Was ist eine gute Weltanschauung? Die Aufsätze behandeln einige der großen Themen der westlichen Philosophie unter neuen Gesichtspunkten, wie z. B. das Apeiron des Anaximander, das Leib-Seele-Problem bei Descartes und Wittgensteins Begriff der Sprache und Lebensform. Sie beleuchten aber auch Seitenwege wie z. B. einen Ausflug Schopenhauers, ein „Plagiat" Nietzsches und einige der Aphorismen Ludwig Hohls.

This paper advances a version of the theory whereby logic had deep origins in democracy, by re-reading Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen. Democracy, ‘the government by debate’, called political (and scientific) attention to the inferential abilities of citizens and to politicians’ ability of taking advantage of them. Sophists, in particular, discovered that people’s inferences follow constant repeatable forms, that these forms have impact on choices and decisions concerning public good, and then by dominating them you dominate politics in democracy. With the (...) Encomium Gorgias launched these ideas, so laying the ground for Aristotle’s science of deduction. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has been charged with being unable to provide solutions to practical moral issues. In response, the defenders of virtue ethics argue that normative virtue ethics exists. The debate is significant on its own, yet both sides of the controversy approach the issue from the assumption that moral philosophy has to tell us what we should do. In this essay, I would like to examine the question regarding the practicality of virtue ethics in a different way. Virtue ethics is (...) an ancient approach shared by both ancient Greek philosophers and classic Chinese Confucians, and indeed, ancient Greeks call ethics practical science. How, then, do the ancients themselves view the issue of practicality? This essay shows that there is a notion of practicality which is prominent in both ancient Greek and ancient Chinese virtue ethics but is neglected in today’s ethics. According to this notion, ethics is to transform one’s life. The essay also raises a prospect of the revival of this notion. (shrink)

The question of whether ethical individuals have a disadvantage in becoming leaders is an important one that has not been adequately discussed in the business ethics/leadership literature. In this paper, drawing on Plato’s middle dialogues and particularly on the Republic, I develop a Platonic framework of the constraints that might hinder the emergence of what the dialogues term ‘philosopher kings’. Subsequently, I use this framework to elucidate the emergence of ethical leaders in todays’ organizations and conclude with a discussion of (...) this paper’s implications for the ethical leadership literature. (shrink)

In book 3 of his Republic, Plato has Socrates undertake an assessment of the educational curriculum that the city (which is being constructed by him in speech) will implement for its youth. Consequently we see that Socrates assigns to poetry a crucial importance; by their imitation of it, poetry shapes the citizens with an initial formation, casts them within a certain orientation, and places them on a path leading in an already conceived direction, toward some unarticulated good. Thus, in forming (...) this city and the souls of its citizens, Socrates first conducts a censorship of the content of the formative myths of the city in an attempt to orchestrate a certain fail-safe against ambiguity and against falling off .. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I argue that Socrates employs both elenchus and the method of hypothesis in the examination of the slave. I show that the elenchus is a necessary step of the inquiry. Being reduced to ignorance, Socrates tacitly uses the method of hypothesis to move the slave from ignorance to correct opinion. I tease this out from the questions Socrates asks. Although the method of hypothesis begins from a question distinct from elenchus, the solution to the problem leads the slave to (...) answer the original question. The examination shows that the two methods can be employed in a sustained inquiry. (shrink)

This paper examines Epictetus’ use of athletic imagery as a pedagogical tool and what this tells us about his views on what philosophers can learn from athletes. This paper argues that this imagery...

