While her thesis (i.e., that philosophy makes human understanding more coherent) frames the contents of this book, I find that Goldstein surprisingly doesn't explore that thesis enough. Instead, I feel like she relies too heavily on providing realistic examples to prove her point rather than discussing from a more meta standpoint all the reasons why philosophy "won't go away," which is precisely what I anticipated going into this book. Of all the fictionalized scenarios that Goldstein provides, I found only the 92nd Street Y debate & the neuroscientist conversation to be helpful in enlightening the reader, and I'm still debating about the former. The book could exist as a history of Plato's philosophic evolution & then scattered, skeletal examples of how that evolution could play out in the real world today, but at the same time I question whether or not Goldstein would have been able to achieve (let alone stand behind) her very thesis by writing up a more complicated, more meta analysis, especially since she seeks to defend the very idea that philosophy makes everything much more tangible. Goldstein walks such a fine line in this book, and I'm frankly too stupid to figure out whether or not she successfully executes what she sought to achieve. To put my concerns succinctly though, I worry that the most seasoned scholars might be quick to judge this book as too peripheral or too amateur considering the intellectual weight of its subject matter.

All things considered, however, I still feel fulfilled by this book. In particular, I enjoyed how Plato (or, to be more accurate, "Plato") countered the assumptions of scientific nay-sayers.

Even if we could get our hands—or rather our minds, which is to say our brains—on those masses of numbers, could they ever absorb the masses of meaning and mattering, the standards of reasoning and behaving to which we submit ourselves in order to live lives that are not only coherent to ourselves but coherent to one another—and coherent to ourselves at least in large part because they are, or we know how to go about making them, coherent to one another? All of that and more goes into constituting the shared world in which we do our living, and without which there is no life that is recognizably a life. — Page 417

I'm happy Goldstein made this book for someone stupid like me, someone who has minimal experience in philosophy, much less in Plato. My other favorite parts include the history of Alcibiades (what a guy!) & the judicial circumstances surrounding Socrates's conviction. Come to think of it, I also enjoyed the anthropological theories into why philosophic thought flourished during the age of antiquity not just in Greece but across the Mediterranean in Jerusalem and further into China. If anything, the book is extraordinarily (ha! No "Ethos of the Extraordinary" pun intended) informative, and I believe that any novice or expert philosopher can find reasons to appreciate this book. Plato at the Googleplex is nicely multi-faceted like that. Lastly, I thoroughly appreciated the subtle feminist bend that Goldstein assumes throughout the course of the book.

Just one more quote, though, before I depart!

Whatever can be known by one person can, in principle, be known by everybody, just so long as they master the techniques for knowing that are most appropriate to a field. If it can't be generally known, if it is irreducibly embedded in a single and singular point of view, then we can have no good reason to accept it. This is the Epistemology of the Reasonable, and it is one side of Plato's divided soul and informs not only most of philosophy (with a few kinky exceptions like, possibly, Heidegger) but all of the sciences. Philosophy-jeerers who argue from science are unaware that they are epistemological allies with the bulk of philosophers, and depend on the Epistemology of the Reasonable that philosophers have hammered out for their convenience. —Pages 375 - 376

Scientists from all over! You owe a great deal to philosophy, so don't discount it as something that's obsolete!

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a difficult book, with some hilarious parts that help overcome the denser ones, but in essence it made me realise what the philosophy I've been reading so ardently for so many years is made of. In this work, Goldstein realises the relevance of Plato's ideas by bringing him into the 2000s, putting him to debate questions that have remained unanswered since Ancient Greece, showing that despite the evolution of scientific knowledge, the form of philosophy remains relevant. In this sense, dialectics is the basis, it is philosophy itself. The process of argument and counter-argument is important, not the goal, the final answer. The great discussions are based on paradoxes or balances of contradictory parts, so the discussion can be infinite, which is why Goldenstein says that progress is ‘invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view.... We don't see it, because we see with it’. In other words, philosophy is a way of analysing and understanding reality, not centred on the search for final answers, but rather on the growth of the individual, on the affirmation of human virtue.

Comentário completo, com excertos, no Narrativa X:
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...

