The New Adventures of Socrates: an extravagance

By Manny Rayner

Plato's dialogues, updated for the age of social media and short attention spans. Socrates hangs out with his old gang - Plato, Glaucon, Thrasymachus and the rest - but also meets new characters including Madonna, George W. Bush, Richard Dawkins, Hamlet and an extremely well-meaning robot. 

Don't count on it teaching you any p

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manny Rayner
• Release date: Feb 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9780244667603

Manny Rayner

In real life, Manny Rayner is an academic at Geneva University. On the internet, he is a popular reviewer on the Goodreads website. This is his fifth book.

Book preview

The New Adventures of Socrates

The New Adventures of Socrates an extravagance

Manny Rayner

Copyright © Manny Rayner 2017

ISBN: 978-0-244-94878-8

ISBN: 978-0-244-66760-3 (e-book)

Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments. Great edifying philosophers are reactive and offer satires, parodies, aphorisms. The permanent fascination of the man who dreamed up the whole idea of Western philosophy — Plato — is that we still do not know what sort of philosopher he was. Even after millenniums of commentary, nobody is sure which passages in the dialogues are jokes.

— Richard M. Rorty

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

— Mark Twain

Contents

How this book got written

Acknowledgements

I Beauty

Socrates Potter

The Importance of Being Socrates

The Trial of Socrates and Rolf Harris

When Harry Met Socrates

Oprah’s Symposium

II Truth

Have You Heard The One About Socrates?

Chitty Chitty Socrates

Sophie’s Socrates

Timaeus’s TED talk

Swords and Sorcery and Socrates

Flashback, Socrates!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Socrates

III Virtue

George W. Socrates

The Three Laws of Socrates (part 1)

The Three Laws of Socrates (part 2)

The Three Laws of Socrates (part 3)

The Online Socrates

One Socrates to Rule Them All

Socrates Inside Out (part 1)

Socrates Inside Out (part 2)

Socrates Python

Socrates and the Chocolate Factory

Stitch and Bitch, Socrates

Apology of Charlie Hebdo

Goodnight Socrates

Is There a Socrates in the House?

IV Epilogue

On the Proper Interpretation of this Book

How this book got written

It’s difficult to write objectively about Plato. He is one of the most important thinkers in Western culture (many would say the most important thinker in Western culture), and the center of a vast critical literature that has been accumulating for well over two thousand years. As often happens with these towering figures, you get the impression that in many cases people aren’t really writing about Plato any more, but rather about the idea of Plato that earlier commentators have helped shape. It’s even harder to write objectively about Socrates, since almost everything we know about him comes from Plato.

When I finally got around to reading Plato’s dialogues a few years ago, I discovered that he and Socrates weren’t much like the pictures that I’d built up in my mind from secondary sources. Above all, they’re funny. Iris Murdoch, an excellent commentator on Plato, points out in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals how unusual this is: great philosophers and spiritual teachers are hardly ever funny. (As Murdoch says, Jesus is witty but He never makes jokes). I tried to pass on my new understanding of Plato and Socrates to my friends, but simple explanations left them cold. After a while, however, I found that parody was an effective method. When I dressed up my take on the latest dialogue as a fanciful sketch in a vaguely Platonic style, people thought it was amusing and relevant. After a while, I decided to collect together these sketches and turn them into the book you see here.

I hope no one will be foolish enough to imagine that I have tried to create a work of scholarship. I don’t even know Greek. But if some of the pieces make you laugh, I will be happy, and if they persuade even one person to try reading Plato who otherwise wouldn’t have done so then I will know I have not wasted my time. He is just as extraordinary as everybody said.

Acknowledgements

This book owes an enormous debt to Cathy, sometimes known on the Web as Not, who encouraged me to undertake the project, came up with the ideas for several of the chapters, removed some appallingly inappropriate passages over my dead body, proofread the whole manuscript, and located our gifted illustrator. The illustrator in question, for reasons of their own, wishes to remain anonymous, but I would like to acknowledge my gratitude all the same for doing a splendid job under tight time constraints. Finally, I hope I may mention the people who read drafts of the book and persuaded me that it would be worth publishing: Monica, Judith, Scott, Janina, Alice, Gio, Choupette, Simon, Roy and Gillian. Thank you all very much!

Manny Rayner

Adelaide, December 2017

Part I

Beauty

Socrates Potter

Ion

[A concourse in Athens. ION, SOCRATES, a PASSER-BY]

ION: Hi Socrates.

SOCRATES: What, you again? After the comprehensive verbal trouncing you received yesterday?

ION: Yeah, well, like I’ve thought about it some more. Wanna try a rerun?

SOCRATES: If that is what you wish. Where shall we start?

