The volume Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, recently edited by Ch. Moore and A. Stavru (Brill, 2018), favours the pluralistic approach to the sources that has gained increasing acceptance over the last decades, and thus shares the choice not to limit the study of Socrates to the canonical ‘quartet’ Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. Indeed, the volume partly continues an existing trend, but at the same time proves to reinforce it by further refining and scrutinising this field of research. The (...) very welcome result is a collection of essays that provides a rich and nuanced picture of Socrates from the Old Comedy to Neoplatonism, based on Socratic literature as well as non-Socratic material – the latter including both non-Socratic authors and non-Socratic passages by Socratic authors. Because of the variety of themes and the number of contributions, which present a vast range of methodological approaches, the work offers a privileged point of view for investigating the ongoing advancements in our understanding of Socratism. Rather than providing a thorough presentation of all chapters, which would inevitably oversimplify their content, this paper attempts to highlight – also through the comparison with the existing literature – the main results of the analysis conducted and their specific contribution to the field. (shrink)

In hisCommentary on the AlcibiadesiProclus often discusses and links the peculiar epistemological category of “double ignorance” with evil and grievous error. To understand this more fully, the following analyzes Proclus’ concept of double ignorance, its characteristics and its causes. Markedly, due to his understanding of double ignorance, Proclus offers a response to the “Socratic” idea that no one willingly errs as this particular category of not-knowing enables him to explain how individuals, despite desiring and in some sense knowing the good, (...) fail or ‘miss the mark’ in articulating and doing the good. (shrink)