Plato's Works, Misc

That i) there is a somehow determined chronology of Plato’s dialogues among all the chronologies of the last century and ii) this theory is subject to many objections, are points this article intends to discuss. Almost all the main suggested chronologies of the last century agree that Parmenides and Theaetetus should be located after dialogues like Meno, Phaedo and Republic and before Sophist, Politicus, Timaeus, Laws and Philebus. The eight objections we brought against this arrangement claim that to place the (...) dialogues like Meno, Phaedo and Republic both immediately after the early ones and before Parmenides and Theaetetus is epistemologically and ontologically problematic. (shrink)

This paper aims to suggest a new arrangement of Plato’s dialogues based on a different theory of the ontological as well as epistemological development of his philosophy. In this new arrangement, which proposes essential changes in the currently agreed upon chronology of the dialogues, Parmenides must be considered as criticizing an elementary theory of Forms and not the theory of so-called middle dialogues. Dated all as later than Parmenides, the so-called middle and late dialoguesare regarded as two consecutive endeavors to (...) resolve the problems drawn out in there; an effort in the theory of knowledge through Theaetetus, Meno and Phaedo and another in ontology through the second part of Parmenides, Sophist and Republic. (shrink)

Boethius fasst im 6. Jahrhundert den Plan, samtliche Werke Aristoteles' und Platons ins Lateinische zu ubersetzen und mit Kommentaren zu versehen. Die Motivation fur dieses Projekt liegt in seiner Einsicht in die bildungstheoretischen Grundlagen des Platonismus und des Aristotelismus begrundet, die ihm auch als Massstab fur seine ethischen Erkenntnisse und sein padagogisch orientiertes Schaffen dienen. Daruber hinaus liefert seine Sorge um die Anschlussfahigkeit dieser Bildungstradition an die gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen im lateinischsprachigen Raum seiner Zeit den entscheidenden Impuls. Ziel dieses Buches ist (...) es, Boethius' Ubersetzungsprojekt in die verschiedenen Ebenen der mit diesem Projekt verbundenen Wissenstransfers aufzuschlusseln und sowohl die Inhalte als auch die Bedingungen dieser Transfers aufzuzeigen. Die Ubersetzungen im engeren Sinne sind hierbei nur ein Teil des Wissenstransfers. Denn mit Blick auf die Sorge um eine gelingende Vermittlung der Inhalte fur die verschiedenen Niveaustufen seines Zielpublikums stellen die Kommentierungen und die Massnahmen der didaktischen Vermittlung einen integralen Bestandteil seines Ubersetzungsprojekts und damit weitere Wissenstransferebenen dar. Die Vorgehensweisen bei diesen verschiedenen Aspekten der Ubersetzung wiederum finden ihre Grundlage in den sprachphilosophischen und seelentheoretischen Einsichten, die fur Boethius' Konzeption einer gelingenden Vermittlung verantwortlich sind. Die Theorie der Sprache, die Boethius in seiner Bearbeitung der aristotelischen Schrift Peri hermeneias (bzw. De interpretatione) ins Lateinische ubertragt, bildet damit zugleich die Grundlage fur die Praxis seiner Ubertragung. (shrink)

در اين جستار برآنيم كه ترتيبي جديد از محاورات افلاطون ارائه نمائيم؛ ترتيبي كه بر مبناي توسعه وجودشناختي و معرفت شناختي افلاطون مبتني است و تفاوت‌هاي اساسي با كرونولوژي غالب امروزي محاورات دارد. در حاليكه در همه كرونولوژي هاي پذيرفته شده فعلي، پارمنيدس به عنوان نقد نظريه مثال در محاورات مياني و بنابراين متأخر از اين محاورات در نظر گرفته مي‌شود، كرونولوژي پيشنهادي ما پارمنيدس را پس از محاورات اوليه و پيش از محاورات مياني قرار مي‌دهد. بر اساس اين تغيير (...) نه تنها منون، فايدون، فايدروس و جمهوري پس از پارمنيدس قرار مي‌گيرند، بلكه ميان ثئايتتوس و سوفيست از يك طرف و فايدون و جمهوري از طرف ديگر، فاصله زيادي ايجاد مي‌شود به طوري كه منون و فايدون ميان جفت اول و سوفيست و تيمايوس ميان جفت دوم قرار مي‌گيرند. در اين جستار نشان خواهيم داد كه چگونه اين تغييرات مي‌توانند به خوانشي سازگارتر از محاورات مياني و متأخر كمك كنند و در عين حال از بسياري مشكلات ناشي از كرونولوژي‌هاي ديگر بپرهيزند. (shrink)

