New Perspectives on Platonic Dialectic
New Perspectives on Platonic Dialectic

Author: Jens Kristian Larsen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-02-25

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1000543145

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For Plato, philosophy depends on, or is perhaps even identical with, dialectic. Few will dispute this claim, but there is little agreement as to what Platonic dialectic is. According to a now prevailing view it is a method for inquiry the conception of which changed so radically for Plato that it "had a strong tendency ... to mean ‘the ideal method’, whatever that may be" (Richard Robinson). Most studies of Platonic dialectic accordingly focus on only one aspect of this method that allegedly characterizes one specific period in Plato’s development. This volume offers fresh perspectives on Platonic dialectic. Its 13 chapters present a comprehensive picture of this crucial aspect of Plato’s philosophy and seek to clarify what Plato takes to be proper dialectical procedures. They examine the ways in which these procedures are related to each other and other aspects of his philosophy, such as ethics, psychology, and metaphysics. Collectively, the chapters challenge the now prevailing understanding of Plato’s ideal of method. New Perspectives on Platonic Dialectic will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in Plato, ancient philosophy, philosophical method, and the history of logic.

Clitophon's Challenge
Clitophon's Challenge

Author: Hugh H. Benson

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0199324832

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The end of Plato's 'Clitophon' can be seen to raise something like the following challenge: How is one to acquire (learn) the knowledge Socrates has so persuasively shown to be essential to virtue and apparently absent from us all. 'Clitophon's Challenge' explores Plato's response to this challenge from the 'Apology', 'Laches', 'Euthyphro', and 'Protagoras' to the 'Meno', 'Phaedo', and 'Republic'.

Plato's Dialectic at Play
Plato's Dialectic at Play

Author: Kevin Corrigan

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-10-29

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 027102271X

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The Symposium is one of Plato’s most accessible dialogues, an engrossing historical document as well as an entertaining literary masterpiece. By uncovering the structural design of the dialogue, Plato’s Dialectic at Play aims at revealing a Plato for whom the dialogical form was not merely ornamentation or philosophical methodology but the essence of philosophical exploration. His dialectic is not only argument; it is also play. Careful analysis of each layer of the text leads cumulatively to a picture of the dialogue’s underlying structure, related to both argument and myth, and shows that a dynamic link exists between Diotima’s higher mysteries and the organization of the dialogue as a whole. On this basis the authors argue that the Symposium, with its positive theory of art contained in the ascent to the Beautiful, may be viewed as a companion piece to the Republic, with its negative critique of the role of art in the context of the Good. Following Nietzsche’s suggestion and applying criteria developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, they further argue for seeing the Symposium as the first novel. The book concludes with a comprehensive reevaluation of the significance of the Symposium and its place in Plato’s thought generally, touching on major issues in Platonic scholarship: the nature of art, the body-soul connection, the problem of identity, the relationship between mythos and logos, Platonic love, and the question of authorial writing and the vanishing signature of the absent Plato himself.

The Development of Dialectic from Plato to Aristotle
The Development of Dialectic from Plato to Aristotle

Author: Jakob Leth Fink

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-11-01

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1139789287

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The period from Plato's birth to Aristotle's death (427–322 BC) is one of the most influential and formative in the history of Western philosophy. The developments of logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and science in this period have been investigated, controversies have arisen and many new theories have been produced. But this is the first book to give detailed scholarly attention to the development of dialectic during this decisive period. It includes chapters on topics such as: dialectic as interpersonal debate between a questioner and a respondent; dialectic and the dialogue form; dialectical methodology; the dialectical context of certain forms of arguments; the role of the respondent in guaranteeing good argument; dialectic and presentation of knowledge; the interrelations between written dialogues and spoken dialectic; and definition, induction and refutation from Plato to Aristotle. The book contributes to the history of philosophy and also to the contemporary debate about what philosophy is.

Plato's Dialectic, as Developed Through His Ethics, Epistomology and Ontology
Plato's Dialectic, as Developed Through His Ethics, Epistomology and Ontology

Author: Daniel Oduber-Quiros

Publisher:

Published: 1948

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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"Platonic Philosophy as a whole is a movement upwards. It is the approach to an ideal, to an absolute end which exists of its own right. It does not offer a system in which all the component ideas are located in a specific place, and it does not force us to study these separately and then bring them together into an artificial whole. We can consider Plato's Philosophy from different points of view: his Ethics, his Epistemology, or his Politics, but every one of these points of view is so concerned and intermingled with the rest that an isolation of one of them is, strictly speacking, impossible. [...]" --

Retracing the Platonic Text
Retracing the Platonic Text

Author: John Russon

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780810117020

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Written from a Continental perspective, Retracing the Platonic Text reveals dimensions of the dialogues that are not addressed by traditional philosophy. These essays by prominent scholars focus on the texts' literary elements, in particular challenges to contemporary interpretations of the Platonic dialogue as a whole. The result illustrates the depth of Platonic thought and the debt of all philosophy to it. Retracing the Platonic Text is a pioneering effort in demonstrating how Continental philosophy both reflects and expands upon Greek philosophy.

The Third Way
The Third Way

Author: Francisco J. Gonzalez

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780847681143

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The study of Plato's dialogues has traditionally oscillated between two paradigms: one that portrays the dialogues as treatises expounding doctrines and one that sees them as purely skeptical, rhetorical, or literary. This collection of new essays by twelve noted Plato scholars illustrates the fruitfulness of breaking away from those paradigms, which have divided Platonic scholarship and led it to a number of dead ends. While the essays are diverse in their approaches, each seeks to find a 'third way' to understand Plato, reading him as neither a dogmatist nor a skeptic but as a philosopher capable of reconciling the content and form of his writings.

Being and Logos
Being and Logos

Author: John Sallis

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 9780253210715

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Being and Logos is... a philosophical adventure of rare inspiration.... Its power to illuminate the text..., its ecumenicity of inspiration, its methodological rigor, its originality, and its philosophical profundity--all together make it one of the few philosophical interpretations that the philosopher will want to re-read along with the dialogues themselves. A superadded gift is the author's prose, which is a model of lucidity and grace. --International Philosophical Quarterly Being and Logos is highly recommended for those who wish to learn how a thoughtful scholar approaches Platonic dialogues as well as for those who wish to consider a serious discussion of some basic themes in the dialogues. --The Academic Reviewer

Platonic Ethics, Old and New
Platonic Ethics, Old and New

Author: Julia Annas

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-04-08

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0801466970

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Julia Annas here offers a fundamental reexamination of Plato's ethical thought by investigating the Middle Platonist perspective, which emerged at the end of Plato's own school, the Academy. She highlights the differences between ancient and modern assumptions about Plato's ethics—and stresses the need to be more critical about our own. One of these modern assumptions is the notion that the dialogues record the development of Plato's thought. Annas shows how the Middle Platonists, by contrast, viewed the dialogues as multiple presentations of a single Platonic ethical philosophy, differing in form and purpose but ultimately coherent. They also read Plato's ethics as consistently defending the view that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and see it as converging in its main points with the ethics of the Stoics. Annas goes on to explore the Platonic idea that humankind's final end is "becoming like God"—an idea that is well known among the ancients but virtually ignored in modern interpretations. She also maintains that modern interpretations, beginning in the nineteenth century, have placed undue emphasis on the Republic, and have treated it too much as a political work, whereas the ancients rightly saw it as a continuation of Plato's ethical writings.