Customer Reviews

The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings

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Anyone will benefit from reading the dialogues of Plato. Eva Brann has read them for nearly fifty years, and her reading of them has profited from two centuries of classical scholarship. She has mastered not only the nuances of the dialogues she has studied for half a century, but also all the related texts now available thanks to those two centuries of scholarship. Without pedantry, condescension, or jargon, her book generously pours this wealth of intellectual experience into the lap of anyone who can read high-school English.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Ms. Brann's writing is how often her sentences end with question marks. As authoritative as they are, her commentaries always expand, and never restrict, the texts she discusses. Commentaries on Plato often give lip-service to the notion that the present-day reader is expected to "participate" in the conversation. Ms. Brann's essays not only make crystal clear the necessity of this participation; they also enable (and inspire) the reader to embark on this arduous but necessay path.