Just Finished Reading: The Living Wisdom of Socrates by Mark Forstater (FP: 2004)
I haven’t read any classical philosophy for a while and a random book choice gave me that opportunity so I took it. I developed a real passion for the Ancients during my last university course where Aristotle became a firm favourite of mine much more so than Plato who I honestly never really rated (apart from the allegory of the cave which is pretty neat if, in my opinion, taken too far). Anyway, Plato’s writings are the main way that the world found out about Socrates who never wrote anything down – a concept explained well in this thin volume. The other is the writings of the military leader Xenophon who knew Socrates and made himself a part-time student of the great man. One of the (honestly few) interesting points the author makes in the book is that the picture of Xenophon’s Socrates and Plato’s Socrates are of two very different people. I’m sure that there’s a book ready to be written (if it hasn’t already been produced) on that very subject.
Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, is that these few interesting insights were just about the best thing in the book. Most of the book is given to rather free translations of the original texts (from both Xenophon and Plato) updated into modern parlance from a 19th century original translation. Purists would, naturally, be squirming in their seats throughout the whole 226 pages. These is actually very little discussion of what Socrates meant during his conversations with the great, the good and the normal in Athens. So I was left a little confused (as to the function of the book to be honest), a little irritated and a little bored. This is not really an introduction to the philosophy of Socrates nor is it an analysis of that thought. Honestly it had the feel of a patchwork quilt of a book looking for a theme. It’s actually billed as a ‘self-help’ book and I will label it as such. I do think that with that in mind it could have been far more focused towards that end and less a ‘copy and paste’ composition. Not terrible but neither for the novice nor the fan. (R)
8 comments:
i much prefer 19th c. translators myself... i doubt if the ancient Greeks wrote in colloquial language...
Typically, I'm told that Plato interpreted Socrates to make him fit rather well with Plato! Not surprising. Shame about the lack of new content; possibly it's an attempt to take advantage of the weird Greek-based self help trend of books coming out lately. I've literally lost count of the amount of books with a Stoic brand on them, but some of them are just self-help with a toga thrown on, like that Ryan Holiday book I read a few years back.
Do you ever wonder how some books get published? An agent had to be impressed with it enough to convince a publisher to pay good money to print it. Or was this author already famous, which then greases the wheels for publication?
Going by the cover, this could have been a self-published thing. It's basically a background image, two text boxes, and maybe some Wordart for "Socrates".
Perhaps my view is not correct, but I have always thought that, while Socrates was a real person, the figure portrayed in Plato’s writings was mostly Plato’s creation.
Either way, I read Plato extensively in college and then did a reread of many of his works about ten years ago. I think that I would like to try him again but this time with some kind of guide. I guess that this book will not be that guide.
I looked up the author. Did we all know he was the producer of Monty Python? I sure did not. He seems to have a lot going on.
Ahh, good research Judy.
@ Mudpuddle: I read something a while back which essentially said that the more readable a translation was of Ancient Greek the more likely it was to be a poor translation!
@ Stephen: When I studied Plato we were told that Socrates (although he existed) was essentially a creation of Plato. It's easy to imagine Plato using Socrates (after his death) to get his points across. there is indeed a sudden upsurge in Greco-Roman 'self-help books. Most of them seem rather poor quality.
@ V V: He had published a few before this mostly in the same ballpark. His previous books must have made *enough* for his publisher to keep bankrolling him.
@ Brian: Yes, that's correct I think. Socrates *was* a real person but was adopted as a character in Plato's works to get his points across - and as a homage to his old teacher no doubt. I'm not a huge fan of Plato and think that many of his ideas are dubious and of overrated value. I'm much more of a fanboy of Aristotle who seemed to me to talk a great deal of sense about an amazing breadth of subjects.
@ Judy: Yes, he does seem to have been involved with Monty Python... Strange world!
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