This selective and opinionated overview of English-language scholarship on the philosophical method(s) of Plato's Socrates discusses whether this Socrates has any expertise or method, how he examines others and why, and how he exhorts others to care about wisdom and the state of their soul.

There is a wide consensus among scholars that Plato’s Socrates is wrong to trust in reason and argument as capable of converting people to the life of philosophy. In this paper, I argue for the opposite. I show that Socrates employs a more sophisticated strategy than is typically supposed. Its key component is the use of philosophical argument not to lead an interlocutor to rationally conclude that he must change his way of life but rather to cause a certain affective (...) experience, one that can be effective at changing his beliefs about how best to live. (shrink)

Plato is commonly considered a metaphysical dualist conceiving of a world of Forms separate from the world of particulars in which we live. This paper explores the motivation for postulating that second world as opposed to making do with the one we have. The main objective is to demonstrate that and how everything, Forms and all, can instead fit into the same world. The approach is exploratory, as there can be no proof in the standard sense. The debate between explaining (...) Plato’s ontology with a single world and requiring a two-world model to make sense of the same thing is typically about scouring the Platonic corpus for evidence and turning to Aristotle for help where we need it. The aim here is to dig deeper than what either of them, or anyone else, has said or implied about the number or worlds, searching instead for any insight that might be gained from the way Forms are supposed to exist versus what we ourselves might understand by existence. Although the paper is, at its most basic level, about the existence of the Forms, the intention is not to prove that they exist, nor to evaluate the proofs and objections already on record, but to consider how they might exist and what follows if they do. Dialogue toward consensus on why we think the Forms exist, and why we think they do not, could perhaps provide a smoother “second sailing” in waters where we have been unable to agree whether they do and where they would if they did. (shrink)

A commentary on the Symposium as a challenge and a gift to Athens. I begin with a reflection on three dates: 416 bce, the date of Agathon’s victory party, c. 400, the approximate date of Apollodorus’ retelling of the party, and c. 375, the approximate date of the ‘publication’ of the dialogue, and I argue that Plato reminds his contemporary Athens both of its great poetic and legal and scientific traditions and of the historical fact that the way late fourth (...) century Athens appropriated them in some way led to the city’s demise at the turn of the century; thus the dialogue is Plato’s challenge to his contemporary Athens to recognize and overcome its flawed relation to its cultural resources. Heard in this way, the key moments are Aristophanes’ implied critique of Pausanias and Eryximachus and Socrates’ implied critique of Aristophanes and Agathon. Proceeding by a close reading, I argue that Plato exposes, for those moved to rise to his challenge, the failure of his great predecessors to conceive the divine in a way that, worthy of the height and otherness divinity requires, can provide substantive orientation for the burgeoning new reason that animates the city’s culture. (shrink)

The article tries to prove that the famous formula "epekeina tês ousias" has to be understood in the sense of being beyond being and not only in the sense of being beyond essence. We make hereby three points: first, since pure textual exegesis of 509b8–10 seems to lead to endless controversy, a formal proof for the metaontological interpretation could be helpful to settle the issue; we try to give such a proof. Second, we offer a corollary of the formal proof, (...) showing that not only self-predication of the form of the Good, but of any form is not possible, that is: no form of F has the form of F. Third, we apply Spinoza’s distinction between an ens imaginarium and a chimaera to Plato’s Idea of the Good. (shrink)

Despite Diotima’s irresistible virtues and attractiveness across the millennia, she spells trouble for philosophy. It is not her fault that she has been misunderstood, nor is it Plato’s. Rather, I suspect, each era has made of Diotima what it desired her to be. Her malleability is related to the assumption that Plato invented her, that she is a mere literary fiction, licensing the imagination to do what it will. In the first part of my paper, I argue against three contemporary (...) ‘majority views’ about Diotima that I regard as false. The first is that we can be certain she is fictional;1 a second is that Diotima is our best evidence for Plato’s feminism; the third, that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for the higher mysteries in the Symposium. After I have set aside what I regard as false, I proceed in the second half of my paper to develop Diotima’s positive contribution to philosophical psychology, her naturalistic account of the psyche as mortal, unified, and developmental. Whether the view Plato assigns to her is one that he held I do not pretend to know; but it is a powerful, defensible, and coherent view that inspired positive aspects of Freudian psychology in the twentieth century. Freud’s insight, in fact, makes clear how erōs can be developed in relation to the bad as well as the good. (shrink)

Plato’s Apology of Socrates contains a spirited account of Socrates’ relationship with the city of Athens and its citizens. As Socrates stands on trial for corrupting the youth, surprisingly, he does not defend the substance and the methods of his teaching. Instead, he simply denies that he is a teacher. Many scholars have contended that, in having Socrates deny he is a teacher, Plato is primarily interested in distinguishing him from the sophists. In this article, I argue that, given the (...) historic educational transformation in Socrates’ and Plato’s lifetimes, Socrates’ denial is far more complex and far reaching than the Socrates-versus-the-sophists distinction indicates. Socrates suggests that Athenians have failed to recognize that there were various types among the new educators of fifth century Athens: orators, sophists, natural philosophers and, perhaps, a philosopher like Socrates. Further, the traditional education, which the Athenians believed was threatened by the new educators, was itself fractured. Ultimately, rather than offering a straightforward distinction between philosophizing and teaching, Socrates and the sophists, Plato treats the question of teaching aporectically in Apology; that is, after pointing to various alternatives for understanding the nature of teaching, Plato concludes the work without offering a clear resolution to that question. (shrink)

