How to Read Plato

Try to see what is shown but not said

Academic philosophy ought to be teaching this but unfortunately it has become shallow and stupid. Or perhaps it thinks that students have become shallow and stupid and are only capable of understanding superficial arguments. Either way, it neglects what really matters, and too much is lost in that.

When reading Plato’s dialogues, to understand them properly you need to remember these three things:

1. Socrates is (probably) talking about virtue

Whatever the topic of conversation – religion, politics, death, geometry, oratory, the soul, courage, knowledge, love, the law, writing, education, etc., etc., and, of course, ethics – Socrates is talking about virtue and is encouraging you to be more virtuous. That is always what Socrates is doing. I’m quite serious when I say this. If this isn’t obvious to you, it might be because you’re missing the point of the conversation. So look again.

Ask yourself: ‘How does this conversation show me how to be a better person and that being a better person is important?’ I promise you that you will find an answer in every case, if you look rightly.

If that’s put too strong for you to take seriously, then I’d say instead that Socrates is probably or mostly talking about virtue. So ask the question and see what you find.

2. Look to what is shown, not what is said

Plato’s Socrates presents a lot of arguments. On the face of it these arguments argue for particular points: that the soul is immortal, that all learning is recollection, that we should be governed by those who have the most knowledge and understanding of how to govern, etc. If you think Plato is trying to prove these points to you, through argument, like a modern academic philosopher, then you’ve misunderstood his point.

Socrates asks questions; he presents puzzles. He is most famous for saying ‘I only know that I know nothing’; it’s this professed lack of knowledge that makes him ‘the wisest man in Athens’. He is also always opposing the sophists, who make it their business to win arguments. In contrast to the sophists, Socrates doesn’t want to win the argument; he wants to lose it, because he knows it is better to lose an argument and learn your error than win an argument and remain in it. Such a person, who believes he doesn’t know anything and doesn’t think it’s right to try to win arguments, is not going to offer you arguments to persuade you of points.

So why does Plato have him offer these arguments? See #1 above. He does it to draw your attention to something important, and to invite you to join him in his investigation of that: that’s all. But if he’s successful, you will end up persuading yourself, eventually.

Socrates calls himself a midwife: he helps people give birth to their own ideas. It’s not about proving points. Plato shows that.

After all his arguments about the immortality of the soul, Socrates says that no one should trust these arguments because no one can know what happens after you die; and yet, the belief in the immortality of our souls is a belief worth betting on, and we ought to try to persuade ourselves of it, because it makes us better people.

After all his talk about learning being recollection, Socrates will say that we will be better people if we believe that knowledge can be found and that we have a duty to try to find it. And besides, you already know that living an ethically decent life is the most important thing, you’ve just not thought it through enough to realise it: you need to be shown what you’ve forgotten.

And Plato’s Republic is overtly an allegory for governing yourself by reason and virtue: it’s not really about politics, just as the allegory of the cave isn’t really about a cave…

3. Look to whom Socrates is talking

Socrates is always saying the same thing in different ways. (See #1 and #2 above.) The difference is the product of the other person or persons in the conversation. If someone thinks that there’s no reason to be virtuous, because it holds you back in the great competition of life, Socrates will point out the benefits that being virtuous brings: respect, admiration, trust, etc. To someone who thinks that it’s good to be virtuous because it brings these benefits, Socrates will point out that anyone who really understood virtue wouldn’t need a payoff because virtue is its own reward.

To someone who is too sure of their own virtue, because they consider themselves to be an expert on the gods, Socrates will show them that they are no expert on this matter. To someone quite obviously stupid, who thinks there’s no point talking seriously about virtue, Socrates will engage in a completely stupid conversation with them, seemingly only to show the audience how stupid they really are and, therefore, why they aren’t worth listening to: he concludes that there’s a lot of stupid talk about ethics, but that’s no reason to dismiss all talk about ethics, because anyone who understands these things properly understands them to be among the most important of all things to understand properly.

Plato is doing this kind of thing all the time. It’s the reason he writes in dialogues and not theses. Socrates says different things when talking to different people, because people are different, and he is trying to show the same thing in different ways.

This is the ‘irony’ for which Socrates is famous: to say something other than you mean, to show something by saying something else.

That’s why we need to look to what is shown and not what is said (#2 above). That’s why Socrates says ‘if I don’t show my ethics by words then I do so by my conduct’. This isn’t particularly cryptic or mysterious or esoteric, but it’s not superficial either. I think it’s the most important thing you can learn about Plato because it’s what unlocks all the meaning.

It’s a shame that it’s not often taught. People only tend to teach the surface arguments and read them literally. That leaves people with a very shallow version of Plato and Socrates, often contradictory with itself, often trivial, often arrogant, often wrong, often boring, often outdated, and that puts people off. These people are the losers, in the end, but it’s the academy’s fault for not making Plato easier to understand by sharing the keys that unlock Socrates’ wisdom. This ought to be the first thing you learn; the rest you can learn for yourself.

If you want to find confirmation of what I’m saying, the signs are there for all to see in pretty much every dialogue: you’ll find them if you care to look. And you can find it explicitly explained in the Apology and in Plato’s letters. I’ll leave that for your own research. Or you can read some of the posts on my website for individual examples of it: I might drag some of them to Substack in time.

In the end, Socrates is only trying to convince you of one thing, which is that being a better person is the most important thing and that philosophy both teaches you this and is necessary to achieve it. This is why he says: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ Socrates will say whatever he can to convince you of that, as he has become convinced.

The goal in life is not to have more of what is good but to be more of what is good. To achieve this goal, we need to understand what ‘goodness’ or ‘virtue’ is, and for this we need philosophy. As a philosopher and a Student of Socrates, I join him in that conviction; and while I don’t expect to match his achievement, it’s enough for me if I don’t lag behind.

Postscript

It should go without saying that this piece offers an interpretation of Plato, and there’s no way to say that it’s categorically the right and final interpretation, scholarly or otherwise. But I’d hope that, having read this, you get what’s going on here. On the surface there are some arguments with which you may or may not agree; beneath that there is a show of doing philosophy in a certain way; and beneath that there is a provocation to do it yourself. What’s on the surface isn’t really what the piece is about.