While scholars typically view Plato's engagement with medicine as uniform and largely positive, Susan B. Levin argues that from the Gorgias through the Laws, his handling of medicine unfolds in severa
The equation of virtue and knowledge points to the core of the Socratic view of human excellence at the same time as it reflects a central puzzle of the Platonic dialogues. Can Socrates be serious in
Virtues of Thought is an excursion through interconnecting philosophical topics in Plato and Aristotle, under the expert guidance of Aryeh Kosman. Exploring what these two foundational figures have to
"From the acclaimed writer and thinker--whose award-winning books include both fiction and non-fiction--a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden but essential ro
Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agree
Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. Kahn shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science.
Plato’s dialogue Cratylus focuses on being and human dependence on words, or the essential truths about the human condition. Arguing that comedy is an essential part of Plato's concept of language, S.
This is a collection of essays written by leading experts in honour of Christopher Rowe, and inspired by his groundbreaking work in the exegesis of Plato. The authors represent scholarly traditions which are sometimes very different in their approaches and interests, and so rarely brought into dialogue with each other. This volume, by contrast, aims to explore synergies between them. Key topics include: the literary unity of Plato's works; the presence and role of his contemporaries in his dialogues; the function of myth (especially the Atlantis myth); Plato's Socratic heritage, especially as played out in his discussions of psychology; and his views of truth and being. Prominent among the dialogues discussed are Euthydemus, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, Theaetetus, Timaeus, Sophist and Laws.
Featuring studies on Platonism and neo-Platonism by scholars from twelve countries, this collection includes material on unity, intellect, and beauty; happiness and virtue, the soul and body; Platonop
Was Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics thought so, but scholars since the nineteenth century have been more skeptical. With this probing study, Phillip Sidney Horky argues that
Plato’s dialogues are some of the most widely read texts in Western philosophy, and one would imagine them fully mined for elemental material. Yet, in Plato and Tradition, Patricia Fagan reveals the d
?The European philosophical tradition. . .consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” -- Alfred North Whitehead?The dialogues of Plato stand alongside the Bible and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as found
Collected writings on Platos unwritten teachings. Offering a provocative alternative to the dominant approaches of Plato scholarship, the Tbingen School suggests that the dialogues do not tell the ful
Plato,mathematician, philosopher and founder of the Academy in Athens, is, together with his teacher,Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, universally considered to have laid thefoundations of Western
A provocative close reading revealing a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates. Modern interpreters of Platos Socrates have generally taken the dialogues to be aimed at working out objective truth.
As a priest of Apollo/neoPlatonist, Plutarch (45-120 CE), e.g., in his Moralia and Lives, witnessed pagan monotheism and the development of Christianity in late antiquity. In this valuable contributio
Composed in the fourth century b.c., the Phaedrus—a dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates—deals ostensibly with love but develops into a wide-ranging discussion of such subjects as the pursuit of bea
Plato's entire fictive world is permeated with philosophical concern for Eros, well beyond the so-called erotic dialogues. Several metaphysical, epistemological and cosmological conversations - Timaeus, Cratylus, Parmenides, Theaetetus and Phaedo - demonstrate that Eros lies at the root of the human condition and that properly guided Eros is the essence of a life well lived. This book presents a holistic vision of Eros, beginning with the presence of Eros at the origin of the cosmos and the human soul, surveying four types of human self-cultivation aimed at good guidance of Eros and concluding with human death as a return to our origins. The book challenges conventional wisdom regarding the 'erotic dialogues' and demonstrates that Plato's world is erotic from beginning to end: the human soul is primordially erotic and the well-cultivated erotic soul can best remember and return to its origins, its lifelong erotic desire.
