Nalin Ranasinghe has a strong affection for the Socrates he finds
in four of Plato's most influential dialogues. This engagingly
humane book traces Plato's struggle to simultaneously understand
and convey the erotic presence of Socrates. Most commentators
suppose that Plato assumes an ironic distance from Socrates.
Ranasinghe claims, rather, that the dialogues reflect Plato's awe
and frustration before the enigmatic figure whose conduct
fascinated and bewildered Classical Athens.
In original readings of the Republic, the Protagoras, the
Phaedo, and the Symposium, Ranasinghe uncovers the profound
literary and thematic unity of each work and shows new connections
among the dialogues. From this re-reading, Ranasinghe proposes new
answers to such perennial problems as the invalidity of the four
proofs of the soul's immortality in the Phaedo, the draconian
nature of the perfect regime described in the Republic, and the
nature of Socrates' dalliance with Alcibiades in the Symposium.
The book begins with an exegesis of the Republic that defends
Socrates against the charge that he offers the blueprint for a
totalitarian state--this slander must be refuted, Ranasinghe
argues, before Plato can be understood as a liberal humanist. The
chapter on the Protagoras examines the roots of sophistry and
explicates a startling similarity between Protagoras and the
nihilistic intellectual of the present day. The chapter on the
Phaedo attacks the depiction of Plato as an otherworldly mystic who
despised human existence. Two final chapters on the Symposium
reveal the true Socrates. He is, Ranasinghe finds, an exemplary
citizen and a human being passionately devoted to his mission of
reconciling the mind to the desires.
Ranasinghe's readings bring the distant and inscrutable figure
of Socrates to life. They offer a vivid account of philosophical
virtue that resonates over the centuries: how to live with
integrity and grace in a world of uncertainty.
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