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

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.

This book attempts to show that philosophy is still relevant in the 21st Century and that philosphy has made progress since the days of Plato. Goldstein uses her skills as both a philosopher and a novelist to produce a lively approach to philosophy. She imagines Plato alive and walking around in the United States today and taking part in dialogues with imaginary comtemporary Americans, one of whom bears a striking resemblance to Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. This latter dialogue is very entertaining, especially if you have ever been exposed to Bill O’Reilly. Much of the discussion in this book revolves around the same question that haunted ancient Greeks: what is it that makes a human life worth living? Of course, Plato suggested an answer to that question with the idea that the unexamined life is not worth living. But, depending on how you interpret that idea, the very suggestion seems elitist if not fascist. Who has any right to decide whether a person’s life is worth living? And yet the philosophical question keeps coming up. Maybe we haven’t really made any progress in this arena after all. But how would we recognize philosophical progress? Goldstein says that “Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view.” (Kindle loc. 227) And this sounds right. These days we instinctively reject slavery as an abomination, but most of our founding fathers saw it as a long-established, traditional human institution. Clearly we have made progress in our understanding of the right of each human being to the fruits of one’s own labor. The book is structured around five imaginary dialogues taking place in five different settings in the United States. Each dialogue is preceded by a chapter that introduces the philosophical topic of that dialogue. The first fictional dialogue occurs at the Googleplex, corporate headquarters of Google, Inc., near San Jose, California. The participants are Cheryl, a media escort, Marcus, a software engineer, Rhonda, Cheryl’s friend, and Plato, a visiting author being escorted by Cheryl. These characters quickly fall into a heated discussion of what kind of education is needed to produce a good leader. We might recognize this dialogue as coming from Plato’s "Republic." But here it is placed in a modern political context. The question has changed much in 2,400 years because now it takes place in a modern democracy in the computer and Internet age. Plato quickly picks up on the wonders of the computer age, and throughout the rest of the book he lugs his laptop along wherever he goes. Goldstein bases her fictional dialogues on the contents of the dialogues of the historical Plato. (This is not to suggest that Plato’s original dialogues were not fictional. We will probably never know.) In addition to the introductory chapters, she cites the original dialogues in two ways. In some places, she inserts a parenthetical reference to a particular dialogue. For example, "Meno 80b" (Kindle loc. 1949). In other places, she inserts a footnote---or rather an endnote. The endnotes appear at the end of each chapter, not the back of the book. I found it very interesting to read each of these notes; they are every bit as interesting as the fictional dialogues themselves. Thus, we are reassured that Goldstein is not putting her own ideas in the mouth of Plato. The whole point of the book is to imagine what that historical Plato would say if he were to come into our modern world and enter into conversation with present-day people. (Instead of What would Jesus do?, it’s What would Plato say?)

Plato At The Googleplex This book is quite a lot of fun. Goldstein sort of divides it into two parts. She has expository chapters in which she discusses topics in Plato. These discuss various topics and include a lot of detail on Ancient Greece, other classical cultures, other philosophers and similar subjects. • She makes an excellent argument against the view of many famous scientists that philosophy is dead, and that physics explains everything. She, of course, also point out that this view is not universally held by scientists. • Not surprisingly, she likes to talk about how "modern" Plato's thought is and likes to posit how eagerly he would accept various modern ideas. Some of these I found a bit questionable although in fairness Goldstien does offer reasonably congent arguments for most of the things she says. That said, she would be better served by using other topics as illustrations. • She does occasionally interject her atheistic world view in expository chapters in a rather awkward manner. Although this mindset is important enough to Goldstein for her to have written a book about it, she sometimes really reaches to fit it in here and often her arguments are not as relevant as she seems to think. Where the book really shines are in the chapters containing hypothetical dialogues. Most of these are quite good, a couple don't meet the standards of the others, but are still definitely worth reading. At their peak, these really make the reader wish it were possible to participate in them. At the low end, the reader wishes that Goldstien had resisted the impulse toward satire, it is not one of her many strengths. However, even the weaker of these chapters have merit. One area where the book could be improved, is in dealing of the relationship between platinum and Christianity. Excepting the fact that Goldstein is and about atheist, she still could and should have spent more time discussing this critical aspect. Although it does run counter to many of her premises, the same was true of Bertrand Russell who did much better job on this topic

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.

Two Absolute Winners… Some years ago, I was writing a book entitled Images of God. Then Karen Armstrong came out with A History of God, and I knew I had been beaten at my own game. Whether you are deeply religious, religiously indifferent, an agnostic or an atheist, if you haven’t read A History of God you are missing out on what I will call the best summary every written on a matter of no small importance. As Armstrong says in her introduction, “All talk about God staggers under impossible difficulties. Yet monotheists have all been very positive about language at the same time as they have denied its capacity to express the transcendent reality. The God of Jews, Christians and Muslims is a God who—in some sense—speaks. His Word is crucial in all three faiths. The Word of God has shaped the history of our culture. We have to decide whether the word ‘God’ has any meaning for us today.” Now there is a new book that boggles my mind. Sixty years ago when I took “An Introduction to Greek Philosophy,” it changed my life. I have been reading Plato, Aristotle, and various neo-Platonists and neo-Aristotelians ever since. So when Rebecca Goldstein published Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, I was extremely well prepared for it, but the book simply blows me out of the water. It is ingenious: she entwines the skills of a novelist with her mastery of the scholarship of what Plato achieved, and writes a book that is as enchanting as it is comprehensible. To see how she proves that philosophy won’t go away, you need only read a few of her litany of responses on page 56: “When we disagree over whether the 1 percent really contribute more to society than the 99 percent and whether, if they do, their contributions should be recognized in the form of increased privileges or increased obligations, Plato is there.” “When we argue over what the role of the state is, whether it is there to protect us or to perfect us, then there is Plato.” “When we argue over whether ethical truths are inextricably tied to religious truths, then there is Plato.” “When we wonder whether there is a real difference between right and wrong, or whether we are only making it up as we go along, then there is Plato.” ----Ah, you get the message! The unexamined life is not worth living, and if you feel you need a little more examining in your life, then pick up either one of these books, and you will reap the rewards of encountering really great minds…minds who have thought about the problems you and I think about all the time, and will enable us to think much more profoundly about things that are really well worth our time and attention, and which can enrich our lives immeasurably in the process…

