The New Lifetime Reading Plan

The result of this life of thought was a series of "dialogues," long and short, some very beautiful, some dull, and most of them spotlighting his master Sуcrates. The "Socratic method" was part of the atmosphere of the period. Sуcrates questioned ali things, and particularly the meanings men attached to abstract and important words, such as justice, love, and courage. The questioning was real; the truth was finally approached only through the play of minds, that give-and-take we call "dialectic." This mode of thought is exemplified and perfected in the dialogues. They are not mere exercises in mental agility (except occasionally) but works of art in which ali the resources of a poetic and dramatic imagination are called into play. The reader of Plato, no less than the reader of Shakespeare, is reading an artist.

You should keep in mind three central Platonic notions: The first is that, as Sуcrates says, "a life without inquiry is not worth living." That lies at the heart of everything Plato wrote. The second notion is that virtue is knowledge; the sufficiently wise person will also be sufficiently good. The third notion has to do with the kinds of knowledge most worth having. Plato believed in "Ideas," invisible, intangible archetypes or proto- types of things and actions and qualities. These latter, as we know them on earth through the distorting veil of the senses, are but faint reflections of the heavenly Ideas. We call this mode of apprehending the universe Idealism; and Plato is its father.

His philosophy, however, is not a consistent whole, and in many respects it changed as he grew older and lost faith in humanity^ ability to govern itself wisely. I suggest therefore that the dialogues be read, not as systematic expositions of dogma, but as the intellectual dramas they are, full of humor, wit, mental play, unforgettable extended similes called myths, and particularly full of one of history^ most fascinating charac- ters, the ugly, charming, mock-modest Sуcrates.

It might be best to begin with the Apology, in which Sуcrates defends himself against the charges of atheism and corrupting the youth. As we know, his defense was a failure— he was executed, by self-administered poison, in 399 b.c.e. The dialogue has, however, been a success for almost twenty- four hundred years.

Follow that with the Crito. Here Sуcrates gives us his rea- sons for refusing to escape from prison. Then perhaps the Protagoras, in many ways the most sheerly brilliant of the dia­logues, and the perfect exemplification of Plato using ali his talents. Some may wish to try the Meno, recording Plato^ famous doctrine of recollection. Then comes the Symposium, practically a drama in its movement and structure. This deals with love in ali its phases, including that accepted Greek pas- sion, love between males. It deals also with drunkenness, as well as with more exalted matters.

After this perhaps the Phaedo. The sections on immortality may be skimmed or skipped, but the last few pages, describing Socrates's noble death, are required reading. Many good judges have felt them to be the finest short piece of narrative ever written. Finally, absorb as much as you can of Plato's most ambitious and rather difficult work, the Republic, which out- lines his highly conservative ideal state and is the ancestor of ali the Utopias and Dystopias—see Huxley [117] and Orwell [123]—that have since appeared.

So many of our notions and ways of thought go back to Plato (including some fantastic and even harmful ones) that knowing nothing of him means knowing less about one's self. To discover Plato is not merely to discover a masterly intellect. It is to come face to face, if you are an inheritor of the Western tradition, with much of the hitherto unsuspected content of your own mind.

C.F.

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ARISTOTLE

384-322 B.C.E. Ethics, Politics, Poetics

Aristotle tells us that education is accompanied by pain. An education in Aristotle himself certainly involves, if not pain, at least difficulty. Unlike his master, Plato [12], he is charmless. Furthermore, the fact that we do not possess his original works but only what has come down to us as probably students' notes, does not make for readability. You are warned not to expect from Aristotle the pleasure Plato offers, except that pleasure which comes from following the operations of a supreme brain.

Aristotle's intellect was one of the most comprehensive, perhaps the most comprehensive, on record. He wrote on everything, from marine life to metaphysics. While it is unwise

to say that ali these writings (many of merely antiquarian value today) can be related under a single system, it is true that Aristotle was a systematizer in the sense that Plato was not. He believed in the collectability and relatability of ali knowledge. He spent his life collecting and relating. Our idea of an ency- clopedia, a most fruitful notion, goes back to him.