"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates's ancient words are still true, and the ideas sounded in Plato's Dialogues still form the foundation of a thinking person's education. This superb collection contains excellent contemporary translations selected for their clarity and accessibility to today's reader, as well as an incisive introduction by Erich Segal, which reveals Plato's life and clarifies the philosophical issues examined in each dialogue. The first four dialogues recount the trial execution of Socrates--the extraordinary tragedy that changed (...) Plato's life and so altered the course of Western though. Other dialogues create a rich tableau of intellectual life in Athens in the fourth century B.C., and examine the nature of virtue and love, knowledge and truth, society and the individual. Resounding with the humor and astounding brilliance of Socrates, the immortal iconoclast, these great works remain powerful, probing, and essential. (shrink)

A study of the topography of Delphi in late antiquity in concert with a study of the pottery, chiefly discovered during recent excavations, casts decisive light on a period in the sites history that is little known and largely ighored in the bibliography. Delphi thus appears as provincial town of moderate size, but more extensive than in previous periods, especially towards the west. The sacred area was transformed into an urban area and the most imposing buildings, public and private, were (...) regrouped around the sanctuary enclosure. The stratigraphie data and the finds, both ceramic and other, indicate a life that was rather calm and comfortable until the last quarter of the 6th c, then an interruption followed by a resumption of activities until the first quarter of the 7th c, when the town was abandoned by its inhabiants. Several types of pottery were made on the spot, evidenced by the discovery of a potter's kiln, refuse dumps, moulds and wasters. (shrink)

Dans la Delphes de l’époque protobyzantine, l’expression artistique et artisanale fait preuve d’une vive interaction entre les Delphiens et leurs homologues de villes proches ou lointaines. La céramique locale plus précisément, bien étudiée et circonscrite dans le temps, couvre un large éventail de produits de bonne qualité, déjà au ive s. de n. è., mais surtout aux vie et viie s. Quant à la céramique importée, amphores, lampes, sigillées et céramique peinte sont examinées ici pour la première fois en détail, (...) dans le souci de compléter l’image des objets en terre cuite utilisés dans cette ville moyenne de la Grèce Centrale. Les rapports commerciaux entre Delphes et certaines autres villes de la péninsule grecque et des îles y sont étudiés, en même temps que la présence dans toutes ces villes des grandes productions méditerranéennes. Cette étude nous permet d’inscrire Delphes dans un cadre commercial précis, la rapprochant des villes de la Grèce Centrale et du Péloponnèse où les produits africains l’emportent sur les importations micrasiatiques. (shrink)

Les lampes corinthiennes des Ier-IIIe s. apr. J.-C. découvertes à Delphes proviennent essentiellement des nécropoles et de quelques contextes urbains fouillés systématiquement dans les années 1990. Elles constituent une preuve directe des rapports entre Delphes et la capitale de l’Achaïe, Corinthe, rapports qui n’ont pas eu de suite après le IIIe s. Ces lampes portent toutes les caractéristiques techniques du type (forme, mode de fabrication, pâte) et se distinguent par une certaine variété dans le décor des médaillons, inspiré par la (...) mythologie ou par la vie quotidienne. Quatorze noms de potiers ont été recensés sur les bases conservées. Plus d’un siècle après une très brève publication par Perdrizet et quarante ans après les articles fondamentaux sur les lampes corinthiennes de Bruneau, l’approche de ce corpus sous un prisme nouveau nous offre l’occasion de reprendre la discussion sur la morphologie, sur les ateliers et surtout sur les villes où ce type de lampes était produit ; elle nous permet aussi une nouvelle interprétation du décor de plusieurs de ces lampes. (shrink)

Η πολύ διαδεδομένη άποψη ότι το μεσοβυζαντινό χωριό Καστόριον, όπου γεννήθηκε ο Όσιος Λουκάς, ταυτίζεται με το χωριό Καστρί και κατ' επέκταση με τους αρχαίους Δελφούς προσκρούει στα αρχαιολογικά δεδομένα: στον μέχρι τώρα ανασκαφέντα αρχαιολογικό χώρο επικρατεί παντελής έλλειψη μεσοβυζαντινών καταλοίπων. Ξεκινώντας από την ετυμολογική εξέταση των όρων Καστόριον και Καστρί και μετά από μια σειρά συλλογισμών, καταλήγουμε να αποσυνδέσουμε το μεσαιωνικό Καστόριον από το Καστρί που κατέλαβε το χώρο των αρχαίων και πρωτοβυζαντινών Δελφών.

Le petit lot de lampes corinthiennes du 11e et me siècle de notre ère qui sont publiées dans cet article provient du site de «Kritika», appartenant au cimetière Nord de Corinthe. Leur présentation est suivie de quelques remarques générales concernant leur diffusion en Grèce et en dehors de celle-ci (illustrée par deux cartes), les ateliers de fabrication (origine des potiers, organisation interne, relations entre les ateliers, commercialisation des lampes), leur présence dans les tombes.

