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Book Reviews I. F. Stone. The Trial of Socrates. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1988. Pp. xi + 28~. $18.95. Investigative journalism, classical scholarship, and detective fiction share much in common . The scholar investigates some unsolved, persistent puzzle and comes up with a solution. The journalist does the same. Both journalist and scholar painstakingly assemble facts and footnotes to justify their claims concerning the correct reading of a scandal or a text. Yet, the interpretations which result can turn out to be fictions. A good writer of detective stories is a master at mixing facts with storytelling. He creates a picture of the world, one that seems so intriguing and so real, though the world viewed is meant to be imaginary. Even so, deeper facts concerning human nature and reality might prove profoundly true. I. F. Stone has written a best seller about the trial of Socrates. It was a Book-of-the-Month Club Alternate Selection. But its genre is unclear. As Cicero had done before him, I. F. Stone decided in retirement to put contemporary politics aside and turn instead to the philosophy of Athens. In this way he planned to spend his days contemplating the glory of democracy. This is where the story starts. To accomplish his noble goal Stone turned to study ancient Greek. The puzzle soon appeared, how such a free society as Athens could sentence Socrates to death. The interpretation that results proves informative, delineating the threats to Athenian society from the rightists and the oligarchs and how those threats had been perceived by ordinary citizens. I. F. Stone is characteristically resourceful in searching out what proves useful. The political background of the trial is revealed. Stone concludes that Socrates brought the indictment on himself, even though Athens sinned against free speech. The story Stone tells about the trial has nothing much to say about philosophy, except when philosophy sounds like common sense. Stone is fond of making Plato's metaphysics out to be sheer foolishness. Stone decries Socratic dialectic as absurd. Indeed, Stone tells the story of Socrates' demise as if Socrates were not a philosopher at all. In any cage, Socrates' philosophic views are made to seem irrelevant, notwithstanding the apparently ideological nature of the charges. The portrait Stone paints of Socrates makes Socrates look like Richard Nixon. I. F. Stone has been a Socrates himself, of sorts. In playing the modern role of the ancient gadfly Stone spent his days inspecting dumpsters, raking up the muck and exposing it to reason, irritating all the politicians who buried it. Socrates had his good intentions and so did I. F. Stone. Yet the book that he has written sadly casts into doubt the value of his life's long work, just as it accuses Socrates. [6o 1] 6o2 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:4 OCTOBER 199o I. F. Stone's Weekly was a legend for its attention to detail. It questioned the intentions of our politicians from McCarthy to Vietnam, gathering facts from here and there to piece together a jigsaw of deceit. Stone gave little credence to the ability of politicians to act from principles,just as he gives little credence to the power of philosophy to influence the values of a state. And so Socrates' antidemocradc students are said to be more responsible for the indictment than his scepticism. Academic philosophy today may be effete, but it was not so for Socrates. Nor it is true today for those who practice their ideas on the street. Socrates' persistent questioning revealed a dearth of values, the fact that no one knew himself nor human nature. It is the content of our speech that matters, not just our right to speak. I. F. Stone ignores Socrates' philosophy as plain foolishness. I. F. Stone was often one-sided, telling the story of a Political debate as the struggle between good and evil, and he does the same here. But reality does not work out this way. North Vietnam was no better than the South. Some McCarthy so shamelessly reviled were Stalinists. The democracy of Athens that Plato so disdained was corrupted to its core. But Stone prefers to let that scandal rest...

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