How Philosophy Became Socratic

How Philosophy Became Socratic

Author: Laurence Lampert

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-07-15

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 0226470970

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Plato’s dialogues show Socrates at different ages, beginning when he was about nineteen and already deeply immersed in philosophy and ending with his execution five decades later. By presenting his model philosopher across a fifty-year span of his life, Plato leads his readers to wonder: does that time period correspond to the development of Socrates’ thought? In this magisterial investigation of the evolution of Socrates’ philosophy, Laurence Lampert answers in the affirmative. The chronological route that Plato maps for us, Lampert argues, reveals the enduring record of philosophy as it gradually took the form that came to dominate the life of the mind in the West. The reader accompanies Socrates as he breaks with the century-old tradition of philosophy, turns to his own path, gradually enters into a deeper understanding of nature and human nature, and discovers the successful way to transmit his wisdom to the wider world. Focusing on the final and most prominent step in that process and offering detailed textual analysis of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic, How Philosophy Became Socratic charts Socrates’ gradual discovery of a proper politics to shelter and advance philosophy.


How Socrates Became Socrates

How Socrates Became Socrates

Author: Laurence Lampert

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-03-11

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780226746333

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Plato dispersed his account of how Socrates became Socrates across three dialogues. Thus, Plato rendered his becoming discoverable only to readers truly invested. In How Socrates Became Socrates, Laurence Lampert recognizes the path of Plato’s strides and guides us through the true account of Socrates’ becoming. He divulges how and why Plato ordered his Phaedo, Parmenides, and Symposium chronologically to give readers access to Socrates’ development on philosophy’s fundamental questions of being and knowing. In addition to a careful and precise analysis of Plato’s Phaedo,Parmenides, and Symposium, Lampert shows that properly entwined, Plato’s three dialogues fuse to portray a young thinker entering philosophy’s true radical power. Lampert reveals why this radicality needed to be guarded and places this discussion within the greater scheme of the politics of philosophy.


Charmides

Charmides

Author: Plato

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 1986-01-01

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13: 9780872200104

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A literal translation, allowing the simplicity and vigor of the Greek diction to shine through.


The Socratic Way of Life

The Socratic Way of Life

Author: Thomas L. Pangle

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 022651692X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Socratic Way of Life is the first English-language book-length study of the philosopher Xenophon’s masterwork. In it, Thomas L. Pangle shows that Xenophon depicts more authentically than does Plato the true teachings and way of life of the citizen philosopher Socrates, founder of political philosophy. In the first part of the book, Pangle analyzes Xenophon’s defense of Socrates against the two charges of injustice upon which he was convicted by democratic Athens: impiety and corruption of the youth. In the second part, Pangle analyzes Xenophon’s account of how Socrates’s life as a whole was just, in the sense of helping through his teaching a wide range of people. Socrates taught by never ceasing to raise, and to progress in answering, the fundamental and enduring civic questions: what is pious and impious, noble and ignoble, just and unjust, genuine statesmanship and genuine citizenship. Inspired by Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s assessments of Xenophon as the true voice of Socrates, The Socratic Way of Life establishes the Memorabilia as the groundwork of all subsequent political philosophy.


Socrates Founding Political Philosophy in Xenophon's "Economist", "Symposium", and "Apology"

Socrates Founding Political Philosophy in Xenophon's

Author: Thomas L. Pangle

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-04-22

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 022664247X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The oeuvre of the Greek historian Xenophon, whose works stand with those of Plato as essential accounts of the teachings of Socrates, has seen a new surge of attention after decades in the shadows. And no one has done more in recent years to spearhead the revival than Thomas L. Pangle. Here, Pangle provides a sequel to his study of Xenophon’s longest account of Socrates, the Memorabilia, expanding the scope of inquiry through an incisive treatment of Xenophon’s shorter Socratic dialogues, the Economist, the Symposium, and the Apology of Socrates to the Jury. What Pangle reveals is that these three depictions of Socrates complement and, in fact, serve to complete the Memorabilia in meaningful ways. Unlike the Socrates of Plato, Xenophon’s Socrates is more complicated and human, an individual working out the problem of what it means to live well and virtuously. While the Memorabilia defends Socrates by stressing his likeness to conventionally respectable gentlemen, Xenophon’s remaining Socratic texts offer a more nuanced characterization by highlighting how Socrates also diverges from conventions of gentlemanliness in his virtues, behaviors, and peculiar views of quotidian life and governmental rule. One question threads through the three writings: Which way of life best promotes human existence, politics, and economics—that of the Socratic political philosopher with his philosophic virtues or that of the gentleman with his familial, civic, and moral virtues? In uncovering the nuances of Xenophon’s approach to the issue in the Economist, Symposium, and Apology, Pangle’s book cements the significance of these writings for the field and their value for shaping a fuller conception of just who Socrates was and what he taught.


Pursuits of Wisdom

Pursuits of Wisdom

Author: John M. Cooper

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-08-25

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 069115970X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about how to live philosophically: philosophy was not one but many, mutually opposed, ways of life. Examining this tradition from its establishment by Socrates in the fifth century BCE through Plotinus in the third century CE and the eclipse of pagan philosophy by Christianity, Pursuits of Wisdom examines six central philosophies of living--Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the Platonist life of late antiquity. The book describes the shared assumptions that allowed these thinkers to conceive of their philosophies as ways of life, as well as the distinctive ideas that led them to widely different conclusions about the best human life. Clearing up many common misperceptions and simplifications, Cooper explains in detail the Socratic devotion to philosophical discussion about human nature, human life, and human good; the Aristotelian focus on the true place of humans within the total system of the natural world; the Stoic commitment to dutifully accepting Zeus's plans; the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure through tranquil activities that exercise perception, thought, and feeling; the Skeptical eschewal of all critical reasoning in forming their beliefs; and, finally, the late Platonist emphasis on spiritual concerns and the eternal realm of Being. Pursuits of Wisdom is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what the great philosophers of antiquity thought was the true purpose of philosophy--and of life.


What a Philosopher Is

What a Philosopher Is

Author: Laurence Lampert

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-01-26

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 022648825X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The trajectory of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought has long presented a difficulty for the study of his philosophy. How did the young Nietzsche—classicist and ardent advocate of Wagner’s cultural renewal—become the philosopher of Will to Power and the Eternal Return? With this book, Laurence Lampert answers that question. He does so through his trademark technique of close readings of key works in Nietzsche’s journey to philosophy: The Birth of Tragedy, Schopenhauer as Educator, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Human All Too Human, and “Sanctus Januarius,” the final book of the 1882 Gay Science. Relying partly on how Nietzsche himself characterized his books in his many autobiographical guides to the trajectory of his thought, Lampert sets each in the context of Nietzsche’s writings as a whole, and looks at how they individually treat the question of what a philosopher is. Indispensable to his conclusions are the workbooks in which Nietzsche first recorded his advances, especially the 1881 workbook which shows him gradually gaining insights into the two foundations of his mature thinking. The result is the most complete picture we’ve had yet of the philosopher’s development, one that gives us a Promethean Nietzsche, gaining knowledge even as he was expanding his thought to create new worlds.


Six Questions of Socrates

Six Questions of Socrates

Author: Christopher Phillips

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780393051575

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Considers the questions posed by Socrates using group discussions from around the world in an effort to show universal commonalities.


How Socrates Became Socrates

How Socrates Became Socrates

Author: Laurence Lampert

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-03-16

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 022674647X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Plato dispersed his account of how Socrates became Socrates across three dialogues. Thus, Plato rendered his becoming discoverable only to readers truly invested. In How Socrates Became Socrates, Laurence Lampert recognizes the path of Plato’s strides and guides us through the true account of Socrates’ becoming. He divulges how and why Plato ordered his Phaedo, Parmenides, and Symposium chronologically to give readers access to Socrates’ development on philosophy’s fundamental questions of being and knowing. In addition to a careful and precise analysis of Plato’s Phaedo,Parmenides, and Symposium, Lampert shows that properly entwined, Plato’s three dialogues fuse to portray a young thinker entering philosophy’s true radical power. Lampert reveals why this radicality needed to be guarded and places this discussion within the greater scheme of the politics of philosophy.


Becoming Socrates

Becoming Socrates

Author: Alex Priou

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1580469191

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A rigorous investigation of Socrates' early education, pinpointing the thought that led Socrates to turn from natural science to the study of morality, ethics, and politics