Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues

by Iris Murdoch

Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues is Murdoch’s philosophical masterpiece featuring fictionalized discussions between the intellectual giants of the classical world, including Socrates and Plato. Described by Acastos, a friend of Plato’s, the riveting debates center on the nature of goodness and faith, told through the voices of history’s most celebrated thinkers.

Witty and profound, these debates apply the timeless wisdom of history’s renowned philosophers to the most contentious issues of the modern day.

Genres: Philosophy, 20th Century, Plays, Theory, British Literature, Fiction, Drama

152 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.

"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues, acclaimed philosopher, poet, and writer Iris Murdoch turns her keen eye to the value of art, knowledge, and faith with two dramatic conversations featuring Plato and Socrates.
“Art and Eros”: After witnessing a theatrical performance, Socrates and his pupils—Callistos, Acastos, Mantias, Deximenes, and Plato—undertake a quest to uncover the meaning and worth of artistic endeavors.
“Above the Gods”: The celebration of a religious festival leads to a lively discussion of the gods and their place in society, as Socrates, along with several of his followers, talks about the morality of religion, wisdom, and righteousness. Told through vivid characterizations and lively discourse, Acastos is a “profound and satisfying” exploration of the Socratic method and an enjoyable example of theatrical writing from a Man Booker Prize-winning novelist.

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

[The heights of Mount Olympus. SOCRATES, PLATO, CALLISTOS, ACASTOS, IRIS MURDOCH. SOCRATES and MURDOCH are about sixty, the others about twenty.

SOCRATES: So what did you all think of Iris's little book?

CALLISTOS: Oh, it was wonderful! Wonderful! Such passionate, fiery exchanges! So deep, so stirring, so intellectual! I admit a lot of it went over my head--

SOCRATES: When the head is as pretty as yours, dear Callistos, we will find no fault with your observations. Acastos, what did you make of it?

ACASTOS: Though I don't believe I liked it as much as Callistos, I also approved. I had not anticipated that a woman would be such an able philosopher, but I was impressed by Iris. She is a serious seeker after truth, she wishes to understand the nature of poetry, religion, the Good. She can see both sides of a question, she listens to her mind and to her heart. She is one of us.

MURDOCH: [ironically] Thank you, Acastos.

ACASTOS: Not at all, Iris. I greatly enjoyed your analysis of religion as the love of the Good. I will have to think about this.

SOCRATES: Plato, you seem less enthusiastic? [PLATO glares at MURDOCH and makes a gesture of disgust] Now, now, my dear, you must overcome those feelings of yours and tell us what you mean.

PLATO: What I mean? Well, I am surprised at Iris's behaviour. Disappointed, one could say. We have had conversations before. I had taken them to be serious conversations. She has written about them in two of her previous books. I particularly liked the second one, The Fire and the Sun. She gives a just account of my objections to art and poetry. She explains how art is no more than a distraction, an impostor, how it tempts us to remain by the Fire and never seek the true Sun. She--

[ACASTOS, impatient, is about to interrupt, but SOCRATES raises a hand to stop him]

SOCRATES: Acastos, you can see that Plato is upset. Let him explain in his own words. Please continue, Plato.

PLATO: Thank you Socrates. Well, you can see what she's done. She's made me a youth! An impulsive, petulant, priggish youth, who writes bad poetry he's ashamed of!

CALLISTOS: [puzzled] But you do, don't you?

PLATO: Of course I do! Now! But later, I'll be a great philosopher. The greatest, if I say so myself. [CALLISTOS and ACASTOS exchange sceptical glances, but SOCRATES nods approvingly] She has cheated, cheated to gain an unfair advantage! How could she do this to me?

SOCRATES: That's enough, Plato. You've made your point. [He turns to MURDOCH] Well, Iris? What do you say?

MURDOCH: [reluctantly] It is true, I should not have done it. It was beneath me.

SOCRATES: And how will you make amends? What penalty should I impose on you?

PLATO: Make her learn mathematics, Socrates! I keep telling her to do it, but she won't! Geometry! Arithmetic! The wonderful mathematics of her century! Oh, how I wish I could have studied quantum mechanics! She could if she wanted to, but she refuses!

SOCRATES: It is tempting, but it would be unjust. It is not in her nature; she must find her own road to the Sun. But this I will demand: she must write a new book, a fair and serious book, where she discusses these deep matters with Plato as equal to equal and uses no more tricks. Iris, do you agree?

