The Poetics of Philosophy [A Reading of Plato]
The Poetics of Philosophy [A Reading of Plato]

Author: David Ross

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2008-12-18

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 1443802603

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The Poetics of Philosophy is my attempt to hear what academic philosophy attempts to silence, namely, how reason resonates with madness. It is thus a stinging of the great steed of academia in order to recover and re-experience what otherwise would be repressed by the exigencies of bureaucratic-commodity life in the late capitalist world. An analysis of Plato’s principal dialogues with a view towards developing the author’s conception of thinking, knowing, and loving, it incorporates the insights of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida. Provoking the world mind to reflect upon its phenomenological possibility for Being dispersed within its daily routines or business, the book argues for the metaphysicality of physical reality articulated through the narrative trope of fractal dialectical logic. The present volume’s more general implications extend the insights of the author’s previous work in the area of social science. I refer to the possibility for world communist revolution, which is predicated on communism’s thorough ridding itself of its naïve materialist perspective, the relics of a Newtonian Universe, and its embracing of a fractal-dialectical logic (or similar) that is better able to incorporate the yearning for immortality, desire to experience beauty, and the need to have a meaningful life that define human species life. To articulate such a framework is the aim of my general research.

Plato and the Poets
Plato and the Poets

Author: Pierre Destrée

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-03-21

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9004201831

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Plato’s discussions of poetry and the poets stand at the cradle of Western literary criticism. Plato is, paradoxically, both the philosopher who cites, or alludes to, works of poetry more than any other, and the one who is at the same time the harshest critic of poetry. The nineteen essays presented here aim to offer various avenues to this paradox, and to illuminate the ways poetry and the poets are discussed by Plato throughout his writing career, from the Apology and the Ion to the Laws. As well as throwing new light on old topics, such as mimesis and poetic inspiration, the volume introduces fresh approaches to Plato’s philosophy of poetry and literature.

Being and Logos
Being and Logos

Author: John Sallis

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-09-20

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 0253044332

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An exercise in the careful reading of the dialogues in their originary character. “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

The Philosophy of Poetry
The Philosophy of Poetry

Author: John Gibson

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0199603677

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In recent years philosophers have produced important books on nearly all the major arts: the novel and painting, music and theatre, dance and architecture, conceptual art and even gardening. Poetry is the sole exception. This is an astonishing omission, one this collection of original essays will correct. If contemporary philosophy still regards metaphors such as 'Juliet is the sun' as a serious problem, one has an acute sense of how prepared it is to make philosophical and aesthetic sense of poems such W. B. Yeats's 'The Second Coming', Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy', or Paul Celan's 'Todesfuge'. The Philosophy of Poetry brings together philosophers of art, language, and mind to expose and address the array of problems poetry raises for philosophy. In doing so it lays the foundation for a proper philosophy of poetry, setting out the various puzzles and paradoxes that future work in the field will have to address. Given its breadth of approach, the volume is relevant not only to aesthetics but to all areas of philosophy concerned with meaning, truth, and the communicative and expressive powers of language more generally. Poetry is the last unexplored frontier in contemporary analytic aesthetics, and this volume offers a powerful demonstration of how central poetry should be to philosophy.

Plato's Four Muses
Plato's Four Muses

Author: Andrea Capra

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780674417229

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Plato's Four Muses reconstructs Plato's authorial self-portrait through a fresh reading of the Phhaedrus, with an Introduction and Conclusion that contextualize the construction more broadly. The reference to four Muses in the myth of the cicadas is read as a hint of the "ingredients" of philosophical discourse, which Plato sets against the Greek tradition of poetic initiations and conceptualizes as a form of provocatively old-fasioned 'mousikē'.The book unravels three surprising features that define Plato's works. First, there is a measure of anti-intellectualism: Plato counters the rationalistic excesses of other forms of discourse, thus distinguishing his own words from both prose and poetry; second, Plato envisages a new beginning for philosophy: he conceptualizes the birth of Socratic dialogue in, and against, the Pythagorean tradition, with an emphasis on the new role of writing and on the cult of Socrates in the Academy; finally, a self-consciously ambivalent attitude emerges with respect to the social function of the dialogues. Plato's works are conceived both as a kind of “resistance literature” and as a preliminary move towards the new poetry of the Kallipolis.

Ancient Philosophical Poetics
Ancient Philosophical Poetics

Author: Malcolm Heath

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0521198798

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Reveals how ancient philosophers approached questions about the nature of poetry, its ethical and social impact and access to truth.

The Just City
The Just City

Author: Jo Walton

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-01-13

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1466800828

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"Here in the Just City you will become your best selves. You will learn and grow and strive to be excellent." Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future—all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past. The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome—and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her. Meanwhile, Apollo—stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he does—has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being human. Then, a few years in, Sokrates arrives—the same Sokrates recorded by Plato himself—to ask all the troublesome questions you would expect. What happens next is a tale only the brilliant Jo Walton could tell. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato
Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato

Author: Rana Saadi Liebert

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-07

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1316885615

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This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato's Republic. Socrates' claim that tragic poetry satisfies our 'hunger for tears' hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic's notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions.

Poetic Justice
Poetic Justice

Author: Jill Frank

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-01-20

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 022651577X

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When Plato wrote his dialogues, written texts were disseminated primarily by performance and oral recitation. Literacy, however, was spreading, and Frank is the first to point out that the dialogues offer two distinct ways of learning to read. One method treats learning to read as being led to true beliefs about letters and syllables by an authoritative teacher. The other method, recommended by Socrates, focuses on learning to read by trial and error, and on the opinions learners come to have based on their own fallible experiences. In all the dialogues in which these methods appear, learning to read is likened to coming to know, and the significant differences between the two methods are at the center of Frank's argument. When learning to read is understood as a practice of assimilating true beliefs by an authoritative teacher, it reflects the dominant scholarly account of Plato's philosophy as authoritative knowledge and of Plato's politics as, if not authoritarian, then at least anti-democratic. Rulers should have such authoritative knowledge and be philosopher-kings. However, learning to read or coming to know by way of Socrates' method, leads to quite a different set of conclusions. Professor Frank resists the claim that Plato's dialogues seek to endorse or enforce a hierarchy of knowledge and politics. Instead, she argues that they offer a philosophical education in self-authorization by representing and enacting challenges to all claims to expert authority, including those of philosophy.

Truth and Wonder
Truth and Wonder

Author: Robert Eaglestone

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1000475956

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Truth and Wonder is an accessible introduction to Plato and Aristotle, showing their crucial influence for literary and cultural studies, modern languages and related disciplines. It focusses on both what Plato and Aristotle say about literature and how they say it, and so demonstrates the ways their philosophies still shape our reading, thinking and living. In the clear and engaging style for which he has become known, Robert Eaglestone uses Plato and Aristotle’s literary qualities to explain their thought. He presents Plato’s ideas through the metaphors, stories and style of his dialogues, and Aristotle’s ideas through the significance of narrative. Truth and Wonder draws on a wide range of thinkers including Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Martha Nussbaum, and a number of canonical writers including Phillip Sidney, Percy Shelley, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Iris Murdoch with examples that will be familiar to students. The ideas of Plato and Aristotle underlie much of Western culture, continue to inspire contemporary literary and philosophical work and shape the case for the central importance of the humanities today. Truth and Wonder is essential reading for students and researchers in the study of literature, theory and criticism as well as for those wishing to understand the foundations of the field. It will also be of interest to those studying philosophy, classics and political theory. Its accessible style and approach also mean it’s a perfect starting point for any literary-minded person who wants to know more about these two foundational thinkers.