It turns out that I have a few more days to make final final final revisions to the manuscript. (No, I didn't beg the publisher. It turns out I just misread an email.) It's dismaying how many typos lurk in any document this long, but I think I'm actually getting to the end of it. At any rate, if you have major or minor suggestions, please feel free to keep making them for a few more days.
Here's a question: the first time you read Plato, did you like it? Did it seem smart or dumb or bizarre or witty or lively or wise or what? I remember the first time I read Plato: my instructor was a bit on the earnest side, very insistent that Socrates was sincerely interested in improving the souls of his fellow citizens. Plato just wanted us to see this. This seemed to me naive. How could this person be oblivious to the fact that Socrates is basically passive-aggressive? The subject never really came up in our class, and I just quietly nursed my sense of superior psychological insight.
I didn't grow into any sort of serious Plato enthusiasm for years and years. Not until grad school, really. But eventually it dawned on my that all this stuff I had thought was so obviously wrong-headed was nothing of the sort. (So for me the story Alcibiades tells, in Symposium, about first thinking Socrates' arguments are coarse and crude, then realizing maybe no other arguments make sense, has great personal resonance. Although I've never committed recreation vandalism against herms or invaded Sicily. Although I've been to Sicily. It was hot.)
Enough about me. My own distinct failure to take to Plato immediately has made me a bit of an anxious Plato teacher. I sure didn't like Plato after only 12 weeks, but 12 weeks is all I've got in my intro class. So tell me about your first experience, reading Plato, if you please. What's the thing you have to make sure to say so that people are sure to find it interesting, if they otherwise might not?
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