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# Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

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Is philosophy obsolete? Are the ancient questions still relevant in the age of cosmology and neuroscience, not to mention crowd-sourcing and cable news? The acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provides a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today’s debates on religion, morality, politics, and science. At the origin of Western philosophy stands Plato, who got about as much wrong as one would expect from a thinker who lived 2,400 years ago. But Plato’s role in shaping philosophy was pivotal. On her way to considering the place of philosophy in our ongoing intellectual life, Goldstein tells a new story of its origin, re-envisioning the extraordinary culture that produced the man who produced philosophy. But it is primarily the fate of philosophy that concerns her. Is the discipline no more than a way of biding our time until the scientists arrive on the scene? Have they already arrived? Does philosophy itself ever make progress? And if it does, why is so ancient a figure as Plato of any continuing relevance? Plato at the Googleplex is Goldstein’s startling investigation of these conundra. She interweaves her narrative with Plato’s own choice for bringing ideas to life—the dialogue. Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and embarked on a multicity speaking tour. How would he handle the host of a cable news program who denies there can be morality without religion? How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a tiger mom on how to raise the perfect child? How would he answer a neuroscientist who, about to scan Plato’s brain, argues that science has definitively answered the questions of free will and moral agency? What would Plato make of Google, and of the idea that knowledge can be crowd-sourced rather than reasoned out by experts? With a philosopher’s depth and a novelist’s imagination and wit, Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us by allowing us to eavesdrop on Plato as he takes on the modern world. (With black-and-white photographs throughout.)

Review: Plato, Yesterday and Today - I have given this interesting book a five-star rating, because it is an excellent introduction to Plato, philosophy generally, and ancient Greek history. In explaining Plato's historical context, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein consciously—and I think successfully—attempts to find a golden mean between historicism (assuming that a writer's thought is merely a product of his/her time) and what she calls "philosophical insularity" (pp. 161-62). One might add that a golden mean also exists between historicism and anachronism/presentism (interpreting an earlier author solely from the current reader's own historical-cultural-ideological perspective, a characteristic defect of postmodernism as well as historical triumphalism). By resurrecting Plato from the dead and placing him in our own time, Goldstein shows how our philosophical ideas have progressed—and often not progressed—from Plato's deep understanding. She uses Plato's own dialogue format (and other literary devices) to situate him in contemporary circumstances. Goldstein's dialogues are masterpieces of art, wit, and philosophical insight. Like Plato, Goldstein has a literary bent that is in service to her love of wisdom, and, like Plato, she does not hesitate to satirize contemporary popular culture when appropriate. I found myself literally laughing out loud at many of her depictions of twenty-first-century characters. And her dialogues are interspersed with helpful nonfictional expositions regarding Plato, philosophy, and history. Several of these are outstanding. I do not, however, agree with all of Goldstein's statements and interpretations. The following are two examples of such disagreement. First, in discussing Plato's test in The Republic for young people to be advanced to the educational track of philosophers and eventual guardians/rulers, Goldstein has her fictional Plato state the following (pp. 198-99): "What I proposed was having our children be told glorious tales to stir their imaginations, very much stressing all the time that these tales were true, and then seeing which among the children can resist them, can see the logical inconsistencies within these tales, and see all their inconsistencies with other truths that they have been told (Republic 413c-414a)." What Plato actually wrote at this precise location of The Republic was the following ("Socrates" is the narrator; paragraph breaks are omitted, and the entire quotation is not indented due to the technical limitations of the present format): [413C] “And I imagine that you too would claim that people are bewitched who change their opinions when they’re either entranced by pleasure or in dread of something frightening.” “Yes,” he said, “it’s likely that everything that fools people is bewitching.” “Then as I was just saying, one needs to find out which of them are the best guardians of the way of thinking they have at their sides, that the thing they always need to do is to do what seems to them to be best for the city. So they need to be observed right from childhood by people who set tasks for them in which someone would be most likely to