In this book, R.E. Allen provides a translation of the 'Parmenides' along with a structural analysis that procedes on the assumption that formal elements, logical and dramatic, are important to its interpretation and that the argument of the Parmenides is aporetic, a statement of metaphysical perplexities.

Did Plato abandon, or sharply modify, the Theory of Forms in later life? In the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic it is generally agreed that Plato held that universals exist. But in Parmenides, he subjected that theory to criticism. If the criticism were valid, and Plato knew so, then the Parmenides marks a turning point in his thought. If, however, Plato became aware that there are radical differences in the logical behaviour of concepts, and the later dialogues are a record of (...) his attempt to analyse those differences, then Plato’s thought can be said to have moved in a new and vitally important direction after the Parmenides . Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics brings together twenty essays by leading philosophers from the UK and the USA reflecting upon this important issue and upon the questions arising from it. (shrink)

The general knowledge and understanding that every teacher of religion and science should have relative to chemistry can be found in the answers to three major questions. In my own response to the first question, How did chemistry emerge as a discipline? I trace the origins, establishment, and subsequent historical significance of cosmology. I contend that chemistry is “the obvious, oldest science” and, as such, has played a key role among the sciences in agelong human efforts to understand reality. In (...) my response to the second question, How do chemists currently view (cosmic) reality? I outline three prominent examples in support of my contention that chemistry, despite being “the obvious, oldest science,” is seen by some as playing only a tacit role in current efforts to (re)integrate religion and science. In my response to the third question, How do chemists currently view ultimate reality and meaning? I argue that “unifiers” in chemistry can also now play a key role in a reality revolution that is pointing humankind not only toward a possible historical (re) integration of religion and science but also toward a return to cosmology. (shrink)

2. The Meno offers a dramatic demonstration of the validity of the first argument put forward for Anamnesis and the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo.

This distinction has sometimes been read as purely epistemic, resting not on things, but on our knowledge of them: there is one world, not two, though it may be apprehended in two ways. But this view is patently at odds with the text. Knowledge and opinion are δυνάμεις, "faculties," to be distinguished and defined by their objects, no less than by the state of mind they produce, and Plato clearly states that the fallibility and unclearness of opinion is rooted in (...) the relative unreality of opinables. (shrink)

Did Plato abandon, or sharply modify, the Theory of Forms in later life? In the _Phaedo, Symposium, _and _Republic_ it is generally agreed that Plato held that universals exist. But in Parmenides, he subjected that theory to criticism. If the criticism were valid, and Plato knew so, then the _Parmenides_ marks a turning point in his thought. If, however, Plato became aware that there are radical differences in the logical behaviour of concepts, and the later dialogues are a record of (...) his attempt to analyse those differences, then Plato’s thought can be said to have moved in a new and vitally important direction after the _Parmenides_. _Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics_ brings together twenty essays by leading philosophers from the UK and the USA reflecting upon this important issue and upon the questions arising from it. (shrink)

Professor Flew has recently sought to demolish the philosophical pretensions of Marx and the Marxists by the use of Hume's Fork and Popper's demand for falsifiable consequences. Marx tried to derive matters of ‘fact and existence’ from ‘relations of ideas’, which Hume's Fork states to be impossible. From this and not from empirical study, he derived predictions for the future course of history which neither he nor his followers have ever properly tested by empirical enquiries. Nor have they ever provided (...) any clear, unambiguous and therefore testable formulations of those predictions. In particular, Flew claims, they have never given any concrete content to the central notion of ‘alienation’ such that an Index of Alienation could be drawn up and enquiries could be made as to whether, for example, the workers are more or less alienated under the private or public ownership of factories. Both faults stem from Marx's continuation of German, specifically Hegelian, philosophy. (shrink)

In their daily practices, can doctors be both patient advocates and society's agents in rationing costly care? Doctors disagree among themselves. Some argue that patients stand to benefit if doctors lead the movement for cost‐effective care in hospitals, nursing homes, and patients' homes. For others cost‐cutting at the bedside erodes the foundations of the doctor‐patient relationship and compromises the quality of care.

