... all probability, Plato's own statement; made indeed to be read by friends in Syracuse in explanation of the role he had played ...

All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

Volume: 4 Publisher: London J. Murray Publication date: 1888 Subjects: Plato Socrates Philosophy, Ancient Notes: This is an OCR reprint.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions HEDONISM IN THE PROTAGORAS SOME INSOLUBLEPROBLEMSOf historical scholarship are posed by the fact that the hero of Plato's dialogues was also an historical figure. Commentators are prone to identify the Socrates of the dialogues with the man who drank the hemlock and walked the streets of Athens. This is perhaps unexceptionable 9 But beyond this they are often tempted (even when they know better) to speak (...) of the dialogues as if they were reports or descriptions of actual events in the life of the historical Socrates. Even so astute a scholar as Gregory Vlastos, in his recent lucid Introduction to the Protagoras, falls into this pit. The dramatic date of the Protagoras is no later than 433, five years before the birth of Plato. It would require clear and strong evidence (of which there is none) to convince us that a verbatim report of this encounter was preserved for thirty years or more, to be handed on to Plato at the appropriate moment. Vlastos, of course, would laugh at this suggestion, but hear him talking about the logic of Socrates' argument: I trust I have made it clear that Socrates' performance in this argument is much better than would appear from the fact, which it would be folly to hush up, that he has made a definite error. For the error he does make is one that he could easily have detected when he got the chance to think out his moves in a more leisurely moment. He would then have seen that he could have produced a valid deductive argument for his immediate objective, and did not have to revoke a single inference he had made.... This is not to deny that he occasionally makes grave errors. 9 It is only to insist that as a practitioner of logical inference, and one who practices on his feet, in the stress of live debate, and with no calculus or any formal patterns of valid inference to guide him, Socrates is not a bungler, but a master? This is all very well, except that the argument Vlastos is discussing was not constructed in the stress of live debate but rather, as it were, in the cool of Plato's study. Plato was not practicing on his feet, and, we may presume, had ample time to think through and revise the arguments in question. Are we to interpret Vlastos as claiming that in later, real encounters witnessed by Plato, Socrates did argue in this way? And that Plato here has Socrates commit logical errors (which he, Plato, knows are errors; for he has Protagoras object to them) in order to portray Socrates as a man who makes frequent mistakes but thinks pretty well on his feet? 1Plato's Protagoras, edited, with an Introduction, by Gregory Vlastos (New York, Liberal Arts Press, 1956), pp. xxxv-xxxvi. [7s] 74 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY In fact, we tend to think of the dialogues as having two authors, Plato and Socrates, and we frequently cannot choose between them. In the Protagoras it is even worse; for many scholars have assumed the existence of a third author, Protagoras, who is credited with having written at least part of his role in the dialogue. I offer here the radical thesis that the Protagoras has but one author, Plato, and that everything in the dialogue is to be laid to him.2 My assumptions are that from beginning to end the Protagoras is a product of Plato's imagination, and that Plato is primarily a philosopher and only secondarily a biographer--or perhaps we might say he is a biographer of ideas, not of persons. The philosophical stances assumed by the disputants may or may not resemble those of the historical figures, but we have no reason to attribute the words spoken or the turns taken in the argument to anyone but Plato. The question, why does Socrates say this at this point, must, if it is to be sensible, mean why does Plato have Socrates say this at this point. The answers, if there are answers, will be found within the dialogues and not in speculative history. In the final argument in the Protagoras (351b... (shrink)

Relatively little attention has been paid to Socrates' argument against akrasia in Plato's "Protagoras" as an example of Socratic method. Yet seen from this perspective the argument has some rather unusual features: in particular, the presence of an impersonal interlocutor ("the many") and the absence of the crisp and explicit argumentation that is typical of Socratic elenchus. I want to suggest that these features are problematic, considerably more so than has sometimes been supposed, and to offer a reading of the (...) argument that accounts for them. My reading revolves around the connections between Socratic method, consistency and akrasia. I argue that Socrates' discussion of akrasia aims at exposing the interlocutor's inconsistency, and to this extent is typical of Socratic inquiry; but it is also untypical, insofar as Socrates' chief concern here is with the inconsistency between an interlocutor's statements and his actions (what I call "word-deed inconsistency") rather than, as more usually, inconsistency among an interlocutor's various statements ("word-word inconsistency"). I use this reading to show how the akrasia argument, despite its untypical features, is not just a variant, but in an important way a paradigm, of Socratic method. (shrink)

