Resumen El siguiente artículo propone una interpretación del Hipias Mayor de Platón. A partir del análisis del contexto dramático, de los interlocutores y de la ejecución del diálogo, se destaca el problema de lo bello en sus implicancias ontológicas y éticas. El repetido esfuerzo por determinar lo bello no sólo responde a un problema filosófico fundamental, sino a una intención terapéutica por parte de Sócrates. El desdoblamiento de Sócrates resultará en el fondo ser un recurso por el cual sea posible (...) superar el olvido de la ignorancia que el interlocutor de Sócrates padece.The following paper proposes an interpretation of Plato’s Hippias Major. From the analysis of the dramatic context, the interlocutors and the execution of the dialogue, it highlights the problem of beauty in its ontological and ethical implications. The repeated effort to determine the beautiful not only responds to a fundamental philosophical problem, but to a therapeutic intention by Socrates. The debated splitting of Socrates will be ultimately a resource by which it is possible to overcome the oblivion of the ignorance that the interlocutor of Socrates suffers. (shrink)

In previous papers I have brought philosophical hermeneutics in conversation with critical hermeneutics, in order to open the potential for Gadamer’s “moderate hermeneutics” to be re-considered as a potential democratic practice of discourse with the potential of transforming social situations that are unjust and inequitable . Emerging from this conceptual/theoretical “textual” analysis of philosophical hermeneutics and critical hermeneutics, I offer a reading of the ancient Socratic practice of dialectic as a form of critical, inclusive, and constructive democratic dialogue, i.e., an (...) expression of local normative hermeneutics grounded in a form of understanding that occurs through consensus and negotiation among, as Plato calls them in the Seventh Letter, “well-meaning” and “noncombative” participants. (shrink)

This essay adopts a Continental philosophical approach to reading Plato’s Socrates in terms of a “third way” that cuts a middle path between doctrinal and esoteric readings of the dialogues. It presents a portrait of Socratic education that is at odds with contemporary views in education and curriculum that view Plato’s Socrates as either the teacher of a truth-finding method or proto-fascist authoritarian. It argues that the crucial issue of attempting to foster an ethical disposition is a unique form of (...) education, in terms of “care of the soul,” that unfolds only within the context of sustained dialectic interrogation. Education is a “difficult” process that entails the “turning” of the soul back to itself in an enlightened form, which is bound up with an ontological relationship of distance to the so-called “truth” of the virtues that appear in limited and dissembling ways to Socrates and the interlocutors. Ultimately, it is shown that “care of the soul” is grounded in the attunement that locates the human being in the world in such a way that “not-knowing” is the most original way in which our Being-in-the-world unfolds, and to embrace this “difficult” truth is to at once set oneself on the arduous but rewarding educative path toward the potential development of an ethical disposition. (shrink)