forget such a thing or be fooled out of it; anyone who remembers it and [413D] is hard to fool is to be chosen and anyone who doesn’t is to be rejected. Isn’t that so?” “Yes.” “And laborious jobs, painful sufferings, and competitions also need to be set up for them in which these same things are to be observed.” “That’s right,” he said. “Thus a contest needs to be made,” I said, “for the third form as well, that of bewitchment, and it needs to be watched. The same way people check out whether colts are frightened when they lead them into noisy commotions, the guardians, when young, need to be taken into some terrifying situations and then quickly shifted [413E] into pleasant ones, so as to test them much more than gold is tested in a fire. If someone shows himself hard to bewitch and composed in everything, a good guardian of himself and of the musical style that he learned, keeping himself to a rhythm and harmony well-suited to all these situations, then he’s just the sort of person who’d be most valuable both to himself and to a city. And that one among the children and the youths and the men who is tested and always [414A] comes through unscathed is to be appointed as ruler of the city as well as guardian, and honors are to be given to him while he’s living and upon his death, when he’s allotted the most prized of tombs and other memorials. Anyone not of that sort is to be rejected. It seems to me, Glaucon,” I said, “that the selection and appointment of rulers and guardians is something like that, described in outline, not with precision.” “It looks to me too like it would be done some such way,” he said. Plato, Republic, trans. and ed. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2007), Kindle ed., Kindle loc. 2651-70. Goldstein's Plato did not, therefore, accurately quote or summarize what the historical Plato actually wrote in the referenced discussion of The Republic. Goldstein may be getting at a meaning of the historical Plato that is deeply concealed in what he actually said. However, that interpretation of Plato, albeit quite interesting, would be highly speculative. More likely, Goldstein has her resurrected "Plato" provide an updated account of what he wrote millennia ago. Although this verges on the presentist fallacy, it is nevertheless interesting. The updated test would be a clever way to identify philosophic minds in our present culture, with its long history of scriptural traditions. For example, the writings of Professor Bart Ehrman (who began life as an evangelical Christian) are recent specimens of a centuries-long rational/historical critique of the Christian New Testament. Similar critiques of the Jewish scriptures go back at least to Spinoza. It is possible that an individual growing up in a religious milieu might be able to detect such contradictions even before becoming aware of the modern scholarship, and this may well have been Goldstein's own personal experience (it was certainly mine). Her updated test would, however, be less obviously applicable in ancient Athens. Plato elsewhere disposed of the gods of Greek mythology on mostly ethical grounds. Their antics were so ridiculous that the sophisticated method devised by Goldstein would probably not have been necessary for any thinking Athenian to reject the pagan gods outright (though not publicly). Accordingly, I don't object to Goldstein modernizing Plato in this manner, but, literal textualist that I am, I would have preferred that she mention her procedure in a note (as she did so well in other instances). Second, in discussing the character of Thrasymachus in The Republic, Goldstein states (p. 155): "Thrasymachus speaks for an unregenerate Ethos of the Extraordinary that licenses unmitigated individualism. He’s an Athenian Ayn Rand." However, Thrasymachus argued that justice is the advantage of the stronger, specifically, the advantage of those who hold ruling political power. (Republic 338b, 339a). This was virtually the opposite of Ayn Rand's political philosophy. It happens that I have read most of Rand's writings—some of them (for example, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem, along with many of her essays) several times. Rand's bedrock principle was the rule of noninitiation of force, a position that Thrasymachus would vehemently have rejected. Rand applied this principle universally, especially to government. Thus, for Rand, taxation and some other governmental laws and regulations violate the principle of noninitiation of force. Rand's problem is not that she is like Thrasymachus. In fact, she emphatically rejected Thrasymachean ethics and politics. Rand's problem is that she failed to recognize that it is simply impossible to apply the principle of noninitiation of force to all governmental activities without dismantling all government, which would result, as Hobbes put it, in the war of all against all. Murray Rothbard, whom Rand expelled from her inner circle, took Rand's political theory to its logical conclusion, anarchocapitalism. Rothbard's radical libertarian approach (with competing armed private insurance companies replacing governmental police and military forces) would inevitably result in rival militias fighting for control, as in many areas of the Middle East and Africa today. Rothbard would apparently have welcomed what we now call "failed states." Rand, who accepted