Ce livre constitue une étude de la topographie de la ville d'Argos à l'époque protobyzantine (IVe–VIIe siècles). Il s'agit en effet d'une mise au point de l'état des recherches archéologiques, essentiellement des fouilles de sauvetage, menées par le Service Archéologique grec dont l'auteur fut épimélète responsable du département d'Argos pendant de longues années et jusqu'à sa mort précoce en 1998.

Les «ateliers palatiaux» constituent un chapitre très important de l'histoire et du fonctionnement des palais minoens. Selon l'opinion traditionnellement admise, formulée par A. Evans et largement reprise par ses successeurs, à l'intérieur des palais fonctionnaient en permanence des ateliers bien outillés, spécialisés dans la fabrication de certaines catégories d'objets. Cependant, une présentation sommaire des ateliers identifiés dans les palais de Cnossos, Phaistos et Malia, accompagnée d'une approche plus exhaustive des ateliers encore inédits de Zakros, conduit à réexaminer en partie l'opinion (...) première : les espaces de travail identifiés à ce jour n'étaient ni aménagés spécialement ni bien équipés, et n'abritaient pas d'ateliers à production strictement spécialisée. Il semble au contraire qu'y aient travaillé occasionnellement, en fonction de leurs besoins, des artisans habiles dans plus d'un art, pour répondre aux commandes de toutes sortes que passaient leurs fournisseurs de haut rang. Il est donc préférable d'employer le terme d'« artisans — ou artistes — palatiaux», qu'incarne parfaitement le personnage plus tard mythique de Dédale. (shrink)

Nous examinons ici un type très caractéristique d'installation artisanale, fréquente dans les habitats ou les bâtiments isolés de l'époque minoenne. Elle est composée, dans sa forme la plus simple et la plus courante, d'un récipient tronconique avec bec verseur placé sur une plate-forme artificielle ou un banc et, en immédiate relation avec lui, d'un grand vase situé à un niveau inférieur, servant à recueillir un liquide. On a donné des interprétations variées de ces installations : servaient-elles à séparer deux liquides (...) (huile et eau), au cours de la production de l'huile? à écraser les raisins pendant la fabrication du vin? à laver les vêtements? Après avoir dressé un catalogue, aussi complet que possible, des installations minoennes de ce type connues à ce jour, on tente de comprendre leur fonctionnement, à l'aide de données comparatives et de parallèles iconographiques diachroniques. Enfin, on examine le rôle de ces installations dans le cadre socio-économique plus large de l'époque minoenne. (shrink)

Comme les rapports précédents, celui‑ci rend compte en une fois de deux campagnes, d’étude et de restauration uniquement désormais : en effet, l’équipe est engagée maintenant dans la préparation de la publication de la demeure protobyzantine DOM5 (architecture et trouvailles mobilières) sous la forme d’une monographie destinée à la collection des Études thasiennes. Les campagnes se sont déroulées les deux années de la mi‑juillet à la fin août, avec des effectifs sensiblement équivalents : une...

Some philosophers have argued that love has moral-psychological power, as it can motivate one to appreciate the existence of others and to offer care for them. This appears evident in the context of our relations with nonhuman animals and nature: love can motivate one to think of them as morally considerable. But what is love? The paper at hand investigates one classic philosophical definition of love and applies it to our relationship with other animals and nature. This definition is the (...) quality view of love, i.e., Platonic love, which, I argue, facilitates deeper moral concern for nonhuman animals and things. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity, from Plotinus (third century) to the sixth-century schools in Athens and Alexandria, neglected the political dimension of their Platonic heritage in their concentration on an otherworldly life. Dominic O'Meara presents a revelatory reappraisal of these thinkers, arguing that their otherworldliness involved rather than excluded political ideas, and he reconstructs for the first time a coherent political philosophy of Late Platonism.

This volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but (...) each property could have had an instance, and would have been located in its instances if it had any. (shrink)

Platonic Patterns is a reprint collection of many of Holger Thesleff's studies in Plato—spanning from 1967 to 2003. It includes three books, four articles and a new introduction by the author, which sets the general outline of his interpretation of Plato. Whereas much of the scholarship on Plato has tended to operate within the frame of one language and/or a single school of thought, Thesleff constructively combines several discoveries and theories of various scholars with his own research, focusing on how (...) Plato can be understood in his own context. The work represents small but significant breakthroughs in research on Plato from an internationally inclusive standpoint. Having previously been published mainly in Finland by scholarly societies, availability outside the Nordic countries has, up until now, been minimal. Thesleff employs his singular expertise of Greek language and literature to make innovative contributions to the study and interpretation of Plato. He thematically stresses the significance of the less overt elements found in Plato's dialogues, such as Plato's use of humor and his linguistic expression, while taking into account the chronology and/or the intended audience. (shrink)

