Angie Hobbs is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Sheffield. A leading scholar of ancient philosophy and its contemporary relevance, she is the author of Plato and the Hero and, most recently, Why Plato Matters Now (Bloomsbury, 2025). Alongside her academic work, she engages widely with public and policy audiences—contributing frequently to radio and television, including a record 27 appearances on In Our Time on BBC Radio 4, and speaking at venues ranging from the World Economic Forum to the U.K. Parliament. In this interview, Hobbs discusses how Plato’s dialogues illuminate urgent contemporary questions about democracy, flourishing, education, love, and resilience—and why Plato’s voice remains indispensable today.
What is your work about?
In each chapter of Why Plato Matters Now, I take a topic of pressing contemporary relevance and explore how Plato’s arguments, concepts, and methodology can illuminate it: dialogue and the dialogue form; the nature of a flourishing life; democracy, demagoguery, and tyranny; how communities are built and destroyed; heroism and celebrity and what money can and cannot do; love and friendship; art, censorship, and myth (as an example of the importance of myth in Plato’s works, I give a detailed account of his legend of Atlantis, which he largely invents, and look at the benign and malign uses to which the myth has been put throughout history). For Plato, the basic ethical questions are ‘how should I live?’ and ‘what sort of person should I be?’ It is an agent-centered approach which is capable of taking on board the complexities of the lived human experience; it considers the whole person, living a whole life, and as such invites us to reflect on the shape, structure, and narrative of a well-lived life. He never speaks in his own voice, but composes dramatic dialogues involving a rich and varied cast of characters, and these dialogues invite interpretation and compel the reader to think for themselves. The characters present models we may wish to emulate, and also models we may be advised to avoid. Plato leaves space for the reader to enter the conversation.
How does it fit in with your larger research project?
In 2012 I was appointed the U.K.’s first Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield (I am now Professor Emerita), and in that role I had and still have two main aims: firstly, in a variety of media, to provide lucid and concise exegeses of, and critical engagement with, philosophical works and thinkers; secondly, to apply philosophical concepts, arguments, and methods in a number of policy sectors, such as the U.K. National Health Service and Civil Service and the World Economic Forum. Why Plato Matters Now fits both these aims: it introduces readers and listeners (I also narrated the audiobook!) to a number of Plato’s dialogues and their core arguments, characters, and methodology, and it also seeks to apply those rich resources to contemporary challenges.
Why did you feel the need to write this work?
Although I discuss and deploy a number of philosophers in my public work—for example, Kant; Bentham; Mill and Taylor Mill; Foucault—I found that time and again it was Plato who offered the most clarity and assistance: in particular, I found myself revising his ethics and (small ‘p’) politics of flourishing and applying the revision to many issues such as waiting-list prioritization in healthcare provision, or the nature and purpose of education. “Flourishing” (eudaimonia in the Greek) is a more objective concept than that of happiness: it concerns the best realization of our various faculties, rational, imaginative, emotional, and physical. We cannot always be happy, but we can always ask ourselves: “How can I best use my faculties to improve the situation, both for myself and my community?” In the book, I argue for the need to replace the notion of “the good life” with the less authoritarian and hierarchical “a good life,” but nevertheless, we are still deeply indebted to Plato (and his mentor, the historic Socrates) for an agent-centered ethical approach which empowers us and gives our lives purpose and meaning. I also often found myself employing his dialogic methodology (itself adapted from the question-and-answer technique of the historic Socrates) to help bridge inter-faith, faith–secular and political and cultural divides, as well as, again, in primary, secondary, and tertiary education. And his coruscating analysis of how a democracy can be subverted into tyranny by an opportunistic demagogue is clearly only too relevant, as is his exposure of the tricks employed by sophists (and their contemporary equivalents) to deceive and manipulate us for profit, power, or both.
What effect do you hope your work will have?
I hope it will entice people to read (or re-read) some of Plato’s beautiful, powerful, witty (and often provocative) works and reflect on the issues he raises—because even though the proposed solutions may sometimes appear too extreme, he nearly always asks the right questions. And in some cases, the solutions themselves are genuinely helpful, even if we do not want to endorse them in their entirety. For instance, his concept of psychic health and harmony between the three faculties of reason, a spirited element, and the appetites allows him to identify flourishing with virtue in ways which have had profound and lasting impact on Western thought, and was the basis of his claim that one should never return wrong for wrong. His view of erōs as a stream of desire which can be re-channeled onto different objects has also been of great importance in theology as well as psychology. At Theaetetus 155d, the character of Socrates says that ‘philosophy begins in wondering, and nowhere else.’ Plato helped harness and foster that sense of wonder in me, and I have never lost it; I would love to think that he will have the same effect on readers of this book.
Do you see any connections between your professional work and personal life?
Yes, definitely. My study of all the ancient Greek philosophers—not only Plato, but Plato above all—has helped me to think through my own view of what constitutes a good life, and what kind of virtues, skills, and resources may be needed to achieve it. And I have found the emphasis Plato places on the importance of resilience and courage and their interconnectedness with wisdom to be a source of great strength during the pandemic, and in times of personal loss and political turbulence. Plato really does matter right now.
Angie Hobbs
Angie Hobbs is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Sheffield. Her chief interests are in ancient philosophy, and ethics and political theory from classical thought to the present, and she has published widely in these areas, including Plato and the Hero (C.U.P); her most recent publication for the general public is Why Plato Matters Now (Bloomsbury 2025). She works with a number of policy sectors (including the U.K. National Health Service and Civil Service), and she contributes regularly to radio and TV programmes and other media around the world, including a record 27 appearances on In Our Time on BBC Radio 4. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Athens Democracy Forum, the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, the Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and Westminster Abbey, and has been a guest on Desert Island Discs, Private Passions, and Test Match Special.
Richard B. Gibson is Editor of the Current Events in Philosophy and the Bioethics series. He is a bioethicist with research interests in human enhancement, emergent technologies, novel beings, disability theory, and body modification.