limited government, ridiculed anarchocapitalism and wrote that libertarianism, having no ethical principles, was destined to become a hippie movement. If she were alive today, Rand might have been surprised to see that libertarianism has degenerated not into a hippie movement but into a right-wing tea-party movement. Elitist that she was, she probably would not like what she would see. She routinely denounced the Republican Party of her day and said, in reference to Ronald Reagan, that anyone who did not believe in the right to an abortion did not believe in any individual rights at all. Unlike many tea partiers, she was a proud and public atheist. But Rand repeatedly condemned the distinction between theory and practice (she rigorously opposed the dictum that something may be true in theory but not in practice). Once upon a time, the formulation of "pure" but impractical ideologies was a preserve of the Left. For example, Marxism was applied by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao to create totalitarian states. The attempt to apply theoretically pure principles, without regard to practical consequences, now seems to be a preserve of the Right. What has been lost is the practical wisdom of Aristotle and the American Founders. As James Madison said in the Constitutional Convention on June 26, 1787, "In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce." The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422. But, like Plato (see Plato at the Googleplex, p. 44), I digress. Notwithstanding my disagreements with some of Goldstein's statements and interpretations, her book is an original and important contribution that should be read by all those interested in philosophical inquiry. One of the many themes of the book is the present-day rivalry between science and philosophy, with some scientists arguing that there is no need or use for philosophy. Goldstein's final chapter is a thoughtfully constructed dialogue between a neuroscientist and Plato on this issue, with the neuroscientist's graduate assistant, Agatha, supporting Plato with excellent arguments. Plato and Agatha make a rational and convincing case for philosophy as a pursuit that is not invalidated by science. Indeed, philosophy will never die as long as it has such eloquent and knowledgeable advocates as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
Review: An intellectual banquet - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein subtitles her provocatively titled book "Why Philosophy Won't Go Away." She has a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton and has written three novels, The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light, and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed 36 Arguments which includes an appendix (available on the web) that points out the logical flaws in every argument. I.e., just because we can't explain it doesn't mean that God did it. Plato at the Googleplex is a hybrid. It is both an explication of Plato's key thoughts and imaginative dialogues between a 2,400-year-old Plato and contemporary figures: A Google engineer, a Freudian therapist and a tiger mother, an advice columnist, a cable news host, and a neuroscience researcher. In alternating chapters, Goldstein alternates chapter between a history of Plato's life and times and an account of his classic dialogues: What is a good life? What is knowledge? What can we know? The Myth of the Cave. The Death of Socrates. And more. Following each chapter on Plato and his thought is a chapter in which Plato confronts contemporary issues: Could crowd-sourcing be better—more valid, more accurate, more true—source of moral thought than experts? What can you say to a Freudian psychoanalyst and a tiger mom who disagree on the proper way to raise a child? How would Plato respond to a cable talk show who denies there can be morality without religion? And, perhaps more basically, what has Plato to say to a neuroscientist who claims that science has answers all questions of free will and moral agency? Now that science has either answered (or seems able to answer eventually) all the Big Questions, what do we need philosophy for? Let alone the thoughts of some Greek who lived 2,400 years ago. Goldstein argues—persuasively to my mind—that we need philosophy to address questions like these: Do the 1 percent really contribute more to society than the 99 percent, and if they do, should their contributions be recognized in the form of increased privileges or increased obligations? Is the role of the state to protect us or perfect us? Are there dangers of mixing entertainment values with politics, and if so, what are they? Do professional thinkers who come out of universities and think tanks have a role in statesmanship? Is their expertise useless or worse in the practical political sphere? Are ethical truths inextricably tied to religious truths? Are all truths—ethical, religious, scientific—no more than cultural artifacts? Is reason sufficient—or even necessary—to guide us through life...? And more and more. Plato at the Googleplex is wonderfully stimulating and readable. For someone with no background in philosophy, the book is, I think, a first-rate introduction to Plato and his thought with its relevance to today's issues. For someone who has a background, it is thought-provoking and challenging. I suspect there are philosophy professors all over the country reading the book and looking for flaws in Goldstein's arguments and scholarship. I wish them luck. Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy an intellectual banquet.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,092,968 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #446 in Political Commentary & Opinion #506 in Political Philosophy (Books) #704 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 404 Reviews |

