Plato's Philosophy Research Articles

Olimpiodoro d'Alessandria: Tutti i Commentari a Platone trans. and ed. by Francesca Filippi

Reviewed by: Olimpiodoro d'Alessandria: Tutti i Commentari a Platone trans. and ed. by Francesca Filippi Harold Tarrant Francesca Filippi, editor and translator. Olimpiodoro d'Alessandria: Tutti i Commentari a Platone. Introduzione, traduzione, testo greco a fronte e note. Volumes 1 and 2. Sankt Augustin, Academia Verlag, 2017. Pp. lxxviii + 390 and lxxvi + 504. Paper, €49.00 and €59.00. For those of us who do not idealize Proclus's contribution to Platonic scholarship, which is influenced excessively by the conviction that Orphic and Chaldaean texts are working within the same system, the commentaries of Olympiodorus can represent a substantial [End Page 555] step forward. The range of issues tackled in his commentaries is often much closer to that expected of a modern commentary than those of his illustrious Athenian predecessor. This is not entirely new, since much the same could be said of Hermias, working within Syrianus's school as Proclus did, and of Damascius when commenting on the Phaedo or Philebus rather than on the Parmenides. Yet our picture of so-called neoplatonism remains dominated by the more striking examples of Plotinus and Proclus, both of them atypical. Working within sixth century Alexandria, Olympiodorus was constrained by the practical requirements for anybody trying to present Plato to a predominantly Christian community in which education was subject to official oversight. His predecessor Ammonius had to make concessions, and specialized rather in Aristotle, but it is less clear that Olympiodorus saw himself as making compromises. His surviving work includes commentaries on two complete Platonic texts (the only case of this from antiquity), a partial commentary on the Phaedo, and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories and Meteorologica (a surprising work to find him tackling). Commentaries are typically records of his actual lectures, and have occasionally suffered from the ineptitude of the recorder. The surviving, but anonymous, Prolegomena to Plato's Philosophy is usually connected with the school of Olympiodorus and, while interesting differences can be discerned between this text and the commentaries, the same might be said of the seemingly early Gorgias commentary and the other two. Since Olympiodorus perhaps taught from the 520s through to at least the 560s, his career lasted long enough to explain various changes of stance and emphasis. The present two-volume text and translation must be welcomed, first, as a relatively inexpensive way of acquiring the four texts relating to the teaching of Plato, all with a fluent modern translation, and, second, as an exercise in reading the earlier part of the Alexandrian Platonic corpus in the exact order that students encountered it. First came prolegomena to the study of Plato, the Alcibiades, then the Gorgias, and then the Phaedo. While it is salutary to have these works all together and arranged in curricular order, two in each volume, one should be aware that the sequence does not always seem perfect. The Alcibiades commentary contains a life of Plato and a little other general prefatory material, indicating that separate prolegomena had not preceded this course of lectures. The Gorgias commentary is much less rich than the Alcibiades commentary, and seems to date from a time when Ammonius was viewed as an authority rather than Proclus and Damascius, both of whom have a high profile in the Alcibiades commentary. Finally, the lectures on the Phaedo treated only 61c to 79e, so that all the important preliminary material that would have treated Olympiodorus's approach to the work as a whole is missing. Treated with caution, however, curricular order is highly desirable. The introductory material covers an appropriate range of topics relevant to these texts, with little overlap between volumes and regular attention to the literature. The Italian translation reads well and should not be too demanding for those with only modest Italian. Since Michael Griffin's Alcibiades commentary (2015, 2017), all four works are already translated into English in five separate volumes; for the Prolegomena, the Budé (L. G. Westerink, Jean Trouillard, and A. P. Seconds, 1990) remains useful; and there is already an Italian translation by Anna Motta (2014). In this volume, we remain dependent, as usual, on the text of Westerink, and no apparatus criticus is provided. Textual matters do not feature prominently in...