Julia Annas here offers a fundamental reexamination of Plato's ethical thought by investigating the Middle Platonist perspective, which emerged at the end of Plato's own school, the Academy. She highlights the differences between ancient and modern assumptions about Plato's ethics--and stresses the need to be more critical about our own. One of these modern assumptions is the notion that the dialogues record the development of Plato's thought. Annas shows how the Middle Platonists, by contrast, viewed the dialogues as multiple presentations (...) of a single Platonic ethical philosophy, differing in form and purpose but ultimately coherent. They also read Plato's ethics as consistently defending the view that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and see it as converging in its main points with the ethics of the Stoics. Annas goes on to explore the Platonic idea that humankind's final end is "becoming like God"--an idea that is well known among the ancients but virtually ignored in modern interpretations. She also maintains that modern interpretations, beginning in the nineteenth century, have placed undue emphasis on the Republic, and have treated it too much as a political work, whereas the ancients rightly saw it as a continuation of Plato's ethical writings. (shrink)

Platonic arguments often have premises of a particular form which is misunderstood. These sentences look like universal generalizations, but in fact involve an implicit qua phrase which makes them a fundamentally different kind of predication. Such general implicit redoubled qua predications (girqps) are not an expression of Plato's proprietary views; they are also very common in everyday discourse. Seeing how they work in Plato can help us to understand them.

Robert Adams defends a platonic account of goodness, understood as excellence, claiming that there exists a platonic good that all other good things must resemble, identifying the Good with God. Mark Murphy agrees, but argues that this platonic account is in need of Aristotelian supplementation, as resemblance must take into account a thing’s kind-membership. While this article will accept something like Murphy’s account of goodness, it will further develop its details and support. Without relying on theistic premises, I show that (...) the metaphysical status of an individual’s goodness consists in resemblance with the platonic good. As for the distinct question of what that goodness holds in virtue of, I conclude it holds in virtue of exactly: the thing’s own properties, those properties being such as to satisfy its kind-based standards, and those K-standards resembling the platonic good. I then develop an account of how K-standards resemble the platonic good: The K-standards resemble it firstly with respect to requiring activities, as the platonic good will be posited to be active, and must resemble it secondly also at the level of what teleology those activities are directed towards. I also motivate the need for a third respect of resemblance, to be developed in future work. The article ends with a discussion of the nature of the platonic good. (shrink)

Offers a fundamental reexamination of Plato's ethical thought, highlighting the differences between ancient & modern assumptions & stressing the need to be ...

A Platonic explanation of non-modal and modal truths is explained and defended using non-spatiotemporal entities as their truthmakers. It is argued, further, that this theory is parsimonious, naturalistic, and ontologically serious. These features should commend the view to a wide swath of philosophers.

In this paper I argue that if one subscribes to dispositionalism — the view that natural properties are irreducibly dispositional in character — then one ought to favour a Platonic view of properties. That is, dispositionalists ought to view properties as transcendent universals. I argue for this on the grounds that only with transcendent universals in play can two central dispositionalist platitudes be accounted for in a satisfactory way. Given that dispositionalism is becoming an increasingly influential view in the metaphysics (...) of science, my argument, if successful, suggests that Platonism will see something of a revival in contemporary metaphysics. This new kind of Platonism is shown to have some striking metaphysical and epistemological consequences. (shrink)

This paper provides a rational reconstruction of a Platonic trope bundle theory that is a live alternative to contemporary bundle theories. According to the theory, Platonic particulars are composed of what Plato calls images of Forms; contemporary metaphysicians call these tropes. Tropes are dependent on Forms and the Receptacle, while trope bundles are structured by natural kinds using the Phaedo's principles of inclusion and exclusion and the Timaeus’ geometrised elements, as well as by co-location in the Receptacle. Key elements of (...) discussion include persistence and abundance of Plato's tropes. The resulting theory is compared with contemporary trope bundle theories. (shrink)

The dialogue has disappeared as a mode of writing philosophy, and philosophers who study Plato today often ignore the form in which Plato’s work appears in favor of reconstructing and analyzing arguments thought to be conveyed by the content of the dialogues. A distinguished classicist here offers an approach to understanding Plato that tries to do full justice to the form of Platonic philosophy, appreciated against the background of Greek literature and history, while also giving proper due to the important (...) philosophic content of the dialogues. The book deals in turn with Plato’s relation to and portraits of Socrates, the literary and philosophical character of the dialogues, and the modes of argumentation employed in the dialogues as well as some of their major themes. (shrink)