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The Examined Life Examined
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# : |
13232 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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10 / 1987 |
4,642 Words |
| Author
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Timothy Fuller
Timothy Fuller is professor of political science at Colorado
College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. |
SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN PLATO'S PHAEDRUS
Charles L. Griswold, Jr.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986
315 pp., $29.50
Charles Griswold, associate professor of philosophy at Howard University, has provided us with a remarkable, challenging commentary on Plato's dialogue Phaedrus. Professional students of Plato's philosophy will examine its arguments carefully, laying the original text alongside it. Even though well-written and clear, it is a complex book for a nonprofessional, merely interested, reader of Plato. Why should such a person want to read such a book?
The answer to that question depends on how the nonprofessional reader receives the proposition that the unexamined life - life without pursuit of self-understanding - is not worth living. Socrates' famous admonition in Plato's Apology looks behind Professor Griswold's analysis of the quest for self-knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus. For according to Griswold's reading, Phaedrus is an extended, profound investigation into the predicaments of trying to lead an examined life, as well as a central dialogue for understanding Plato's philosophy as a whole.
For Griswold, the effort to lead the examined life begins with the puzzle of figuring out exactly what we mean by "examined." We encounter this puzzle in terms of the split between methods of examination; the dominating urge to acquire technical competence through highly professionalized, often arcane, modern scholarship - the scientific approach - and commonsense views of the human
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