MURDOCH: I agree. I have even thought of the title: Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Plato, is this acceptable to you? And I apologise.

[She holds out her hand to PLATO, who momentarily hesitates]

PLATO: I accept.

[They shake hands. SOCRATES puts an arm around each of them]

SOCRATES: Well done, well done, my children. And now, I think our business here is concluded and we all need something to drink. Come, let us seek out the nearest tavern.

[He keeps his arms around MURDOCH and PLATO as the party leaves]

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Art and Eros

SOCRATES Isn’t it the nature of art to explore the relation between the public and the private? Art turns us inside out, it exhibits what is secret. What goes on inwardly in the soul is the essence of each man, it’s what makes us individual people. The relation between that inwardness and public conduct is morality. How can art ignore it?--Art and Eros

In times of madness, when leaders sound like deranged poodles yipping in the dark night, there is comfort in rational discourse. This makes me smile. Socrates is so pragmatic, sweeping away the illusions of perfection that Plato holds up so dearly like a shield.

And we should thank the gods for great artists who draw away the veil of anxiety and selfishness and show us, even for a moment, another world, a real world, and tell us a little bit of truth. And we should not be too hard on ourselves for being comforted by art. --Art and Eros, Socrates

My take on art: ART is communication. The complexity and nuance of the message is what delineates high art from low art, but watching the characters unravel and explore the tangents in civility was refreshing.

The second dialogue is on religion, such a divisive subject, I'll be reading it shortly.

Above the Gods: A Discussion on Religion

This was interesting and still relevant today. The argument between relativism and absolutism and pageantry versus internal morality.

So long as there’s an uneducated mob, there’s a place for something like religion. - Antagoras

The deification of the state is being forced upon us. I don’t like it – but the alternative is anarchy! - Antagoras

We are not gods, we are absurd limited beings, we live with affliction and chance.- Socrates

Socrates is once again the moderate and Plato the idealist with the fictional characters providing the tapestry that weaves in both philosophers' thoughts. It was an entertaining read and certainly better than 99.9% of what can be viewed on television.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is the Good good because the gods approve of it, or do they approve of it because it is good? (In effect, is the Good, is morality, somehow "above" the gods?) Or is morality just attributing high falutin' notions to one's own emotional preferences and prejudices, "dressing feelings up with flowers"?

There are a few good reasons to read this book: (1) you have just finished reading Plato's Dialogues and desire a light, humorous palate cleanser. (2) you have read some of Iris Murdoch's fiction and wonder about her 20C apparent obsession with that hoary classical notion of The Good, and want to see that spelled out a little. (3) You are a teacher of philosophy and are looking for a tightly-written, brief overview of various possible moral attitudes, as well as something to enliven the class after wrestling with something difficult.

Short and sweet, and even better on a second reading, as Murdoch raises questions that she refuses to answer, but these stay with you and tease you into thought and hopefully out of confidence in your own moral and aesthetic assumptions.

[José Simões · Rating 5 out of 5]

É preciso conhecer muito bem a Filosofia socrática e platónica para escrever um (ou dois) textos deste calibre. O primeiro fez-me rir a bandeiras despregadas, tal é a inteligência da utilização dos tiques de escrita e de raciocínio de Platão, mas também a forma como ironiza o seu estilo de escrita. O segundo, pensar seriamente sobre que coisa é essa da Religião. Diria, portanto, que não é necessário conhecer bem esses textos do séc. IV a.C., mas ajuda muito para entrar neste jogo. Em todo o caso, trata-se não só de uma proeza ou de um exercício de escrita modelar, mas sobretudo de uma grande e genial capacidade de escrever e de pensar. Não há muita gente capaz de fazer isto. Tal como não há muita gente capaz de escrever umas Memórias de Adriano ou um romance epistolar sobre Augusto. E sim, é desse nível que falo.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is the nature of reality? Is it orderly or mere chaos? Is religion merely mythology? These are some of the questions touched upon in this short philosophic excursion by Iris Murdoch. Two Platonic dialogues for our day, written to be performed on stage, the book is a fitting addition to philosophic corpus.
Better known for her novels, Murdoch was an accomplished philosopher, and this along with Fire and the Sun demonstrate her philosophic prowess. The two dialogues are connected by the questioning of young Acastos along with Plato and Socrates. Plato comes across as a brooding young philosopher, but Socrates is his familiar self, questioning and darwing out the young Acastos just as we have come to expect from Plato's collected dialogues. As an example of the gems from the book we find Socrates commenting near the end of the first dialogue, "perhaps the language of art is the most universal and enduring kind of human thought." This is a great short read for armchair philosophers.

[Regan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murdoch's great turn in these short dialogues is to present Plato as a mostly introverted youth who keeps to himself, scribbling everything that everyone says, divorced from the others. He is alone, broody and petulant. Throughout the plays the characters again and again describe Plato as emotional, moody and irrational. They see him as a failing poet, and a none-too-bright philosopher.

Late in each dialogue Plato erupts and can hold his peace no longer. In both manic episodes Plato frantically attempts to expound on what will be the foundations of his later philosophy, to the general derision of his audience. (Less Socrates, naturally.)

The joke is on Plato, but, since Plato's 'silly' view has held such a prominent place in the history of Western thought, Murdoch invites us to wonder if the joke is on us?

[Lukerik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some very clever writing here. When I first saw the book I thought it was rather brave of someone to be writing dialogues in this day and age, especially inviting comparisons with Plato. If reading some of the old non-Platonic dialogues has taught me nothing else it's that the genre is much harder to do well than Plato makes it appear.

But what we have here are two fully functioning dialogues that work on multiple levels. There are lots of clever in-jokes for those readers who have read Plato and know something about his times, but so much besides that I'd recommend this book to anyone.

[J Jansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written platonic dialogues with many references to contemporary problems, persuasive, and concerns in them. This makes the reading fun.
The conversational parties and the setup are well done. Every character has a real character that I can follow, something that the original dialogues do not evoke for me.
The tentative and uncertain nature of the dialogue is so good for exploring ideas and showing the different sides of them.

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A Dialogue About Art" and "A Dialogue about Religion." I usually find the dissection and analysis of ideas more tiring (and tiresome) than pleasurable, especially when they become abstractions divorced from any real-life correlatives. In this pair of conversations (which are actually two parts of a whole) though, Murdoch has contrived to make the interplay of ideas as interesting as the interplay of the characters she gives them to. She's such a lucid writer, with such a feel for the small characteristic detail, that even an anti-philosophe like myself gets caught up in the seductive interplay of shifting defnitions that seem to have something to do with the most important things in life. Murdoch has, of course, her own humanistic, rationalistic point of view (I'm not sure those words describe it adequately, but it's as near as I get), and she puts her most persuasive arguments in the mouth of Socrates. Plato comes across as a decidedly sulky and occasionally wrong-headed pupil, but decidedly a more substantial and worthy character than other fairly easily recognizable "characters" (in the old sense - that is, types). Murdoch's easy acceptance and depiction of the homoerotic interplay between her characters (one is a shallow flirt) is refreshing. Only 131 pages but well worth the dollars, and a really interesting corollary to the novels, where the philosophical preoccupations are subordinated to the characterization. [These notes made in 1990:].

[John Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

The boss-type intellectual and politician advocates social realistic art to improve society and, like Marx, doesn’t want to explain the world but change it. Surely, says Acastos, there are interesting good men in literature. Name some, says Socrates. That man is the measure of all things comes from Protagoras. The sophist in the second dialogue says the gods were just ideal pictures of us. I’d go further: they were projections of the gods inside us we’re ignorant of, our own unconscious wills or spirits which inform our minds and often believe of themselves they are gods. Socrates asks, can there be a good religious way of life without supernatural beliefs. Only if the belief is true. Belief in your own informing spirit is about as true as you’re going to get and would only be regarded as supernatural out of ignorance it is natural, to you. The socially conscious youth contends religion has always been a reactionary force, consoling people who can think about heaven and not about changing the world and their rotten lives. That’s the pagan criticism of Xianity and applicable to Islam too. Acastos says religion can’t be slavish subjection to some supernatural person, so ruling out any transcendent god. Socrates asks what Heraclitus meant by saying, he who is alone wise wants and does not want to be called Zeus. Murdoch gives her explanation. Mine would be the god inside us wants and does not want to be regarded as god because if you did call him what he is you’d know him and might unable to sustain the illusion your consciousness is free. Mind you my unconscious said I lived in a divinity students residence to find out what they were saying about me. I said I would not be so presumptuous. The socially conscious youth says, religious people think they’re going to live for ever in heaven. Maybe that’s because they know they’re mortal and don’t want to accept they’re quite as unimportant as they also know they are. A better explanation would be that to live we have to believe we’re indispensable while also knowing we’re not. I notice the religious avoid thinking where heaven might be, now it can no longer be just above the mountain tops and readily accessible. Is it outwith the universe? How do ascending prophets get there in the flesh, by holding their breaths through an immensity of space? It’s a mystery to me how people can believe the codswallop they affect to believe. Plato won’t have it we’re the gods. Murdoch, without god, wants there to be a transcendent good that compels spiritual change in us. Socrates suggests there’s one god left, Eros (or sex). Alcibiades walks in and says good and evil are as one, you can’t have one without the other. Plato’s not having that. Eros has the last word. One of them wants the slave, for sex.