The definition of beautiful in Plato's philosophy

The definition of beautiful in Plato's philosophy

Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics by Dominic Scott

Reviewed by: Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics by Dominic Scott Jakob Leth Fink Dominic Scott. Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 240. Cloth, $70.00. The results of this comparison of the Republic and the Nicomachean Ethics (EN) can be summed up thusly: (i) the texts share the same methodology, (ii) this methodology is based on a functional account of human nature, and (iii) whereas Plato believes that political philosophy needs grounding in metaphysics, Aristotle considers such a thing possible but superfluous. I shall here focus on (i) exclusively. The shared methodology is characterized by two Platonic similes: the cave from the Republic, and the racecourse simile that Aristotle attributes to Plato in EN 1.4. Both represent a research program with three steps: starting from ordinary intuitions about political matters and ascending towards higher principles, grasping these highest principles and, finally, returning to the initial starting points. At the third and final step, the political philosopher applies his knowledge of the highest principles in explanations of the initial intuitions and intervenes in his society with a view to improving his fellow citizens through education and lawgiving. This three-step methodology operates on two levels of argumentation: one that uses ordinary opinions and experience as a basis for its conclusions; another that uses metaphysical principles. The levels are distinguished in terms of precision and explanatory power. Borrowing a phrase from Plato, Scott calls them the shorter and the longer routes. Both routes are circular in that they return to their initial starting point in their final steps. Socrates travels the shorter route in Republic 2–4 and 8–9, but offers only a description of the longer route in books 5–7. Whereas interpreters usually focus on the longer route, Scott has much to say about the shorter one. Most importantly, the shorter route has a more empirical basis than what we usually expect of Plato. In almost all cases, the shorter route does not presuppose the metaphysics of the central books (28). This is quite provocative. If Scott is right, how does he suppose that the shorter and longer routes relate to one another? It seems that he saddles the Republic with a version of the chorismos: if the two routes are completely independent of one another, but lead to the same conclusions, how then are the forms explanatorily relevant for Plato's political philosophy as found in the Republic? The problem is aggravated by the fact that there are indeed metaphysical assumptions on the level of the shorter route; Scott talks about a "middle route" that involves certain metaphysical assumptions (54). However, these are not the metaphysical claims found [End Page 538] on the longer route. So it seems that we are left with a set of unwarranted metaphysical assumptions. The thing is that Plato nowhere takes the longer route. It is left as a necessary but unaccomplished condition for his political thought. Aristotle travels the shorter route in the EN, moving towards the principle: a definition of eudaimonia. He believes that the longer route is possible, but that its pursuit would be counterproductive in a political treatise aimed at action rather than knowledge (118–21). The longer route would lead into theoretical philosophy in order to clarify the terms of the definition of eudaimonia. Aristotle thinks that the philosophy of human affairs will only be complete if a return to the starting points is made, as is clear from EN 10.9. Here, Aristotle advocates the student's engagement in matters concerning real politics. It would be natural to suppose that the ascent from the principles was to be found in the Politics, especially books 7–8. In that case, the account in the Politics would have to rely on the definition of eudaimonia from the EN. But Aristotle relies on exoteric works here and not on the EN (181–85). So Aristotle never attempts the downward move toward the starting points of political philosophy. Let me add that the reliance of the Politics on the EN would also be challenged by...

Three Misunderstandings of Plato's Theory of Moral Education

AbstractIn this essay, Mark Jonas argues that there are three broadly held misconceptions of Plato's philosophy that work against his relevance for contemporary moral education. The first is that he is an intellectualist who is concerned only with the cognitive aspect of moral development and does not sufficiently emphasize the affective and conative aspects; the second is that he is an elitist who believes that only philosopher‐kings can attain true knowledge of virtue and it is they who should govern society; the third is that he affirms the realm of the Forms as a literal metaphysical reality and believes that for individuals to attain virtue they must access this realm through contemplation. The goal of this essay is to correct these misconceptions. The rehabilitation of Plato's reputation may enable future researchers in moral education to discover in his philosophy new avenues for exploring how best to cultivate virtues in students.

