“In my end is my beginning”: that apparently applies to Socrates too, for the opening chapter of this volume is Debra Nails's The Trial and Death of Socrates. But it is also a starting point: for after Section I's eight chapters on Biography and Sources, the remaining twenty‐two discuss Socrates beyond his death. Section II is simply Plato with eight chapters discussing Socrates and his philosophy through Plato's dialogues. Section III moves on into Hellenistic Philosophy with three papers, and the final two sections take his influence From the Medieval Period to Modernity and on to The Modern Period.
A giant in his lifetime (and a dangerous one too for Athenians who eventually put him to death for corrupting Athenian youth), Socrates left through his pupil Plato a legacy of philosophical thought and method that endures still: the opening words of the preface to this companion are: “We are living in the midst of a Socratic revival, both academic and broadly cultural”. The approach taken in the construction of this book reflects the Socratic method: “Who was Socrates that he should have spawned such diverse offspring? Rather than venture a single answer, the essays … investigate and exemplify the various ways in which versions of this question can be answered”.
In his own times Socrates was not alone: he lived, thought and taught within an intense philosophical and literary tradition and environment. The eight essays in Section I explore these contemporary aspects in chapters such as Socrates and Euripides, Socrates Among the Sophists and Socrates, Antisthenes and the Cynics. Plato's Socrates has a section to himself, most of the essays building on or challenging the Platonic Socrates presented by the influential studies of Gregory Vlastos and his pupils. Then the rest of the book moves on to the influence, invention and continual re‐invention of Socrates and his philosophy from the Hellenistic world to today.
This is a comprehensive set of essays analysing perhaps the most important philosopher of them all: and let us not forget either his role as educator which is just as influential today as his philosophy. The writers are all, in common with all the Blackwell Companions, academic experts on their fields. Technical issues are treated thoroughly and comprehensibly and the state of knowledge on Socrates is comprehensively presented both for today and in historical contexts. The essays themselves are of a length that allows proper treatment of arguments. This is a work primarily for the academic library where it will be the standard handbook for some years yet, although no doubt its contents prompting constant debate, even controversy. Its subject matter is specialist, but by no means inaccessibly so (as befits its subject himself) and will be of interest too to non‐specialists with a penchant for philosophy, or for the history of thought, since there is as much of interest here about the influence of Socrates on later periods as there is on the thought of the philosopher himself.
