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Angie Hobbs

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2025-08-09

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2025-08-09

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1. “Sort of person should I be? He thinks everybody is going to be interested in those. And he then, through his answers, sort of says, well, actually, if you want to live a flourishing life, you really need to do that. And you can only do that if you're in a psyche is in a state of psychic harmony. And that's in a state of psychic harmony, which is your flourishing is actually the same as your moral and intellectual excellence. So he kind of tries to lure people into caring about morality who think that they don't care about morality. And he does it all through questions. So again, I think he would really dislike the current methods of doing philosophy, just sort of just giving speeches. I am the guru. Listen to me. He would hate that. So he follows his friend and mentor Socrates, Socrates, as we all know”

   2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

2. “Increasingly, we're just not that morally ambitious. We certainly don't have much immoral imagination, and that this is actually proving a real problem right now. So, Angie, over to you. Tell us what you think Plato would make of the quality and the state of our current moral discourse, and what would he advise that we do about it? I think you're absolutely right. And again, lovely to be here. Thank you very much for having me on. Yeah. He would say we're immensely morally unambitious and not just ambitious about morals, but ambitious about how we could and should live. So you're absolutely right. He thinks the basic ethical questions are, how should I live and what sort of person should I be? And we haven't even got to morality yet because Plato wants to draw people into this conversation who think that they don't care about morality or virtue. And he thinks these questions, how should I live?”

   2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

3. “To a figure from history rather than the live sort of philosophic force for us still. So in some ways what this book tries to do is say, well, this is wrong. He's more than just a figure from history. He actually should be very present in not just our philosophy, but in all kinds of thinking that we need to be doing today. So I'd like to start off just by going right almost to the sort of very beginnings of the foundations of not just your book, but what Plato actually thought he was doing when he was doing philosophy. Now you say he takes on the kind of Socratic idea that philosophy is about asking, how should I live? And he tries to find a few more substantial metaphysical grounds for that. And she, that sounds like something that's actually quite alien from the kind of philosophy that is normatively practiced now, not just in the academy, but the sort of ways we're discussing philosophy out in the wider world. Several commentators recently have said,”

   2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

4. “Hello, welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Sophie Scott Brown, and our guest today is Angie Hobbs. Angie hardly needs introduction, but I'll go ahead anyway. Angie is the professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. She is a specialist in ancient Greek philosophy focusing on ethics, political theory and moral psychology, and today we're discussing her new book, Why Plato Matters Now, a definitive guide to Plato and his place in the modern world and a very timely one too. Angie, I've obviously been able to have a quick look and it's very exciting. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. So, Angie, you mentioned the book that Plato is obviously there's that famous quote, all philosophy is really just a footnote to Plato. Most of us have heard of him, and if we haven't actually heard of Plato or read the text, then we know maybe bits and bobs or elements of him, like the allegory of the cave. And yet somehow it can sort of feel that Plato increasingly these days has faded in.”

   2025-08-09 · Intelligence Squared · Does Plato Still Matter Today? with Angie Hobbs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT