The book review of PLATO:A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION

This book, as the title says, is just a brief introduction of Plato which fits the reader who has interests on philosophy but don’t receive professional training. In the whole pages, there is no academic words such as “Dasein” created by Heidegger or ”Dialektik” rediscovered by Hegel. Like the rhetoric of Plato, this book just written by ordinary language conveys fluent and concise meanings which let us be close to the Plato. The most interesting thing is the view of the writer from the angle of female ,which, conclusively, discover the pure love between man and man described as the love between tutor and the student. So this review will follow two clues to review the book: the first is the analysis of the logical order of the book and the second is my own opinion about this book and Plato.

   In the first chapter ,the author illustrate the epistemology of Plato, which mostly concentrated on the book MENO. In the book, Plato says that truth can be realized and the knowledge on earth is memory. The two ideas can be also seen in the book PHAEDO. In PHAEDO, Socrates students question why Socrates is not feared to death. Socrates answers that the truly philosopher are every time thinking of death, thinking for death, thinking as a dead because only after the death, the pure soul can separate from the dirty body, and only the soul can pursue the truth and not be disturbed by the body‘s desire. Moreover he deducts that soul is eternal and reincarnate forever. So everyone has the intelligence to get the truth for the soul because the truth has grasped all of truth, the only thing we should do is emerging the truth from our soul or mind. Back to MENO, Socrates help a boy servant solve a geometry problem related to the irrational number which is also a powerful example to prove his idea and illustrate that right thoughts or realization can generate knowledge via the induction and reflection of right thoughts. However, in THEAETETUS, Socrates questions that the thought of the court who only listen some testimony from eyewitnesses. In the author’s idea, she says it seems ambivalent to the previous idea but actually they are cohesive (she doesn’t answer the reason directly. She just says the definition of knowledge in Plato is different from our common sense).

The second chapter is talking about the lifetime of Plato and Socrates which can give us a clear scope to approach this philosophers. The third chapter’s title names “The way to unscramble Plato” divided into the “practice and theory”, “the pretend of Socrates “ and “ detachment and authority”. Admittedly, it’s too hard to accurately conclude the relationship between them. We can just depicts some characters of Plato. Socrates, written by Plato, is aloof to death, satire the person living on selling “wisdom” and sophistry. He truly believe that everyone can pursue the truth and his responsibility is like a midwife who don’t produce wisdom but cultivate others’ wisdom by communication and reflection. Sometimes he will also propose his own doctrine (it mostly comes from Plato) especially in TIMAEUS. Plato constructs his own ideal world and ideal society which, in philosophy word we call ontology. In fact, his ontology about the universe and the ideal has influenced or even dominate the western philosophy, astronomy. He says that the universe is rational      and has its own soul as an conscious organics ,The ideal model of universe should be globe because of the smooth surface and the perfect nature. He also create the theory “three in one “like “the difference, the similarity and the unity of difference and similarity in one entity “which accord with the Christian idea of trinity and the opinion of tao school. However, the writer doesn’t mention these doctrine of Plato, shamefully.

She also argues about the Plato’s influence and attitudes to arts and poems .In Plato’s idea, the fake story will weaken the Greek’s sense of citizen and beautify the warrior status which has no benefit to cooperation. So we can concluded that Plato is an anti-myth philosopher or in other words the appearance of philosophy has announced the dusk of myth age. Sarcastically, the beautiful myth of Atlantis is spread by Plato.

The most interesting chapter is” the love desire and philosophy” which mostly concentrate on the homosexual(this word actually conveys a misunderstanding that it establish on the sex relation, I prefer to express as the pure love between man and man ,the love from the depth of soul).In the author’s view, many scholar overlook the side of Plato, so only gain the party conclusion. For Plato, the homosexuality is described as the love between the old tutor and the young students which, in Socrates words, is just on the soul instead of sex. But Plato don’t reject the sex, sometimes he think the desire of sex can be transformed into the love to truth and contemplate of the eternity. So the most creative idea from the author is Plato build the relation between the sex love and philosophy. She also mention the Plato’s idea on female. She argues that Plato completely discuss in a male’s view inherited the discrimination of female, on the other hand, Plato also admits that woman has a ability to take on the jobs of man in REPUBLIC.

There are some remaining chapters I doesn’t evolve in which relate to the entity of everything, the soul and ego and the virtue of individual and society. She give a vivid and inspiring introduction of them. These concepts like soul reincarnation , the three part of soul ,the relation between the soul and body, god and goodness has enough space to discuss and cannot be easily concluded as a sentence. I will talk about them in the end.

Frankly speaking, the book is good enough to be a introduction of Plato. Most of fields are mentioned in the book and it also discover a new field about the love and philosophy. But to me, it’s too brief and merely discuss about the research and influence of the Plato. Actually the trinity should be discussed in detail. For example, the dialectics has three sections “ conscious, reflect and reflect the reflection” and the dialectics ‘ original word “Διαλεγεσθαι” means gathering and penetrating which is often used by Socrates .The tao school also has a same state that” tao produce one, one become two, two become three, three become everything. So it’s interesting to discuss the Chinese philosophy and Greek philosophy. Maybe you can escape from Plato, but you cannot escape from the Plato system. Plato should be chewed over and over again. My passion of Greek shall also be lighted again. Maybe this is the biggest gain from the book( to write the review, I has read the PHAEDO and TIMAEUS and refer the book《陈康，论希腊哲学》)

2019-12-30

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