welcome back everybody to another book discussion with me Eliot if this is your
first time here I'm reading a book in every sub-genre of every genre while I'm
currently recording this this moment right now we're still in all lockdown so
I figure it'll be a good time to explore some books in Project Gutenberg if you
don't know Project Gutenberg it's this online library that hosts all these
different books and literature that are currently in public domain and one genre
that contains a lot of public domain books is the philosophy genre and so
today I'm gonna be exploring one of the subgenres of philosophy books and that
is Socratic dialogue and the book representing that today is apology by
Plato if you don't know what Socratic dialogue is it's pretty much just a
discussion about moral and philosophical problems so the whole book itself
apology is really just dialogue this is the first book by Plato that I've read
parently Socrates is this reoccurring character that Plato has he's kind of
the protagonist of his stories it plays this wise man an apology is a story of
Socrates trial so if you know the life and death of Socrates spoiler alert he
ends up getting executed this is the story of him defending himself with
Socratic dialogue Socrates is being convicted of two charges first for not
believing in God and second for corrupting children what he's actually
being punished for it is because apparently people have found him to be
really nosy for asking all these questions so one of his first defense is
that people tend to call him wise but he doesn't see himself as wise because you
know a famous Socrates quote which I think kind of comes from apology itself
is that the only thing he knows is that he knows nothing which makes him wise
which makes him feel the need to keep asking these questions about everything
so whenever some is so sure about something like religion
he kind of you know turns it against them and says how can you be so sure of
this how can you be so certain of this thing that is you really don't know so
when you start asking all these questions about God and religion and you
know even coming from it in a way that's like I know nothing I'm trying to learn
about this stuff people tend to get a little angry or annoyed by all these
questions and Socrates was annoying all these people and they figured we just
need to get rid of him human beings they have this certainty about them and we
have to tread lightly when we see that someone is so certain about something
it's like we're not gonna convince them otherwise right even in current events
it's kind of shown that even with scientific proof of things it's still so
hard to convince people because they seem so certain to believe what they
believe even though it's completely crazy so that's what Socrates is going
through he's not trying he's just like let's let's talk about reason here and
let's just figure out what we don't know because all we know is what we don't
know and one of my favorite parts in the book is when he asked the accuser well
if I am such a horrible person can you give me an example of someone who is
doing good to the world and it's accuser kind of hums and huz and tries to look
for an answer and he ends up saying oh yeah the law is good but then Socrates
is like yeah but the law is not a person he's like the government is good and at
this point we're all like clearly on Socrates side because hey anybody who
thinks that the government is truly truly doing good for the people is
definitely not the person you want to be getting your philosophical wisdom from
in my opinion and in Socrates too of course so that's the main plot of the
story it's just mainly dialogue between Socrates and his
accusers and the judges and what's great is this character that Plato kind of
created well you can only assume that it's based off of the real Socrates who
was Plato's instructor teacher mentor and so it probably took some
characteristics from him but one of my favorite things about this Socrates
character is he keeps telling the audience not to interrupt him when he's
talking and I felt like that was just like it yeah that's a fun little quirk
to give a character and the best part is that it's called apology which is just a
play on the whole kind of crazy situation that Socrates was in because
he's clearly not apologizing but in the end it's a kind of a sad ending because
Socrates ends up being sentenced to death but he really is a good sport
about this whole trial and everything from at least from the text
he doesn't seem scared at all he says things like I wouldn't want to live if I
can't be philosophical and that death if you think about it as sleep is just one
internal night which I think is a nice way to look at it apology by Plato is a
terrific book to dip your toe into philosophical literature it's a really
short one it's really easy to read it's written all like in dialogue there's no
like narrative or exposition it's just without quotation marks either but it's
very easy to follow who is talking which i think is a great feat in writing and
Plato has always been acknowledged as a great writer
in addition being a great philosopher so I really recommend this book if you feel
like getting philosophical this is a really easy one to start it's super
short usually with this book review book discussion thing that I do I usually
break it up into two parts I give you my impression of it from the
middle and then my impression of it once I finished reading but with this one
there was no reason to stop in the middle because it felt like 30 pages
thank you so much for joining me let me know what you think of apology by Plato
and if there's other philosophy books that you think I should read please feel
free to recommend them in the comments below I will talk to you next time check
out one of these videos keep being safe being happy and know that you know
nothing