"The book had a great hack on memorization techniques, which could come handy in certain situations. However, I do think that it only applies to recalling and remembering a subject matter instead of actually ‘learning��. "

"I’ve gotten into the habit of dividing up the books I’ve read by whether I read them before or after Plato’s Republic. Before The Republic, reading was a disorganized activity—much the same as wading through a sea of jumbled thoughts and opinions. I had no basis from which to select books, except by how much they appealed to my naïve tastes. But after reading The Republic, it was as if the entire intellectual landscape was put into perspective. Reading became a focused activity, meant to engage with certain questions.

“Question�� is the key word here because, in the end, that’s what Plato is all about: asking the right questions, the important questions. All academic disciplines are organized around a few basic questions—“what is the nature of human cognition?�� “what are the fundamental laws of the universe?”—and in The Republic, Plato touches on almost every one of them. That’s why shelving the book in the philosophy section doesn’t quite do it justice. An exhaustive list of the disciplines touched upon in this dialogue would be massive—epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, eschatology, political science, economics, art, literature, music. In fact, it would be easier naming disciplines that �������’t touched upon.

That’s how Plato lit up the intellectual landscape for me. By posing these questions in their most basic forms, and attempting answers, he makes it clear which questions are the important ones in life, and how difficult they are to answer. And that’s why Plato’s Republic is the quintessential classic. It has everything a classic should have—a unique perspective, brilliant ideas, engagement with perennial issues, and a charming writing style. It is the greatest book of perhaps the Western tradition’s greatest thinker. I don’t care who you are—you should read it.

Nevertheless, there are some perplexing and frustrating things about Plato. For one, it is extraordinarily difficult to figure out where Plato stands in relation to his work. Unlike almost every later philosopher, Plato didn’t write didactic works. He puts his ideas—sometimes conflicting ideas—into the mouths of the people of his day. The result is a kind of double confusion. To what extent are the ideas expressed by Socrates actually Socrates’s? To what extent are they Plato’s? To what extent are they anyone’s? Perhaps Plato was just fond of playing intellectual games and creating philosophical pocket dramas.

Added to this is a kind of subtle irony that creeps up in several of his dialogues. In Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates complain about the evils of writing; yet Plato obviously loved to write. One of Plato’s most influential ideas is his theory of forms; yet one of the most influential arguments against the theory was put forward by Plato himself. In The Republic, as well as elsewhere, Plato repeatedly equates knowledge with goodness, and falsity with evil; yet he proposes to found his entire utopia on a massive lie. And again, in this book Plato puts forward one of the most famous arguments in history against poetry and the arts; yet Plato was one of the most artistic of all writers. Plato proposes to banish the myths of Homer and Hesiod; then Plato ends his magnum opus with his own myth. You see these contradictions again and again, which leads you to wonder: how many of his arguments are meant to be taken seriously?

What’s more, some of the arguments put forward in his dialogues are—it must be said—frustratingly stupid, relying on false analogies and several other types of fallacies. This would be no mystery if he was a halfwit. But the quality of his writing and the originality of his ideas make it clear that he was a genius. This again makes you wonder if he is putting forth his ideas in earnest.

There are many complaints commonly lodged at Plato (and his pupil Aristotle). Liberals criticize his hatred of democracy and freedom. Moralists complain that he embraced slavery. (A friend of mine once told me that his philosophy professor called Aristotle the “father of racism.��) Scientists—such as Carl Sagan—disparage Plato’s anti-empirical and mystical tendencies. Nietzsche and his followers condemn Plato for dividing up the world into self-evident good and bad. The list of complaints can be extended almost endlessly. And, it should be said, there is some justice in all of these criticisms. (But just you try and found an entire intellectual tradition spanning thousands of years, and see if you do any better!)

In Plato, I find something so valuable that it could outweigh every one of those criticisms: Plato's celebration of thinking for its own sake—argument for the sake of argument, debate for the sake of debate. Too often, we consider intellectual activity as merely a means to some desirable end; how rarely we consider that thinking is its own reward. Vigorous thought is one the keenest joys in life. And that is why Plato is so valuable, why he still has so much to offer our world—perhaps now more than ever.



[A note on justice. Even though Plato spills much ink in trying to prove that justice is more desirable than injustice, I think the real solution is in Glaucon’s speech in Book 2, where Plato manages to hit upon the solution provided by game theory. It’s worth quoting at length.

[Many have believed] that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. [I.e. The evil suffered from injustice is greater than the good gained from acting unjustly.] And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but the lesser evil, and honored by reason of the inability of the men to do injustice.

This view—purportedly the common view of justice—is game theory in a nutshell. Cheating your neighbor is (for you) the biggest positive, since you get their resources without having to work. But being cheated is the biggest negative, since you lose both your resources and the work you invested in procuring them. Creating laws to abolish cheating is a sort of compromise—avoiding the pain of being cheated at the expense of the gain from cheating. That, to me, seems like the most logical explanation of justice.

This is just one example of why it's rewarding to read Plato, because even when he's wrong, he's right.]
"

"I read it for a second time because I had absolutely no memory of it. I do, however, vividly remember Robert Graves’s Count Belisarius, which used this text as a source. The avarice and rapacity of Emperor Justinian and his Empress Theodora, a former prostitute, are truly, I think, what Trump would be doing now if he could. Murdering on impulse, forging wills of the deceased that assigns themselves as heirs, paying tribute to the so-called barbarians.

“They were a pair of bloodthirsty demons and what poets call ‘plaguers of mortal men.�� For they plotted together to find the easiest and swiftest means of destroying all races of men and all their works, assumed human shape, became man-demons, and in this way convulsed the whole world.�� (p. 58)

That’s right, it’s Procopius’s contention that Justinian was not a man but a demon. He based this assessment on two witnesses who independently saw Justinian’s head briefly vanish, so that his body continued to walk on headless for a time, before the head returned to its shoulders. Moreover, Justinian, like any demon, needed little to no sleep. Wild stuff, probably calumny, but outrageous and fun to read."