[Richard Weaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I understand why she wrote this book as she did. Contemporary updates to philosophical ideas-that’s a great idea. My problem is in some of her assertions. I feel she lets her own personal opinions mold the philosopher and the philosophies. So, not what is Plato trying to say, but what I think Plato should be saying. And when I read Plato, I don’t come to the same conclusions her. Maybe I’m just coming to the same cognitive bias she is. Or she’s wrong and I’m right. The second one sounds really good.

[Mishehu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Typical Goldstein fare: intelligent, playful, entertaining, wise. Argues convincingly for the relevance of ancient Greek philosophy in our time, and effectively dismantles the oft-cited claim (pace Whitehead) that all of philosophy post Plato is merely a gloss on Plato. A terrific read.

[Kkraemer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly brilliant book.

In alternating chapters, Goldstein presents the fundamentals of Western philosophy (with occasional dips into the East), exploring why philosophy matters, why Socrates' questions are still not answered, why Plato's ponderings provide insight into life 2,400 years later. The "odd" numbered chapters are explanatory in nature (and yes, math matters here), while the "even" numbered (all in Greek, by the way) are written in form of "trialogues" (rather than just dialogues, as Plato would have produced), wherein people analyze the ideas and information from the previous chapters.
Mathematically, it's perfect.
and the trialogues are most interesting. The first takes place between Plato, a woman whose job it is to promote books on a book tour, and a fairly smarmy young Googleer who thinks that he can outmaneuver one of the greatest thinkers in history. The second takes place between Plato, a "tiger mom," and a woman whose interest is protecting the integrity of children from the forces that would ruin their unique beings. Other trialogues include interviews with a "shock jock" radio personality (very popular. Lots of fans) and with cognitive scientists who see Truth in the neural connections of thought.
Utterly fascinating.
Goldstein is not only knowledgeable but very very funny. This is a book to dip into, ponder, return to, ponder, finish, and know that you'll never be finished, that the questions and the thinking is, in fact, the work of life.
Not to be missed. Not to be read only once.

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Because there had been such a man as Socrates, Plato could convince himself that human life was worth caring about. But I suspect that for him it did take convincing.”

I heard about this book when it first came out and probably said something like, “Oh Pinker's wife wrote a book about Plato in the 21st century? Bah humbug!” I had read The Blank Slate in undergrad which was a less-than-inspiring read. And since, as was recently revealed to me by my mother, that I need to put on my tombstone the words (hers): “He usually guessed, but he was right” I assumed that here was another instance of my epitaph. But no, I found it not to be the case this time. Before I get into that, I'll also say that after that initial encounter, the book entered my life again when a former professor of mine asked me to do a write up on it. Of course that relationship could be characterized as fruitless at best, and I never received a copy of the book he offered nor any other sort of engagement at all. So let's leave that memory in the past, burned and charred. I was hoping to the read the book but fortune had laughed in my face. And then a year or two later, it came up in conversation again with someone I've really enjoyed getting to know over tea. He said he had greatly enjoyed the book and then, with a slight pause, gave me his own battered copy (along with some other books he was trying to get rid of) and said, “I'd like this one back though.” And so a year after that, I've finally gone and read the book for my own personal interest and so that I can discuss it with this gentleman. I like the book cover too. I think it has an abstract quality that lends itself to Plato.

