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What are you reading? March 7, 2025 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-07
Open Socrates: The Case For a Philosophical Life by Agnes Callard
How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World by Donald J. Robertson
I feel the need to group these books together.
I’ve also been watching some Youtube videos of the writers of these two books. One of these videos explicitly raises a question.
Callard’s sort-of complaint is that the book is being utilized as a form of advice giving (in other words, a sort of self-help type thing) whereas she's thinking of it as a philosophy book which makes certain claims but does not dispense advice.
My basic answer to that question:
1) When a book (or music or art) is released for public consumption, the author is not responsible for how it is received by the public although an author can surely question why it is getting that reception.
2) The subject matter here is Socrates. Given that subject matter, I don’t know how one could not write a book about Socrates that doesn’t dispense some sort of advice. It’s what Socrates does (and he may have said as much in the words put into his mouth by Plato or Xenophon).
I ain’t gonna lie: I am enjoying both of these book immensely.
And I am going to have to make it a point to get to Night Owls.
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