## Images

![Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91GO3z8gubL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Plato, Yesterday and Today
*by A***N on June 14, 2014*

I have given this interesting book a five-star rating, because it is an excellent introduction to Plato, philosophy generally, and ancient Greek history. In explaining Plato's historical context, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein consciously—and I think successfully—attempts to find a golden mean between historicism (assuming that a writer's thought is merely a product of his/her time) and what she calls "philosophical insularity" (pp. 161-62). One might add that a golden mean also exists between historicism and anachronism/presentism (interpreting an earlier author solely from the current reader's own historical-cultural-ideological perspective, a characteristic defect of postmodernism as well as historical triumphalism). By resurrecting Plato from the dead and placing him in our own time, Goldstein shows how our philosophical ideas have progressed—and often not progressed—from Plato's deep understanding. She uses Plato's own dialogue format (and other literary devices) to situate him in contemporary circumstances. Goldstein's dialogues are masterpieces of art, wit, and philosophical insight. Like Plato, Goldstein has a literary bent that is in service to her love of wisdom, and, like Plato, she does not hesitate to satirize contemporary popular culture when appropriate. I found myself literally laughing out loud at many of her depictions of twenty-first-century characters. And her dialogues are interspersed with helpful nonfictional expositions regarding Plato, philosophy, and history. Several of these are outstanding. I do not, however, agree with all of Goldstein's statements and interpretations. The following are two examples of such disagreement. First, in discussing Plato's test in The Republic for young people to be advanced to the educational track of philosophers and eventual guardians/rulers, Goldstein has her fictional Plato state the following (pp. 198-99): "What I proposed was having our children be told glorious tales to stir their imaginations, very much stressing all the time that these tales were true, and then seeing which among the children can resist them, can see the logical inconsistencies within these tales, and see all their inconsistencies with other truths that they have been told (Republic 413c-414a)." What Plato actually wrote at this precise location of The Republic was the following ("Socrates" is the narrator; paragraph breaks are omitted, and the entire quotation is not indented due to the technical limitations of the present format): [413C] “And I imagine that you too would claim that people are bewitched who change their opinions when they’re either entranced by pleasure or in dread of something frightening.” “Yes,” he said, “it’s likely that everything that fools people is bewitching.” “Then as I was just saying, one needs to find out which of them are the best guardians of the way of thinking they have at their sides, that the thing they always need to do is to do what seems to them to be best for the city. So they need to be observed right from childhood by people who set tasks for them in which someone would be most likely to forget such a thing or be fooled out of it; anyone who remembers it and [413D] is hard to fool is to be chosen and anyone who doesn’t is to be rejected. Isn’t that so?” “Yes.” “And laborious jobs, painful sufferings, and competitions also need to be set up for them in which these same things are to be observed.” “That’s right,” he said. “Thus a contest needs to be made,” I said, “for the third form as well, that of bewitchment, and it needs to be watched. The same way people check out whether colts are frightened when they lead them into noisy commotions, the guardians, when young, need to be taken into some terrifying situations and then quickly shifted [413E] into pleasant ones, so as to test them much more than gold is tested in a fire. If someone shows himself hard to bewitch and composed in everything, a good guardian of himself and of the musical style that he learned, keeping himself to a rhythm and harmony well-suited to all these situations, then he’s just the sort of person who’d be most valuable both to himself and to a city. And that one among the children and the youths and the men who is tested and always [414A] comes through unscathed is to be appointed as ruler of the city as well as guardian, and honors are to be given to him while he’s living and upon his death, when he’s allotted the most prized of tombs and other memorials. Anyone not of that sort is to be rejected. It seems to me, Glaucon,” I said, “that the selection and appointment of rulers and guardians is something like that, described in outline, not with precision.” “It looks to me too like it would be done some such way,” he said. Plato, Republic, trans. and ed. