30 Things Everyone Should Know by Siobhan Adcock

30 Things Everyone Should Know by Siobhan Adcock

In this first comprehensive treatment of Plato's political thought in a long time, John Wallach offers a critical historicist interpretation of Plato. Wallach shows how Plato's theory, while a radical critique of the conventional ethical and political practice of his own era, can be seen as having the potential for contributing to democratic discourse about ethics and politics today.

The author argues that Plato articulates and solves his Socratic Problem in his various dialogues in different but potentially complementary ways. The book effectively extracts Plato from the straightjacket of Platonism and from the interpretive perspectives of the past fifty years--principally those of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, M. I. Finley, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Vlastos.

The author's distinctive approach for understanding Plato--and, he argues, for the history of political theory in general--can inform contemporary theorizing about democracy, opening pathways for criticizing democracy on behalf of virtue, justice, and democracy itself.

The Barter and The Completionist are two novels by Siobhan Adcock. Triquarterly and The Massachusetts Review have published her short fiction, and Salon, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post have published her essays and humor writing. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.