Why Plato Matters Now

"Angie Hobbs is a leading public philosopher who has a background in classics. She actually wrote a really nice, very short, illustrated Ladybird book on The Republic that, for some bizarre reason, has gone out of print. She’s very good at explaining Plato at all leves. This book is pitched higher—it’s not an academic book, but the scholarship is visible in the sense that she gives her sources and is careful to avoid oversimplifying. So you get some of the complexity of different readings of Plato . But her underlying theme is connecting his work to the present day, why we should read Plato now . Unfortunately much of what he wrote about politics and power is still very relevant. Some of what is most pertinent relates to questions of what happens when a tyrant gets into power, the phases of development in society when an immoral authoritarian leader takes the reins. Some of Plato’s predictions are uncannily accurate about the present day. Well, Classics is a really interesting subject area—or really a cluster of subject areas. Philosophers who study classical philosophy today are usually polymaths. They study history, they study theatre, they study poetry, they study philosophy, they study politics. Because they are studying Classical civilisation and all the intertwined elements of that, I think that probably makes them, as a group, more sensitive to context when they read a book of philosophy. Plenty of people read Descartes, but they don’t really contexualise him amongst his contemporaries. A Classicist will not read Plato naively, as a close reading of a text, without being aware of the Athens within which he was writing and the political tensions and historical precedents, in terms not just of philosophy, but of things that have happened that have shaped the way in which the writer is expressing himself. Then, Classicists are constantly under pressure to justify their existence – why study an ancient civilization, why take years learning Latin and Greek? So they are often keen to demonstrate the continuing relevance of what they do. The combination means that they read works in context, but also look for parallels in the present. Hobbs is someone who is very aware of the political aspects of Plato’s—and Socrates ’—life (Socrates was Plato’s mentor). The Dialogues are based on the historical Socrates, to some extent. Not all of them. But I think it’s fairly natural for a Classical philosopher to look at the shape of things politically. It would be difficult, anyway, to read some of Plato without being aware of just how prescient many of his ideas are. There is, of course, the cliché that all philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato anyway (that was Alfred North Whitehead’s quip). Hobbes outlines and explains and contextualises some of Plato’s key ideas. But there are so many parallels with the present. This is a rich book written by someone who has devoted much of her life to studying Plato. It’s not a rip-roaring read, I wouldn’t take it to the beach. It’s a serious book, that requires attention, but it is written for the general reader, and very rewarding. Yes. Callard’s book on Socrates is a much more personal take, and it focuses on Socrates more than Plato, although obviously what we know of him is largely through Plato’s writing. So there is an overlap, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. For Callard, the emphasis is on the fallibility of reason and the humility of Socrates in recognising that he might be mistaken, and what that means in terms of the pursuit of knowledge and how you might go about it. She presents Socrates as a kind of hero of reasoning and a model of how we should live, in the sense of constantly revising our thoughts in the light of new evidence and reason. Hobbs is more focused on Plato’s text and on interpreting it. They are both good books, but I’m choosing Hobb’s because I think it will last longer; it’s less idiosyncratic. You will either love or hate Agnes Callard’s way of writing and being. I think she’s a strong and sometimes quirky voice as a writer. If you know her, you hear her speaking as you read. But they are both in the same ballpark in the sense that they are looking at ancient philosophy and making it relevant to the present day. Actually, in this vein, I’d also like to mention a much earlier book that isn’t as well-known as it should be. This is Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato at the Googleplex . She’s a novelist as well as a philosopher. Yes. I really enjoyed interviewing her for that. Plato at the Googleplex is another book making Plato relevant to the present day. It’s very skilfully constructed in the sense that Plato is actually a character in the book moving through contemporary society, reacting to the present (hence the title). These three books together would make a great combination. They complement one another."