Reviving Plato’s Forms in Education to Fight Corruption

This paper aims at showing why Plato's educational philosophy constitutes a solid base for fighting corruption in the twenty-first century despite the fact that it was propounded more than two thousand years ago. The historical-educational research method was employed in this research which highlights the following key aspects of Plato's philosophy of education: the universality of forms or virtues, the simile of the cave and the Socratic method. A hypothetical example which explains the application of Plato's educational thought in classrooms is provided. The title of this paper provides a satirical wordplay since the forms have always been universally valid, and negating them has always had the potential to ignite undesirable results due to the corruptive nature of such action.

Problem of justice in Plato's philosophy

Problem of justice in Plato's philosophy

Plato and Pythagoreanism

Was Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics thought so, but scholars since the 19th century have been more skeptical. In Plato and Pythagoreanism, Phillip Sidney Horky argues that a specific type of Pythagorean philosophy, called Pythagoreanism, exercised a decisive influence on fundamental aspects of Plato's philosophy. The progenitor of mathematical Pythagoreanism was the infamous Pythagorean heretic and political revolutionary Hippasus of Metapontum, a student of Pythagoras who is credited with experiments in harmonics that led to innovations in mathematics. The innovations of Hippasus and other mathematical Pythagoreans, including Empedocles of Agrigentum, Epicharmus of Syracuse, Philolaus of Croton, and Archytas of Tarentum, presented philosophers like Plato with new approaches to science that sought to reconcile empirical knowledge with abstract mathematical theories. Plato and Pythagoreanism shows how mathematical Pythagoreanism established many of the fundamental philosophical questions Plato dealt with in his central dialogues, including Cratylus, Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus, and Philebus. In the process, it also illuminates the historical significance of the mathematical Pythagoreans, a group whose influence over the development of philosophical and scientific methods have been obscured since late antiquity. The picture that results is one in which Plato inherits mathematical Pythagorean method only to transform it into a powerful philosophical argument concerning the essential relationships between the cosmos and the human being.

Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought

The layperson may not have read any of Plato's dialogues, but everyone will know what Platonic love is. Platonic love, in common parlance, is a love not of the body, but of the mind. The concept of Platonic love is derived from a passage in Plato's Symposium, to be discussed below, in which a priestess explains to Socrates that beauty can be found not only in the body, and not even primarily in the body, but that beauty as such is the same wherever we encounter it, and moreover that there is a beauty far beyond that which is visible and can be perceived by our senses. This characterization of beauty, however, which seems to underlie much of Plato's philosophy as explicated in the dialogues of his middle period, must be seen against the background of a culture that was focused, not to say fixated, on the body and its beauty. Athenian culture, the aristocratic culture of those with whom Socrates associated himself, had as its ideal the kalokagathos--the excellent, accomplished, capable citizen and gentleman. (1) This excellence could in theory always be analyzed as being composed of its two constituent aspects of being kalos and agathos: to be agathos is to be 'good,' whatever may count as good, but to be kalos is to be fine, handsome, and 'beautiful.' And often at the beginning of a dialogue Socrates is portrayed as deeply affected and attracted by the physical beauty of a young man or boy. The dialectic of physical beauty and the beauty of the mind will be my starting point. In Section I, I look at a few well-known passages from Plato's early and middle period dialogues: Lysis, Charmides, Meno, Republic, and Protagoras. The familiar picture arises of Socrates as an individual who, as is the case with the society he is part of, is captivated by, and to an extent erotically obsessed with, physical beauty; but the example from the Republic demonstrates that the souls of those who are subject, and in that way subjected, to physical beauty are as liable to be dictated in their thoughts and actions by ugly sights. But at the same time, Socrates from early on sets this vision of physical beauty in relation with a putative beauty of the soul and the mind; the philosopher who can see this beauty can free himself from the tyranny of the senses. In Section II, I provide the theoretical foundation of this assertion in looking at the Symposium, where the eternal form of the beautiful is introduced as the ultimate aim of all our striving, love, and friendship. But in the very act of the philosophers' freeing themselves from all that is mortal, including their subjection to the senses, and the sense of sight above all, they subject themselves, as demonstrated in Republic and Phaedrus, to a new rule--the rule of and determination by those eternal forms--so that the philosopher appears to be in no better a position than the ordinary lover of sights and sounds in respect of freedom and autonomy. In Section III, I attempt to deconstruct this picture through an interpretation of passages from Timaeus, which are read, as Plato intended them to be read, as allegorical. In Section IV, I conclude with a tentative suggestion of the consequences of this deconstruction for a new understanding of the dynamics of the metaphysics of both intellectual vision and the physical gaze in Plato's thought. I I begin with some examples of the attractiveness of physical beauty and its power over the viewer. (2) Near the beginning of the dialogue Lysis, the eponymous young hero is first encountered in a palaestra, or wrestling school (206E9-207A3): [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] Among them was also Lysis, and he stood among the boys and youths, being wreathed and outstanding to look at, worthy to hear not only the habitual kalos estin, but the designation kalos kagathos. It is interesting that Socrates reports this as his first impression, when he sees Lysis from afar. Lysis is not just handsome, he has an 'aristocratic appearance. …