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2007), Kindle ed., Kindle loc. 2651-70. Goldstein's Plato did not, therefore, accurately quote or summarize what the historical Plato actually wrote in the referenced discussion of The Republic. Goldstein may be getting at a meaning of the historical Plato that is deeply concealed in what he actually said. However, that interpretation of Plato, albeit quite interesting, would be highly speculative. More likely, Goldstein has her resurrected "Plato" provide an updated account of what he wrote millennia ago. Although this verges on the presentist fallacy, it is nevertheless interesting. The updated test would be a clever way to identify philosophic minds in our present culture, with its long history of scriptural traditions. For example, the writings of Professor Bart Ehrman (who began life as an evangelical Christian) are recent specimens of a centuries-long rational/historical critique of the Christian New Testament. Similar critiques of the Jewish scriptures go back at least to Spinoza. It is possible that an individual growing up in a religious milieu might be able to detect such contradictions even before becoming aware of the modern scholarship, and this may well have been Goldstein's own personal experience (it was certainly mine). Her updated test would, however, be less obviously applicable in ancient Athens. Plato elsewhere disposed of the gods of Greek mythology on mostly ethical grounds. Their antics were so ridiculous that the sophisticated method devised by Goldstein would probably not have been necessary for any thinking Athenian to reject the pagan gods outright (though not publicly). Accordingly, I don't object to Goldstein modernizing Plato in this manner, but, literal textualist that I am, I would have preferred that she mention her procedure in a note (as she did so well in other instances). Second, in discussing the character of Thrasymachus in The Republic, Goldstein states (p. 155): "Thrasymachus speaks for an unregenerate Ethos of the Extraordinary that licenses unmitigated individualism. He’s an Athenian Ayn Rand." However, Thrasymachus argued that justice is the advantage of the stronger, specifically, the advantage of those who hold ruling political power. (Republic 338b, 339a). This was virtually the opposite of Ayn Rand's political philosophy. It happens that I have read most of Rand's writings—some of them (for example, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem, along with many of her essays) several times. Rand's bedrock principle was the rule of noninitiation of force, a position that Thrasymachus would vehemently have rejected. Rand applied this principle universally, especially to government. Thus, for Rand, taxation and some other governmental laws and regulations violate the principle of noninitiation of force. Rand's problem is not that she is like Thrasymachus. In fact, she emphatically rejected Thrasymachean ethics and politics. Rand's problem is that she failed to recognize that it is simply impossible to apply the principle of noninitiation of force to all governmental activities without dismantling all government, which would result, as Hobbes put it, in the war of all against all. Murray Rothbard, whom Rand expelled from her inner circle, took Rand's political theory to its logical conclusion, anarchocapitalism. Rothbard's radical libertarian approach (with competing armed private insurance companies replacing governmental police and military forces) would inevitably result in rival militias fighting for control, as in many areas of the Middle East and Africa today. Rothbard would apparently have welcomed what we now call "failed states." Rand, who accepted limited government, ridiculed anarchocapitalism and wrote that libertarianism, having no ethical principles, was destined to become a hippie movement. If she were alive today, Rand might have been surprised to see that libertarianism has degenerated not into a hippie movement but into a right-wing tea-party movement. Elitist that she was, she probably would not like what she would see. She routinely denounced the Republican Party of her day and said, in reference to Ronald Reagan, that anyone who did not believe in the right to an abortion did not believe in any individual rights at all. Unlike many tea partiers, she was a proud and public atheist. But Rand repeatedly condemned the distinction between theory and practice (she rigorously opposed the dictum that something may be true in theory but not in practice). Once upon a time, the formulation of "pure" but impractical ideologies was a preserve of the Left. For example, Marxism was applied by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao to create totalitarian states. The attempt to apply theoretically pure principles, without regard to practical consequences, now seems to be a preserve of the Right. What has been lost is the practical wisdom of Aristotle and the American Founders. As James Madison said in the Constitutional Convention on June 26, 1787, "In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce." The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422. But, like Plato (see Plato at the Googleplex, p. 44), I digress. Notwithstanding my disagreements with some of