[David Dunlap · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a fascinating conceit: two dialogues with Socrates at the center -- one about the nature of art, the other about religion. As so frequently happens these days whenever this reader approaches works of a philosophical nature, the arguments presented are, at times, too deep and convoluted to be easily unraveled. That said, the interplay among the characters is quite interesting, and there were (for this reader) true flashes of brilliance in the second dialogue: I will continue to ponder the relationship between religion and morality for a bit. Recommended, if you are so inclined.

[Ehsan the badass · Rating 3 out of 5]

اندکی تامل کنید.تیموناکس گفت که خیر و نیکی مفهومی انتزاعی است،و آنتاگوراس آن را جعبه ای خالی نامید.شاید منظورشان این است که ما را آزاد و بی قیدو شرط میگذارند تا هرچه را خود دلمان خواست خیرو نیکی بنامیم.

[Cecília · Rating 3 out of 5]

Iris Murdoch, stop making everyone act gay all the time. I’m not enjoying this 60yo/20yo pairing as much as you thought I would. That aside, this is a great didactic summary of many poignant arguments about art and religion.

[Walter Polashenski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. I think her Socrates was en point. The perfect questioner,reflecting, summarizing, just a little challenge, always encouraging.

[Eric Randolph · Rating 5 out of 5]

If your idea of a good time is imagining how Plato and Socrates would have chatted about art and religion, then let's be friends.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Refreshing discourse debating the natures of art and religion.

[Samuel Croteau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Iris Murdoch is a master philosopher. And Alcibiades does it again.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

explores: where is the value of religion? is it derivative or inherent?

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 // 04b25

[Vel Veeter]

This book contains two dialogues written as if to be performed, but I listened to the audiobook read by a single narrator and it was fine. Iris Murdorch, along with being an accomplished novelist is also a trained philosopher with a PhD and so course understands the nature of philosophy and philosophical discussion, elements that show up in many of her novels, and especially that of the relationship between master and mentee/student and teacher.

These dialogues, one about the nature and role of art in society, and one about the nature and role of religion in society are both interesting in the ways that they discuss those ideas. I find the art dialog to be the one I am more interested in in terms of my orientation to art and language, but as far as society goes, given that I live in the United States, I have to reckon with the role and importance of religion, but at the societal level and on the interpersonal one as well.

The charm of both dialogues is two-fold. Among her many expertises, Iris Murdoch seems to really understand youth and how youth informs knowledge. So the ideas of the boys in each one are audacious, foolhardy, and earnest — rash and invective at times, and both supremely confident and self-conscious at the same time. So watching her not only put Socrates in the role of teacher, but also infusing the dialogues with personality is a great success.

The other charm is that Plato is represented here as an annoyed failed poet who is clearly smarter than every other student, but reticent to speak up except when absolutely compelled, upon which time he thoroughly settles the matter.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Iris, Iris, Iris... So you are smarter than I am. I struggled to make heads or tails of your dramatic conversations exploring art and religion. Socrates, Plato and some of their confreres, and I do mean confreres given their overt proclivities, carry on a 'stimulating' exploration. Now I have never read anything in the original Greek or Latin for that matter but their viewpoints seem remarkably modern and decidedly progressive. Can it be said that history only repeats itself as do the Greek dramas? So, no wonder!! This must have been just an early version. I perceived references to art as if their were many forms and evolutions. I perceived references to religion as if there were many who were already agnostic or atheist. Amazing!! But.. what of the dialogue and any conclusions to be made? Nada. Socrates, Plato and the gang got me no closer to understanding the definitions. Good try, Iris!!! It must be me.

[Ian O'Loughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Murdoch challenged some long and deeply held beliefs of mine, and I think she may be right.

[Parham]

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