ISBN 9781913260422 (paperback), 390 pages

How they changed the world, and how they can change it again.

For better or worse, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle engineered the Western mind.

Above all, they formed part of a movement that stood at the crossroads of mythological and scientific-rational thought, at the crossroads of mythos and logos. Although the path of logos had already been beaten by the pre-Socratics, and would be paved by the Stoics, it is they, the Gang of Three, who forced the carriage to turn.

This book sets out to do three things: trace the journey from mythos to logos; outline the lives and thought of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; and consider their legacy, and what can still be gained from them, especially in the universal fields of mental health and human flourishing.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not philosophers in the narrow sense that we understand today, but in the broader, historical, etymological sense of being lovers of wisdom. They knew logic and dialectic, but they also knew how to live, and how to die—and it is in this, perhaps, that their greater strength lies.

Editorial reviews

The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle by Neel Burton should be required reading for any college class in philosophy. This is the best book on philosophy I have ever read, and I have four master’s degrees. —Philip Van Heusen for Readers’ Favorite

Anyone who loves philosophy, history, and the history of ideas will thoroughly enjoy reading Burton’s book. —The US Review of Books

Burton offers abundant insights, and effectively connects the work of three famous philosophers to the struggles of modern-day readers. —The BookLife Prize

Precise and profound without being pedantic … A government of the wise and virtuous that seeks the happiness of all seems as far away as ever. This book brings us near the philosophers who troubled to think through these things. —Relibro

As humanity faces deepening crises, Burton is increasingly turning to the wisdom of the ancients for answers. Through his work, he seeks to bridge the gap between ancient philosophy and modern challenges, offering insights that resonate deeply in today’s troubled world. —Plato’s Academy Centre, Athens

Contents list

Preface
Introduction

Part I: The Presocratics and Sophists

1. The Pre-Socratic Movement
2. The Milesian School: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes
3. The Second Pre-Socratic Phase: Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides
4. The Third Pre-Socratic Phase: Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus
5. The Sophists: Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias

Part II: Socrates

6. History of Athens up to the Time of Socrates
7. The Socratic Question
8. Socrates at First
9. Socrates on a Mission
10. Socrates at War
11. Socrates in Love
12. Socrates on Trial

Part III: Plato

13. Life and Works
14. Meno
15. Phaedo
16. Phaedrus
17. Republic
18. Theaetetus

Part IV: Aristotle

19. Life, Biology, and Works
20. Practical Sciences: Ethics and Politics
21. Organon: Logic and Dialectic
22. Productive Sciences: Rhetoric and Poetics
23. Theoretical Sciences: Physics and Metaphysics

The Gang of Three

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The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle 

Most people go to Venice with a lover, but I went instead with Plato’s writings on love, the Lysis, Symposium, and Phaedrus, dispersed across two timeworn, clothbound Loebs that I had taken down from the top shelf on the top floor of Oxford’s best bookshop. Now that I am acquainted with the ladder of love, as you will soon be, I can see why those books were kept there, as near as possible to the sky. 

Like many, I had read, and been inspired by, Plato’s Apology, on the trial of Socrates, but as a young medical graduate I did not know much more about the Greek philosophers. All I had was a vague sense that they, along with Homer, sat at the beginning of Western thought and civilization, and also at their pinnacle. The trip would be an opportunity, not only to see Venice, but to dig a little deeper. 

One afternoon, I went for a long, aimless walk, and wound up in a walled garden, the Parco di Villa Groggia, with a theatre and follies of ancient ruins. It felt like a garden in Classical Athens, like, perhaps, Plato’s Academy—and the perfect place to start on the Phaedrus. As I read, I experienced one of those rare ecstatic communions that I discuss in my book on the emotions. Words written more than two thousand years ago, etched with a stylus into wax tablets, had, by some mysterious magic, succeeded in moving me to my very core. 

Ecstatic communions, like oracular readings of the kind that set off Socrates, can be life-changing. Within five or six years, I had completed a master’s degree in philosophy, and read and outlined the collected works of both Plato and Aristotle. The outlines were published for the time-poor as Plato’s Shadow (2009) and Aristotle’s Universe (2011). Little did I know then that those two books would serve as groundwork for this one, the research for which would otherwise have been insurmountable! 

My title is inspired by Edward de Bono (d. 2021), who, like me, began as a physician. In a nutshell, de Bono contrasted critical thinking, which is logical, adversarial, and judgmental, with ‘parallel’ thinking, which is open, cooperative, and, he argued, better suited to real-life problem solving. Critical thinking, with its emphasis on ‘the truth’, is rooted in the Socratic method pioneered by Socrates and codified by Plato and Aristotle. Renaissance humanists turned to this ‘Gang of Three’ to deliver them from Christian dogma, but their apparatus has since outlived this purpose, leaving us trapped in a form of thinking that is abstract, limited, and sterile. 

The thesis is controversial, but it points to the sorts of issues and stakes involved, and the faintly disparaging title that I took from it, with its connotations of partiality and criminality, serves as a salutary reminder to my reverential self to look for the bad as well as the good. 

For better or worse, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle engineered the Western mind. Above all, they formed part of a movement that stood at the crossroads of mythological and scientific-rational thought, at the crossroads of mythos and logos. Although the path of logos had already been beaten by the pre-Socratics, and would be paved by the Stoics, it is they, the Gang of Three, that forced the carriage to turn. 

This book sets out to do three things: trace the journey from mythos to logos; outline the lives and thought of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; and, in the final analysis, consider their legacy, and what can still be gained from them, especially in the universal fields of mental health and human flourishing. 

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not philosophers in the narrow sense that we understand today, but in the broader, historical, etymological sense of being lovers of wisdom. They knew logic and dialectic, but they also knew how to live, and how to die—and it is in this, perhaps, that their greater strength lies.