The Best Things in Life: A Contemporary Socrates Looks at Power, Pleasure, Truth and the Good Life
Book Review • Kreeft, Peter. The Best Things in Life: A Contemporary Socrates Looks at Power, Pleasure, Truth and the Good Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1984. $13.10.
Read time: 11 min
Peter Kreeft is a professor of Philosophy at Boston College. At nearly eighty years old, he is a Christian apologist and still a prolific writer, having written well over fifty books on philosophy, religion, theism, and Christianity. Kreeft studied as an undergraduate at Calvin College in the late 1950s, receiving an M.A. and later his doctoral degree in 1965 from Fordham University. In 1984, he wrote The Best Things in Life: A Contemporary Socrates Looks at Power, Pleasure, Truth and the Good Life. In it, he addresses modern ideas on what makes for a happy and meaningful life. Throughout its 189 pages, The Best Things in Life portrays a dozen distinct, fictional dialogues between Socrates and a number of others who represent various forms of flawed thinking. As stated in the Forward, “This very book dethrones the two great gods of … society—Power and Pleasure” (11). Kreeft accomplishes this by employing the Socratic Method, discovering truth via the right questions. This is to say, Kreeft engages his readers in a reasoned critique of contemporary thought on such issues as money, education, technology, artificial intelligence, epistemological certainty, success, sexism, the impact of music, sexual behavior, Communism and Capitalism, and objective values.
Summary
Kreeft employs the Socratic Method in the voice of Socrates himself. The ancient philosopher of Athens, so long ago sentenced to death for corrupting the minds of the state's youth, is walking the halls of Desperate State University. The book opens with Socrates meeting Peter Pragma, a college student trying to decide what to do with his life. Peter embodies the pragmatic pursuit of power and success. In response to one of Socrates’ questions, “What is ‘a good job’ and why do you want one?” Peter replies, “Money, of course. That’s the answer to both questions. To all questions, maybe” (17). Walking over to the campus science lab with Peter, Socrates opens a dialogue with Marigold, a geneticist working with guinea pigs. When queried about the basis of the value of her work, Marigold answers that her “profession is an honest and a useful one” (43). She, too, represents a pragmatic approach to what constitutes “success.” To her, conquering nature for human happiness (which assumes that the material world is all there is) is what matters most. Socrates argues long and does not depart the lab before convincing Peter that “if there are no gods, then technology is the highest thing because there’s nothing [higher than ourselves for us] to conform to, and we may as well make nature conform to us,” conquering nature by technology as an end in itself (43). Socrates’ reasoning shows the superiority of philosophy to technology since philosophy gets at the question of the meaning of life while technology cannot and does not answer this fundamental question.
Not long after that, Peter and Socrates come across the president of the university, President Factor—President “Fudge” Factor. Socrates enlists the president to help Peter understand the difference between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. Finally, Socrates brings Peter around to understanding that the “simplest and ultimate distinction between human and computer intelligence … [is that it] is the programmers and users of computers that understand, but not the computers” (52). Only humans have a mind that can question their own programming and choose freely to act irrationally. No computer will ever possess this uniquely human quality unless it is programmed to do so, and on and on, the infinite regress goes.
On another day, Peter finds the aged philosopher and criticizes his friend, Felicia Flake, for “superstitiously” believing in the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and flying saucers. This conversation touches on epistemology—the basis for Peter’s own certainty that such “superstitions” are not legitimate beliefs. Socrates rebuts, “The world, it seems to me, is divided into the wise, who know they are fools, and the fools, who think they are wise” (54). Kreeft uses the occasion to elaborate on the logical contradiction of any mere human alleging a universal negative proposition: claiming to know that something does not exist certainly, be it God or Bigfoot. Logically, to know such a thing with objective certainty would require a knowledge of all things.
As Peter later attempts to determine what success looks like, Socrates helps him understand that success is ultimately defined by achieving the greatest good, which is much more than money, power, or the pleasure of popularity or health (70). Wisdom is most valuable, for it can direct you to what money cannot buy, the greatest good, which Socrates says is found by visiting the Religion Department—namely God.
Socrates eventually discovers Felicia Flake, a free-spirited student looking for pleasure in all the wrong places. With her, too, Socrates converses extensively about the best things in life. Representing a zeitgeist of emotion-driven hedonism, “Felicia Flake,” as her name implies, seeks felicity void of wisdom (85). After she invites Socrates to smoke pot with her, she soon learns that the “happiness” she receives from Marijuana is deceptive and damaging. On a different occasion, they meet again and launch into an argument about the negative impact of Rock music on her outlook on life (103). Similarly, her sexual ethics and misconceptions of “love” come under Socrates’ scrutiny, as he exposes the foolery of her thinking that something is wholesome just because it is popular or pleasurable (112).
Socrates eventually reignites dialogue with his acquaintance, “Pop” Syke, the campus psychologist. Syke tries to educate the philosopher on the ambiguity of biological and psychological sexual orientation. Socrates establishes philosophically what Genesis 2 says in brief: that humans are either male or female, created in God’s image, the God who himself encompasses both sexes but is male in relation to us (129).
Felicia introduces Socrates to two brothers, Karl the Communist and Adam the Capitalist. They likewise are fair game for Socrates’ discerning questions, as he exposes the dead-end materialism of both opposing economic theories and waxes eloquent regarding the impact of each on human freedom. Kreeft finishes his book with Socrates critiquing Felicia’s seven arguments against objective moral values.
Critical Analysis
There are strengths as well as weaknesses to The Best Things in Life. The book has three strengths: the relevance of the topics to many readers, Kreeft’s facility with ancient and modern philosophers and their ideas, and a strong case for the “examined life.”
