Summary of Paul Johnson's Socrates

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Three individuals, all from different civilizations, but all living in the same century, insisted that the distinction between their civilizations and the surrounding barbarism must be reinforced by moral education.

#2 Socrates was a philosopher who lived in Athens around the time of Ezra. He was the first classless person in history, and he believed that education was the surest path to happiness.

#3 Plato was a genius, and his pupil Aristotle founded his own university, the Lyceum, in Athens, which was rival to Plato’s Academy. When writing about Socrates’ end, and his own early dialogues, Plato was still innocent enough to reproduce both accurately. But as he began to play his new role as academic, he began to think about ideas rather than people.

#4 As an intellectual, Plato began to formulate his own ideas. As an academic, he quickly merged them into a system. And as a teacher, he used Socrates to spread and perpetuate it. In his earlier writings, Plato presented Socrates as a living, breathing person, but as his ideas took shape, demanding propagation, he was killed a second time, becoming a mere wooden man.

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Rafbók: 12 maj 2022