'Phaedrus' is the first work ever to provide an explanation to how we organise our ideas, speeches and use our knowledge in a general sense. It explains the basics of an arguing and convincing, within the context of Greek politics and society.

As I said, it's division and gathering that is evident in all of our arguments. We make our claims based upon the similarities and differences in things, and this is the core of argumentation.

In his dialogue style, Plato talks about many other things, that range from what makes a good writing a good one, to the heritance of knowledge. How should knowledge be attained from others? How should we present our knowledge for new generations to understand us? These are some of the questions that come up in Phaedrus.

Plato, one of the clearest writers in philosophy, wrote yet another beautiful work. I've started reading Plato when I was thirteen, and I really enjoy reading his works, which just flow.

I recommend not only this book, but almost any book of Plato's, for all philosophy lovers out there, and all those that would like to make their first attempt in understanding some philosophical issues, which build the base of our living.

In Phaedrus, Plato records the conversation of love and rhetoric between Socrates and Phaedrus. Socrates uses love as a metaphor for rhetoric by categorizing the differences between love and lust, as well as the differences between a philosopher who pursues divine truth, and a poet who forgoes truth for ostentations. Then Socrates and Phaedrus eventually conclude the requirements for being a dialectician. In the course of defending proper love and truth, Socrates pointes out that beauty and truth are divine. Whoever pursues reality would worship beauty and truth with reverence, and his admirations of divinities yield pleasures. Then in order to receive the blessing from gods, the proper lover and the philosopher must overcome desires with reasoning. Conversely, those commoners who are tempted by earthy imitations of the reality would be trapped by carnal or linguistic pleasures, as the improper lover and the poet, who lack reasoning would drown in the momentary enjoyments of their own wantonness.

Virtues of Authenticity comprises of more than a dozen essays on varying themes on Plato and Socrates; primarily Plato; and includes Nehamas' essays on the Symposium, the Phaedrus and the Republic, which also appear in the volumes he had translated earlier. Nehamas tries to answer basic questions, like what and to whom Socrates taught, or why Plato hated poetry. His analytical rigor really shows and the book, despite the depth of his analysis, reads really well, though you always feel that you may have lost an entire level of meaning; and you have, indeed.

Very interesting in conjunction with Vlastos' work as well as with Nehamas' own lectures in his "Art of Living" on Socratic and Platonic irony.

It is rather difficult to review Plato's Symposium from a modern viewpoint. The attempts by Agathon's guests, including Socrates, to define love are largely based on the love of boys rather than women. While that is a difficult concept for me to ponder, I recognize that such a social custom prevailed to some degree in ancient Athens and will attempt to offer an unbiased view of the text. Basically, partygoers celebrating Agathon's first victory in a drama contest decide to do something besides drink themselves into a stupor because they are still paying for such activity the night before. Socrates joins the group on this second night, and it is decided that each man in turn will offer his praises to love. Each of six men offer their interesting, diverse thoughts on the matter, ranging from the conventional to the Socratic ideal. Phaedrus says that the greatest good a boy can have is a gentle lover and that the greatest good a lover can have is a boy to love. He stresses self-sacrifice and virtue as the kind of love the gods love most. Pausanias describes two kinds of love: vulgar love is best explained as love for a woman in the interest of sexual satisfaction; noble love is that concerned with bettering the soul of the object of love (necessarily a young boy). The doctor Eryximachus explains love in terms of harmony, and he goes so far as to credit the vague notion of love with accomplishing all kinds of things in a diverse set of subjects. Aristophanes begins by relating a myth about man's origins. When man was created, individuals were actually attached back to back; the gods later split each human entity in half, and love consists of each person's search for his "missing half" who can be of either sex; even when two mates find one another, their love is imperfect because they cannot become literally attached as they were originally. Agathon says that Love is the youngest of the gods, that he offers the means by which all disputes between the gods and between men are settled, and emphasizes the beauty of love (represented quite well by himself, he seems to say).

Socrates, as can be expected, shifts the discussion of love to a higher plane. Claiming to know the art of love if nothing else, Socrates tells how he gained his knowledge from a fictional character called Diotima. He says that love represents the desire to give "birth in beauty," that love is neither a god or a mortal but is instead the messenger between god and man. To love is to want to acquire and possess the good forever and thus attain immortality. Socrates goes on to give a very important speech about one of Plato's perfect Forms--namely, the Form of Beauty. The advanced lover will learn to seek Beauty in its abstract form and will take no more notice of physical beauty; the perfect lover is a philosopher who can create virtue in its true form rather than produce mere images of virtue. This short summary in no way does justice to Socrates' speech, but it gives the general idea. After Socrates speaks, a drunken Alcibiades (Socrates' own beloved) crashes the party and commences to give a speech about Socrates, the effect of which is to identify Socrates as a lover who deceives others into loving him. As both lover and beloved, Socrates is seemingly held up by Plato as the true embodiment of love. To truly love is to be a philosopher.

I myself don't hold this text in as high regard as many intellectuals, but there can be no doubt of this dialogue's influence on Western thought over the centuries. The book succeeds in the presentation of advanced philosophical ideas and as literature. The discussion of the Form of Beauty is particularly useful in terms of understanding Platonic thought. It would seem that this dinner party and the speeches we read are very likely fictitious and represent Plato's thoughts much more closely than Socrates' own views, but it is impossible to tell to what extent this is true. The Symposium is inarguably one of Plato's most influential, most important texts and is required reading for anyone seriously interested in philosophy as it has existed and continues to exist in Western society.