So with the preliminaries out of the way, this book was pretty good! After I read the prologue I thought I would hate it. Mainly because (and this is my main disagreement with Goldstein's interpretation) she ties the development of Plato's philosophy and ethics to the tragedians and before that Homer with a phrase she invents: the Ethos of the Extraordinary. I'm gonna be bringing that up again so let's call it the EE. The base idea is that the Greek's had an existential quandary: why did life or any individual's life matter at all? She explains that ancient Greek religion didn't fill that void (which it didn't), which spawned the EE in Homer. What made a person's life matter was whether they lived an extraordinary life. In the Homeric world this meant gaining kleos-as much as possible and she's not exactly wrong in that. The problem is that we only have Homer for a source whose poems are starring aristocrats so they're gonna present the ethics that way. The other problem is that even in Homer there are subtle hints and clues that may suggest being like Achilles is not the only way to get your life to matter. Perhaps the most glaring of these is the shift from alive Achilles in the Iliad “I choose a short life and eternal glory over a long but obscure life” and dead Achilles in the Odyssey “I'd rather be a living slave of a poor farmer than king of the dead.” But there are others from silent and brutal descriptions of near-nameless warriors slain one after the other in the Iliad to depictions of virtuous slaves in the Odyssey. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think it's safe to say that if the question is what made a person's life matter in the ancient/Homeric Greek world, while getting the most kleos as possible was the surest and best way, it was by no means the only way nor did it set the standard for ethical behavior (which is really the important thing here). Put another way, there were ways to make your life matter, even if (especially!) you weren't Achilles (dipped in the river Styx at birth, prophesied wunderkind of the world) and didn't seek eternal kleos. In the prologue she traces that EE from Homer, into the tragedians who modified it (slightly) and then into Plato's Athens where Pericles transformed it into collective or communal glory (cf. Pericles' funeral oration from Thucydides) and then against which Alcibiades fought with his charismatic flair for his own individual glory. This is all for the most part also correct and good way to see the development of thought. However, I might still disagree with her interpretation of the tragedians, but the book isn't really about that-so it's not that important for me to get into. (As a very brief aside, if for some reason that stands out to you, Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness is probably the place to go).

As a result of this thread of ethical thought, Plato was a variation on the tragedians' take on Homer and markedly different from Pericles, but nonetheless still EE where extraordinary=kleos is changed to extraordinary=intellectual kleos or something like that. Now the problem with my criticism, and the reason I'm starting this review by going on about it, is that in the rest of the book Goldstein does a pretty good job qualifying the summary I've just given you. But not enough for me so that I feel compelled to say no Plato's thing is not about being extraordinary, the very idea that only the extraordinary would have access to a meaningful life is antithetical to Plato and Socrates and a gross misinterpretation of that famous Socratic exhortation from the Apology “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The very point is that everyone has the ability to examine themselves. It is a skill that must be practiced and developed and there are undoubtedly some people who are more naturally skilled in that realm just as there are those more naturally skilled in music, athletics, or oration, but I for one strongly assert that the more important aspect to consider here is that humans all have the ability to do so and it is that ability that we must make use of. Personally, I don't even believe that it's as objective a matter as people interpret it as being. It isn't so much a matter of whoever most rigorously applies self-examination lives the most meaningful life. No, the situation is more like do your best to rigorously apply self-examination, those who don't are surely bound to decrease their own well-being. And I would put the result of applying such ideas of self-examination not in terms of a meaningful life but one that produces well-being and goodness. Now for Plato, that's the same thing, but for we moderns, we have a different idea of what “meaningful” means, what a “life that matters” is. This is where I think Goldstein needs to qualify her talk of meaningful and mattering lives. Nonetheless, she does specifically qualify the extraordinary part of the EE and what that means for Plato, perhaps not as explicitly as I would like, but certainly enough to assuage my disagreement. And since I've just now articulated the important part about viewing Plato as descending from this EE, I'm completely and utterly assuaged.