ABSTRACT Most Plato scholarship characterizes Socrates's dialectic as cooperative, reciprocal, and open ended. This orthodoxy echoes Socrates's characterizations of it, but the dialectic's dramatizations rarely confirm it. Commentators recognizing this seek to protect the dialectic's image by maligning Socrates's interlocutors. Francisco Gonzalez's description of the Protagoras's “central crisis” exemplifies this approach. When a dispute over how to conduct the discussion threatens its dissolution, Gonzalez blames Protagoras, claiming that relativism forecloses conversation and community. I argue that Gonzalez elides alternative forms of (...) community supported by other discursive practices and that Socrates's refusal to answer legitimate concerns about his methodological demands turns the dialectic into the “external, nondialogical, absolute standard” Gonzalez says it lacks. (shrink)

The theory of knowledge has two sides - epistemology and a bridge to join them: that a belief is justified if and only if obtained by appropriate use of an adequate organon - a principle of theoretical epistemology requiring an organon or manual of practical methodology. Such organon justification is internalist. (How could one ever miss one's source for it?) But it leads briskly to skepticism on pain of regress or circularity - or so it is argued in section 1. (...) In section 2 we consider the epistemology embodied in the Socratic elenchus, which provides a new angle on how methodology relates to epistemology and to science and metaphysics. Thus are we made to face once again the organon account of justification: our internalist bridge principle. That account proves in section 3 to be a special case ,of a more general argumentative account of justification, which in turn agrees with intuitions so powerful as to be enshrined already in our dictionaries. Good rhetoric suggests therefore that 'justification' and its cognates be yielded to the argumentative account; in which case justification must likely fall from its status as principal concept of epistemology. Justification is hence unlikely to be all that is required in general for knowledge, nor is it likely to be what is always required in any premises of use to justify anything. That way, apparently, lies regress or circularity. Better to demote justification to the status of one way for a belief to be appropriate or apt for knowledge, while allowing other ways not dependent on already attained justification: perception, perhaps, or introspection, or memory. (shrink)

It is well known that reductio ad absurdum arguments raise a number of interesting philosophical questions. What does it mean to assert something with the precise goal of then showing it to be false, i.e. because it leads to absurd conclusions? What kind of absurdity do we obtain? Moreover, in the mathematics education literature number of studies have shown that students find it difficult to truly comprehend the idea of reductio proofs, which indicates the cognitive complexity of these constructions. In (...) this paper, I start by discussing four philosophical issues pertaining to reductio arguments. I then briefly present a dialogical conceptualization of deductive arguments, according to which such arguments are best understood as a dialogue between two participants—Prover and Skeptic. Finally, I argue that many of the philosophical and cognitive difficulties surrounding reductio arguments are dispelled or at least further clarified once one adopts a dialogical perspective. (shrink)

The proverb “chalepa ta kala” (“fine things are difficult”) is invoked in three dialogues in the Platonic corpus: Hippias Major, Cratylus and Republic. In this paper, I argue that the context in which the proverb arises reveals Socrates’ considerable pedagogical dexterity as he uses the proverb to rebuke his interlocutor in one dialogue but to encourage his interlocutors in another. In the third, he gauges his interlocutors’ mention of the proverb to be indicative of their preparedness for a more difficult (...) philosophical trial. What emerges in the study of these three Platonic dialogues is that Socrates believes that how he and others describe learning makes a tangible difference in philosophical investigation. (shrink)

In late antiquity, logic developed into what Ebbesen calls the LAS, the Late Ancient Standard. This paper discusses the Neoplatonic use of LAS, as informed by epistemological and metaphysical concerns. It demonstrates this through an analysis of the late ancient debate about hypothetical and categorical logic as manifest in the practice of syllogizing Platonic dialogues. After an introduction of the Middle Platonist view on Platonic syllogistic as present in Alcinous, this paper presents an overview of its application in the syllogizing (...) practice of Proclus and others. That overview shows that the two types were considered two sides of the same coin, to be used for the appropriate occasions, and both relying on the methods of dialectic as revealing the structure of knowledge and reality. Pragmatics, dialectic, and didactic choices determine which type or combination is selected in syllogizing Plato. So even though there is no specific Neoplatonic logic, there is a specific Neoplatonic use of LAS. (shrink)

