This volume is a study of the relationship between philosophy and faith in Søren Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments. It is also the first book to examine the role of Socrates in this body of writings, illuminating the significance of Socrates for Kierkegaard's thought. Jacob Howland argues that in the Fragments, philosophy and faith are closely related passions. A careful examination of the role of Socrates demonstrates that Socratic, philosophical eros opens up a path to faith. At the same time, (...) the work of faith - which holds the self together with that which transcends it - is essentially erotic in the Socratic sense of the term. Chapters on Kierkegaard's Johannes Climacus and on Plato's Apology shed light on the Socratic character of the pseudonymous author of the Fragments and the role of 'the god' in Socrates' pursuit of wisdom. Howland also analyzes the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Kierkegaard's reflections on Socrates and Christ. (shrink)

"Jacob Howland's book is an engaging, readable, and extremely suggestive addition to the literature on Plato's magnum opus." --Ancient Philosophy.

Like Aristophanes’ Frogs, Plato’s Symposium stages a contest between literary genres. The quarrel between Socrates and Aristophanes constitutes the primary axis of this contest, and the speech of Alcibiades echoes and extends that of Aristophanes. Alcibiades’ comparison of Socrates with a satyr, however, contains the key to understanding Socrates’ implication, at the very end of the dialogue, that philosophy alone understands the inner connectedness, and hence the proper nature, of both tragedy and comedy. I argue that Plato reflects in the (...) character of Socrates the primordial wisdom embodied in satyric drama. I conclude with a brief consideration of Nietzsche’s challenge to Plato’s Dionysian wisdom. (shrink)

In engaging five of Plato's dialogues—Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Cratylus, Sophist, and Statesman—and by paying particular attention to Socrates' intellectual defense in the "philosophic trial" by the Stranger from Elea, Jacob Howland illuminates Plato's understanding of the proper relationship between philosophy and politics. This insightful and innovative study illustrates the Plato's understanding of the difference between sophistry and philosophy, and it identifies the innate contradictions of political philosophy that Plato observed and remain entrenched within the field to this day. This (...) is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of political philosophy. (shrink)

Scholarly convention holds that logos and muthos are in Plato’s mind fundamentally opposed, the former being the medium of philosophy and the latter of poetry. I argue that muthos in the broad sense of story or narrative in fact plays an indispensable philosophical role in the Republic. In particular, any account of the nature and power of justice and injustice must begin with powers of the soul that can come to light only through the telling and interpretation of stories. This (...) is implicit in Glaucon’s Gygean tale. Read in connection with the earlier tale of Gyges in Herodotus, Glaucon’s muthos shows itself to be a story about storytelling and interpretation, knowledge of self and others, and the discovery of the roots of justice and injustice. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's relationship to the literary Socrates of antiquity, an ironic and ambiguous figure who reflects the uncertain nature of reality itself, uniquely recapitulates Plato's relationship to the historical Socrates. For Kierkegaard as for Plato, contact with Socrates results in an explosion of poetic and philosophical creativity—a demonstration of Socrates’ pedagogical potency that implicitly resolves what Plato calls the “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.” This chapter reflects on that ancient quarrel and its connection with the figure of Socrates, traces the (...) birth of Kierkegaard's Socrates in his dissertation, and sketches the developing significance of Socrates in Kierkegaard's major pseudonymous writings. (shrink)

This innovative study sees the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem through the lens of the Platonic dialogues and the Talmud. Howland argues that these texts are animated by comparable conceptions of the proper roles of inquiry and reasoned debate in religious life, and by a profound awareness of the limits of our understanding of things divine. Insightful readings of Plato's Apology, Euthyphro and chapter three of tractate Ta'anit explore the relationship of prophets and philosophers, fathers and sons, and gods (...) and men, bringing to light the tension between rational inquiry and faith that is essential to the speeches and deeds of both Socrates and the Talmudic sages. In reflecting on the pedagogy of these texts, Howland shows in detail how Talmudic aggadah and Platonic drama and narrative speak to different sorts of readers in seeking mimetically to convey the living ethos of rabbinic Judaism and Socratic philosophising. (shrink)

This article concerns the ‘ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’. With the guidance of Leo Strauss, and with reference to French cultural anthropology and the Hebrew Bible, I offer close readings of the origin myths told by the characters of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium and Socrates in book 2 of the Republic. I contrast Aristophanes’ prudential and political esotericism with Socrates’ pedagogical esotericism, connecting the former with poetry’s affirmation of the primacy of chaos and the latter with philosophy’s openness to (...) the measures of nature or phusis. Aristophanes regards the political poetry of Olympianism as a necessary corrective of original human disorder, while Socrates traces the sickness of souls and cities to an excess of poiēsis, ‘poetry’ or ‘production’ in all of its cultural and material senses. The quarrel between Socrates and Aristophanes illuminates fundamental questions that were of central concern to Strauss: What is the status of nature? Must we orient ourselves by the forceful impressions of culture, or can we make out natural standards of how to live? Is war the primary human condition, or peace? Are human beings essentially erotic, or thumotic? Is philosophy an expression of reckless boldness, or of saving moderation? (shrink)

I argue that the internal evidence of the Republic supports a conjecture first advanced by the historian Mark Munn: Glaucon was an accomplice of the so-called Thirty Tyrants who most likely died at the side of his relatives Critias and Charmides in the Battle of Munychia. If Munn is right, the Republic must be read as a poignant philosophical drama, the tragedy of Socrates’ unsuccessful struggle to save Plato’s brother from the corrupting influence of his family and his city. This (...) perspective raises important questions about the nature and limits of Socrates’ philosophical pedagogy, which must in turn be seen within the context of the dialogue’s symbolic and mythical representation of the cosmic moral drama of the soul. (shrink)

