Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato

Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato

Author: Sandra Peterson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-03-10

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1139497979

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Plato's Apology, Socrates says he spent his life examining and questioning people on how best to live, while avowing that he himself knows nothing important. Elsewhere, however, for example in Plato's Republic, Plato's Socrates presents radical and grandiose theses. In this book Sandra Peterson offers a hypothesis which explains the puzzle of Socrates' two contrasting manners. She argues that the apparently confident doctrinal Socrates is in fact conducting the first step of an examination: by eliciting his interlocutors' reactions, his apparently doctrinal lectures reveal what his interlocutors believe is the best way to live. She tests her hypothesis by close reading of passages in the Theaetetus, Republic and Phaedo. Her provocative conclusion, that there is a single Socrates whose conception and practice of philosophy remain the same throughout the dialogues, will be of interest to a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and classics.


Early Socratic Dialogues

Early Socratic Dialogues

Author: Emlyn-Jones Chris

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2005-06-30

Total Pages: 757

ISBN-13: 0141914076

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Rich in drama and humour, they include the controversial Ion, a debate on poetic inspiration; Laches, in which Socrates seeks to define bravery; and Euthydemus, which considers the relationship between philosophy and politics. Together, these dialogues provide a definitive portrait of the real Socrates and raise issues still keenly debated by philosophers, forming an incisive overview of Plato's philosophy.


On the Socratic Education

On the Socratic Education

Author: Christopher Bruell

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2003-04-08

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1461639735

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Can the education which so many search for today on our college campuses be found in the works of a past author? On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues uncovers the education that Socrates sought on his own behalf and, in so doing, made available to others. Sixteen dialogues are discussed, each considered on its own, but also placed within the context of Plato's account of the Socratic quest. The aim of the book is to make Socrates' investigation and resolution of the questions that still concern us as human beings more accessible to serious contemporary readers.


Cross-Examining Socrates

Cross-Examining Socrates

Author: John Beversluis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-01-06

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 9780521550581

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a rereading of Plato's early dialogues from the point of view of the characters with whom Socrates engages in debate. Socrates' interlocutors are generally acknowledged to play important dialectical and dramatic roles, but no previous book has focused mainly on them. Existing studies are thoroughly dismissive of the interlocutors and reduce them to the status of mere mouthpieces for views which are hopelessly confused or demonstrably false. This book takes interlocutors seriously and treats them as genuine intellectual opponents whose views are often more defensible than commentators have standardly thought. The author's purpose is not to summarise their positions or the arguments of the dialogues in which they appear, much less to produce a series of biographical sketches, but to investigate the phenomenology of philosophical disputation as it manifests itself in the early dialogues.


Plato's Socrates as Educator

Plato's Socrates as Educator

Author: Gary Alan Scott

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2000-10-19

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0791491927

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Despite his ceaseless efforts to purge his fellow citizens of their unfounded opinions and to bring them to care for what he believes to be the most important things, Plato's Socrates rarely succeeds in his pedagogical project with the characters he encounters. This is in striking contrast to the historical Socrates, who spawned the careers of Plato, Xenophon, and other authors of Socratic dialogues. Through an examination of Socratic pedagogy under its most propitious conditions, focusing on a narrow class of dialogues featuring Lysis and Alcibiades, this book answers the question: "why does Plato portray his divinely appointed gadfly as such a dramatic failure?"


Plato and the Socratic Dialogue

Plato and the Socratic Dialogue

Author: Charles H. Kahn

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-01-09

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 9780521433259

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book offers a new interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues as the expression of a unified philosophical vision. Whereas the traditional view sees the dialogues as marking successive stages in Plato's philosophical development, we may more legitimately read them as reflecting an artistic plan for the gradual, indirect and partial exposition of Platonic philosophy. The magnificent literary achievement of the dialogues can be fully appreciated only from the viewpoint of a unitarian reading of the philosophical content.


The Republic

The Republic

Author: By Plato

Publisher: BookRix

Published: 2019-06-15

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 3736801467

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BCE, concerning the definition of justice, the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. The dramatic date of the dialogue has been much debated and though it must take place some time during the Peloponnesian War, "there would be jarring anachronisms if any of the candidate specific dates between 432 and 404 were assigned". It is Plato's best-known work and has proven to be one of the most intellectually and historically influential works of philosophy and political theory. In it, Socrates along with various Athenians and foreigners discuss the meaning of justice and examine whether or not the just man is happier than the unjust man by considering a series of different cities coming into existence "in speech", culminating in a city (Kallipolis) ruled by philosopher-kings; and by examining the nature of existing regimes. The participants also discuss the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the roles of the philosopher and of poetry in society.


Socratic Wisdom : The Model of Knowledge in Plato's Early Dialogues

Socratic Wisdom : The Model of Knowledge in Plato's Early Dialogues

Author: Hugh H. Benson Professor of Philosophy University of Oklahoma

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000-01-05

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9780199771240

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

While the early Platonic dialogues have often been explored and appreciated for their ethical content, this is the first book devoted solely to the epistemology of Plato's early dialogues. Author Hugh H. Benson argues that the characteristic features of these dialogues--Socrates' method of questions and answers (elenchos), his fascination with definition, his professions of ignorance, and his thesis that virtue is knowledge--are decidedly epistemological. In this thoughtful study, Benson uncovers the model of knowledge that underlies these distinctively Socratic views. What emerges is unfamiliar, yet closer to a contemporary conception of scientific understanding than ordinary knowledge.