Plato's Progeny: How Plato and Socrates Still Captivate the Modern Mind

by Melissa Lane

Socrates wrote nothing; Plato's accounts of Socrates helped to establish western politics, ethics, and metaphysics. Both have played crucial and dramatically changing roles in western culture. In the last two centuries, the triumph of democracy has led many to side with the Athenians against a Socrates whom they were right to kill. Meanwhile, the Cold War gave us polar images of Plato as both a dangerous totalitarian and an escapist intellectual. This book is framed by accounts of modern responses to the trials of Socrates and the ironies of Socratic inquiry. At its centre are two chapters exploring the idea of Platonic 'origins' in philosophy, and of Platonic 'foundations' for philosophical politics, as these have been read by Coleridge, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Popper, and Murdoch among others. Melissa Lane argues that the search for Platonic origins is an artefact of post-modern literalism. Yet images of Socratic inquiry can still invigorate our ethics and politics.

Genres: Philosophy

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

About the author

Melissa Lane received her PhD in philosophy from Cambridge University, where she teaches the history of political thought and political philosophy in the history faculty. She is a fellow of King's College. Her books include Method and Politics in Plato's Statesman (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Plato's Progeny: How Plato and Socrates Still Captivate the Modern Mind (Duckworth, 2001)

Reviews

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and compelling - Lane analyses the reception of Plato in western philosophy through three classic interpretive puzzles: (i) the relation of Socrates to Plato; (ii) the nature of Platonic metaphysics, and its relation to Platonic ideas of art, love, and beauty, mimesis, anamnesis, and eros; (iii) Plato's political orientation - variously 'unmasked' as fascist, marxist, and utopian.

The book showcases the astonishing range of interpretations of Plato that have been mooted across the history of philosophy, and illustrates how the fate of Plato has ebbed and flowed with the shifting tides of that history: every era has fashioned a Plato, or indeed a motley crew of Platos, in its own image. It is rather as if Lane has put all of the 'Platos' of the past in a display cabinet, where we can see them jostle with one another for our attention - an almost pantomimic, yet a compelling, spectacle. She does not aim for conclusive resolutions to any of the heavy interpretive questions she raises (as would be foolish in such a short book) - but she does a service to the history of philosophy in simply, clearly, and concisely sketching how much the contingencies of historical context have foisted certain readings of Plato upon us, and further in showing how the opposed views of his work emerge from deep tensions in his own philosophical world.

I quite like the conclusion she reaches, that Plato should be recognised for his vivid illustrations of the profound connections between metaphysics and aesthetics, and between psychology and politics (not that he would have conceptualised them as such); for teaching us in the dialogues 'what it is to inhabit a world of thought, a world in which the wholeness of the world is put in question'. Socrates and Plato surely are valuable to us as 'an allegory of our desire to teach and learn'.

Yet I worry that, in delivering her 'antidote' to dogmatic, absolutising interpretations, Lane risks emptying Plato of substance, turning the dialogues into a kind of blank canvas for whatever our current preoccupations happen to be, leaving minimal room for transhistorical truth. It's too postmodern. Too non-committal. I want a Plato with blood and guts, who I can love and hate, be fascinated and frustrated by, either or both - not one that is a mere figment of my and my society's imagination, a mere holographic representation of the Zeitgeist. But perhaps that is a futile hope....

[Alec Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

not an academic, just a very casual reader of the republic.

immediately after reading the republic, one of the "foundational texts" of western politics and philosophy, i immediately had many questions like:
- HOW is it foundational? what did this influence?
- WHO did this influence?
- am i meant to be taking this guy seriously? did nobody in 2500 years come up with better theories on metaphysics and the "Forms"?
- is this guy even pro-democratic? he seems more pro-tyranny pro-communism

i am happy to say that for me, the layman, this book did a fantastic job at answering these questions, and also ultimately leaving the conclusion that the republic is a 2500 year old book which can't defend itself, and can be interpreted in many different ways (some more reasonable than others). the most important reading of the original text is the one that encourages you to think on it, engage, and reflect on your ideas about life and society.