Friday’S Footprint: Rethinking the Philebus on the Basis of Plato’s Political Philosophy

A stimulus may be given to the interpretation of Plato's Philebus by no longer ignoring the impact of Plato's political philosophy. A first hint is the occurrence of astasiastotatēn (63e9), a notion exclusively functioning within Plato's politi¬cal philosophy and no less surprising, in the 'non-political' Philebus, than 'Friday's Footprint' was to Crusoe. A second hint is the stasis between epistēmai and hēdonai, only to be avoided by the exclusion of hēdonai unwilling to subordinate themselves to phronēsis/nous (63b2-64a6). A new reading of Philebus in light of these 'footprints' leads to the conclusion that not only the 'digressions' on ontology, cosmology and anthropology but also the analyses of hēdonai and epistēmai — in other words: the main body of Philebus — presuppose the substratum of Plato's political philosophy. Consciousness of this substratum contributes to understanding the content and course of the dialogue, and even to recognizing its unity.

The Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy: Plato - A Sceptical View on ‘Poetry’

Aristotle's Poetics is widely considered the starting point for the literary theory of the Western culture. Nevertheless, Aristotle's work is preceded by a vast array of literary practices and a range of theoretical views on poetry that show the manner in which the Western culture had outlined the idea of literature. Admittedly, one of the most important moments in the historical evolution of the critical reflection on literature is Plato's philosophy. This study analyzes Plato's critical and theoretical views on poetry (as presented in Apology of Socrates, Ion and Republic) in connection with an analysis of the cultural role played by poetry at that time. The paper argues that Plato's critical view on poetry denies tradition and its role, while tradition only stores ‘folk wisdom.’ In fact, Plato's clear distinction between poetry (doxa) and philosophy (truth) represents the birth of an analytical perspective on poetry, seen as a particular cultural phenomenon.

The Cratylus of Plato: A Commentary (review)