Strengths
First, Kreeft offers the reader highly relevant topics. Money, education, music, sex, and success strike at the heart of many human desires and behaviors. Even the most abstract topics, such as the value of scientific work, the ethics of advances in artificial intelligence, and even Communism and Capitalism, may have their place for readers asking such questions.
How Kreeft deals with the idea of success in relation to the ultimate good was of particular import to me. He tackles Peter Pragma’s six arguments and winds up setting the gospel on a tee in a good way. Peter gets it:
“All right. Let’s see. Nothing we looked at in our six candidates was enough. Nothing was big enough. Everything was a little good, a partial good. Each thing left something else outside, something else to be desired.”
Socrates compliments his progress and allows him to continue: “So if we ever did find the greatest good, it would have to be total, not partial—universal, not particular. Otherwise, we would still want something more.” Kreeft deftly shows that the ultimate good that we could pursue and achieve is not money (66), power (69), human respect and honor (70), health (72), pleasure (75), or even health of soul (77). Rather, the human soul, like an arrow finding its target, finds its ultimate and universal good in God himself (79).
A second strength of the book is Kreeft’s facility with ancient and modern philosophers and their ideas. Kreeft weaves elucidating references to Plato’s Republic into the discussion regarding Communism (144). He interestingly accommodates Jung’s conception of a bisexual soul (129) and attributes Freud’s understanding of the soul to Plato (100). And who knew that the popular idea that “music acts as a spiritual purgation of the soul,” a katharsis, was Aristotelian (104)? Socrates helpfully corrects this view of music, for example, by showing that inappropriate music does not cathartically heal the listener of inappropriate emotions but rather expresses and incites such emotions.
A third strength is that Socrates makes a strong case for the “examined life”—that is, the role that philosophical inquiry should play in all of life. Early in his book, Kreeft arrests the notion that money and power are lofty enough goals for education and career. He shows the bankruptcy of this perspective and insists that “whatever career you choose—science or business or anything else—you also have a second career as well.” This second career is what all humans should have in common with each other. “You can’t just be a businessman or a scientist or a technician. You must also be something else. Do you see what? … A human being, is what. That is our common career” (32). Jesus expressed a similar thought: “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Life is more—more than materialism, bodily provision, or perceived, earth-bound success. Life cannot be reduced to any means of that life. Life is more (Luke 12:23).
Weaknesses
The Best Things in Life has several weaknesses, too: it is defensive, at times, of philosophy as a discipline as opposed to the sciences; it is thematically disjointed; and its conversational format is inefficient as a learning aid. First, it strikes me as “defensive” regarding the value of philosophy. What I mean by this is that while the value of philosophy is demonstrable throughout the dialogues, the specific theme of the value (indeed superiority) of philosophy over all other disciplines seems overstated and over-emphasized to the potential devaluation of careers other than in the liberal arts. For example, Kreeft has Peter Pragma assert a view that most college students I have known would not actually share: that money is what determines a good job (17). Summarily, Kreeft then has Socrates dismantle that view.
Elsewhere, Peter (that is, Kreeft) adds to Peter’s folly by thinking out loud that he wants to go into a science field to make a lot of money. Peter: “Let’s look at science.” Socrates: “All right. What attracts you there?” Peter: “Same thing. Money. Science is where the big bucks are. The dough” (28). This simplistic strawman, unsurprisingly, easily tumbles and belies his defensiveness about the fact that liberal arts degrees are less marketable when it comes to finding work as compared to science majors. One more example on this note: Kreeft makes Marigold, the Geneticist, assert that her work is superior to Socrates’ work, and then he has Socrates argue that since philosophy informs the meaningfulness of technology, philosophy is superior (42). Wisdom and the love of wisdom certainly trump the physical work of a geneticist, but the formal discipline—even career—of “philosophy” is not superior to a career in genetics. Just as many parts make up one body, so all careers within the pale of the Creation Mandate are valuable and equally vital if done in faith, just as the hand is not more or less valuable than the eye, as Paul the Apostle argued regarding members in the local church (1 Corinthians 12).
A second weakness is that Kreeft’s work is thematically disjointed. Though he is able to touch on a wide range of topics and relevant issues, there is a lack of unity in the work. Other than that, Socrates, the Gadfly of Athens, engages confused people on a university campus. Overall, the work is a hodgepodge of loosely connected existential and scientific or political themes. If there were a unifying theme, it might be the value of philosophy—the love of wisdom—to all of life.
A third weakness is the inefficiency of a conversational format in the learning process. After reading a page or two, I often found that the main point that I gleaned—if not for all the puns, banter, and irrelevant narrative details—could have been stated succinctly in a single sentence. Of course, learning by asking the right questions can be done in such a way as to reveal underlying presuppositions or drive home a lesson, as seen in the teachings of Christ. The book’s 189 pages of dialogue could be reformatted into a compact, twenty-page pamphlet with a similar educational effect for a fraction of the reading time. Perhaps other readers had a different experience.
Conclusion
Professor Peter Kreeft has provided an accessible and entertaining read addressing a dozen contemporary topics and critiquing popular ideas associated with each. Kreeft manifests a facility with the arguments on both sides, situating his views firmly within the Christian worldview on all topics, and speaks with great relevance to the modern reader. Despite these strengths, The Best Things in Life sometimes pits Socrates against straw men and may strike the reader as thematically disjointed and inefficient as a learning aid due to its conversational format. I would recommend Kreeft’s work to philosophically-minded students preparing for or studying on college campuses, as they could most benefit from the topics addressed and the arguments and rebuttals advanced. ❖
