Book Club: Xenophon’s Memorabilia, part I, in defense of Socrates

Time to to discuss a new book (previous entries here)! This time I am initiating what is likely to be a four-part discussion of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, which is about the life and philosophy of Socrates. There are a few reasons to read the Memorabilia. First, it is the major account of Socrates that is alternative to the picture we get from Plato. Second, Xenophon’s focuses more on how Socrates lived than on how he philosophized. But of course the two — especially in the ancient conception of philosophy as the art of living — go hand in hand, which means that we can read Xenophon and Plato as complementary to each other, not antagonistic. Lastly, Xenophon’s Memorabilia is the very book that turned Zeno of Citium — the founder of Stoicism — to philosophy:

“[Zeno] was shipwrecked on a voyage from Phoenicia to Piraeus with a charge of purple. He went up into Athens and sat down in a bookseller’s shop, being then a man of thirty. As he went on reading the second book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, he was pleased that he inquired where men like Socrates were to be found. Crates [of Thebes, the Cynic] passed in the…