Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy (...) has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called “analytic and continental” camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and an increasingly large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which “relativism” has been defined, explained, defended and criticized. (shrink)

Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them. More precisely, ‘relativism’ covers views which maintain that—at a level of high abstraction—at least some class of things have properties they have not simpliciter, but only relative to a given framework of assessment, and correspondingly, that the truth of (...) claims attributing these properties holds only once the relevant framework of assessment is specified or supplied. Relativists characteristically insist, furthermore, that if something is only relatively so, then there can be no framework-independent vantage point from which the matter of whether the thing in question is so can be established. Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called ‘analytic and continental’ camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and a still developing large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which ‘relativism’ has been defined, explained, defended and criticized. (shrink)

This edition of Martin Ostwald's revised version of J. B. Skemp's 1952 translation of _Statesman_ includes a new selected bibliography, as well as Ostwald's interpretive introduction, which traces the evolution in Plato's political philosophy from _Republic_ to _Statesman to Laws_--from philosopher-king to royal statesman.

"This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition..., offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship"--Front flap of dust jacket, volume 1.

In his celebrated masterpiece, Symposium, Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and, of course, Plato's mentor Socrates - each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates' famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness. And then into the party bursts the drunken (...) Alcibiades, the most popular and notorious Athenian of the time, who insists on praising Socrates himself rather than love, and gives us a brilliant sketch of this enigmatic character. The power, humour, and pathos of Plato's creation engages the reader on every page. This new translation is complemented by full explanatory notes and an illuminating introduction. (shrink)

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Socratic Discourses" by Plato, Xenophon. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, and on the Pentagon in the United States, concerns over security issues have been at an all-time high in this country. Both state and federal governments continue to discuss legislation on these issues amid much controversy. One key concern of both employers and employees is the extent that employers, espousing a "need to know" mentality, continue to expand their capability and implementation of surveillance of employees in the workplace. With (...) the technology typically growing faster than the speed of legislation, protective or permissive, the management and legal issues involved in electronic monitoring of employee communications in the workplace, are and well should be on the agenda for discussion of every management and legal team in American business today. Companies have a legitimate right to protect their trade secrets from disclosure by disgruntled employees. Similarly, companies also have a duty to protect their good names and reputations from unauthorized employee communications with outside parties, and even other employees, that may damage them. It is also a prime duty of management to ensure, in their direction of their workforces, that the employees execute their responsibilities by working full time on their stated objectives. In this regard, any management that fails to oversee its workforce to ensure that employees are not expending valuable company time, for which they are being compensated, on personal business, including unauthorized communications, is remiss in its responsibilities to its shareholders. The company may see a reduction of the price of its shares in the marketplace if it does not protect the economic interests of its shareholders. (shrink)

Hailing from the American South, I was a slow student, awakened by Plato in high school and introduced to philosophy in college. Alienated from analytic trivia and minutia, I did graduate work in Greek philosophy at Syracuse University. My first academic job at Memphis State University involved me in the Southern Civil Rights Movement; my second at the Wisconsin State University-Stevens Point involved me in the environmental movement and inspired me to create first environmental ethics and then, in collaboration (...) with Roger Ames, comparative environmental philosophy. In the face of unprecedented challenges, such as global climate change, academic philosophy must abandon its preoccupation with arcane puzzles and its studied intellectual isolation and work collaboratively with the natural and social sciences if it is to survive in the competitive and accountable academic climate of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Volume 36 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2019-20. Works: _Republic 7, Topics 1.2, Nicomachean Ethics 3.5, Isis and Osiris_. Topics: types of dialectic, political philosophy, voluntary, hermeneutical retrieval, wanted emotions.

Is there a punishment for violating the natural law? This important question has been neglected in the scholarship on Thomistic natural law theory. I show that there is a three-fold punishment proper to the natural law; the remorse of conscience, the inability to be a friend to oneself, and the inability to be a friend to another work in concert to provide a natural penalty for moral wrongdoing. In order to establish these points, I first analyze sources of St. Thomas (...) Aquinas’s natural law theory by discussing St. Augustine’s notion of law and fundamental ideas in Aristotle’s political philosophy. Next, I show how Aquinas unites aspects of Augustinian and Aristotelian thought in his treatment of natural law and thereby provides a framework for answering our question. Finally, I turn to Plato’s Gorgias and to Aristotle’s discussion of self-love in order to integrate these ideas with Aquinas’s natural law theory. (shrink)

In his discussion of the ethics of suicide Plato alludes to more than one traditional injunction against it:indicates a fairly general acceptance of its wickedness. Cebes has heard the Pythagorean Philolaus, among others, saying that suicide was immoral, but has gathered no satisfactory explanation as to why this should be so. One reason, impressive, but, Socrates admits, difficult is to be found.