Goldstein's statements and interpretations, her book is an original and important contribution that should be read by all those interested in philosophical inquiry. One of the many themes of the book is the present-day rivalry between science and philosophy, with some scientists arguing that there is no need or use for philosophy. Goldstein's final chapter is a thoughtfully constructed dialogue between a neuroscientist and Plato on this issue, with the neuroscientist's graduate assistant, Agatha, supporting Plato with excellent arguments. Plato and Agatha make a rational and convincing case for philosophy as a pursuit that is not invalidated by science. Indeed, philosophy will never die as long as it has such eloquent and knowledgeable advocates as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An intellectual banquet
*by W***D on June 9, 2014*

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein subtitles her provocatively titled book "Why Philosophy Won't Go Away." She has a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton and has written three novels, The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light, and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed 36 Arguments which includes an appendix (available on the web) that points out the logical flaws in every argument. I.e., just because we can't explain it doesn't mean that God did it. Plato at the Googleplex is a hybrid. It is both an explication of Plato's key thoughts and imaginative dialogues between a 2,400-year-old Plato and contemporary figures: A Google engineer, a Freudian therapist and a tiger mother, an advice columnist, a cable news host, and a neuroscience researcher. In alternating chapters, Goldstein alternates chapter between a history of Plato's life and times and an account of his classic dialogues: What is a good life? What is knowledge? What can we know? The Myth of the Cave. The Death of Socrates. And more. Following each chapter on Plato and his thought is a chapter in which Plato confronts contemporary issues: Could crowd-sourcing be better—more valid, more accurate, more true—source of moral thought than experts? What can you say to a Freudian psychoanalyst and a tiger mom who disagree on the proper way to raise a child? How would Plato respond to a cable talk show who denies there can be morality without religion? And, perhaps more basically, what has Plato to say to a neuroscientist who claims that science has answers all questions of free will and moral agency? Now that science has either answered (or seems able to answer eventually) all the Big Questions, what do we need philosophy for? Let alone the thoughts of some Greek who lived 2,400 years ago. Goldstein argues—persuasively to my mind—that we need philosophy to address questions like these: Do the 1 percent really contribute more to society than the 99 percent, and if they do, should their contributions be recognized in the form of increased privileges or increased obligations? Is the role of the state to protect us or perfect us? Are there dangers of mixing entertainment values with politics, and if so, what are they? Do professional thinkers who come out of universities and think tanks have a role in statesmanship? Is their expertise useless or worse in the practical political sphere? Are ethical truths inextricably tied to religious truths? Are all truths—ethical, religious, scientific—no more than cultural artifacts? Is reason sufficient—or even necessary—to guide us through life...? And more and more. Plato at the Googleplex is wonderfully stimulating and readable. For someone with no background in philosophy, the book is, I think, a first-rate introduction to Plato and his thought with its relevance to today's issues. For someone who has a background, it is thought-provoking and challenging. I suspect there are philosophy professors all over the country reading the book and looking for flaws in Goldstein's arguments and scholarship. I wish them luck. Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy an intellectual banquet.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Another Excellent Rebecca Goldstein Read
*by B***E on December 11, 2020*

This is the fifth R. Goldstein book I've read, so I guess I'm a fan. This book fits in with her two other philosophy explainers; "Betraying Spinoza" and "Incompleteness, The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel". In "Plato at the Googleplex", Prof. Golsdstein does what se does best, breaks down a philosopher's work by setting it within an historic context. I was a philosophy major in college, and have continued to read philosophy since. I've always seen philosophy as conversation spanning generations that makes progress real toward livable truths. Prof. Goldstein makes that argument in this book, fancifully bringing Plato into the 21st century while providing important insight into the ancient Athenian/Greek culture that informed Plato's thought. she makes a strong argument on this point, and fleshes out my own intuition on the topic with some solid reasoning. The Republic was the first philosophic treatise I ever read, and lead me into that college major. I haven't read any of Plato's dialogues since college; and that was a very long time ago, but reading this book makes me want to revisit those old friends.

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