Best known for his influential History of Greece, the historian and politician George Grote wrote this account of Plato's dialogues as a philosophical supplement to the History. First published in 1865 and written in dialogic form, Grote's account of Plato's works includes substantial footnotes and marginalia. This first volume focuses on Plato's early and transitional dialogues, all of which feature Socrates. It also includes a preface to the whole project which discusses the meaning and importance of philosophy itself, and extensive (...) introductory material on pre-Socratic philosophy, the life of Plato and history of the Platonic canon. With three volumes each running to over six hundred pages, Grote's scholarship is formidably comprehensive. The publication of Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates confirmed him as one of the greatest authorities on Plato in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

This exceptional book examines and explains Plato's answer to the normative question, "How ought we to live?" It discusses Plato's conception of the virtues; his views about the connection between the virtues and happiness; and the account of reason, desire, and motivation that underlies his arguments about the virtues. Plato's answer to the epistemological question, "How can we know how we ought to live?" is also discussed. His views on knowledge, belief, and inquiry, and his theory of Forms, are examined, (...) insofar as they are relevant to his ethical view. Terence Irwin traces the development of Plato's moral philosophy, from the Socratic dialogues to its fullest exposition in the Republic. Plato's Ethics discusses Plato's reasons for abandoning or modifying some aspects of Socratic ethics, and for believing that he preserves Socrates' essential insights. A brief and selective discussion of the Statesmen, Philebus, and Laws is included. Replacing Irwin's earlier Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977), this book gives a clearer and fuller account of the main questions and discusses some recent controversies in the interpretation of Plato's ethics. It does not presuppose any knowledge of Greek or any extensive knowledge of Plato. (shrink)

Perhaps the most important contribution to the history of Greek philosophy that has been made during the last twenty years is to be found in the work under-taken by Professors Burnet and A. E. Taylor in reconstructing the personality of the historical Socrates. There is, by this time, fairly general agreement that it is not to Xenophon's Memorabilia but to Plato's dialogues that we must go if we are to attempt to understand what Socrates meant for his own age and (...) for all time. But Socrates' gain has been Plato's loss. We are compelled to deny to Plato any power of really original thinking until at least his fortieth year. He is, indeed, still left in possession of supreme literary and dramatic genius; but all that he wrote, down to and including the Republic, is not the fruit of his own thought, but the careful record of the thought of Socrates. (shrink)

To speak of ‘the real subject’ or ‘the primary aim’ of a Platonic dialogue usually means to magnify one aspect of it at the expense of other aspects as important. Such is not my intention. It is quite clear, however, without prejudice to the philosophic value of any of the topics discussed, that the Protagoras is an attack upon the sophists as represented by Protagoras, the greatest of them. Hippias and Prodicus are present and some of the great man's glory (...) is reflected upon them; they are also no doubt to some extent implicated in his defeat, though they seem quite unaware of the fact. (shrink)

To speak of ‘the real subject’ or ‘the primary aim’ of a Platonic dialogue usually means to magnify one aspect of it at the expense of other aspects as important. Such is not my intention. It is quite clear, however, without prejudice to the philosophic value of any of the topics discussed, that the Protagoras is an attack upon the sophists as represented by Protagoras, the greatest of them. Hippias and Prodicus are present and some of the great man's glory (...) is reflected upon them; they are also no doubt to some extent implicated in his defeat, though they seem quite unaware of the fact. (shrink)