Reviewed by: The Cratylus of Plato: A Commentary Shawn Loht Francesco Ademollo . The Cratylus of Plato: A Commentary. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xx + 538. Cloth, $140.00. Filling a large gap in English-language Plato scholarship, this volume is the first dedicated book-length commentary on the Cratylus. No small feat, the work is the culmination of over a decade of the author's research investigating Plato's dialogue on language. This monograph will no doubt secure Ademollo's place as a top scholar in Plato studies and a leading expert on Plato's philosophy of language. [End Page 450] With the main body of the text numbering nearly five hundred pages (some appendixes and significant back matter add to the length), this commentary functions as a highly compressed analytical reading of the Cratylus from start to finish. The work contains exhaustive scholarship engaging secondary sources and key issues related to the standard versions of the Greek text. Only the brief introductory chapter differs in this regard: this provides a very short overview of the dialogue by discussing its general questions, biographies of the principal characters, and some larger historical issues related to the dialogue's line of inquiry. Ademollo demonstrates a masterful facility for dissecting Plato at a line-by-line, word-by-word level. He also gracefully incorporates thorough study of corresponding keywords and concepts elsewhere in Plato's work when there is a question of interpretation or translation choice. In general, despite its density, Ademollo's text is written in a lively and engaging style, with the best combination of critical reading and illuminating discussion. With these considerations in view, readers of Plato looking for an authoritative study of the Cratylus may find Ademollo's text difficult to use depending on their needs. Insofar as the text gives a complete reading of the dialogue from beginning to end, those seeking a more general introduction to the Cratylus or its main themes likely will find this commentary's length somewhat overwhelming. For similar reasons, the commentary may be less accessible for those who wish to get a focused look at the dialogue's relevance for other works in Plato. Ademollo works from an approach that develops the dialogue's internal coherence rather than its continuity with the rest of Plato's corpus. Limited space is devoted to how the dialogue's themes relate to other key topics in Plato or to how the dialogue's overall messages fit into the larger contours of Plato's philosophy. When Ademollo does take up such broader issues, he is motivated primarily by exegetical purposes rather than by a wish to work out Plato's philosophical understanding of a given topic. On the whole, Ademollo's approach is a bit more philological in its scope than one might see in a more detached philosophical reading. The commentary does not advance a central philosophical argument or perspective, although many of the chapters are structured around their own arguments or leading questions. The main body of the text consists of nine chapters, each of which is divided into several major sections and subsections that proceed through the dialogue stepwise, evaluating one passage at time. The chapters are organized according to the central movements of the dialogue: the dialogue's initial question regarding linguistic naturalism, Hermogenes's thesis for conventionalism, the dialogue's interlude on etymology, and so on. Ademollo's method of reading the dialogue is to present one small amount of text at a time—usually an individual argument—and then to analyze thoroughly all of the important issues it contains. It is here that Ademollo's commentary will be especially helpful for readers of the Cratylus if they seek an expert assessment of individual phrases and keywords in the dialogue or a deeper understanding of the minute turns in its argumentation. However, because the commentary's analyses of the dialogue's arguments often proceed slowly, unfolding over the course of several pages, one may still need to study an entire chapter or more in order to comprehend Ademollo's overall reading of specific passages. Where this text shines on a philosophical level is in its very granular treatment...

T. S. Eliot's Ambiviolences: Oscar Wilde as Masked Precursor

T. S. Eliot's Ambiviolences:Oscar Wilde as Masked Precursor John Paul Riquelme (bio) "Literature prevents the question Who speaks? from ever being answered." —R. Barthes, S/Z LIX A Masked and Queer Modernist Aesthetic Oscar Wilde's place in the history of literary modernism has yet to be satisfactorily described. The obscuring of his position in modernism's emergence and development involves thorny issues. Thorns aside for the moment, as with Thomas Hardy (especially his poetry and his late fiction) and some other writers of the 1890s, there is no consensus about whether Wilde is a late Victorian writer or one who produced works that anticipate aspects of later modernist writing so thoroughly that they stand at the beginning of the modernist canon and fully within it. Among authors of the 'nineties, Wilde's situation is especially tortuous, as I explain in the next section. His significance to modernism would be clearer if prominent first-stage modernists had been able to acknowledge more directly and candidly his effect on their thinking and writing. T. S. Eliot provides a particularly revealing case, one that involves his ambivalence concerning Wilde, some of whose works we know that Eliot owned and lectured on before he became an established poet-critic. In the fourth of his "Reflections on Contemporary Poetry" in The Egoist of July 1919, drawing a parallel between experiences in life and experiences in art, but not conflating them, Eliot describes in remarkably [End Page 353] amatory terms the powerful relation a contemporary poet can have to a precursor who instills a "passion." The passion involves a "profound kinship" and a "peculiar personal intimacy" that is "imperative" during "a genuine affair" in which the younger poet is "quickened" and can produce work that would not have been possible without the experience. Eliot emphasizes that the "imperative intimacy" is not to be confused with admiration, and that the result is neither imitation nor borrowing. When mature poets steal, they presumably do so having reached a maturity beyond imitation and borrowing through the quickening effect of intimacy with a precursor. Poetry that Eliot did not publish during his lifetime and poetry that he did indicate that he experienced such an affair with Oscar Wilde, with consequences of lasting significance. Salomé had a particularly intense effect on Eliot. "We are changed," Eliot says about the younger poet's experience. He was, for the long term. Eliot also mentions the likelihood that the ardor will cool, as happens in life: "Like personal intimacies in life, it may and probably will pass, but it will be ineffaceable." Eliot's cooling toward Wilde is an important element in understanding Wilde's continuing but varying role in Eliot's writing and thinking. Equally important is the ineffaceable quality of the initial effect. About the "dead master" in Eliot's "Little Gidding" II (1942), at the beginning of the dialogue between the quickened and the dead, we hear that he is "a face still forming." That could mean a face about to resolve itself into a definitive shape, one that is coming into crisp focus in the particular scene. But the temporal implications of still, a word that occurs in Four Quartets with various meanings, suggest a continuing state of emergence, or generation, like the Chinese jar of "Burnt Norton" V, which "Moves perpetually in its stillness." Eliot's statement in "Reflections" resembles Wilde's response, during the first of his two criminal trials (1895), to the request that he explain the phrase, "the love that dare not speak its name," from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas. Mentioning "the sonnets of [End Page 354] Michelangelo and Shakespeare," the "great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan," and the basis of Plato's philosophy, Wilde says that "It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him." Eliot's version translates Wilde's perspective into terms relevant to poetic creation enabled by contact between different generations. Made a quarter of a century apart, the two statements...

