This paper examines the influence of Euripides on Plato, reflecting the intertextuality between Euripides‘ Antiope und Plato’s Gorgias (esp. the agon between Zethos and Amphion and the agon between Callicles and Socrates, then the deus ex machina in the Antiope and the myth of the afterlife in the Gorgias). It is argued that the final part of the Gorgias is a serious philosophical answer to the tragic aporias, which Euripides dramatically staged in his Antiope (that is the aporia (...) of supposed and real kinship as well as the aporia of traditional revenge ethics) and which the viewer should answer for himself according to the conception of Euripidean tragedy. (shrink)

Describes a Platonic personal spirituality based on reason that is readily accessible to people today. Michael LaFargue presents an important and accessible aspect of Plato’s legacy largely overlooked today: a variety of personal spirituality based on reason and centered on virtue. Plato’s Virtue-Forms are transcendent in their goodness, ideals that Platonists can use to improve character and become like God so far as is humanly possible. LaFargue constructs a model of inductive Socratic reasoning capable of acquiring knowledge (...) of these perfect Virtue-Forms, then scales back claims about these Forms to what can be supported by this kind of reasoning. This is a critical theory, but also a pluralistic one that accommodates modern cultural diversity. A how-to chapter provides detailed descriptions of the rules of Socratic reasoning basic to this spirituality, which any interested individual can practice today. LaFargue supports his interpretation by a close reading of the Greek text of key passages in Plato’s dialogues. The work also undertakes a broader philosophical consideration, discussing the philosophical foundations proposed for this Platonism in relation to the thought of G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richard Rorty. (shrink)

This book analyses the response of the classic texts of Jewish tradition to Plato's 'Euthyphro dilemma': does God freely determine morality, or is morality independent of God?

This book explains how the _Cratylus_, Plato’s apparently meandering and comical dialogue on the correctness of names, makes serious philosophical progress by its notorious etymological digressions. While still a wild ride through a Heraclitean flood of etymologies which threatens to swamp language altogether, the _Cratylus_ emerges as an astonishingly organized evaluation of the power of words.

In Essays on the History of Ethics Michael Slote collects his essays that deal with aspects of both ancient and modern ethical thought and seek to point out conceptual/normative comparisons and contrasts among different views. Arranged in chronological order of the philosopher under discussion, the relationship between ancient ethical theory and modern moral philosophy is a major theme of several of the papers and, in particular, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and/or utilitarianism feature centrally in (most of) the discussions."--BOOK (...) JACKET. (shrink)

Plato and the eternal forms -- Wittgenstein and the end of philosophy -- Kant and the leap of faith -- Nietzsche and the death of God -- Aristotle and public virtue -- Heidegger and authenticity.

In Plato’s Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger explains that the division of all human beings into Greek and barbarian is mistaken in that it fails to divide reality into genuine classes or forms (eidē). The division fails because “barbarian” names a privative form, that is, a form properly indicated via negation: non-Greek. This paper examines how the Stranger characterizes privative forms in the Sophist. I argue that although the Stranger is careful to define privative forms as fully determinate, he nevertheless (...) characterizes them as having a structure unlike that of their non-privative counterparts. A privative form, in contrast to a non-privative form, is indifferent to the specificity of its members. (shrink)

pt. 2: The domain of the Dialogues ; What Socratic dialogue is not ; The examined life ; Tragedy in the philosophic age of the Greeks ; Republic I, Justice, power, knowledge ; Republic II-V, Soul and city ; Republic VI-X, The architecture of reality ; Laws, The legacy of Cephalus -- pt. 2: Protagoras, The dialectic of the many and the one ; Gorgias, The temptation to speak ; Parmenides, Most true ; Sophist & statesman, The formal disintegration of (...) justice ; Phaedrus, Hymn to love ; Symposium, The pride of love ; The platonic achievement ; The living voice. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION One of Plato's major concerns in his moral theory was to show that acting morally benefits agents and promotes their self-interest. ...