Argues that Plato's dialogues contain a surprisingly neglected account of Socrates' education about the love of noble virtue and that recovering this education could help broaden and deepen liberalism's moral and political horizon.

In a recent article, C. H. Kahn addresses an ‘old scholarly myth’, namely the idea that Book I of the Republic began life as an earlier, independent dialogue and was subsequently adapted to serve as a prelude to the much longer work that we know. The case for this hypothesis rests both on stylometric considerations and on the many ‘Socratic’ features that Book I, unlike the rest of the Republic, shares with Plato's earlier works. Having disposed of the positive (...) arguments in favour of the ‘myth’, Kahn turns to the contrary—and in his view overwhelming—evidence that Book I was composed from the start as an integral part of the longer Republic. He catalogues 12 passages in Book I, accounting for roughly half its length, whose full significance will, he argues, only emerge if they are seen as instances of prolepsis, deliberate anticipations of what is to come in later books. (shrink)

It is no longer the fashion to imagine Herodotos a liar when he tells marvellous stories, for some of his most extraordinary statements have long since been shown to contain at least a substantial measure of truth. It is perhaps not sufficiently realized, however, that on occasion he misleads his readers and himself by too much critical unbelief in his materials and consequent application of the crude methods of mythological investigation then current. In other words, he often rationalizes in the (...) only way then possible, superficially altering the story so as to rid himself of the incredible details, or at all events, as I think, attributing to the actors motives which a somewhat drily rational mind could understand and approve or condemn. It is of course well known that at least the former method was a commonplace of the sophists, whose influence on Herodotos is manifest and widespread; it has been said, indeed, that it is much older than they and characteristically Ionic. L. Radermacher finds traces of it in the Odyssey itself and adds that, although we can sometimes catch the rationalizer at work, we cannot be sure of always doing so and ‘müssen annehmen, dass der Glaube an die Geschichtlichkeit ihrer Sage manche griechischen Autoren früh verführt hat, sie geschichtlicher zu erzählen als eigentlich erlaubt war’. This is a true and useful statement. Modern criticism has long learned to set aside ancient allegorizations of myths, about which I need say nothing, for the subject has been repeatedly and well handled by my colleague, Dr. J. Tate; it has often, however, confused ancient interpretation of myth with ancient criticism of saga. Euhemerism indeed is usually recognized for what it is, although even this is not always so; but uixere inepti ante Euhemerum multi, and their efforts are by no means always distinguished either from allegorizing or from real sagas. For an example of the former confusion I may refer to Stallbaum's note on Plato, Phaedrus, 29 C-D, where the reader is referred to the account given by Lobeck of the rise and growth of allegorization. But Plato says nothing at all of allegories in this passage. He quotes, with ironical admiration of its ‘wisdom’, a version of the story of Boreas and Oreithyia according to which she. was knocked off the Areiopagos, or some other place, by a strong north wind, and so was killed and consequently said to have been carried away by Boreas. He adds that it would be a laborious and dismal business to go through all the tales of wonder in that way, rationalizing the Hippocentaurs, Gorgons, Chimaira, Pegasos, and the rest out of existence; a wise saying which was uttered in vain for Palaiphatos and his kind. However, most moderns know a myth from a saga and an allegory from a crude rationalization which accepts the story as true except for the incredibilities and is quite ready to believe, for instance, in Romulus if we will but postulate that he was not snatched up to heaven but murdered and his body hidden. There is a much more subtle snare, consisting of a story which, although rationalized, is well told, and Herodotos in this respect can be a notable offender, for he never tells a story ill. (shrink)