CREATIO EX NIHILO– A GENUINELY PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHT DERIVED FROM PLATO AND ARISTOTLE? SOME NOTES ON THETREATISE ON THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE TWO SAGES

AbstractThe article aims at demonstrating that in attributing thecreatio ex nihiloto both Plato and Aristotle as their unanimous philosophical conviction theTreatise on the Harmony between the Two Sagesdeeply depends upon the Neoplatonic reading of those two philosophers. The main obstacles for such a view in the works of the two sages are Plato's assumption of a precosmic chaos in theTimaeusand Aristotle's denial of any efficient causality to the unmoved mover in theMetaphysics. Both of these points had been, however, done away with by the Neoplatonist commentators already, especially by Ammonius in his lost treatise on efficient and final causality in Aristotle the use of which in theHarmonyis shown by a comparison with Simplicius. Christian and Muslim readers just had to transfer those arguments and hermeneutical techniques into an anti-eternalist context in order to make the two philosophers agree with one of the basic tenents of their face, a hermeneutical technique considerably different from the one employed by al-Fārābī in his exposition of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy which is compared to theHarmonyin a briefly sketched concluding section.

Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (review)

Reviewed by: Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues Gerald A. Press Catherine H. Zuckert. Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Pp. viii + 888. Cloth, $45.00. For most of the twentieth century, interpreters of Plato took little interest in the dramatic aspects of the dialogues, assumed Plato's teachings were directly expressed by their leading speakers, and sought to understand prima facie absences and inconsistencies among apparent teachings through a developmental picture of Plato's thought. Rarely did they explain why Plato occasionally used philosophical characters as different from each other and from Socrates as Parmenides, Timaeus, and the Eleatic Stranger, leaving Socrates present but largely silent. Nor did they address why, having returned Socrates to leadership in the "late" Philebus, Plato eliminated him altogether in favor of an Athenian Stranger in the Laws, taken as his latest dialogue. Platonic developmentalism has been receding for twenty years, but few interpreters have considered these other characters apart from the unsubstantiated and vague assumption that they all somehow speak for Plato. [End Page 133] Catherine Zuckert offers here "a new framework in which to view the corpus as a whole" (47). She coordinates a quite different arrangement of dialogues with an interpretation of Plato's philosophizing as unchangingly represented by an intellectually developing Socrates whose professional status and practices align with the contemporary history of Athens, and with Plato's other philosophers and the evident differences among them in substance and style. Zuckert's arrangement of the dialogues in their dramatic order roughly follows that of Eduard Munk (Die natürliche Ordnung der platonischen Schriften [1857]) and far surpasses earlier sketches by Brumbaugh (1964) and Cropsey (1995). In terms of older divisions within Platonic scholarship, she is a unitarian, but non-dogmatic. Her Socrates remains Plato's ideal philosopher, and he remains committed to a hierarchical view of purely intelligible realities, but he does not claim to possess or impart knowledge of it. Zuckert's Socratic philosophy is neither dogmatic nor skeptical, but better than the alternatives on offer precisely in its more limited intellectual and political pretensions and more nuanced understanding of human desire. The introduction defines her goal to interpret arguments in their literary forms and dramatic and historical contexts, offers an initial portrait of Plato's other philosophers, and outlines the dramatic-historical framework