An agent‐based approach can also help us understand what is good for people, human well‐being. Utilitarianism reduces virtue and morality to certain relationships with human or sentient well‐being; but Stoicism and even Aristotle can be understood as having reversed this order of explanation. For the latter, virtue is the basis for understanding human well‐being. An agent‐based ethics of caring can draw on certain ideas of Plato in order to argue that the moral virtue of caring and certain nonmoral virtues (...) such as strength of purpose help make certain experiences and ways of living count as good for us. This reversed reductionism can be called “elevationism”, and it represents a significant alternative to both dualistic and reductionistic accounts of the relation between moral virtue and human well‐being or welfare. (shrink)

Socrates is still an enigmatic figure of enormous importance in Western culture. This book introduces both some of Socrates' problems and some of the problems about him. It seeks at the same time to advance new views, arguments and information on Socrates' mission, techniques, ethics and later reception. Composed of new essays by different scholars, some of them primarily Hellenstics, some philosophers, it illustrates both the variety of Plato's literary portrayals of Socrates and the diversity of later and present-day (...) approaches to him. Socratic Questions thus confronts the difficulties, philosophical and biographical, presented by dialogues such as Protagoras and Crito and by the Apology of Socrates. From civil disobedience to ethics, this collection provides stimulating discussions of Socrates' life, thought and historical significance. It will be of great interest to all students of ancient Greek history literature and philosophy. (shrink)

Pharmakon traces the emergence of an ethical discourse in ancient Greece, one centered on states of psychological ecstasy. In the dialogues of Plato, philosophy is itself characterized as a pharmakon, one superior to a large number of rival occupations, each of which laid claim to their powers being derived from, connected with, or likened to, a pharmakon. Accessible yet erudite, Pharmakon is one of the most comprehensive examinations of the place of intoxicants in ancient thought yet written.

"Simplicius starts with a survey of previous commentators and an introductory set of questions about Aristotle's philosophy and about the Categories in particular. The commentator, he says, needs to present Plato and Aristotle as in harmony in most things."-- Publisher description.

Pharmakon traces the emergence of an ethical discourse in ancient Greece, one centered on states of psychological ecstasy. In the dialogues of Plato, philosophy is itself characterized as a pharmakon, one superior to a large number of rival occupations, each of which laid claim to their powers being derived from, connected with, or likened to, a pharmakon. Accessible yet erudite, Pharmakon is one of the most comprehensive examinations of the place of intoxicants in ancient thought yet written.

Examines arguments that maximization holds for conceptual reasons. Looks at maximizing theory and raises conceptual problems for evaluative maximization––difficulties in ranking mixes, problems with organic wholes, and mathematical versus internal evaluative judgments. As regards the evaluative decisions maximization is concerned with, it is argued that we are guided in our understanding of what is good by what is better. To the extent that the better is prior to the good, maximizations are parasitic on other evaluations. Concludes with a look at (...) the discussion of false pleasures in Plato's Philebus. (shrink)

Beginning with a reading of Plato's Statesman, this work interrogates the relationship between life and being in Plato's thought. It argues that in his later dialogues Plato discovers--or invents--a form of true or real life that transcends all merely biological life and everything that is commonly called life.

This essay examines the critical role played by comedy and laughter in Plato. It begins by taking seriously Plato's critique of comedy and his concerns about the negative effects of laughter in dialogues such as Republic and Laws. It then shows how Plato, rather than simply rejecting comedy and censuring laughter, attempts to put these into the service of philosophy by rethinking them in philosophical terms. Accordingly, the laughable or the ridiculous is understood not just in relation (...) to the ugly or the ignoble, as it is in Homer, but in relation of blindness, ignorance, and falsity. By taking up such a philosophical perspective, one can then distinguish what truly is laughable from what merely appears so. It is in this way that Plato is able to explain why Socrates appeared so ridiculous to the multitude but was known to be anything but to those who were able to see him with philosophical eyes, that is, those who were able to attend to what I call the spectacle of laughter. The paper concludes... (shrink)

Examines the dialogues from Plato's early and middle periods and illustrates the similarities and differences between Plators"s concept of craft knowledge and ...

Introduction to Philosophy, Fourth Edition, is the most comprehensive topically organized collection of classical and contemporary philosophy available. Building on the exceptionally successful tradition of previous editions, this edition for the first time incorporates the insights of a new coeditor, John Martin Fischer, and has been updated and revised to make it more accessible. Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, the text includes sections on the meaning of life, God and evil, knowledge and reality, the philosophy of science, the mind/body problem, (...) freedom of will, consciousness, ethics, and philosophical puzzles and paradoxes. It presents seventy substantial--and in some cases complete--selections from the best and most influential works in philosophy, offering a unique balance between classical and contemporary material. An extensive glossary of philosophical terms is also included. The fourth edition features fifteen new readings, including work by Albert Camus, Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel Dennett, Harry G. Frankfurt, William Paley, Derek Parfit, John Perry, Richard Taylor, Peter Van Inwagen, Bernard Williams, and Susan Wolf. Part III, Knowledge and Reality, has been restructured and now includes Plato's Thaetetus, selections by Edmund L. Gettier and Robert Nozick, and an essay by Christopher Grau that explores the philosophical concepts presented in the popular film The Matrix. Two new ethics puzzles--"The Trolley Problem" and "Ducking Harm and Sacrificing Others"--are also included. This edition incorporates Study Questions after each reading and is accompanied by an Instructor's CD and a Student Companion Website, both containing helpful resources. (shrink)