Augustine’s sermons on the Psalms of Ascent, part of the Enarrationes in Psalmos, are a unique entry in the venerable tradition of those writings that aim to help us ascend to a higher reality. These sermons transform the ascent genre by giving, in the place of the Platonic account of ascent, a Christian ascent narrative with a Trinitarian structure. Not just the individual ascends, but the community that is the church, the body of Christ, also ascends. The ascent is up (...) to God, the Idipsum or the Selfsame, the ultimate reality, confessed by the church as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Through the grace of the Incarnation, God the Son enables us to ascend, making himself the way of ascent from the humility we must imitate at the beginning of the ascent all the way up to Heaven, where he retains his identity as Idipsum. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit works in the ascending church to convert our hearts to the love of God and neighbor. I review the Platonic ascent tradition in Plato’s Republic and Plotinus’ Enneads; overview ascent in some of Augustine’s earlier writings; introduce the narrative setting of the sermons on the Psalms of Ascent; and analyze the Trinitarian structure of their ascent narrative. I close with some reflections on the difference between a preached Trinitarianism that encourages ascent and a more academic effort to understand God such as we find in Augustine’s de Trinitate. (shrink)

Although Augustine is rightly associated with the rationalistic epistemology of the Platonist tradition—which holds that knowledge comes from the mind rather than from experience—there is an underappreciated, and significant, empirical aspect to his epistemology, which I aim to clarify in this article. In Augustine’s epistemology, knowledge of God depends on the history of his people, his revelation, and above all his Messiah. However, the empirical aspect of Augustine’s theology does not overrule his rationalism, but rather is integrated into it. Augustine (...) is a Christian representative of a broader epistemological tradition which includes Plato as well as Immanuel Kant and which considers warrant for our beliefs to come from the mind even as experience provides the input necessary for the process to begin. It is, of course, a Christianized version of such a nuanced rationalism: In both its rationalistic core and its empirical aspect, knowledge is explained in Christian terms: in the former because the mind does not have these ideas of its own powers but from God’s indwelling and gracious assistance, in the latter because the experience leading to knowledge is the religious experience that founded the Christian church and Scriptures. (shrink)

Now available together as a set for a discounted price: _Theories of Human Nature_, with, _Human Nature: A Reader_, by Joel J. Kupperman. _On _Theories of Human Nature_:_A very fine book on human nature, both what it is and what philosophers have thought about it--philosophers in an inclusive sense, from Plato and Aristotle to Mengzi and Xunzi, from Hume and Kant to Ibn al-Arabi to Marx and Rousseau and including many others. The writing is lively and accessible, the philosophy (...) insightful, and the sense of human possibilities conveyed admirable. It will fit nicely into many different sorts of classes. --John Perry, Stanford University _On _Nature: A Reader_:_ This anthology provides a set of distinctive, influential views that explore the mysteries of human nature from a variety of perspectives. (shrink)

