Abstract

This study begins from the relationship among three sets of passages from Plato's dialogues. The Phaedo, Symposium, and Parmenides are unique in being the only narrated dialogues that are not narrated by Socrates. Additionally, only these dialogue contain accounts of the young Socrates. Finally, each of these accounts are centrally concerned with aspects of ideality. On the basis of these connections, the study is set up as a close reading of these passages specifically with respect to the eidetic in relation to Socrates. ;Chapter One examines Socrates' autobiography in the Phaedo. There are three principal conclusions of this analysis: Socrates demonstrates the implicit and latent ideality contained in the explanations of the physicists and cosmologists; explicit considerations of mind, teleology, and the good are a necessary aspect of constructing explanatory accounts; the fundamental horizon of Socrates' second sailing is ethical rather than epistemological. Chapter Two closely, analyzes the opening section of the Parmenides and portions of the gymnastic. This analysis shows on the one hand that Socrates' youthful understanding of the ideas bears the marks of a typical Platonism. Parmenides' challenges to Socrates provide an indication of the difficulties inherent in the notion of eidos while at the same time suggesting ways to reconcile those difficulties. Chapter Three looks at Socrates' account in the Symposium of his lessons with Diotima. Here it is shown that the revelation of the eidetic is a moment of a project of self-understanding and transformation. Chapter Four returns to the Phaedo and provides an interpretation of Socrates' hypothetical method. This interpretation argues that this method is enacted and understood in light of what Socrates learns from Parmenides and Diotima, and that the positing of ideas as explicated there is a fundamentally practical endeavor undertaken as a measure of safety against the dangers of sophistry. Chapter Four ends with some considerations of whether the eidetic can ultimately, be understood in isolation from a larger set of hypotheses