The Pleasures of Good Talk

In Chapter 1, “Fact and Form,” in his book Process and Reality, the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) wrote: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.”

I read Will Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy for the first time when I was about twelve. The book’s opening chapter is titled “Plato.” I read that chapter over sixty years ago and fell in love with Plato. And here I am, over sixty years later, still in love. I no longer have the paperback copy of the book I first read, but I still have a copy of it. It’s in my Kindle library. For me, a significant part of loving Plato is getting to know Socrates, at least as his most famous student portrayed him. One of my reasons for being drawn to Socrates is summarized by Durant. It is from a subchapter of “Plato” titled “Socrates.”

“Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought? There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. Gnothi seauton, said Socrates: Know thyself.”

Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy (pp. 14-15). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. 

When I was in the tenth grade, I attended Provine High School in Jackson, Mississippi. I studied second-year Latin there under Mrs. Virginia Suttle, of blessed memory. That year, I bought a large sheet of white poster board for my Junior Classical League project (I was never creative at these sorts of things). I carefully wrote the words “Know Thyself” on it and properly attributed them to Socrates. I didn’t get a particularly good grade on my project, but my project reflected what has been the guiding light of my life. The following year, Jackson built a new High School for its burgeoning South Jackson student population, Wingfield High School. I attended the eleventh and twelfth grades there and took third and fourth-year Latin under the very gracious, very learned Virginia Suttle.

Recently, I have begun to reread Plato’s Republic. Unlike any other philosopher I am familiar with, the marvelous thing about reading Plato is the exquisite storytelling used to teach philosophy—the dialogues and the beautiful conversations. I am reading Paul Shorey’s translation. I want to share an example of how Plato uses a story to teach; the particular case I am referring to is a digression, an entertainment, not the heart of Plato’s point. It occurs at the beginning of Book I.

Socrates is returning from the port of Piraeus with a man named Glaucon. They have attended the inauguration of a festival in honor of a goddess. They leave to return to Athens but are held up by a boy sent by a man named Polemarchus. He wants them to wait until he catches up with them. They wait. Polemarchus entices the two men to stay overnight. He thinks they will enjoy some nighttime scheduled events related to the festival. They return with Polemarchus to his home. There, Socrates is pleased to find Cephalus, the father of Polemarchus. He had not seen him for a long time and was delighted to have the opportunity to talk with him. The focus of their conversation is old age and growing older. 

Cephalus, for his part, is glad to see Socrates, explaining that with age, he can no longer make the trip to Athens easily. He says something wonderful to Socrates concerning growing older: “I would have you know that, for my part, as the satisfactions of the body decay, in the same measure my desires for the pleasures of good talk and my delight in them increase.”

Socrates acknowledges that he enjoys talking, as he puts it, with the “very aged.” Then he says why.

“For to my thinking we have to learn of them as it were from wayfarers who have preceded us on a road on which we too, it may be, must sometime fare—what it is like. Is it rough and hard-going or easy and pleasant to travel? And so now I would fain learn of you what you think of this thing, now that your time has come to it, the thing that the poets call ‘the threshold of old age.’ Is it a hard part of life to bear or what report have you to make of it?” (378 e).

I have read a lot of Aristotle, a famous student of Plato. But, nowhere did I find in him the humanity I find in Plato. It is a rare item and, to my way of thinking, at the very heart of wisdom, the goal of philosophy.

I will leave you the opportunity to read the answer Cephalus shared with Socrates. It’s not that what he says is long or difficult but rather that reading these things for oneself is a delight. This opening of the Republic is a pleasant way to enter what is considered one of the greatest works of political philosophy. May you read it, enjoy it, learn from it, and engage in a lifelong dialogue with Plato.

All the best,
Gershon