The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault by Alexander Nehamas
Alexander Nehamas’ The Art of Living was recommended to me by Stephen Black, my professor of Ancient Philosophy and Late Antiquity in college. A fundamental change in my education occurred in Professor Black’s Ancient Philosophy course. While ten of the twelve students were timid, silent & barely alive, my friend Turbo and I dominated the course, demanding answers, insights, and knowledge from the shrewd and dialectic and always-willing Professor Black. Patient as Socrates, he never tired of my persistent inquiries, and in doing so he fostered the part of my personality that constructs itself continually through the investigation and production of philosophical views.
The style of Professor Black’s teaching I have learned since (and fully realized now in reading The Art of Living), was, in my opinion, the result of the influence of Socrates on Professor Black and in turn his enactment of Socrates’ method. In opposition to this engaged, dialectical spirit of Socrates, much of philosophy is experienced by students and practiced by ‘professionals’ as purely theoretical, as a self contained, static system of concepts, and thus easily ignored or abandoned as soon as the class ends, the book is finished, or the paper is completed. Philosophy conceived and practiced in this detached and purely theoretical way often removes the self from the system of thought. (more…)
