Thinking in Plato

I started re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia last week. I’ve usually read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe about twice a year since I was about seven years – it being one of my top ten favorite books. In recent years, I’ve started reading the other six books in the series at least once in the year. I find that like the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante, and Joyce, the Chronicles has the ability to expand one’s consciousness and imagination and, therefore, deserves repeated readings over a lifetime.

While reading these books I often find it helpful to consult Paul F. Ford’s Companion to Narnia and Michael Ward’s definitive work on the subject, Planet Narnia. Both of these works help the reader dig deeper into the construction and design of the series, as well as the theology and philosophy that undergirds the work.

The night before last I was reading Ford’s companion to the series and saw this entry on the Platonic philosophies inherent in the work:

“Plato saw the Socratic method of questioning as a necessary consciousness-raising antidote to the human tendency to shrink back from the fullness of reality into a superficial existence. In such a reduced state the human spirit will mistake the most immediate appearances for reality itself. Self-deception is a recurring factor in this constriction of consciousness since it is easy enough to hold an opinion but hard work to actually know what one is talking about.”