I bought this textbook for my Classical Philosophy class (which was taught by William Placher - check his books out, they're awesome), and the Symposium really got me thinking about what love really is. What's cool about the work is that while each of the speeches make some great points, in the end they never really decide on a final answer, so it's still your call.

I liked the Symposium so much, that I decided to buy it as a gift for my friend. It was then that I realized how superior the Woodruff version is - other versions I found in bookstores featured commentary that was sometimes more than twice as long as the actual work! In this version, on the other hand, the introduction is short but informative - therefore you're not paying extra to hear some other guy give his two cents on Plato's work, when Plato's words themselves are really all you're interested in.

Contrary to what one of the reviewers below contends, little knowledge of the figures under discussion is required on the part of the reader. This is owing to Alexander Nehamas's skill in lucidly and masterfully conveying the key ideas of the philosophers he brings under analysis. Although "The Art of Living" is not an explicit demand for a reorientation of philosophy, and a call for its rechannelling towards abandoning the realm of pure theory in favour of a more practical end, it nevertheless attempts to draw attention to an alternative style of philosophising which enjoins that philosophy ought to make itself subservient to the practicalities of life. This trend flourished mainly in ancient Greece, particularly in the enigma of Socrates, (the preeminent exemplum of the "art of living") until it was eclipsed by the now dominant tradition that emphasises theoretical knowledge, later to be revived by such figures as Montaigne, Nietzsche and Foucault, whose aesthicist stance Nehamas chooses as a point of departure. He evaluates, in the first book of his study, the figure of Socrates, as presented in the dialogues of Plato, and how he, in his philosophical endeavour, succeeded in fashioning a work of art out of himself or, in Nehamas's words, creating himself as a unique personality. Nehamas also explains how Montaigne, Nietzsche and Foucault, sought and, succeeded in realising, similar projects for themselves, absorbing Socrates's ironic silence about himself as well as reacting against it, in their bid for "self-creation" via the medium of their texts. It is by this aestheticist turn that Nehamas designates the "art of living", a uniquely particularlist and individualist praxis of philosophising, enabling a subordination of theoretical knowledge to actual experience. Knowledge, as Nehamas seems to imply, must be lived in order to be truly understood. The major shortcoming of the book, I felt, was the chapter on Montaigne, which was extremely tedious, though, on the whole, an outstanding and fulfilling treatise.

Socrates is the personification of philosophy. Who loves this way needs to make the effort of trying to understand the enigma that is Socrates and the problematic knowledge of ethics values he's questionning.
Nehamas makes a excelent book on that matter. Interesting and not too academic. Writting books of philosophy is already a way of living and it seems that he's good in that!

What is philosophy? Most people today assume that its primary task is to offer convincing answers to a set of well-known questions. But many philosophers, from the fifth century onwards, have felt that thinking well is only a secondary task, always in the service of *living* well; and living well may not be something for which there is a single helpful definition. Taking Socrates as their paradoxical model--a model, precisely, of how to do without models--these philosophers thus set about forging a life which is both coherent and unique, often considering their own views as simply raw material for that fashioned life. They do not tell others what to believe or even how to behave, but provide instead an *example* of a compelling mode of existence.

This, argues Alexander Nehamas in his brilliant new book, is the tradition Socrates began, and which Montaigne, Nietzsche and Foucault--perhaps Plato too, in some respects--have continued. That it is still alive today is evident in the fact that Nehamas himself practices what he preaches: not content with a presentation of the theory, Nehamas exemplifies it by bringing together, in this one work, the various strands of his intellectual life. A veritable tour de force, and one which may have lasting consequences on the world of philosophy.

Strongly influenced by an analytical interpretation of Nietzsche from Danto's Nietzsche as Philosopher Nehamas does more harm to Nietzsche than good. Nehamas's own "creative" interpretation of Nietzsche is utterly irresponsible. Interpreting Nietzsche analytical only makes Nietzsche's moral properties run amok. Nehamas interprets Nietzsche like most Christians interpret the Bible: He takes away a few things he can use, dirties and confounds the remainder and reviles the whole. Nietzsche asserts, rather than believes, that "untruth" is indeed a condition of life. But he does not assert any kind of "theory of truth," as Nehamas would have us to believe. Nietzsche's moral philosophy is Descartian - doubting to believe to discover one's own perspective of truth - not a dogmatic religious truth! His intent is rather, to give us his perspective to help us discover truth in ourselves, not in Nietzsche, himself.

This is one of the well known hatchet jobs done on Nietzsche over the last two decades in order to sell the idea that Nietzsche is a postmodernist -- a person who buys the Derridian line that there is nothing outside the text. But Nietzsche is not one of those types. Indeed, 'there is nothing outside the text' is one of those pieces of philosophical insanity that can only be compared to other such pieces: like Parmenides belief that nothing moves, or Barkeley's belief that there is no such thing as matter, or Palto's belief that things do not have their properties, and so on. The position Nehamas takes is an outgrowth of German Idealism, which is just Berkeley all over again. Nietzsche was a realist. He thought of German philosophy as a flight from reality, and a coward's philosophy designed to make a big show. The very notion of life as literature is self-contradictory. But, of course, like all postmodern theorists, Nehamas is un-selfcritical. His rectitude is all that matters, and it cannot be questioned.

The structure of this book is tight; the author unfolds his subjects with great skill. Probably the most intriguing book on Nietzsche in English.