Since I'm on the topic of my disagreements, though, I will air the other actually serious grievance I have which is her depiction of Plato as the “ecstatic scholar” type. It's not her character Plato in her dramatic chapters I'm criticizing (I'll say some nice but measured things about that shortly), but her interpretation of Plato's philosophical project as culminating in mathematics. Plato had Pythagorean leanings, Plato liked numbers, Plato liked math, and he liked music as a sort of math, analogous mediums. He stretched that analogy further in many of his dialogues to great effect. But I'm afraid I side more with scholars who view these analogies as analogies rather than as the honest-to-goodness result of Plato's aspirations for philosophy that we see the beauty in the harmony of the math of the cosmos and then instantiate that beauty in ourselves. I'm not sure what any of that means except in analogy, but her character Plato says things like he believes them as truth. Now, to qualify my own statements a little bit, it actually isn't so ridiculous to attribute these things to Plato. He talks about the forms A LOT. He likes math A LOT. I would even listen to someone who told me he was in the cult of Pythagoras his entire life. Plato being a realist is not really a problem for me. Throwing Plato into a modern context and having him say something like just realize the harmony of the mathematical cosmos, friendo-I'm less keen on. But saying that might do a disservice to the Plato character Goldstein creates which is a (mostly) worthy one-if at times a bit too unsubtle. And to be a bit more pointed about my criticism here-its not so much that Plato couldn't have said these things or been a hardcore realist about the mathematical harmony of the cosmos, but that in his dialogues he doesn't particularly. In my opinion the evidence is not on her side. But hey that's what fiction is for and it might be very difficult to write a believable Plato without fleshing some of those details out in that way-I'm not trying to write a what if Plato were here in the modern world book, I'm just trying to talk about depicting Plato's ideas in the right way and having his character, who so deftly adapts to many other complicated features of the modern world, not adapt in some rather essentially philosophical ways. This is also just one way in which I think she gets things a tad bit wrong, her character Plato does so many other things the right way.

Okay so let's switch gears a little bit. I've ranted on what I wanted and I'll spend the rest of the review talking about the chapters, praising what's good, and then I'll finish with my recommendation at the end. The book is half dramatic chapters in the style of Plato (adapted) in modern settings and half-explanatory on historical/philosophical context. I say adapted because they are not dialogues exactly as Plato's dialogues were, but some are in different modern formats. Those two halves can also be split: the dramatic chapters are a third quaint modern Plato, a third citing from the dialogues, a third philosophical ideas in a modern form and context. And the explanatory ones- a third what philosophy is, a third Socrates/Plato sociohistorical context, a third Plato's “actual” beliefs.

Here are a handful of things Goldstein does remarkably well:
Contrary to the faults that I found in her thread of ethical thinking, her interpretation of the thread of philosophical thinking is spot on. She identifies the beginning of it all-the Presocratics-and puts a name to it: the Ionian Enchantment. This was the idea that it was possible for philosophical issues to be a matter of applying reason to figure things out. This is something that has not changed even today for human beings. There are theories that upend the principle of sufficient reason and there are ones that boldly state there can be no intelligibility to be found, but these theories are all subject to the fact that as humans we must employ our faculty of reason to understand them at all in the first place. I promise you that if it is true that the universe and life as we know it is entirely unintelligible, then we will still grasp at that unintelligibility with our meager human intellect. That's just how it works! And I'm not saying intuition isn't a real thing that holds true in certain situations, but it just cannot even come close to our faculty of understanding. I'm also not saying that reason is completely objective or even objective in any way; personally I believe objectivity is a dead concept. I think that Kant's idea of rationality has too much of a hold over our understandings of the human ability of understanding and that we need to return to Plato. But anyway this enchantment, as the fundamental insight of the Presocratics and Platonic philosophy in general, is brilliant and inexpressibly insightful and essential. I cannot put this clearly enough. It is essential to understanding philosophy and Plato's philosophical project.

The subtitle of this book is “why philosophy won't go away” and she spends a decent chunk of text talking about so called “philosophy-jeerers” who dismiss philosophy as an obsolete discipline altogether. Let's not indulge such thinking any more than we have to in this review. Suffice it to say, Goldstein marks the flaws in their thinking and points out that philosophy is quite useful and fully capable of progress. In her words:

“Progress in philosophy consist, at least in part, in constantly bringing to light the covert presumptions that burrow their way deep down into our thinking, too deep down for us to even be aware of them.”

Wonderful, brilliant. This is what I end up telling people most often. And it's also the message I find in every Platonic dialogue. “Fine if you don't like my arguments bad, good, or otherwise-if you don't like the stories I tell, then at least look at how our disputations have made certain flaws obvious and recognize that that is the true goal of dialogue and discourse.” The hope is to come to collaborative answers that move us forward, but the goal is to prevent us from continuing to make the mistakes we have always made and to rationalize them because we believe they are not mistakes. One more time: The goal is to not make the same mistakes because we actually believe, we have convinced ourselves and so it is true (yes true for us, but here true and true for us are the same thing are they not?), that we are not making mistakes. If you or anyone else ever wonders why I think Plato is worthy to be read, it is for this reason alone. Goldstein stresses this point excellently by condensing Plato's attitude:

“If you read these arguments without internalizing them, turning them uncomfortably against yourself, then you might as well not bother. That's Plato's attitude.”

