“Looking for Plato in Athens with my daughter” | greece, culture
ATHENA. His experience of trying to pay due homage to the ancient philosopher Plato in Athens is given in an executive text hosted by The New York Times by Thomas Chatterton Williams.
The latter (who, among other things, wrote “Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race”) refers to the classical ancient Greek education he received as a child from his father in Galveston, Texas many decades ago. This year, he went on holiday with his family to Greece and in turn wanted to introduce his own seven-year-old daughter, Marlowe, to the world of classical studies.
The long-awaited journey of Thomas Sutteron Williams began with a scheduled Air France flight landing in Athens in July. It was the family’s first vacation after the coronavirus pandemic had turned everything upside down, not just in their own lives but all over the planet.
Vacations included and looked at the Greek islands, but Athens, Plato’s land, was what carried Thomas Sutherton Williams.
The latter wanted to tour the place where the great ancient Greek philosopher had grown up and he did not convey to his daughter the same love that his father had conveyed to him.
With these aspects, Thomas Sutteron Williams essentially wanted to turn the daughter of the Greek capital into an outdoor class, and to some extent he succeeded.
Among other things, he repeated to her about how his father discovered the image of Socrates, which led to a lifelong devotion to Plato’s student, in whose dialogues his genius is preserved.
Together they gave the archeological site of Plato’s Academy, where the great philosopher taught the young people of the time and, among others, Aristotle, the later teacher of Alexander the Great, one of the greatest minds that mankind has ever known.
These men really studied here, he told her. From 387 BC, the Academy endured until the death of its last leader, Philo of Larissa, a little more than 300 years later. The ruins were lost in history until the 20th century.
Mentally the father tries to transport the daughter to ancient times. He spoke to her about Plato and Socrates and how the reason for these two was inherently superior to writing, because writing did not actually exist then. The students who had the opportunity to sit in front of Plato were some of the luckiest in all of spiritual history. They exercised their discipline as it should, and unconsciously in Williams’ mind came images of his own father and the way he tried to discipline him – something similar to what he did to his 7-year-old daughter. of.