In "nominalism and realism" armstrong carefully demolishes various nominalist responses to plato's "one over many" problem but simply dismissed the quinean response as "ostrich nominalism". The paper argues that plato's problem is pseudo. So to ignore it is not to behave like an ostrich. Rather to adopt realism because of this problem that isn't there is to be a "mirage realist." there are some good reasons that lead armstrong to realism but he is largely a mirage realist. Quine (...) does not ignore any real problem for nominalism and so is not an ostrich nominalist. (shrink)

Philosophers have harbored doubts about the possibility of moral expertise since Plato. I argue that irrespective of whether moral experts exist, identifying who those experts are is insurmountable because of the credentials problem: Moral experts have no need to seek out others’ moral expertise, but moral non-experts lack sufficient knowledge to determine whether the advice provided by a putative moral expert in response to complex moral situations is correct and hence whether an individual is a bone fide expert. Traditional (...) accounts of moral expertise require that moral experts give reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification, an account which, I argue, is too lean in allowing for the possibility of a moral expert who is motivationally indifferent to her own moral judgments and advice. Yet even if the proposition that a moral expert is an individual who provides reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification and is necessarily motivated by that advice exhausts the necessary and sufficient conditions for moral expertise, this proposition cannot function as an applicable criterion for non-experts to use in appraising would-be experts’ claims to expertise. The credentials problem thus remains unanswered. (shrink)

Maistre's Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg is modeled on Plato's Laws. Plato and Maistre both demand the political control of natural inquiry, and implement these controls through theodictic conversation. Maistre, following the lead of Plato's legislator, publishes an exemplary conversation about providence between a young man tempted by an atheistic Enlightenment and two older, wiser, and more learned men of affairs. Maistre defends providentialism from materialist interpretations of natural science even as Plato defended it from ancient materialism.

Leo Strauss and his alleged political influence regarding the Iraq War have in recent years been the subject of significant media attention, including stories in the _Wall Street Journal _and _New York Times._ _Time_ magazine even called him “one of the most influential men in American politics.” With _The Truth about Leo Strauss_, Michael and Catherine Zuckert challenged the many claims and speculations about this notoriously complex thinker. Now, with _Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy_, they turn (...) their attention to a searching and more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss’s thought as a whole, using the many manifestations of the “problem of political philosophy” as their touchstone. For Strauss, political philosophy presented a “problem” to which there have been a variety of solutions proposed over the course of Western history. Strauss’s work, they show, revolved around recovering—and restoring—political philosophy to its original Socratic form. Since positivism and historicism represented two intellectual currents that undermined the possibility of a Socratic political philosophy, the first part of the book is devoted to Strauss’s critique of these two positions. Then, the authors explore Strauss’s interpretation of the history of philosophy and both ancient and modern canonical political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. Strauss’s often-unconventional readings of these philosophers, they argue, pointed to solutions to the problem of political philosophy. Finally, the authors examine Strauss’s thought in the context of the twentieth century, when his chief interlocutors were Schmitt, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. The most penetrating and capacious treatment of the political philosophy of this complex and often misunderstood thinker, from his early years to his last works, _Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy_ reveals Strauss’s writings as an attempt to show that the distinctive characteristics of ancient and modern thought derive from different modes of solving the problem of political philosophy and reveal why he considered the ancient solution both philosophically and politically superior. (shrink)

Predication is an indisputable part of our linguistic behavior. By contrast, the metaphysics of predication has been a matter of dispute ever since antiquity. According to Plato—or at least Platonism, the view that goes by Plato’s name in contemporary philosophy—the truths expressed by predications such as “Socrates is wise” are true because there is a subject of predication (e.g., Socrates), there is an abstract property or universal (e.g., wisdom), and the subject exemplifies the property.1 This view is supposed (...) to be general, applying to all predications, whether the subject of predication is a person, a planet, or a property.2 Despite the controversy surrounding the metaphysics of predication, many theistic philosophers—including the majority of contemporary analytic theists—regard Platonism as extremely attractive. At the same time, however, such philosophers are also commonly attracted to a form of traditional theism that has at its core the thesis that God is an absolutely independent.. (shrink)