ION: Okay, we’ll skip the intro. For the benefit of people just joining our program, I am a rhapsode, that’s a kind of dramatic reciter of poetry, and I specialize in Homer. I told Socrates that I’m really good at interpreting Homer, like, better than anyone else I know, but other poets just make me go to sleep. And he started telling me that didn’t make sense and got me all confused.

SOCRATES: I only question. You got yourself confused, young Ion–

ION: Whatever. Let’s start at the bit with the leaden plummet. Okay?

SOCRATES: By all means. And when Homer says, And she descended into the deep like a leaden plummet, which, set in the horn of ox that ranges in the fields, rushes along carrying death among the ravenous fishes—will the art of the fisherman or of the rhapsode be better able to judge whether these lines are rightly expressed or not?

ION: That’s it. Well, yesterday I answered like a complete dork that it was the fisherman. I’d like to change my mind.

SOCRATES: You now aver that it is the rhapsode?

ION: See, I went and talked to one of my rhapsode friends who specializes in J.K. Rowling. And I tried out your arguments on him, I said, when J.K. describes Harry’s first encounter with platform who will understand it best, you or the railway buff? And he said, me of course, it’s a fictitious incident that has nothing to do with the real architecture of Kings Cross Station. It’s all about the Potterverse, on which I’m a renowned expert whose blog is followed by–

SOCRATES: I fear, as usual, that my understanding is insufficient to grasp all the subtle points you make. Had I but been able to afford that 50 drachma course in sophistry! Nonetheless, if I grasp your meaning aright, you say that your knowledge of Homer is the essential thing, not anything about the technicalities of fishing.

ION: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Because Homer is using fishing in a poetic sense, rather than giving a lesson in how to maximize your catch?

ION: Quite so.

SOCRATES: Well, you might have a point there.

ION: So you’ll now concede that appreciation of poetry isn’t a mystic art, but just a matter of developing a good knowledge of the text?

SOCRATES: Oh, I don’t know about that. Tell you what. I’ll give you this round and then let’s make it best of three. With a doubled stake.

ION: You’re on.

PASSER-BY: Sucker.

But seriously . . .

A theme which recurs many times in the dialogues is Plato’s mistrust of poets. In the Republic and Laws, he wants their activities to be tightly controlled; here, and in the Sophist, he complains that they are able to give the impression of knowledge when in fact they know nothing.

It’s all the stranger that he tells us Socrates spent his last weeks, after he had been sentenced to death, composing poetry.

The Importance of Being Socrates

Charmides

[A singles bar in Athens. CHARMIDES, SOCRATES, CRITIAS and OSCAR WILDE]

SOCRATES: . . . Now consider again the nature of temperance.

CHARMIDES: Of what?

SOCRATES: It’s an ancient Greek term that doesn’t translate well into English. [Aside] Zeus, he’s hot!

CHARMIDES: Oh . . . right.

SOCRATES: So what makes a person temperate? I could add, if I may be permitted, that you’re rather temperate yourself.

CHARMIDES: [blushing] That’s, uh, that’s very nice of you, Socrates. But I don’t think I’d be able to say what the word means.

SOCRATES: Come, Charmides, you are far too modest. If you blush at this little compliment, you must surely have some idea.

CHARMIDES: Well, let me see, it must be something like being, you know, quiet and sensible and not getting overexcited about things? Sorry, I’m not terribly good at philosophy.

SOCRATES: I think we’ll find you know more about it than you pretend. Let’s take this one step at a time. First, is it a good thing or a bad thing to be temperate?

CHARMIDES: It’s a good thing, isn’t it?

SOCRATES: Absolutely. And if you have this desirable quality, will you do things better or worse?

CHARMIDES: I’ll do them better, I suppose.

SOCRATES: Of course you will, you delightful little creature! But now, why don’t we consider an example. On Twitter, who do you think is better, the man who has many followers or the man who has few?

CHARMIDES: You mean, if Twitter had been invented yet?

SOCRATES: Naturally.

CHARMIDES: I guess it must be the man with many followers?

SOCRATES: Indeed it must. To continue, what kind of men enjoy a wide following on Twitter?

CHARMIDES: Well . . . usually they’re loud-mouthed, opinionated assholes.

SOCRATES: Exactly. And are these men quiet and modest?

CHARMIDES: No, they’re not.

SOCRATES: There you are then. When you’re talking about tweeting, the simple truth is that it’s a disadvantage to be quiet and modest.

WILDE: The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

CHARMIDES: By Apollo, what a penetrating remark!

SOCRATES: [to WILDE] Do you find some fault with my argument?

WILDE: Arguments are to be avoided, my dear Socrates; they are always vulgar and often convincing.

SOCRATES: It would seem, at least, that you do not believe the conclusion.

WILDE: Oh, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

SOCRATES: [after a pause] Very well, let us consider some more examples.