Name: Plato at the Googleplex
ISBN: 9780307378194

Rebecca Goldstein

A revisionist analysis of the drama of philosophy explores its hidden but essential role in today's debates on love, religion, politics and science while colorfully imagining the perspectives of Plato on a 21st-century world. By the award-winning author of The Mind-Body Problem. 50,000 first printing.

Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

Plato at the Googleplex

Gavin

It is very hard to say anything new about Plato. Except, of course it isn't, because he spoke in the most general possible terms, and the world continues to do unprecedented things and so allow for new commentary and new applications of Plato. It will always be possible to say something new about Plato because, until the heat death draws near, it will be possible to say something new about the world, and criticism should relate the old but general with the new and unanalysed. 

This was really deep fun: Goldstein debunks a great deal about him via close-reading (e.g.: that Plato's book, Πολιτεία, has no etymological or structural relation to modern republics). Some very moving chapters, too, particularly the neuroscientist dialogue: she renders this man we know almost nothing personal about as polite, curious and modest, willing to suspend judgment on e.g. our popular democracy. The titular chapter is best, involving the philosopher wrestling with one imperfect implementation of his epistemocracy, the data-mining Silicon Valley engineer:

  "You're telling me that the purpose of all of this knowledge is merely to make money? Greed is driving the great search engine for knowledge? This bewilders me... How can those who possess all knowledge, which must include the knowledge of the life most worth living, be interested in using knowledge only for the insignificant aim of making money?"
     "Plato, I said, I think you have a somewhat exalted view of Google and the nerds who work here." 
     "Nerds?" he said. "Another word I do not know."

     Well, again I was in a somewhat awkward position, since I didn't want to offend Plato, who struck me, despite his eye contact and excellent manners, as a nerd par excellence. So I fell back on something I'd once heard... that the word was originally "knurd", which is "drunk" spelled backwards, and was used for students who would rather study than party.
     "And the people who work here at Google are all nerds?"
     "I would say each and every one." I smiled at him.
     He smiled and looked around the café as if he had died and gone to philosophers' heaven.
     "My chosen term for nerd", he said, "is philosopher-king".

Goldstein's move for each chapter is to draw out an inconsistency in Plato that later became a persistent philosophical dichotomy; the chapters are all classical dialogues, actually trialogues at least. Also she makes us note how little explanation of modern culture Plato would actually need to be able to deploy his existing arguments. Witty and persuasive. (You'd think I'd need no persuading of the eternal value of philosophy, and nor do I, but I'd no intention of studying Plato properly before this.)

In one sentence: Plato wanders contemporary America, Chromebook tucked under his arm, looking to understand the few ways we are radically different.

Goldstein is undeniably one of the most brilliant philosophical minds of the day. The premise here is kind of genius: placing Plato in his own dialogue form at the Googleplex, at the 92nd St Y, on Fox News, talking about the nature of knowledge, the best way to raise a child (or a society). Each dialogue is nestled between essays on Plato himself, which basically amount to the context in which he lived: the political climate of the time, the Greek temperament towards the gods, towards meaning. 

The beauty and the challenge of what Goldstein does lies in the fact that it's so hard to pin down any of Plato's actual stances on anything precisely because he wrote in dialogue form, always putting words in other peoples' mouths, never claiming any to be his own. 

It's said that Goldstein has significant literary talents, too, and though there are glimpses of that talent in this book, they're not on full display. Admittedly, Goldstein herself addresses that, saying that in dialogues, the characters serve the argument, not the other way around. So, naturally, you end up with characters that are flat, or other end of the spectrum, are caricatures of a certain type of person (it's hard not to think of the Fox News bit as I type that- Goldstein obviously thinks very little of the network; it's kind of a riot to read). If you keep that in mind, it's easier to swallow. 

All in all, this is a wonderful, wonderful book if, like me, you've never studied philosophy professionally, but have an insatiable curiosity about it, to the point that the concepts are fascinating, but could stand to be put in context. 

I'm not sure if those with professional philosophical training would find it as fascinating as I did, but my hunch is they could take something away from this, too. With a mind as rich as Goldstein's, it'd be hard not to.

Plato at the Googleplex Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

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