The argument in theProtagoraswhich starts with an analysis of giving in to pleasure in terms of ignorance, and leads into a demonstration that courage is knowledge, is certainly one of the most brilliant in Plato and equally certainly one of the trickiest. My discussion deals mainly with three problems: Precisely what absurdity is detected in the popular account of moral weakness, and where is it located in the text? On the basis of largely formal considerations I believe that the absurdity (...) is a much less subtle affair than has been thought, and that it is located at 355c-d. What is the connection between knowledge and belief in 358b-d, and how do these two concepts figure in the arguments which precede and follow this passage? Here I want to comment on differences between theProtagorasand other Socratic arguments. How good is the argument at 356–357e which analyses moral weakness as ignorance? There are several problems here, including a fundamental puzzle of the dialogue, namely that, apparently, Plato uses a non-Socratic hedonism to establish the Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge. Here I agree with those critics who see irony at the expense of the sophists—sophistic teaching is shown to be grounded in hedonism—but in addition I suggest that Plato also offers an oblique criticism of hedonism itself in the course of which basic points of real substance are made. This interpretation fits in with various other features of the dialogue, including the curious fact that, though the main argument proceeds on a thorough-going hedonistic basis, Socrates is subtly but distinctly not committed to that basis. Hence the unity of the dialogue is supported, and as well an attitude to hedonism is given which is more consistent with that of other dialogues, while we are able to see the Socratic paradox in its regular role as a tool of ethical exploration. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine how the idea of self-rule is dramatised and articulated in the Protagoras and the Gorgias with respect to the apparently different treatments of hedonism. Looking at the former dialogue, I describe how the hedonist premise develops from a dramatic image of disorder, specifically the absence of self-rule. I then consider whether the evidence from that dialogue has any bearing on the Gorgias' discussion of hedonism. I conclude that the Socratic rejection of hedonism in that text (...) is about the Calliclean abandonment of any concern for self-rule, an abandonment that actually masquerades as a commitment to self-rule. This analysis is used to present a more general account of what Socrates considers to be the capacities required for good citizenship. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine how the idea of self-rule is dramatised and articulated in the Protagoras and the Gorgias with respect to the apparently different treatments of hedonism. Looking at the former dialogue, I describe how the hedonist premise develops from a dramatic image of disorder, specifically the absence of self-rule. I then consider whether the evidence from that dialogue has any bearing on the Gorgias’ discussion of hedonism. I conclude that the Socratic rejection of hedonism in that text (...) is about the Calliclean abandonment of any concern for self-rule, an abandonment that actually masquerades as a commitment to self-rule. This analysis is used to present a more general account of what Socrates considers to be the capacities required for good citizenship. (shrink)

In this commentary the author presents a reading of Plato's Protagoras with a special concern for the fact that the work is a dialogue. He shows how the intentions of both Socrates and Protagoras, and the specific dramatic circumstances, affect the discussion concerning the teachability of virtue. Mr. Goldberg contends that in order to grasp the order of the arguments about the unity of virtue, Athenian education and democracy, continence, and hedonism, one must consider all the seemingly casual incidents and (...) inter- changes. In particular, he sees in Socrates' ironic analysis of a poem of Simonides a response to the famous speech of Protagoras which contains the sophist's version of the Promethean creation myth. The differences between sophistry and philosophy are clarified, and Socrates emerges as the dutiful citizen doing his best for democratic Athens. (shrink)

In The Socratic Paradox and Its Enemies, Roslyn Weiss argues that the Socratic paradoxes—no one does wrong willingly, virtue is knowledge, and all the virtues are one—are best understood as Socrates’ way of combating sophistic views: ...

Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works. Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson (...) to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition. (shrink)

This two-part volume collects the complete fragments and most important testimonies for the leading presocratic philosophers. The Greek and Latin texts are translated on facing pages and accompanied by a brief commentary for each philosopher.

Daniel Russell develops a fresh and original view of pleasure and its pivotal role in Plato's treatment of value, happiness, and human psychology. This is the first full-length discussion of the topic for fifty years, and Russell shows its relevance to contemporary debates in moral philosophy and philosophical psychology. Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life will make fascinating reading for ancient specialists and for a wide range of philosophers.