At the beginning of 2025, I was working on an article on the Middle Persian term frahang (‘education, culture’), examining it as a Sasanian concept. One of the objectives of the article was to investigate frahang in the light of Greek paideia.
There are quite a number of Greek sources that are relevant, but I was particularly interested in Plato’s reading of paideia and how he related it to the Persians, otherwise known as the Achaemenids. The two dialogues in which Plato brings in the Persians are Alcibiades I.122a (perhaps pseudo Plato) and Nomoi. Incidentally, if you are interested in paideia, Jaeger (1973), which originally appeared in three volumes between 1934 and 1947, is a good resource.
I came across a fascinating passage in Nomoi, which did not relate to my question but was highly illustrative of why philosophy and the philosophical question matter, irrespective of their age. Having seen the announcement of Angie Hobbs’s forthcoming book, Why Plato matters now, I now have reason to share that passage as an example of Plato’s continuing relevance:
A man’s exceptional wealth is no more reason for a state to confer specially exalted office on him than his ability to run, his good looks, or his physical strength, in the absence of some virtue—or even if he has some virtue, if it excludes self-control.
Plato, Nomoi III, 696b; Cooper’s (1997: 1385) translation
This is why I am so looking forward to reading Hobbs’s book, which brings me to the question of philosophy in the public discourse.
While strolling through a local bookshop yesterday, I came across Herald of a restless world, a biography of Henri Bergson by Emily Herring. I sat down and read a couple of pages in the shop, and had to get myself a copy. The description on the back cover calls the book ‘electrifying’, and that is spot on. I mention it here because Herring, as the subtitle suggests, introduces Bergson to the reader as the man who ‘brought philosophy to the people’.
Two excellent books, biographies of sorts, that highlight the relevance of philosophy beyond academia and within public discourse: one concerns a philosopher from antiquity, the other a modern thinker.
Bibliography
- Cooper, John M. (ed.). 1997. Plato: Complete works. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
- Herring, Emily. 2025. Herald of a restless world. London: Basic Books.
- Hobbs, Angie. 2025. Why Plato matters now. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Jaeger, Werner. 1973. Paideia: Die Formung des griechischen Menschen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.