This essay argues that muthos in the broad sense of “story” or “narrative” is essential to a philosophical understanding of the roots of justice and injustice within the soul. I examine the use of narrative in two different contexts: the tale of the Gygean ring of invisibility that Glaucon tells in Plato's Republic, and the parable of Agnes and the Merman in Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. These two muthoi make possible a direct, inner experience of the fundamental difference between (...) just and unjust souls. They guide us to the insight that the capability of radical injustice is rooted in the absence of the very powers of sympathetic imagination and intellect that unlock their meaning. Because the deepest insights of these Platonic and Kierkegaardean texts come to light only through the interpretation of a story, they cannot be communicated in the “nonmythical” form of logos or philosophical argument alone. (shrink)

Like Aristophanes’ Frogs, Plato’s Symposium stages a contest between literary genres. The quarrel between Socrates and Aristophanes constitutes the primary axis of this contest, and the speech of Alcibiades echoes and extends that of Aristophanes. Alcibiades’ comparison of Socrates with a satyr, however, contains the key to understanding Socrates’ implication, at the very end of the dialogue, that philosophy alone understands the inner connectedness, and hence the proper nature, of both tragedy and comedy. I argue that Plato reflects in the (...) character of Socrates the primordial wisdom embodied in satyric drama. I conclude with a brief consideration of Nietzsche’s challenge to Plato’s Dionysian wisdom. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the ethical and theological importance of the conclusion of Either/Or. The author argues that the fundamental psychological, philosophical, and theological contradictions and conflicts of the book’s protagonists—an accidental editor, an alienated litterateur, a didactic judge, a solitary pastor—are most radically expressed in the Ultimatum, and are no less radically resolved therein. The first half of the article concerns the literary structure and existential drama of Either/Or as a whole, and reads Victor Eremita’s editorial explanation of (...) how the papers of A and B came into his hands as a religious allegory that anticipates the possibility of existential rebirth with which the book concludes. The second half examines the Ultimatum, and its attempt to break open souls that have closed themselves off from the terrors and joys of reality. (shrink)

If philosophy weaves its speeches by distinguishing the basic elements of human experience and then collecting them into significant wholes, Dorter's wise book exemplifies the essential movement of philosophical thought. This polished, scholarly, insightful study explores the unity, not only of the four dialogues mentioned in its title, but in an important sense of the Platonic corpus as a whole. Dorter's fresh defense of the unorthodox view that in the so-called later dialogues Plato "retained the theory [of forms] in all (...) its essentials" constitutes an important contribution to Platonic studies. This is not all. The Plato that emerges from Dorter's study is no longer a primitive practitioner of modern techniques of analysis, but a thinker who challenges all of the major alternatives on the contemporary philosophical scene. In reacquainting us with the distinctive shape of Plato's metaphysics, Dorter opens up a possibility that is scarcely acknowledged in current philosophical discourse, namely, that "ontological thinking may lead to moral or spiritual transformation". His book will be of interest to anyone willing to entertain the idea that philosophy can improve the soul. (shrink)

Engaging a broad range of Platonic dialogues, this collection of essays by distinguished scholars in political theory and philosophy explores the relation of Socratic philosophizing to those activities with which it is typically opposed—such as tyranny, sophistry, poetry, and rhetoric. The essays show that the harder one tries to disentangle Socrates’ own activity from that of its apparent opposite, the more entangled they become; yet, it is only by taking this entanglement seriously that the distinctive character of Socratic philosophy emerges. (...) The collection sheds new light on the ways in which Plato not only represents philosophy in relation to what it is not, but also makes it “strange” to itself. (shrink)

This paper argues that Plato’s Apology can be read as a tragedy analogous to Oedipus Tyrannus. Jacob Howland has argued that the elements of tragedy laid out Aristotle’s Poetics are present, but the relation of the Apology to Oedipus Tyrannus and other aspects of Sophocles’ tragedy have not been noted. With this procedure, Plato means to argue that a philosopher should hide his refutations more than Socrates did.

Jamie Turnbull - Kierkegaard and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.3 503-504 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Jamie Turnbull University of Hertfordshire Jacob Howland. Kierkegaard and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 231. Cloth, $80.00. The subject of Jacob Howland's stimulating and insightful book is Kierkegaard's ambivalent relationship (...) to Socrates, as manifest in Kierkegaard's short but important work Philosophical Fragments. Howland's book is the first full length study of Socrates' role in Philosophical Fragments, and thereby in Kierkegaard's thought as a whole. The aim of this work is to establish the critical importance of.. (shrink)

Measuring the effectiveness of medical interventions faces three epistemological challenges: the choice of good measuring instruments, the use of appropriate analytic measures, and the use of a reliable method of extrapolating measures from an experimental context to a more general context. In practice each of these challenges contributes to overestimating the effectiveness of medical interventions. These challenges suggest the need for corrective normative principles. The instruments employed in clinical research should measure patient-relevant and disease-specific parameters, and should not be sensitive (...) to parameters that are only indirectly relevant. Effectiveness always should be measured and reported in absolute terms (using measures such as 'absolute risk reduction'), and only sometimes should effectiveness also be measured and reported in relative terms (using measures such as 'relative risk reduction')-employment of relative measures promotes an informal fallacy akin to the base-rate fallacy, which can be exploited to exaggerate claims of effectiveness. Finally, extrapolating from research settings to clinical settings should more rigorously take into account possible ways in which the intervention in question can fail to be effective in a target population. (shrink)