Plato’s Memoirs

In line with his fictional Socrates’ Prison Journal (2006), the author makes Plato put off the revision of his last work, the Laws, to write his memoirs, reflections on his life and works. The idea is audacious but requisite to clear away misunderstandings and falsehoods that have accumulated around Plato’s work and thought and are being taken earnestly and without question by scholars and students of philosophy. Plato wrote dramatic plays, intended as such. As in all imaginative literature, the surface is all play, but below the surface the message is fully earnest. Thus arguments and theoretical formulations are to be taken in proper perspective as part of the dramatic give and take, while the moral values, the philosophy of life, and the underlying metaphysical vision should be taken most seriously. This is antipodal to the mainstream academic approach which focuses critically on arguments and theory while disdaining the ‘foolish’ morals and ‘fancy’ metaphysics. My purpose is to induce at least a few people to take those values and that philosophy of life seriously, not just as the subject of astute academic dissertations.