You really might as well not bother.

She points out the divergence of Aristotle, Aristotelian philosophy, and how Plato became Aristotelized. She talks about how Plato's aim in his philosophical project is to find the best reason for things (which fits nicely with the aforementioned idea of the Ionian enchantment-the best human reason can get us to). Aristotle turned this into a teleological matter, one in which the best things are made so out of functionality. Goldstein rightly distinguishes this from Platonic intelligibility, which she attributes to Spinoza. I won't get into that either, but it has to do with Plato's affection for math which inspired other thinkers like Galileo and Spinoza. I'm willing to grant that, because I'd have to take a look at them to properly disagree. Nonetheless, the teleology/intelligibility distinction is a vital one.

And the last one I'll put on this list is that she does a pretty good job of bringing the character of Plato to life. Albeit her character, she pits a vivid portrait of the man against modern interlocutors and comes out with something of a success.

So what did I enjoy? Well I loved engaging with all these ideas even the parts I disagreed with. I would have given this book 5 stars, but well I think Plato could have been done in a modern context a little more to my liking so 4.5 stars, just short of a perfect score. But scores are dumb, the point is this is a good book and I enjoyed it. Out of all the dramatic chapters, the first one is probably my favorite because it is the most organically similar to Plato's dialogues. It features Plato chatting up two non-experts (or one who claims to be) and them not particularly reaching any conclusions. It's even properly framed as a story within a story! Well done. Plato at the 92nd street Y and Plato on Cable News (some Fox show parody) were good but frustrating. Sometimes her Plato descends into just quoting or paraphrasing Plato's own works without much more to them. She does a lot of extra stuff, but sometimes the dramatic chapters devolve into that. The Cable news one was probably my least favorite-talk about talking by one another. Perhaps very realistic, but not exactly stimulating. It also features Plato going on about the harmony of the cosmos, which as I've said, is not my favorite interpretation of the man. XxxPlato features Plato offering advice in an Ann Landers style advice column. It's a clever way to get Plato talking about love and he has some nice things to say, but that suffers from overcitation of the Phaedrus at times. Again, its just at times, probably because I've read too much Plato that I notice these things. But I wouldn't say it was a particular barrier to reading the book. The last dramatic chapter returns to the closer adaption of Plato's dialogues and is pretty clever.

Of the explanatory chapters, I think Goldstein does a great job except for the last one that gets a bit too into the “ecstatic scholar” communing with the universe thing I mentioned at the beginning. I am sure Plato was a realist and did believe in something like the forms. However, I do not think that we can find it in the dialogues, i.e. I do not believe Plato advances a positive metaphysic in his dialogues. Feel free to disagree. The other chapters however are all pretty much on point, except of course the parts I've already disagreed with. There's incisive commentary on those opposed to philosophy and why they're mistaken. There's really wonderful sociohistorical explanation that covers Athens, Socrates, and Plato. The chapter devoted to Socrates called “Socrates must die” is a circumspect examination of all the factors that went into Socrates' death and Plato's understanding of it. The book as a whole is remarkably well-researched and, so it seemed to me, lucid and accessible. I had heard this book was written for a popular audience, but it really rides that line well-explaining many of Plato's more esoteric concepts in clear ways. The same is true for her sociohistorical context. I really can't praise that part enough. It might almost be worth it to read one of those chapters as a companion piece to reading the Apology it's so clear and encompassing.

So anyway, I enjoyed engaging with the ideas, I enjoyed disagreeing, seeing Plato come to life, seeing explanations that were familiar to me but presented well and thoughtfully and seeing them in a modern context.

I would recommend this book to...anyone! Haha I just love Plato so much and this is probably the most accessible book like this that I've encountered that I would recommend it just based on that. There are a few hiccups, but you know it wouldn't be so bad if you believed everything she said was true about Plato. Maybe if you ended up reading Plato's dialogues yourself, you'd form your own opinion just like I have. It's not particularly long and the chapter pacing is pretty moderate. Some might get bogged down in all the detail packed in (I'll confess a bias on this), but it's worth it.

