Volume 48, Number 17 · November 1, 2001
Philosophy for Winners
By M.F. Burnyeat
The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
by Anthony Gottlieb
Norton, 469 pp., $27.95
In the winter of 46 BC, Cato of Utica knew that the Roman Republic was finished. Julius Caesar had won the civil war and was on his way to capture him. Cato, a prominent Stoic, resolved on suicide—in Stoic parlance, a 'reasonable exit.' Others would live on as best they could (and he worked tirelessly to help them escape or accommodate to the new order), but he was personally so identified with the Republic that no role was left for him. By way of preparation for death he read, and reread, Plato's Phaedo, in which Socrates, the great hero of the Stoic philosophy, prepares to die in prison by a self-administered dose of hemlock.
Review, 3993 words
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