The Education of Desire: Plato and the Philosophy of Religion

Evan Simpson is a philosophy professor and dean of humanities at
McMaster University and the editor of Anti-foundationalism and Practical
Reasoning: Conversations Between Hermeneutics and Analysis.

This book’s engaging title nicely captures the heart of the Platonic enterprise. The text is a demonstration of the virtues of placing philosophical questions within a broader intellectual context. It is illuminating to see Plato’s dialogues in their historical and political contexts and to watch the author trace the importance of language for knowledge of the good.

There are also dangers in generalist scholarship. Concern for evidence and argument may take second place to artful but debatable connections among ideas. Despland’s claims for a philosophy of religion in Plato may strike readers as forced, especially in the light of his observation that “Greek religion is largely a modern invention.” The fact is that by “philosophizing on religion” Despland means any thinking about “the world or man’s place in it.” The Education of Desire is primarily a reading of Plato’s philosophy in general.

It is, indeed, about all of philosophy, an ambition that leads to some organizational peculiarities. The “Conclusion” begins on page 197, less than half way through the book’s 395 pages. This makes room for a long, “un-Platonic postscript,” featuring Hegel, the New Testament, and Lev Shestov, and devoted to large questions: What hope is there for the human mace? This is the stuff of a splendid course in Humanities I, rather than the academic philosophy of religion usually published by university presses.