[Merilee]

The book is very well-written but, after getting halfway through the 434 pages, I decided that there were other things I’d rather be reading.

[Thomson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I sincerely respect the author's artistic and intellectual project, but found this book just OK to read. Rebecca Goldstein imagines a living, breathing Plato transported into a variety of whimsical modern-day situations and given the opportunity to comment on life's big questions. Running with this premise, she makes her own contribution to the Platonic tradition of composed philosophical dialogues, using what we (more or less) know about Plato's values and intellectual comportment to render a not-so-unbelievable portrait of his individual behavior and personality.

Though the author is clearly well-read - the text brims with references to original Greek sources, important thinkers from throughout history, and contemporary pop culture - the cleverness of her writing bordered on overindulgent for me. I find that the strength of this book was in contextualizing and humanizing Plato's life and philosophy. (The long digressions on Greek society/culture/history helped with this.) Perhaps the obvious criticism of this book is that it is unfocused, but this also lends it an approachable quality, as if you were having the author over for tea and conversing with her discursively, for the sake of learning a bit more about her field.

I'm trying to make better use of the full rating range on Goodreads, so despite giving it two stars, I don't not-recommend this book. Here, Rebecca Goldstein is a scholar who loves her subject (philosophy) as well as a biographer who loves her subject (Plato). If you don't mind the style, I'd say that she succeeds in creating an original and accessible tribute to both of them.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this book has generated some of the longest and most erudite reviews I've read on Goodreads, and I can see why. In spite of its "pick me up and buy me" title, it's not a quick, hilarious romp through the wonderful world of philosophy. It is, as far as I can tell, a brilliant and largely original analysis of Plato's thought, vividly putting it in the context of Athenian history, and never failing to emphasize why it remains important. The process is at times very difficult. The issues aren't easy; but Goldstein has a real gift for explanation. She knows the dialogues intimately, and she has clearly thought about and taught the subject for years. Unfortunately (for me) these kinds of interests are only in alternate chapters. In between are modern versions of Platonic dialogues, with Plato questioning computer nerds, PR types, a permissive mother and a tiger mom, a Rush Limbaugh clone, physicists, and neuro-scientists. I had thought these would be high points. But for me they did little to illumine the more analytic chapters; they were often apparently meant to be funny, but they didn't make me laugh. If it weren't for these chapters, I would have given the book a rave review and five stars.

[James Klagge · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Goldstein's writing, and I am a huge fan of Plato, and I like the idea of seeing what Plato might say about the modern world. Consequently I had high expectations for the book. It didn't fully live up to them. Not all the chapters are Plato's take on the modern world, only half of them are: Google, child-rearing, advice columns, cable news, and neuroscience. Those are ok to pretty good. The other 5 chapters are really Goldstein's take on Plato. It is not really a scholar's account, but a well-informed philosopher's account. And she has a few interesting interpretive ideas of her own. She draws on the full range of the dialogues, including the Timeaus, the Phaedrus, and the Laws, which don't always get much attention from analytic philosophers. In sum, I liked it, but I didn't love it. I learned some things, but it mostly confirmed things I knew. (Full disclosure: I am a Philosophy professor who has taught Plato's dialogues dozens of times, but I am not a Greek scholar.)

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work makes me want to read Plato, which is something worthwhile. She seems to be so familiar with the body of his content that she can paraphrase and pull extracts without making the reader fear as though she is seeking Plato's stamp of approval on her point of view.

[Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can be very dry in the dry sections, but Goldstein does a very good job (as far as i know) putting Plato into interesting modern conversations/dialogues. Good historical overview and also an excellent bit of reasoning as to why philosophy still matters.

[Phil · Rating 1 out of 5]

Next! There are a lot better books on philosophy then this recycled microwave dinner of pop culture with a pretension to examine philosophy (mainly western philosophy of course).

[Allisonperkel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Big aim in need of an editor. Also the O'Reilly chapter should have just been removed.