The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis's masterpiece in ethics and the philosophy of science,warns of the danger of combining modern moral skepticism with the technological pursuit of human desires. The end result is the final destruction of human nature. From Brave New World to Star Trek, from Steampunk to starships, science fiction film has considered from nearly every conceivable angle the same nexus of morality, technology, and humanity of which C. S. Lewis wrote. As a result,science fiction film has (...) unintentionally given us stunning depictions of Lewis's terrifying vision of the future. In Science Fiction and the Abolition of Man: Finding C. S. Lewis in Sci-Fi Film and Television, scholars of religion, philosophy, literature, and film explore the connections between sci-fi film and the three parts of Lewis's book:how sci-fi portrays "Men Without Chests" incapable of responding properly to moral good, how it teaches the Tao or "The Way," and how it portrays "The Abolition of Man.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PARODY AND THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBABILITY IN THE APOLOGY by Thomas J. Lewis Over a century ago James Riddell pointed out that Socrates' defense speech in die Apology closely followed the standard form of Athenian forensic rhetoric. He called the Apology "artistic to the core," and he identified parts of "the subde rhetoric of this defense."1 Since then many scholars have explicated the rhetorical elements in Socrates' defense.2 Their (...) work has led in turn to recent attempts to integrate the rhetorical form into an overall understanding of the meaning and significance of the Apology? The puzzle to be solved is what to make of the fact that Socrates disclaims the ability and the intention to use rhetoric in a speech which is itself a rhetorical masterpiece. R. E. Allen raises the possibility thatby using the techniques ofrhetoric and at the same time denying that he is using them Socrates is dissembling or lying. However, Allen rejects this possibility and interprets Socrates' falsehood as only a surface or apparent falsehood. According to Allen it is ironic parody of a disreputable rhetoric which seeks to convince without concern for the truth.4 For Allen the object of the parody is base rhetoric in general, the type of rhetoric denounced by Socrates in the Gorgias as "rhetoric aiming at gratification and pleasure, and indifferent to truth and the good of the soul."5 Two subsequent articles, one by Kenneth Seeskin, the other by Douglas Feaver andJohn Hare, support the view that Socrates is parodying the debased form of rhetoric. However, they place somewhat different emphasis on the exact object of the parody. They argue that the object of Socrates' rhetorical parody is Gorgias' Pahmedes, rather than pandering rhetoric in general.6 After summarizing the many rhetorical similarities between Gorgias' Palamedes and Socrates' defense speech, Seeskin concludes that "Gorgias' Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 359-366 360Philosophy and Literature Palamedes is not a masterpiece of world literature; it is a collection of topoi—tried and true devices for winning acquittal... [whereas] despite his disclaimer, Socrates' speech is no amateur performance. On the contrary, he knew all the tricks of the trade and employed them with consummate skill" (p. 97). Seeskin uses Plato's Gorgias to explain how Socrates' rhetoric fits within an overall understanding of the Apology. He notes the two types ofrhetoric presented in the Gorgias: base rhetoric, a species of flattery which aims at gratification; and philosophic or true rhetoric which aims at improving the soul. Then Seeskin makes a crucial point. He insists it is not enough to distinguish between base rhetoric and philosophic rhetoric; there must be a way to identify a given instance of rhetoric as either base rhetoric or as philosophic rhetoric. Moreover, he cautions that distinguishing the one from the other is no easy task. "It is impossible to tell them apart on the basis of technique alone. Base rhetoric is no less polished for its baseness.... Nor can one tell them apart on the basis of their stated goals. Flattery succeeds only to the extent that it can pass itself off as something better" (p. 98). Thus, if Socrates and Palamedes employ the same rhetorical devices, Seeskin wonders how we can tell which type ofrhetoric is in the Apology. "Somewhere in the Apology of Socrates there ought to be a clue which allows one to distinguish his defense from the 'standard' defense composed by Gorgias" (p. 99). Seeskin finds the clue in the exordium, where Socrates denies that he is a skillful speaker: "Unless, of course, by a skillful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. If that is what they mean, I would agree that I am an orator, though not after their pattern" (17b). Although Palamedes makes a comparable claim, Seeskin argues that Palamedes was concerned with appearance rather than truth, and that the key to appearance is the use of the argument from probability. According to Seeskin, Socrates does not rely on the argument from probability, whereas this argument permeates the Palamedes. "Again and again, the speaker tries to show that it would be implausible to suppose that anyone in his position did what he is accused of doing. How... (shrink)

Ardley aims to assist the re-discovery of James Oswald, Scottish common sense philosopher, Moderate churchman, and author of the two-volume Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion. He also makes surprising claims about Oswald's merits as a philosopher, and about the place Oswald merits in the history of philosophy. He writes that Oswald, "more than most writers of the eighteenth century, had things of the first order to put forward", that he was "one of the most gifted moral writers (...) of his age", and that he was "the most discerning of the Scots trio [Reid, Beattie, Oswald]". He views Oswald as a staunch defender of the "philosophia perennis" and thus as standing squarely, if unwittingly, in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. And he takes Oswald to anticipate such disparate writers as Adam Smith, Burke and de Maistre, Maritain and Garrigou-Lagrange, and Kierkegaard. (shrink)

This book contains seven essays devoted to various aspects of the continuity and survival of the theological tradition identified with such texts as the Corpus hermeticum and the Orphic hymns. Until the seventeenth century it was generally believed that these works pre-dated the Christian era, thereby supporting the claim of a perennial philosophy, identified with Platonism, as well as the presumed Judaic origins of Plato’s philosophy itself. Early modern scholarship exploded the myth of the antiquity of these writings, identifying (...) the majority of them with unknown early Christian authors, but their influence continued, as Walker demonstrates, even into the eighteenth century. Three of these essays have been published before, but those on Savonarola, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the French Jesuit missionaries in China, and the Chevalier Ramsay, have been prepared for this volume. (shrink)

This collection, in the genre of a Festschrift presented in honor of Elizabeth G. Salmon by her colleagues at Fordham University, comprises twelve scholarly essays of uniform excellence, all of them original to this volume. They range rather broadly over the whole history of Western man’s grappling with the question of God—from Plato’s hesitancy to give ultimacy to the Forms to Dewey’s discerning a role for God in the search for human meaning. In between is Avicenna’s understanding of intellect, (...) Descartes’ Cogito, Hegel’s critique of Kant, Marcel’s intuition of being as mystery, the Transcendental Thomists: Rahner’s and Lonergan’s metaphysics of spirit and Maréchal’s argument for God, and Peirce’s neglected argument from Erkenntnislehre as instinct more basic than reasoning. Unification comes from the fact that these are all exercises in the philosophy of God, an activity viewed here as retaining a certain contiguity with theology and religious history. No one school of philosophical thought serves to unify the essays; nearly all are represented, with the exception of any explicit use of Process Thought or of the new natural theology believed to be deriving from Analytical Philosophy, beyond Flew and MacIntyre. (shrink)