for the remainder of the volume. Zuckert takes the Laws as Plato's first dialogue dramatically and the Athenian Stranger as a Pre-Socratic philosophical figure (chapter 1), establishing the quest for an all-encompassing, intelligible order and the nature of human happiness as the twin problems on which Plato and his Socrates will remain focused. In the first stage of his philosophic development, Socrates proposes a speculative theory of ideas to solve these problems that is soundly criticized by Parmenides, whose own view, however, leads to self-contradiction (chapter 2). Parts of Apology, Symposium, and Phaedo show retrospectively the steps by which the young Socrates of the Parmenides became the mature Socrates of dramatically later dialogues (chapter 3), his turning to the study of words and learning the nature and importance of human desire. In the Protagoras, Alcibiades I, Charmides, Laches, Hippias Major and Minor, set during the early Peloponnesian War, this younger Socrates shows his contemporaries the incoherence of their views and encourages them to pursue philosophy with him, but has no positive views to offer (chapter 4). In the second stage, Symposium, Phaedrus, Clitophon, Republic, and Philebus (chapter 5), set during the later Peloponnesian War, Socrates presents "a kind of positive teaching . . . a vision" (14); but it depends heavily on images, in contrast with the counter-Socratic model represented by Timaeus's lecture on cosmology (chapter 6). The Theages, Euthydemus, Lysis, Gorgias, and Meno, set in the last decade of Socrates's life, give us the philosophic and political practice of a Socrates who has become well known, dealing with followers and temporary associates, still without a coherent account of the whole, but still committed to the search for wisdom. Stage four is constituted by the eight dialogues around Socrates's trial and death. The Theaetetus, Euthyphro, and Cratylus argue for the...

EDUCAÇÃO, FORMAÇÃO DO CARÁTER E MOTIVAÇÃO MORAL EM PLATÃO

Este artigo trata filosofia de Platão especificamente abordando a questão da educação vinculada com a formação do caráter moral que possibilita a motivação para a escolha de ações virtuosa por quem aceitou se submeter ao treinamento dialético buscando autoconhecimento e pensamento crítico. O artigo pretende apresentar como a dialética platônica é uma forma especialmente apropriada para a compreensão da prática conjunta e simultânea de educação, pensamento crítico, ética e política. Para alcançar estes objetivos analisamos partes de um exemplar de cada tipo de diálogo platônico: o Cármides, como diálogo socrático, a República como um diálogo do período intermediário e o Político como um representante dos diálogos lógicos, último grupo dos diálogos platônicos.

Platonic Dialogues, Socratic Inquiries: A Symposium on Plato's Philosophers

Interpreting a Platonic dialogue is a labor of love for those seeking wisdom. In her book Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, 1 Catherine Zuckert has taken on a labor of Herculean...

Homeric Resonances

This “Homeric” appreciation of Catherine Zuckert's Plato's Philosophers focuses on the significance of the revised chronology for reading the Platonic dialogues and how this changes the conventional understanding of the relation between Plato and Socrates: Plato become Socrates' biographer, not his replacement.

The Drama of Philosophy

Catherine Zuckert's Plato's Philosophers argues that the central concern of the Platonic dialogues, read as a single corpus, is to examine the character of philosophy as represented in the activities of five different Platonic characters. The activity of philosophy is most clearly triangulated by showing the advantages and limitations of Socratic philosophy as set against the practices of others laying claim to that title. This article endorses Zuckert's interpretation while raising questions concerning Socrates' eventual philosophic status, the relationship between philosophy and irony, and the standing of philosophy as a social practice.

Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie (Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and early medieval Islamic philosophy) (review)

Reviewed by: Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie (Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and early medieval Islamic philosophy) Esther Seidel, Independent Scholar Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie (Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and early medieval Islamic philosophy). By Francesca Yardenit Albertini. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. Pp. xxiv + 472. Francesca Albertini's voluminous study, Die Konzeption des Messias bei Maimonides und die fruehmittelalterliche islamische Philosophie, wishes to put a fresh emphasis on the link between Maimonides' concept of the Messiah and his ideal of the leader as a political figure. For Maimonides, Albertini argues, the arrival of the Messiah will be realized only through human effort and appropriate behavior: it is man who bears responsibility for this event through his moral actions. The Messiah, on the other hand, as the leader of the community, seeks to implement the new order in society through which Divine Law will be established and followed precisely. Hence, the Messiah's arrival is not an apocalyptic, eschatological event as understood by Christians. Instead, it marks a new era of restoration of the Law, which alone guarantees a well-ordered society as the necessary precondition for knowing God (p. 7). This wide study demands the reader's full concentration for a number of reasons: the style of writing, although it covers much ground, is compact, and the amount of historical and philosophical material (e.g., Aristotle's eudaimonia, shariʿa and fiqh in Islamic law, principles of faith in early Kara'ite writing, Plato's philosopher king, and prophecy and politics in Alfarabi), not to mention the changing religious conceptual contexts and nuances of meaning, all feature in different chapters to elucidate the main theme, but the leitmotif is not always clearly visible. While the reader may derive benefit from various chapters, in particular the one on early Islamic thought and its influence on Jewish Kara'ite thought and Maimonides' own thinking, shorter summaries and relevant conclusions would have provided some welcome guidance through this expansive study. Also, "Muʾtazil" has been clumsily translated into German (I suggest: "der, der sich absetzt" rather than "zurücksetzt"), and the whole case for reason and rational debate within Islam could have been put more strongly. Nowhere is there a recognition that it was precisely Islamic thought that forced Jewish thinkers into taking a more rational approach themselves with regard to their own belief. In addition to the issue of convoluted presentation, another more urgent concern is the subject matter itself and how it has been studied and depicted here. Albertini herself recognizes some of the difficulties. She points out that Maimonides himself made no clear differentiation between the terms "Messiah," "Messianism," and "Messianic Age" (p. 427), and perhaps more worryingly—in view of her own stated aim in this study—that Maimonides focused his attention precisely not on the Messiah's political role, but on the significance of the Messiah's announcement of the new period in time (ibid.), by which he meant a period when human beings dedicate themselves to acquiring knowledge of God (p. 430). [End Page 723] Although Albertini acknowledges the latter as Maimonides' aim, she continues throughout her study to emphasize the practical and political against his rational outlook. And yet, she admits herself, there is "a danger—proportional to ignorance—to put too much emphasis on the messianic age, which for Maimonides produces wrong ideas of God" (p. 430). How, then, are we to interpret Maimonides' own discomfort with the notions above referring to the Messiah and notions such as "bodily resurrection," and how does Albertini explain Maimonides' own hesitancy to address these concepts conclusively? Some of the answers to these questions lie in Albertini's assertion of a fundamental division in Maimonidean scholarship represented by two camps of interpreters (p. 276). The first group prefers to judge each work produced by Maimonides as a separate entity, written at a given time and under particular circumstances, so that it allows them to take into account Maimonides' own development in character and personality. The second group of interpreters, among whom Albertini places herself, makes a claim to Maimonides as a "systematic thinker" and purports...

Partial Answers to Persistent Problems

In responding to the other participants in the Symposium on Plato's Philosophers I attempt to clarify the reasons for, and the results of, my attempt to bring out the interrelations among the dialogues in order to determine what Plato thought. Recognizing that the indications of the dramatic dates of some the dialogues are controversial, I argue that the dates point to an over-arching narrative–the story of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. Plato uses his other philosophers—the Athenian Stranger, Parmenides, Timaeus, and the Eleatic Stranger—to bring out the problems that gave rise to Socratic philosophy and the limitations of his responses. Plato makes Socrates his “hero,” because Socrates provides the best account of the human beings who engage in the search for wisdom. By contrasting him with the other philosophers, Plato dramatizes the insoluble problems that make philosophy always a search for wisdom.