Quine may be taken to use the phrase ‘Plato's Beard’ to denote a solution to the following problem: How is it possible to speak of that which does not exist, of non-being or as Read has it, to denote a solution to the problem: ‘How can a sentence with empty names have meaning?’. Quine writes: Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has (...) proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor. To expand. If nonbeing in no sense is, then we cannot ever assert that it is not; yet if it in some sense is, then how can it remain nonbeing? Let us fill out with an example (coined from Quine). If Pegasus in no sense exists, then how can we ever assert that Pegasus does not exist?—yet we may clearly want to assert that Pegasus does not exist and affirm the proposition that it is false that Pegasus exists. If, on the other hand, Pegasus in some sense exists, how may we affirm that he does not? We shall be contradicting ourselves or be guilty of equivocation. (shrink)

Although Levinas frequently references Plato positively, they are engaged in different philosophical enterprises. Whereas Levinas takes his place in the tradition of modern moral philosophy for which the atrocities of the twentieth century are undeniable burdens, Plato is concerned with cultivating dispositions that promote psychological and social harmony. For Levinas, Plato’s Form of the Good signals a dual commitment, on the one hand to the primacy of ethical action to existence, and on the other to the connection (...) between ethics and transcendence, in the sense of absolute otherness or separation. But this reading is anachronistic. (shrink)

The book has two parts: one metaphysical, the other epistemological. The metaphysical part is largely concerned with realism issues. It starts with realism about universals, dismissing Plato's notorious ‘one over many’ problem. Several chapters argue for a fairly uncompromisingly realist view of the external physical world of commonsense and science. Both the nonfactualism of moral noncognitivism and positivistic instrumentalism, and deflationism about truth, are found to rest on antirealisms about their subject matters that are hard to characterize. A case (...) is presented for moral realism. Various biological realisms are considered. Finally, an argument is presented for an unfashionable biological essentialism. The epistemological part of the book argues against the a priori and for a Quinean naturalism. The intuitions that so dominate ‘armchair philosophy’ are empirical not a priori. There is an emphasis throughout the book on distinguishing metaphysical issues about what there is and what it's like from semantic issues about meaning, truth, and reference. Another central theme, captured in the title, is that we should ‘put metaphysics first’. We should approach epistemology and semantics from a metaphysical perspective rather than vice versa. The epistemological turn in modern philosophy and the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy were something of disasters. (shrink)

This essential historical introduction to the main themes of the book starts with a close, sympathetic, and significantly novel analysis of a famous argument in Plato’s Republic in which Plato draws a distinction of kind between knowledge and belief, and between their objects. It is then demonstrated that the distinction, broadly so understood, remained a dominant force, in one form or another, in all non-sceptical branches of the European philosophical tradition, including empiricism, until the eighteenth century. It is (...) argued that there is much to learn from this history, and specific features of the traditional distinction are identified as deserving the further, sympathetic consideration given, in effect, in later chapters. (shrink)

Als Plato de hedendaagse academie zou aanschouwen, zou hij niet alleen stomverbaasd zijn over de massificatie en de byzantijnse bureaucratie, maar gezien het ethische doel van de universiteit zou hij ook reden hebben om bezorgd te zijn.

Plato’s dialogue Parmenides remains one of—if not, the—most perplexing text in the Platonic corpus. Specifically, it examines the difficulties surrounding the concepts of unity, multiplicity, and Being that are required for participation in the Ideas. One of the problems forced upon the young Socrates by Parmenides and Zeno in the second half of the dialogue concerns the relationship between Being (ὄν) and the One (ἕν), namely, how defensible is the oneness, or the unity, of the Idea if it also (...) partakes of Being? The text culminates in an aporia as to how to articulate the difference between the One (ἕν) and the many (πολλά), since if the one is, it becomes many. How do many beings share in the one mode of Being? Crucially, how are we to articulate the difference between the One and the many, or Being and beings? Where Plato’s answer invoking the enigmatic concept ‘exaiphnēs’ (ἐξαίφνης), the temporal becoming of the unity and plurality of the One, seems to contradict the privileging of presence that Heidegger charges him with, he nonetheless fails to offer an understanding of difference that has neither Being nor unity. I argue that Heidegger’s engagement with the problem of the ontological difference, and its development into the identification of Being with difference itself, offers solutions to this aporia in Plato’s Parmenides by addressing a difference that is irreducible to the one or the many, the relational or the derivative. This has significant consequences for understanding Heidegger’s critique of Plato as not just consisting of the privileging of presence but also the failure to respond to the problem of difference. (shrink)