In the final chapter of Speech Matters, Seana Shiffrin argues that institutions have especially stringent duties to protect speech freedoms. In this article, I develop a few lines of criticism. First, I question whether Shiffrin’s framework of justified suspended contexts is appropriate for institutional settings. Second, I challenge the presumption that the knowledge-gathering function performed by police is necessarily compromised by insincere practices. Third, I criticize Shiffrin’s characterization of the university as involving a complete repudiation of enforced consensus, and I (...) express doubts about the close connection between education and democratic legitimation that Shiffrin endorses. Finally, I raise a problem with the book’s overall argument: even if one agrees that speech freedoms are necessary for moral development, they also may be threatening to moral development. The upshot is that the protection of speech should be modulated in order to account for the potential conflicts between sincerity and other valuable ends, rather than being oriented above all to sincerity. (shrink)

Socratic Method in the Euthyphro can be fruitfully analysed as a method of irony interpretation. Socrates' method – the irony of irony interpretation – is to pretend that Euthyphro is an ironist in order to transform him into a self-ironist. To be a self-ironist is to ironize one's knowledge of virtue in order to bring an intuitive and unarticulated awareness of virtue to mind. The exercise of the capacity for self-irony is then a mode of striving for the good.

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.

This paper examines whether Socrates provides his interlocutors with good reasons to seek knowledge of what virtue is, reasons that they are in a position to appreciate. I argue that in the Laches he does provide such reasons, but they are not the reasons that are most commonly identified as Socratic. Socrates thinks his interlocutors should be motivated not by the idea that virtue is knowledge nor by the idea that knowledge is good for its own sake, but rather by (...) the idea that knowledge is needed to recognize what to aim at. His argument reaches the potentially life-altering conclusion that we should all seek knowledge of what virtue is. It is powerful precisely because it relies on uncontroversial premises that his interlocutors could be expected to accept. In laying out this argument, I distinguish different ways in which someone could count as a teacher of virtue. At the end of the article, I situate the argument within the debate about whether virtue is teachable. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to give an account and a rational reconstruction of the heuristic advice provided by Aristotle in the Topics and Prior Analytics in regard to the difficulty or ease of strategic planning in the context of a dialectical dialogue. The general idea is that a Questioner can foresee what his refutational syllogism would have to look like given the character of the thesis defended by the Answerer, and therefore plan accordingly. A rational reconstruction of this (...) advice will be attempted from three perspectives: strategic planning based on the acceptability of Answerer’s thesis, strategic planning based on the predicational form of the thesis, strategic planning based on the logical form of the thesis. In addition, we will provide an illustration of the potential of this heuristic advice as we apply it to the interpretation of a fragment from Plato, presuming that, in a similar way, a reading of this kind might be more generally applicable in the interpretation of the Platonic dialogues. (shrink)

‘Scaffolded learning’ describes a cluster of instructional techniques designed to move students from a novice position toward greater understanding, such that they become independent learners. Our Socratic Model of Scaffolded Learning includes two phases not normally included in discussions of scaffolded learning, the preparatory and problematizing phases. Our article will illuminate this blind spot by arguing that these crucial preliminary elements ought to be considered an integral part of a scaffolding model. If instructors are cognizant of the starting position of (...) students, then students are more likely to develop a proper sense of autonomy. We turn, then, to examples from Socrates, the archetypal teacher, that cast light on the importance of preparation and problematizing for the student. Finally, we address the concern that integrating these preliminary elements into scaffolded learning would unnecessarily complicate a useful and effective pedagogical method. Ultimately, if it is effective and autonomous learners we wish to cultivate in the classroom, then something like SMSL must include preliminary elements that calibrate the instructor’s approach to the members of the class. After all, the unexamined student is not worth teaching. (shrink)

This article proposes an analysis of Plato’s Sophist that underlines the bond between the logical and the emotional components of the Socratic elenchus, with the aim of depicting the social valence of this philosophical practice. The use of emotions characterizing the ‘elenctic’ method described by Plato is crucial in influencing the audience and is introduced at the very moment in which the interlocutor attempts to protect his social image by concealing his shame at being refuted. The audience, thanks to Plato’s (...) literary strategy, realizes the failures of the interlocutor even as he refuses to accept them. As a result, his social image becomes tarnished. Purification through shame reveals how the medium is strictly related to the endorsement of specific ethical and political goals, making the Platonic dialogs the tools for the constitution of a new paideia. (shrink)

