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Dear Socrates
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
Dear Socrates,
In “Phaedo”, your faithful disciple Plato recounts your view that “the mind commands the body.” It is however my experience that the body frequently commands the mind; one who drinks wine, for instance, is led to a different state of mind from one who does not. Since, thanks to the gods, you are back among us after this terrible miscarriage of justice, what do you have to retort to my objection?
With best regards,
Marc Dixmier
Dublin
Dear Marc,
What you call to my attention is indeed a well-known phenomenon. Wine can affect the mind. In my own case, as you might fuzzily recollect if you had been at our little drinktogether, the Symposium, the wine put everyone under the table but yours truly.
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