Drew A. Hyland, one of Continental philosophy's keenest interpreters of Plato, takes up the question of beauty in three Platonic dialogues, the Hippias Major, Symposium, and Phaedrus. What Plato meant by beauty is not easily characterized, and Hyland's close readings show that Plato ultimately gives up on the possibility of a definition. Plato's failure, however, tells us something important about beauty—that it cannot be reduced to logos. Exploring questions surrounding love, memory, and ideal form, Hyland draws out the connections between (...) beauty, the possibility of philosophy, and philosophical living. This new reading of Plato provides a serious investigation into the meaning of beauty and places it at the very heart of philosophy. (shrink)

This book explains how to read Plato, emphasizing the philosophic importance of the dramatic aspects of the dialogues, and showing that Plato is an ironic thinker and that his irony is deeply rooted in his philosophy.

Explores interpretations of Plato by Heidegger, Derrida, Irigaray, Cavarero, and Gadamer.

Martin Heidegger’s sustained reflection on Greek thought has been increasingly recognized as a decisive feature of his own philosophical development. At the same time, this important philosophical meeting has generated considerable controversy and disagreement concerning the radical originality of Heidegger’s view of the Greeks and their place in his groundbreaking thinking. In Heidegger and the Greeks, an international group of distinguished philosophers sheds light on the issues raised by Heidegger’s encounter and engagement with the Greeks. The careful and nuanced essays (...) brought together here shed light on how core philosophical concepts such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and ethics are understood today. For readers at all levels, this volume is an invitation to continue the important dialogue with Greek thinking that was started and stimulated by Heidegger. Contributors are Claudia Baracchi, Walter A. Brogan, Günter Figal, Gregory Fried, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Drew A. Hyland, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, William J. Richardson, John Sallis, Dennis J. Schmidt, and Peter Warnek. (shrink)

This paper examines Plato’s Sophist with particular attention to the cast of characters and the most curious and complicated dramatic situation in which Plato places this dialogue: the dramatic proximity of surrounding dialogues and the impending trial, conviction, and death of Socrates. I use these considerations as a propaedeutic to the raising of questions about how these features of the dialogue might affect our interpretation of the actual positions espoused in the Sophist. One clear effect of these considerations will be (...) to destabilize the commonly held view that in this dialogue Plato is “replacing” Socrates and Socratic aporia and questioning with the more didactic, formalistic, and doctrinal conception of philosophy espoused by the Eleatic Stranger. (shrink)

In this reply to Paul Gaffney, I raise questions about his strong emphasis on winning as the foundation of athletic virtues such as teamwork. I connect this to his reading of Aristotle on the connection of virtue and happiness, and suggest an alternative reading that I believe is more true to Aristotle and to the experience of sport.

Abstract I take up the important notion of “spectres,“ addressed by Jacques Derrida in Spectres of Marx and elsewhere, and argue that the very notion of spectres makes absolutely central the question of interpretation, or hermeneutics. Using what I find to be the spectre of Socrates throughout Derrida's work, and Socrates' own engagement with various spectres, I develop a reflection on the conception of philosophy that might adequately think the question of interpretation.

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance through engagement with the legacies of Jean Baudrillard and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.

The guiding suggestion of this article is intimated in the title: “Platonism,” that set of “philosophical positions” supposedly present in the Platonic dialogues (pre-eminently the “theory of forms,” but also “Plato’s metaphysics,” his “epistemology,” his “moral theory,” his “political theory” etc.) are not so much discovered in the dialogues as they are invented out of a very specific (mis) reading of those dialogues. And the first great “misreader” was Aristotle, who, I argue, first made possible the set of assumptions about (...) philosophy and about philosophic writing that, in turn, made anything like “Platonism” possible. (shrink)

As the differently ordered title indicates, and through a careful examination of Books IV and VIII of Plato’s Republic, I seek to destabilize the common view that there is a specific number of regimes and a necessary order of decline in the Book VIII account of the decline of regimes, one consequence of which would be that Plato is a straightforwardly harsh critic of democracy. The upshot of my study is to argue that in fact, the account offers a qualified (...) defense, a proto-Kantian “critique” of democracy. I attempt to sustain this argument with references to several of the Letters of Plato. (shrink)

As the differently ordered title indicates, and through a careful examination of Books IV and VIII of Plato’s Republic, I seek to destabilize the common view that there is a specific number of regimes and a necessary order of decline in the Book VIII account of the decline of regimes, one consequence of which would be that Plato is a straightforwardly harsh critic of democracy. The upshot of my study is to argue that in fact, the account offers a qualified (...) defense, a proto-Kantian “critique” of democracy. I attempt to sustain this argument with references to several of the Letters of Plato. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 45, Issue 3, pp 341 - 357 Taking my cue from the richly dramatic character of the Platonic dialogues and how that dramatic character informs the thought therein, I attempt a reading of Heidegger’s dialogue on a country path that takes similar account of the dramatic themes of that dialogue. Accordingly, I address such themes as the fact that the characters of the dialogue are not given personal names, the fact that it is and must be a (...) dialogue that occurs on a country path, and the strange interactions of the three characters. The paper culminates in a discussion of the role of “night,” which, I argue, functions as our guiding image of Ereignis. (shrink)

The ancient Ephesian thinker Heraclitus, in his aphoristic writings, described the dynamic coming-to-be of things according to a number of obscure metaphors. In this essay, Hyland ponders whether there is a paradigmatic experience according to which a number of these metaphors can best be understood. Gathering together and thoughtfully retranslating a number of Greek terms including polemos (often translated as “war”), eris (“strife”), agon (“contest”), and paidia (“play”), Hyland argues that Heraclitus’s metaphors can be understood as referring to an experience (...) of athletic play. Hyland explores the significance of athletic play, with its stance of responsive openness, as a paradigm for thinking and living. (shrink)

Beginning with attention to the double shadow of death that hovers over the Theaetetus, I discuss the pervasive presence in that dialogue of finitude and the effect that recognition has on Socratic/Platonic philosophy, which, even in this supposedly “later” dialogue, remains deeply and in a sustained way aporetic, interrogative. But such aporia, and the interrogative stance that follows from it, is also, I argue, a fundamental mode of knowing.

Beginning with attention to the double shadow of death that hovers over the Theaetetus, I discuss the pervasive presence in that dialogue of finitude and the effect that recognition has on Socratic/Platonic philosophy, which, even in this supposedly “later” dialogue, remains deeply and in a sustained way aporetic, interrogative. But such aporia, and the interrogative stance that follows from it, is also, I argue, a fundamental mode of knowing.

Beginning with attention to the double shadow of death that hovers over the Theaetetus, I discuss the pervasive presence in that dialogue of finitude and the effect that recognition has on Socratic/Platonic philosophy, which, even in this supposedly “later” dialogue, remains deeply and in a sustained way aporetic, interrogative. But such aporia, and the interrogative stance that follows from it, is also, I argue, a fundamental mode of knowing.