This paper considers the use that Plato makes of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in his engagements with eristic refutations. By examining Plato’s use of the principle in his most detailed engagements with eristic—in the Sophist, the discussion of “agonistic” argumentation in the Theaetetus, and especially the Euthydemus—I aim to show that the pressure exerted on Plato by eristic refutations played a crucial role in his development of the PNC, and that the principle provided him with a much more sophisticated means (...) of demarcating philosophical argumentation from eristic than he is generally thought to have. In particular, I argue that Plato’s qualified formulation of the PNC restricts the class of genuine contradictions in such a way that reveals the contradictions that eristics produce through their refutations to be merely apparent and that Plato consistently appeals to his qualified conception of genuine contradiction in his encounters with eristics in order to demonstrate that their refutations are merely apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting that the conception of genuine contradiction afforded by the PNC did not just provide Plato with a way of demarcating genuine from eristic refutations, but also with an answer to substantive philosophical challenges that eristics raised through their refutations. (shrink)

This paper shows Socratic elenchus as an efficient and effective way of modeling rational knowledge seeking. Like ordinary conversations, the elenctic exchanges in the dialogues presuppose a degree of autonomy on the part of its participants. Socrates’ line of questioning often seems pertinent to a particular interlocutor because he is well aware of the fact that the interlocutor has goals and ambitions or is reputed to be an expert at something. In turn, Socrates’ line ofquestioning reflects his own goals and (...) ambitions. In Alcibiades Major Socrates is trying to turn Alcibiades towards a greater awareness of his limitations. Plato’s dialogues also force readers to consider their own solutions to the topics introduced in them. Consequently, the autonomy of a dialogue’s participants requires that interpreters not exaggerate one aspect of a dialogue’s structural features at the expense of other aspects. (shrink)

An extended critique of the applicability of Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche's thesis of the end of metaphysics to the philosophical practice of Socrates.

Plato articulates a deep perplexity about inquiry in ?Meno's Paradox??the claim that one can inquire neither into what one knows, nor into what one does not know. Although some commentators have wrestled with the paradox itself, many suppose that the paradox of inquiry is special to Plato, arising from peculiarities of the Socratic elenchus or of Platonic epistemology. But there is nothing peculiarly Platonic in this puzzle. For it arises, too, in classical Indian philosophical discussions, where it is formulated with (...) great clarity, and analysed in a way that casts it in a new light. We present three treatments of the puzzle in Indian philosophy, as a way of refining and sharpening our understanding of the paradox, before turning to the most radical of the Indian philosophers to tackle it. The Indian philosophers who are optimistic that the paradox can be resolved appeal to the existence of prior beliefs, and to the resources embedded in language to explain how we can investigate, and so move from ignorance to knowledge. Highlighting this structural feature of inquiry, however, allows the pessimist philosopher to demonstrate that the paradox stands. The incoherence of inquiry is rooted in the very idea of aiming our desires at the unknown. Asking questions and giving answers rests on referential intentions targeting objects in a region of epistemic darkness, and so our ?inquiry sceptic? also finds structurally similar forms of incoherence in the pragmatics of interrogative discourse. (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)

Provocation is an integral part of Socrates’ philosophical method. Does provocation have a similar methodological function in art? My tentative answer is no. In the Socratic method, provocation is used both on an individual level to force a person to think better and on a general level in order to keep a society awake. A society should never rest but “be stirred into life.” Philosophy is a teleological practice with truth or enlightenment as its telos. Art has no well-defined telos, (...) the place and use of provocation in art is therefore debatable. But for art to be something rather than anything, I argue that a provocative work of art has to provide for the aesthetic qualities of how the provocation is performed. Provocation without instrumental qualities is atypical in philosophy, whereas provocation without intrinsic qualities is atypical in art. Using this as a normative guide, we may claim that instrumental success is more important than intrinsic success in philosophy and that the opposite holds for art, as far as provocation is concerned. I conclude by commenting on two Swedish examples of provocation in art from this perspective. (shrink)

