This interpretive introduction provides unique insight into Plato's Republic. Stressing Plato's desire to stimulate philosophical thinking in his readers, Julia Annas here demonstrates the coherence of his main moral argument on the nature of justice, and expounds related concepts of education, human motivation, knowledge and understanding. In a clear systematic fashion, this book shows that modern moral philosophy still has much to learn from Plato's attempt to move the focus from questions of what acts the just person ought to perform (...) to the more profound questions of what sort of person the just person ought to be. (shrink)

Explores the development of the ideas of evolutionary biology, particularly as affected by the increasing understanding of genetics and of the chemical basis of inheritance.

In replying to my criticism of his interpretation of this passage, Professor H-N. Castañeda has disregarded much of my argument. In particular, he has ignored my contention that a contrast between 'essential’ and ‘accidental’ predication is integral to the wider argument for immortality in which Phaedo 102b-d is embedded. This would remain the case whatever the grammar of 102b-c, and whatever the exact force of πεφυxέναι and τυγχάνει at 102c1-2. Further, Castañeda pays no heed to the difficulty of interpreting Plato's (...) other relational examples in his way, given that no analysis parallel to that of 102b-d is anywhere hinted at for them. Moreover, he disregards the difficulty that several other examples in the nearby context are analysed in terms of the Theory of Forms, and yet are not overtly ‘relational’ in the usual sense at all.Castañeda says that it is ‘clear’ from my own translation of several passages that τυΥχάνει in the Phaedo ‘has nothing to do with accident.’. (shrink)

A coherent treatment of the flow of ideas throughout Darwin's works, this volume presents a unified theoretical system that explains Darwin's investigations, evaluating the literature from a historical, scientific, and philosophical perspective.

In replying to my criticism of his interpretation of this passage, Professor H-N. Castañeda has disregarded much of my argument. In particular, he has ignored my contention that a contrast between 'essential’ and ‘accidental’ predication is integral to the wider argument for immortality in which Phaedo 102b-d is embedded. This would remain the case whatever the grammar of 102b-c, and whatever the exact force of πεφυxέναι and τυγχάνει at 102c1-2. Further, Castañeda pays no heed to the difficulty of interpreting Plato's (...) other relational examples in his way, given that no analysis parallel to that of 102b-d is anywhere hinted at for them. Moreover, he disregards the difficulty that several other examples in the nearby context are analysed in terms of the Theory of Forms, and yet are not overtly ‘relational’ in the usual sense at all.Castañeda says that it is ‘clear’ from my own translation of several passages that τυΥχάνει in the Phaedo ‘has nothing to do with accident.’. (shrink)

All the writings of Plato generally considered to be authentic are here presented in the only complete one-volume Plato available in English. The editors set out to choose the contents of this collected edition from the work of the best British and American translators of the last 100 years, ranging from Jowett to scholars of the present day. The volume contains prefatory notes to each dialogue, by Edith Hamilton; an introductory essay on Plato's philosophy and writings, by Huntington Cairns; and (...) a comprehensive index which seeks, by means of cross references, to assist the reader with the philosophical vocabulary of the different translators. (shrink)

The book provides a commentary on Plato's Republic which encourages the reader to be stimulated to philosophical thinking by Plato's wide-ranging discussions.

Forms, Matter and Mind. Three Strands in Plato’s Metaphysics -/- This book offers a new interpretation of Plato’s conception of man and of how it develops in the Corpus. Commonly, Plato’s anthropology is considered to be a version of naïve Orphism with the soul being a heavenly, but fallen, daemon. This is shown to be a misleading over-simplification. An examination of three basic and interrelated strands in Plato’s thought (Forms, Matter and Mind) demonstrates how Plato’s conception of man is an (...) integrated part of his metaphysics and develops with it. Thus, a change can be seen from a fairly unreflecting Socratic beginning via a transcendent soul to a rather sophisticated ‘Aristotelianism’. What is at issue is a non-materialistic, or more precisely, a dualistic view of man that has been discredited in modern times by two preconceptions: a widespread opinion that dualism must mean or involve Cartesianism, which seems untenable, and an equally widespread and, until recently, unshaken belief that man can be exhaustively described in materialistic terms. Both assumptions are questioned today. The present work shows that Plato’s view of man is fundamentally different from Cartesianism and furthermore that he rejects the materialist view as well. Hence, the book shows Plato’s increasing relevance for the current debate on the nature and possibilities of man. (shrink)

‘Now that all parts and members of the mortal creature had been fashioned into one, seeing that it must be the creature's lot for reasons of necessity to spend its life in the domain of fire and air and that it was like to waste away being continually melted and emptied by their onslaught, the gods contrived reinforcement for it. Blending a being kindred to man's being but with different shapes and senses, they brought it into life, a second kind (...) of living creature. Trees, plants, and seeds are these, and those among them which are cultivated types to-day have arrived at their mild benevolence to man only because they have been civilized by his husbandry; formerly only the wild kinds existed, for these are older than the cultivated. Now everything that is alive, whatever it be, may perfectly correctly and of right be termed ‘a living creature’. The creature now in question has at any rate the third kind of soul which our discourse told us is situated between the midriff and the navel. This kind of soul has nothing of opining or of reasoning mind, but it has sensation of pleasant and painful with attendant desires. For continually it is subject to every impression. Its manner of birth has not granted it the power to revolve by itself in itself upon itself rejecting outside motion and asserting its own and thus by beholding all things by native endowment of soull to reason out aught of its own concerns. So it has life and is not some second being other than a living creature, but it stays fixed, rooted, motionless, for it has never been granted movement of its own initiation.’. (shrink)

For quite a long time now I have argued against the view, widely held, and forcefully expounded by John Burnet, that at Phaedo 102b2-d2 Plato is formulating the notion of essential attribute and contrasting essence with accident. I have claimed that the essence-accident contrast is absent from that passage. This is a view that others have also held. But I have since 1950 found in that passage a formidable theory of relations. Recently, Professor David Gallop has taken me to task (...) for my heterodoxy. His reaction is overwhelming:I confess that I do not see how such a theory, [A] even if the text were to embody it, [B] could be held to provide an adequate account of relational statements in general. Gallop's paper is very tantalizing. Although he establishes neither A nor B, he does offer a series of very extraordinary arguments, whose examination reveals the depth of Plato's thinking on relations. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.