Bloomsbury Socrates On Trial: Rewriting Plato for Today

Platos Republic is perhaps the most widely-read book in the Western philosophical tradition. Yet it advocated government by an unelected elite who were authorised to lie and to deceive ordinary citizens, to practise euthanasia on the unhealthy, to abandon family structures and parenthood, and for whom virtue resembled austerity. The social problems it addressed are familiar. Elites inevitably succumb to corruption. The rich prosper at the cost of the poor. The law defends the privileged, and at times the inhumanity of the powerful. Orators become spin doctors. Opportunity rest upon colour, gender, culture, and class. Social media breeds intemperance. The young are subject to a plethora of violent images. A healthy bank balance is preferred to the health of the soul. And the unexamined life has become the vocation of the tabloids and the education system. What response might a new Republic make to this symbiotic relationship between education and elitism? Plato framed social and political education within a carefully constructed philosophical metaphysics. But his metaphysics is not ours. His idea of freedom is not our idea of freedom. So, can a new Republic recycle this relationship between education, elitism, and power, and discover within its complexities a metaphysics of philosophical learning relevant for our own social and political life? Equipped with a modern conception of freedom and metaphysics, The New Republic recycles Platos vision of the project for a just society. Review Socrates on Trial makes us look at our world in new ways, urges us to rethink education, and is a much-needed plea for a Socratic uprising in education. Consumerism, screen-addiction, the exploitation of the earth resources, racial injustices - Tubbs argues that we cannot afford to remain in the world of shadows, and calls for an education that is profoundly self-critical and philosophical. In holding up a mirror, the book benefits and inspires all of us.Emma Cohen de Lara, Senior Lecturer In Political Theory, Amsterdam University College, The NetherlandsThis book is quite extraordinary at the literary as well as the philosophical level. A tour de force.Josh Cohen, Professor of Modern Literary Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London, UKWhat if Socrates were to return today, and insist again on asking uncomfortable questions of the propertied and the powerful? Tubbs's reply in this compelling philosophical fable is as fascinating and as shocking as its stylistic inspiration in Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor. His Socrates discovers that the examined life is as unwelcome today as it was in ancient Athens, that property and power remain as allergic to questioning as then and, in a fatal ironic twist worthy of its protagonist, that it is now he who must defend himself against the failure of his efforts to lead others out of the cave. Tubbs's Socrates, questioning our culture and his own contribution to it, learns that, although he must fail again, this time at least he can fail better.Howard Caygill, Professor of Philosophy, CRMEP, Kingston University, UK About the Author Nigel Tubbs is Professor of Philosophical and Educational Thought in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winchester, UK.Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth) is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK. He was formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, UK, and was Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 - 2012.