Plato's Memoirs

Author: D.R. Khashaba

ISBN 978-1-60264-612-4 (softcover)

158 pages

In line with his fictional Socrates' Prison Journal (2006), the author makes Plato put off the revision of his last work, the Laws, to write his memoirs, reflections on his life and works. The idea is audacious but requisite to clear away misunderstandings and falsehoods that have accumulated around Plato's work and thought and are being taken earnestly and without question by scholars and students of philosophy.
Plato wrote dramatic plays, intended as such. As in all imaginative literature, the surface is all play, but below the surface the message is fully earnest. Arguments and theoretical formulations are to be taken in proper perspective as part of the dramatic give and take, while the moral values, the philosophy of life, and the underlying metaphysical vision should be taken most seriously. This is antipodal to the mainstream academic approach which focuses critically on arguments and theory while disdaining the "foolish" morals and "fancy" metaphysics. The author hopes to induce at least a few people to take those values and that philosophy of life seriously, not just as the subject of astute academic dissertations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KHASHABA, D.R., b. 1927, is an independent philosopher. He describes his philosophy as an original version of Platonism. Published Let Us Philosophize (1998, 2008), Plato: An Interpretation (2005), Socrates' Prison Journal (2006), Hypatia's Lover (2006), The Sphinx and the Phoenix (2009). Arabic translations of his books, all originally written in English, are now being published by the National Center for Translation in Cairo, Egypt. The Arabic versions of Socrates' Prison Journal and Hypatia's Lover have already appeared; translation of Plato: An Interpretation hopefully to follow shortly. A widower with one daughter, Hanan, and one granddaughter, Farah, Khashaba lives in his home-country Egypt.
Weblog: http://khashaba.blogspot.com.