Overview

Best known piece where Plato poses big question vividly. The question touches many topics and can be seen from different angles. Humor lightens the reading while also bringing Socrates closer thus increasing the gravity of the question.

Angles obvious to me:

• character vs shadows
• duty vs whatever
• high cost of truth vs mass of conformists
• individual ethics vs median masses mechanics/(im)morality
• political/ideological: “undemocratic logic” of considering what is best as opposed to wherever masses go
• political/class: rich young followers
• intergenerational and other decay/corruption of Athens
• inadequate court process, circus by definition

Unforgettable quote: “by the dog I swear!”

Context

After two Plato dialogues the “10 years” reading list has Clouds by Aristophanes. Socrates summons a chorus of clouds in the play. I stopped at that point for whatever reason.

I see how Aristophanes is not wrong in his own way. Simple good sounding ideas that are virtuous otherwise can have their own limited use. It seems they are not enough/reliable to bring better standards into political/collective setting. Even though great minds came very close to finally solving the question posed.

Anyway initially I thought about going through classics by some stable plan. But the plan got destabilized because my views on philosophy got updated. So I’m not into going through all the tree of attempts to resolve the hard question. I’ll just shortcut it instead of clouding myself.

This leaves me divided between Montaigne, languages, abstract fundamental stuff and hopefully arts.