About the name

 

‘I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Galucon, son of Ariston’, so begins one of the foundational texts of Western philosophy, Plato’s Republic. 

The Piraeus is the port of Athens.  It was an enthralling place.  Cultures meshed, people of different stations jostled, and the churn of peoples produced intellectual ferment.  

In the original Greek, ‘down’ or Κατέβην, is the same term used to denote Odysseus’ passage to Hades.  It is better translated as a ‘descent’.  This suggests transcendence, a shift from the usual realm of human experience.  It is in this manner, Plato has Socrates remove himself from the usual concerns of city life, and descend to the Piraeus to answer the pivotal questions of what goodness, reality and knowledge are.  

When opening a book, you embark on the very same journey.  You descend to the Piraeus also.  You escape your surroundings and the material world, and engage in dialogue with disembodied ideas.  

This blog is about books and my own dialogue with them.  As such, each post is a letter from a time I went down to the Piraeus.  




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