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1 8 0 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2when compared with Heidegger of the twenties, more Heideggerian than thephilosophical master of Messkirch himself” (185).In the final essay, Laurence Lampert discusses Seth Benardete’s readingof Socrates’s philosophic education in the Symposium. Those acquainted withLampert’s excellent work on Nietzsche, as well as his recent study of Plato,will find familiar themes presented here. Lampert’s essay is certainly themost radical piece in the collection. Lampert presents Benardete’s Socratesas “at home in his homelessness,” which is not the same as occupying “a stateof rest, satiation, or completion”; he affirms his own erotic neediness as desirable,as “satisfying for itself in itself”; he is fearless as a knower, indifferentto the “psychic or spiritual comfort thought necessary in the face of the terrifying”truth about eros; and his self-knowledge allows him to be at homein his homelessness, for he knows that “to be is to be eros and nothing else.”He “blesses the innocence of becoming” (195). Eros both desires wisdom andphilosophizes, but “that desire generates a desire to have an effect” (in thiscase, on Alcibiades), “a desire on which Socrates acted. Philosophy generatespolitical philosophy”; this leads to the view that the last stage of philosophiceducation entails a caring for “home through tending to the various formstaken by ‘Alcibiades’” (197). Lampert cites the Baconian project as an example,but he could just as easily have offered Nietzsche’s view of Plato. Lampert’sessay closes with an explanation of the way in which Socrates saved Athens—not Athens as a city, but Athens as opposed to Jerusalem or as representativeof philosophy. Lampert’s essay allows the reader, through a consideration ofBenardete’s reading of the Symposium, to confront the action taken in defenseof philosophy by both Plato and Socrates.Overall, this is an outstanding book that addresses a permanent question:can philosophy defend itself against the most compelling opponents?Because it is a permanent question, and a question that many are simplyunaware of in our age, it is a particularly timely collection, and deserves tofind a mainstream readership.