This thesis identifies and explains a fundamental philosophical problem of self-implication in Marxian ideology criticism that has led to its misuse and rejection in social theory and political philosophy. I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche’s development of genealogy as a method of social criticism complements ideology criticism in a way that overcomes this problem, by addressing it explicitly, rather than trying to avoid it. In making this argument, I hope to bridge a widely perceived gap between Nietzsche’s and Michel Foucault’s genealogical (...) approaches to social criticism, on the one hand, and Marxian ideology criticism on the other. The conflict between these approaches has been exaggerated in contemporary academic literature, to the loss of invaluable contributions Nietzsche and Foucault make to the theory and practice of ideology criticism. I begin by defining ideology in way that, I demonstrate, takes into account the use of the notion by Karl Marx and the early Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. I identify two central components of ideology, namely, an epistemic aspect, regarding illusion, and a functional aspect, which links ideology to its role in maintaining oppression. I also defend the notion of ideology against major objections to each of these aspects. In Chapter 4, I introduce the problem of self-implication that, I take it, poses the greatest challenge to the coherence of ideology criticism. The remainder of the thesis examines two alternative ways of dealing with this problem, namely immanent and transcendent criticism. I explain the weaknesses with each approach and, in doing so, show why Marx and Adorno each succumb to the problem of ideological self-implication. In the final chapter I argue that Nietzsche’s method of genealogy is compatible with ideology criticism and can complement such criticism, to overcome the problems that have been examined. (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)

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)

In this paper I use the traditional image of Plato as swan to suggest that interpreting Plato should not be a matter of getting to know what his doctrines are (a doctrinal approach), but rather a of getting to know Plato himself (a knowledge by acquaintance approach). I argue that the dialogues encourage the knowledge by acquaintance approach and discourage the doctrinal approach, through the use of Platonic anonymity, Platonic irony and Platonic self-effacement. I point out how the knowledge by (...) acquaintance approach values the rich diversity of historical opinions about Plato, whereas the doctrinal approach seeks to resolve such diversity once and for all. Even though the doctrinal approach has powerful tools at its disposal—such as the testimony of Aristotle, the principle that the main speaker in a dialogue is Plato’s mouthpiece, and stylometric analysis—the product of a doctrinal approach is a brand of Platonism that is weak, rigid, and ultimately dispensable. The philosophy of Plato is worthy of more respect than that, and it repays such respect with wider understanding. (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)

The aim of this thesis is to consider the relationship between philosophy and biography, and the bearing that this relationship has on debates concerning the nature and function of philosophy. There exists a certain tradition that conceives philosophy exclusively in terms of rational discourse and as such explicitly rejects the idea of any substantial relationship between philosophy and the way in which one lives. I shall argue that the claim that philosophy cannot have any impact upon biography is often based (...) upon an implicit conception of philosophy as primarily rational discourse. In contrast to this I shall draw upon Socratic and Stoic philosophical resources in order to reconstruct an alternative conception of philosophy as an art concerned with one's way of life. Central to this conception will be the relationship between philosophical discourse or argument and philosophical training or exercise. I shall argue that the ancient claim that philosophy is primarily expressed in one's behaviour presupposes a conception of philosophy as an art that involves both rational discourse and training or exercise as two equally important components. I shall argue that by adopting this alternative conception of philosophy as a techne it will be possible to understand properly the relationship between philosophy and biography. In Part One I shall outline the ancient idea that philosophy is something expressed in one's life, the Socratic conception of philosophy as an art, the Stoic development of this conception into an art of living, and some ancient objections to this Stoic conception. In Part Two I shall examine the relationship between philosophical discourse and exercises in Stoic philosophy, focusing upon the neglected concept of philosophical askesis. Central to this will be the literary form of such exercises and so I shall focus upon two texts concerned with philosophical exercises. (shrink)