Post-modernism is receiving much attention, but it is often seen as merely an extrapolation of modernism. Michael Polanyi’s post-critical epistemology offers a useful way of understanding post-modernism. The modern objectivism of critical thought leads to a dead-end dehumanization. Polanyi offers a recovery of the human dimension by demonstrating the ways in which all knowing, especially scientific discovery, requires human participation. An analogy is drawn with post-modern art and architecture, which similarly attempt to recover the human form and traditional or classical (...) ornamentation in a way which goes beyond the sterile abstractness of modernism. (shrink)

Agathon, in his panegyric of Eros, had maintained that it is good, beautiful, and divine. Socrates begins his elenchus of this claim by pointing out that Eros is relational in character: love is always love of something, desire desire for something. Eros falls in that class of terms later described as ta pros ti, terms which have their meaning ‘toward’ something else. Furthermore, Eros lacks what it loves and desires to possess it: “everyone … who desires something desires what has (...) not been obtained and is not present; his love and desire are set on things he lacks, things he does not possess.” Desire implies privation. Agathon and Plato also agree that Eros is always in love with the beautiful ; as Agathon had earlier said, “the world was fashioned by the gods through love of beautiful things; for there is no love of the ugly.” It then follows that, since Eros is love of what it lacks, it cannot be beautiful or good, and since the gods possess both attributes, it cannot be divine. It is not, however, bad or ugly or mortal, but ‘intermediate’ between those attributes. (shrink)

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

There are a variety of puzzling features about this argument. One of them—questions of validity apart—is its apparent redundancy. Parmenides’ initial division provided him with an infinite plurality of parts. He might therefore have given an existence proof of infinitely many numbers, conceived as pluralities of units, by means of this division. Instead, he introduces a new principle of division for the purpose. Again, he derives the conclusion that Unity has infinitely many parts from the infinity of number; but he (...) has already shown that Unity is infinitely divisible into parts consisting of being and unity. In short, the new principle of division introduced for number seems unnecessary, and Parmenides has twice shown that Unity has infinitely many parts. (shrink)

LOYALTY HAS NOT HAD A BAD PRESS, but, as far as Anglo-Saxon philosophy is concerned, very little press. It has merited entries in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and a short one in Macquarrie's A Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Of course, there is also Josiah Royce's The Philosophy of Loyalty. I propose to argue that these discussions of loyalty tend to assimilate it to faithfulness to a promise, and so omit what is distinctive of (...) it. I shall also argue that the likely reason for this distortion is the modern view of man as a self-defining subject who has autonomously to invent his own law or way, for the universe presents none to him. (shrink)

R. E. Allen's superb new translation of Plato's Symposium brings this classic text to life for modern readers. Allen supplements his translation with a commentary that not only enriches our understanding of Plato's philosophy and the world of Greek antiquity but also provides insights into present-day philosophical concerns. Allen reveals the unity of Plato's intentions in the Symposium, explores the dialogue's major themes, and links them with Plato's other dialogues. His wide-ranging commentary includes discussions of Greek religious, (...) social, and sexual practices, the conceptual connections between the Symposium and Freud, the influence of the Symposium on later writers, and recent scholarship on the dialogue. Allen's primary focus is philosophical, however, and he succeeds in explicating the doctrine of Eros in Plato's Symposium so that the reader can see how wish and desire relate to Plato's moral philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Among Plato's later dialogues, the _Parmenides_ is one of the most significant. Not only a document of profound philosophical importance in its own right, it also contributes to the understanding of Platonic dialogues that followed it, and it exhibits the foundations of the physics and ontology that Aristotle offered in his _Physics_ and _Metaphysics _VII. In this book, R.E. Allen provides a superb translation of the _Parmenides_ along with a structural analysis that procedes on the assumption that formal elements, (...) logical and dramatic, are important to its interpretation and that the argument of the _Parmenides_ is aporetic, a statement of metaphysical perplexities. Allen's original translation of and commentary on the _Parmenides_ were published in 1983 to great acclaim and have now been revised by the author. (shrink)

Plato’s Euthyphro is important because it gives an excellent example of Socratic dialogue in operation and of the connection of that dialectic with Plato’s earlier theory of Forms. Professor Allen’s edition of the dialogue provides a translation with interspersed commentary, aimed both at helping the reader who does not have Greek and also elucidating the discussion of the earlier Theory of Forms which follows. The author argues that there is a theory of Forms in the Euthyphro and in other (...) early Platonic dialogues and that this theory is the foundation of Socratic dialogue. However, he maintains that the theory in the early dialogues is a realist theory of universals and this theory is not to be identified with the theory of Forms found in the Phaedo, Republic, and other middle dialogues, since it differs on the issues of ontological status. (shrink)