This is a tremendous book. The excerpts that have been published various places really don't do it justice. This is NOT "Plato for Dummies", but rather a very serious book explaining Plato's philosophy. The book includes several "cute" sections where Plato visits Google, helps an advice columnist advise people on problems with their love life, debates a cable news character, shares the stage with a Tiger mother character and a psychoanalyst to discuss child upbringing, and debates free will with a neuroscientist. These sections are good, and amusing, and extensively use quotes from various dialogues -- most of Plato's speeches are not made up by Goldstein, but are taken from his writings. For example, much of what Plato says to the cable news character is actually taken from the Platonic dialogue called the Gorgias, in which the character Socrates addresses a character who is very similar to some modern cable news personalities. So this chapter actually summarizes and redoes the Gorgias dialogue, which is both enlightening and amusing. However, most of the content of the book is not these fantasy sections. Most of the chapters of the book are instead a straightforward exposition by Goldstein of what Plato's philosophy is, how it is based in the culture of ancient Greece yet deviated significantly from that culture and modified it for the better, how it is distinct from Judeo-Christian and other religious approaches to the "meaning of life", and how it influenced subsequent philosophy in the Western world, and in particular the liberal philosophies that came out of the Enlightenment. I believe that this book is perhaps one of the best introductions to Plato for modern readers that I have seen. As far as I can tell, based on my reading both of Plato and of secondary sources on Plato, Goldstein's book is a highly accurate account of Platonic philosophy. It is also a sympathetic account of Plato. At the same time, Goldstein makes clear that in some respects the philosophies that have developed since Plato HAVE made progress beyond Plato -- which, as she points out, would please Plato very much. A reader of this book will get a biographical account of Plato's life, as well as summaries of some of the key points of many Platonic dialogues, and extensive quotations from many of these dialogues. It's a good introduction that should inspire many readers to read the original Plato. I think this book also makes clear why Platonic philosophy can also be considered a RELIGIOUS philosophy, in the sense that it is not just a theoretical exercise, but a call to live a certain way of life.

I love Rebecca Goldstein. I read her books and always enjoyed. Her take on Spinoza was refreshing and wonderful. With sadness, I have to say I did not like the book. The writing is wonderful, but I got lost in it. I was putting it down and did not want to go back to it. It is not an easy book to read, as well. I have to say that after reading the reviews and knowing author's other books I could expect more "easiness" into the idea of the book, the topic and its presentation.

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.

The book is in exactly the condition described. The delivery was announced in advance and the package arrived as planned. Just one point: the package was open on both ends when I picked it up from my local post office.

A very interesting and thoughtful book, with an unusual structure. Essays on various aspects of Plato's life and philosophy are separated by fictional chapters where Plato is depicted in the present day. He lectures at the headquarters of Google, is interviewed by a bullying TV host, takes part in a public debate about how to raise children, and discusses free will in a neuroscience lab. I loved it. I found the essays very useful in helping me to better understand Plato's works. Goldstein is extremely knowledgeable and her writing is clear and enjoyable. And the fiction chapters are fun, and also quite useful.

It is interesting to read Plato presenting different views on ethical problems in contemporary times. The author lets the story run in a nice tongue-in-the-cheek way, and then gets serious about the relationship of Plato with Socrates and their own times. Nice reading,

Personally I don't find the staccato conversation of New York jewesses as cute as the author seems to. But what they say, (In the more novelistic chapters). Is actually worth paying attention to and does serve its purpose, leading the reader down the philosophic rabbit whole. I would like to be able to hand this book out casually to strangers.

"Take a breath, find some patience for 5 mins, and read this review. Don't hurry", perhaps this is the sort of lesson you get in chapter 2. Coming back, Chapter 1 was is a marvellous introduction to the sexiness of philosophy from Plato's eye. I literally used to close my eyes to feel the trance sort-of experience while reading some of the ending pages of chapter 1. Chapter 2 is where the journey begins. Plato is seen in his old toga sitting at the Google-Complex (or Googleplex) in Seattle (perhaps like Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev), about to address his fans. The women who is the prime lady having conversations with him hardly know any philosophy, let alone Plato and the Greeks. The journey as you read is really akin of reading a deeply profound novel. This is in fact a novel. Philosophical novel! Chapter 3 is introduction to Greek history and thought in general, which was boring to me. Maybe sometime in the future, I shall return to read it far more carefully than I did it the first time. More soon.