Una larga tradición le atribuye a Sócrates la preocupación por transformar la vida de quienes dialogan con él; atribución que se opone a la imagen, rastreable en los Diálogos de Platón, de su fracaso al momento de influir en la vida de sus interlocutores más recalcitrantes. Para disminuir esta tensión y, con ello, disolver la impresión de dicho fracaso, se examinan elementos de la representación platónica del élenchos en favor de la idea de que Sócrates no busca convertir a los (...) demás. Al final, se añade una crítica al optimismo con que Pierre Hadot sí le adjudica la función de agente de conversión. (shrink)

The concept of human wisdom is fundamental for an understanding of the Apology. But it has not been properly understood. The received interpretations offer insufficient resources for explaining how Socrates could have been humanly wise before Apollophilosophiaeven though he did not know that he did. The analysis is confirmed by its resolution of some enduring difficulties in the interpretation of Apology, in particular, the question of why Socrates continued to search for knowledge he thought impossible to attain.

The business ethics field contains a number of explanations for the imagination’s influence on decision-making. This has benefited moral theorizing because approaches that utilize the imagination tend to acknowledge important biological and psychological forces that influence the way we understand situations, develop strategies for problem-solving, and choose courses of action. But, I argue, the broad range of approaches has also served as an obstacle to theory development in the field. Given the variety of theoretical and disciplinary approaches, coupled with the (...) diversity of applications, it would be fair to judge the current state of theory as fractured. To bring focus to theory development, this conceptual study of the moral imagination is grounded in the work of one discipline, one theorist, one text: Plato’s Republic. The primary outcome of this study is the demonstration of the conditions under which the imagination serves to augment and support rationality rather than serving as an impediment. The systematic nature of Plato’s theory aids in the formation of more coherent conceptual grounding than currently available in the field. A final contribution of this study is the positioning of Plato as a proper beginning or foundation to any further theory development in the moral imagination. (shrink)

A philosophical conception of open-minded inquiry first emerges in western philosophy in the work of Socrates. This paper develops an interpretation of Socratic open-mindedness drawing primarily on Socratic ideas about (i) the requirements of serious argument, and (ii) the nature of human wisdom. This account is defended against a number of objections which mistakenly interpret Socrates as defending, teaching, or inducing skepticism, and neglecting the value of expert wisdom. The ongoing significance of Socratic open-mindedness as an ideal of inquiry is (...) brought out through examination of a notorious Canadian case in the context of forensic pathology. (shrink)

Desde una lectura del diálogo Gorgias de Platón, la tesis del presente artículo es que, según la aproximación socrática a la justicia, el arte político propende por la asunción de la vulnerabilidad como apertura a la alteridad y al ejercicio de autonomía. La argumentación consta de tres partes. En primer lugar, se muestra que el reconocimiento de la vulnerabilidad conduce al reconocimiento del otro y, consiguientemente, a la valoración positiva de sus necesidades. En segundo lugar, se plantea que la justicia (...) supone la autonomía, pues expresa el deseo de un bien común como ley autoimpuesta. La tercera parte expone cómo el conocimiento de lo justo se deriva de un trabajo dialéctico con el lenguaje, enfatizando su performatividad y su capacidad para movilizar emociones y deseos. Se concluye así que el saber político surge como un rapto hacia los límites de nuestras aspiraciones y posibilidades. (shrink)

This paper offers an innovative interpretation of Socrates’ disavowal of being a teacher as well as a new way of understanding Plato’s depiction of sophistry. The author identifies two different types of sophists, forthrightly frivolous sophists and slyly flattering sophists, in order to compare the pedagogical methods and political motives of each of these two types of sophists with those of Plato’s Socrates. In the course of this comparison it is made clear that Socrates endeavours to be not a teacher (...) but a ‘cowherder’, to use Plato’s agricultural hunger imagery. He rejects the conventional pedagogy that endeavours to ‘feed’ information to students. Instead he fosters learning by putting students in a position to think ideas through for themselves, just as a cowherder puts the herd out to graze in the pasture. This pedagogy alone has the potential to produce citizens who assume responsibility for their own education. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Le concept de loi socratique a depuis toujours été l´objet decontroverses, principalement en raison des tentatives pour expliquerson attitude lors de son jugement, son emprisonnementet son exécution. Toute la difficulté de concilier entreeux les différents textes sur la philosophie et la vie de Socrate,naturellement ressort à propos des circonstances de sa condamnationet de sa mort. Si, dans l´état actuel de notre documentation,il paraît impossible d´apporter une solution définitive,néanmoins une possibilité d´en (...) atténuer les contradictions résidedans l´examen du fonctionnement de la méthode socratiqueà partir de ses fondements: le dialogue comme moyend´un accord, non seulement entre les citoyens d´Athènes,mais entre ceux-ci et le propre ordre universel, lequel se dessineda la recherche humaine de la justice et du bien commun. (shrink)