J.L. Ackrill's work on Plato and Aristotle has had a considerable influence upon ancient philosophical studies in the late twentieth century. This volume collects the best of Ackrill's essays on the two greatest philosophers of antiquity. With philosophical acuity and philological expertise he examines a wide range of texts and topics--from ethics and logic to epistemology and metaphysics--that continue to be in the focus of debate.

In the introductory first chapter the author states his conviction that Aristotle’s theory of learning, at the center of which stands the apodeictic syllogism, is inadequate because partial. Chapter 2 is a balanced survey of Aristotle’s syllogistic, which does not serve the purpose of discovery, but is intended to turn into science knowledge already acquired. All learning proceeds from preexisting knowledge which is structured by demonstration. Next Bauman turns to Plato’s theory of learning as present in the Meno: learning (...) is remembering. His account of the Socratic method of making a disciple see the truth by pertinent questions is excellent. He warns us to avoid extreme interpretations of ἀνάμνησις. According to Aristotle, Plato confounded the process of remembering with induction. The process of learning consists in the passing from opinion to knowledge. Aristotle’s theory as explained in the Posterior Analytics widely differs from Plato’s. In chapter 5, Bauman examines whether the syllogism based on a universal major is a petitio principii, a charge laid against it ever since antiquity and repeated by John Stuart Mill. For Mill, induction is the only form of real inference, but Bauman shows that Mill’s position is not correct. Aristotle sets up a method which allows us to understand why things are the way they are and to pass on knowledge. In chapter 6, Bauman compares Aristotle’s method with what teachers usually do and with how textbook authors conceive the passing on of knowledge. Some previous knowledge is necessary for all teaching. Aristotle focused on how the sciences should be taught, showing how conclusions are implicitly contained in principles or can be deduced from them. Bauman thinks that this is restricting learning far too much and remains unsatisfactory. He disagrees with Aristotle’s statement that all scientific knowledge is expressible in propositions in the indicative mood. The syllogism cannot be the only mode for all teaching. This difficulty, however, can be solved when one keeps in mind what strictly scientific knowledge in the Aristotelian sense is, and that there are other forms of knowledge such as opinion, factual knowledge, and dialectic. Furthermore one should also consider that the syllogism is basic to all forms of reasoning, even if there are syllogisms of different types. A printing mistake on page 191, line 13 should be corrected.—Leo J. Elders, Institute for Philosophy, “Rolduc,” Kerkrade, The Netherlands. (shrink)

GORDON, J.. Plato’s Erotic World: From Cosmic Origins to Human Death, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Mrs. Krook seems to describe her own religious position in the following words on p. 347 of her book: “the religious Humanist, who has received his first life from the Judaeo–Christian religion and is condemned to nurse his redemptive hope in solitude between the emancipated irreligious on the one side and the orthodox religious on the other …”. It is a pity that she delayed until the last paragraph to make explicit what one gathered only as the book went on. (...) One reader at least for most of the length of the book survived in hope between the desire to put the book away on the one hand and the desire to be kindled at some flame on the other. To him the book really seemed to come alive with the consideration of Messianic Humanism and in particular D. H. Lawrence’s The Man Who Died. One felt that there was something coming earlier on, especially from the discussion of Arnold’s Literature and Dogma, and one was told that one could expect even more from a consideration of Henry James, but the book until then might have seemed little more than a collection of not very well related comments on a series of texts: Plato’s Gorgias, Hobbes’s Leviathan, St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, Hume’s Enquiry into the Principles of Morals, J. S. Mill’s Three Essays on Religion, Matthew Arnold’s Literature and Dogma, F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies, and then Lawrence’s The Man Who Died. (shrink)

A careful reading of Plato's works show that Thrasymachus and Callicles, his famous immoralists, are unselfconsciously devoted to virtue as they see it. They thereby offer surprising support for the view that people are not simply self-interested, and they cast light on the beliefs and hopes we all have of justice.

Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works. Also included are concise introductions by (...) Cooper and Hutchinson to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition. (shrink)

J.N. Findlay was a South African philosopher who published from the late 1940s into the 1980s. He had a prestigious international academic career, holding many academic posts around the world. This article uses a textual comparative approach and focuses on Findlay’s Gifford Lecture at St Andrews University between 1965 and 1970. The objective of the article is to highlight the extent to which Findlay’s philosophical writings were influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism. Although predominantly a Platonist, Findlay drew influence from Asian philosophy (...) and religion, particularly Mahāyāna Buddhism. In these lectures, he applies the metaphor of the Platonic Cave to investigate Hegelian and Husserlian approaches to knowledge. Though he was a leading Hegel and Husserl scholar, his reading of these two philosophers is strongly influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism, resulting in a unique mystical interpretation of these two philosophers. Revisiting Findlay’s writings is significant for two reasons; firstly, he investigated Buddhism prior to the Asian religions being included in Religious Studies departments’ purview in South African universities, and secondly, his interpretation of two prominent Western philosophers along Buddhist lines provides an early attempt at decolonising the predominance of Western philosophical views of knowledge.Contribution: This contribution forms part of a larger collection of essays investigating philosophical works that have had a significant impact on the study of religion. This contribution investigates the Buddhist influence on J.N. Findlay’s philosophical readings of Husserl and Hegel. (shrink)

In the Gorgias, Socrates argues that just punishment, though painful, benefits the unjust person by removing injustice from her soul. This paper argues that Socrates thinks the true judge (i) will never use corporal punishment, because such procedures do not remove injustice from the soul; (ii) will use refutations and rebukes as punishments that reveal and focus attention on psychological disorder (= injustice); and (iii) will use confiscation, exile, and death to remove external goods that facilitate unjust action.

Plato's "Politicus" (Statesman) stands, both in date and in political thought, between the "Republic" and the "Laws". It presents his thought at the point when he was chastened by disappointment with his attempts to put theory into practice at Syracuse. The dialogue reflects contemporary controversies on the method of definition; but its logical exercises and the impressive 'myth' of the two cosmic eras serve to bring out its essential political teaching. This volume contains the text in translation. In this (...) second edition, Skemp made corrections to his extensive introduction and running commentary, and added a new appendix taking into account scholarship since the first (1952) edition. (shrink)

This book is an anthology of Plato's writings, connected with sections of commentary.

This book takes on two main tasks. The first is to argue that anti-hedonism lies at the center of Plato's critical project in both ethics and politics. Plato sees pleasure and pain as our sole sources of empirical evidence about good and bad. But as sources of evidence they are highly fallible; contrast effects with pain intensify certain pleasures, including most pleasures related to the body and social standing. This leads us to believe that the causes of such (...) pleasures (e.g. food, drink, sex, status) are greater goods than they are, and greater goods than other, more important goods (e.g. virtue, knowledge). As a result, hedonic error produces the belief that vice, including injustice, can be prudent. Hedonic error leads to other misconceptions of virtue as well, such as that wisdom is weak and can be ruled by the passions. These cognitive distortions can only be corrected by reference to some non-hedonic standard, so hedonists reliably fall prey to them. This entire system of attitudes—hedonism and its associated misconceptions of virtue—is widely held and constitutes popular morality. Popular morality's basic source is hedonic error, but it is also transmitted and sustained in society through shame and fear of punishment. However, avoiding shame and punishment requires a sort of double-think: adherents of popular morality must accept certain views that they cannot acknowledge too clearly or too publicly. For example, they must hold that injustice can be prudent and must be willing to wrong out-groups (e.g. another city), but openly acknowledging this same view threatens in-groups (one's own city) by implying willingness to wrong some in the city to benefit a closer in-group (e.g. one's class, clique, or family). // -/- The book's second task is to tackle a seeming outlier to Plato's anti-hedonism: the _Protagoras_, where Socrates appears to defend hedonism. I argue that the _Protagoras_ actually perfectly illustrates Plato's anti-hedonism, as explained above. Protagoras and other sophists think they shape public opinion, but in fact they have internalized popular morality through shame and fear. As a result, Protagoras accepts but refuses to openly endorse three parts of popular morality: that injustice can be prudent (333c), that pleasure is the good (351c-d), and that wisdom is weak and can be ruled by the passions (352c-d). Each time, his concealed view is (aptly!) attributed to "the many". So, when Socrates appears to endorse hedonism in the _Protagoras_, he actually introduces and develops the view as part of his examination of Protagoras' covert ethical commitments. (shrink)