A partir du renvoi à la « maxime de Platon » insérée dans l’avant dernière page de la première édition de L’interprétation du rêve, l’auteur expose d’abord les convergences entre la conception du rêve de Platon présentée dans La République et les intuitions qui fondent l’édifice métapsychologique freudien. A la lumière des sources textuelles citées par Freud et de ses intérêts, l’auteur avance ensuite l’hypothèse selon laquelle Freud aurait non seulement omis de reconnaître la généalogie théorétique platonicienne de la « (...) via regia menant à la connaissance de l’inconscient », mais aussi utilisé le dialogue antique comme source d’inspiration tacite pour la composition de L’Interprétation du rêve. (shrink)

The author makes the case that Plato is engaged not only in thinking but also, and more important, in doing¿that what we do with the knowledge is crucial, because it can determine the meaning and purpose of our own life. She saw that he was not merely engaging in rational philosophical discussion, but that the dialogues of Plato, especially up to the Republic, embody the Socratic exhortation for each individual to "take care for the soul." The dialogues therefore embody both (...) a rational philosophy and a system of spiritual/religious principles and doctrines whose purpose is to lay out¿in a public forum¿the path a true disciple needs to take to have a personal and direct experience of spiritual illumination, or enlightenment. (shrink)

For most of the twentieth century, interpreters of Plato took little interest in the dramatic aspects of the dialogues, assumed Plato's teachings were directly expressed by their leading speakers, and sought to understand prima facie absences and inconsistencies among apparent teachings through a developmental picture of Plato's thought. Rarely did they explain why Plato occasionally used philosophical characters as different from each other and from Socrates as Parmenides, Timaeus, and the Eleatic Stranger, leaving Socrates present but largely silent. Nor did (...) they address why, having returned Socrates to leadership in the "late" Philebus, Plato eliminated him altogether in favor of an Athenian Stranger in the .. (shrink)

Starting with the reference to “Plato’s dictum” that Freud added in the second last page of the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, the author explains the convergences between the conception of dreams expounded by Plato in the Republic and Freud’s fundamental insights. The analysis of bibliographic sources used by Freud, and of his interests, allow than to suppose not only that Freud omitted to acknowledge the Plato’s theoretical genealogy of “the Via Regia to the unconscious”, but also the (...) possibility that the Republic constituted a tacit source of inspiration for the composition of The Interpretations of dreams. -/- Muovendo dal richiamo al «detto di Platone» inserito nella penultima pagina della prima edizione de "L’interpretazione dei sogni" di Freud (1899), vengono preliminarmente esposte le convergenze tra la concezione del sogno di Platone esposta ne "La Repubblica" e le intuizioni poste alla base dell’edificio freudiano. Alla luce delle fonti testuali citate e utilizzate da Freud, e dei suoi interessi, viene poi avanzata l’ipotesi che egli non soltanto abbia omesso di riconoscere la genealogia teoretica platonica della «via regia che porta alla conoscenza dell’inconscio» (p. 282), ma che l’antico dialogo abbia potuto rappresentare una fonte tacita di ispirazione per la composizione de "L’interpretazione dei sogni". (shrink)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 811-815, July 2011.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates says he spent his life examining and questioning people on how best to live, while avowing that he himself knows nothing important. Elsewhere, however, for example in Plato's Republic, Plato's Socrates presents radical and grandiose theses. In this book Sandra Peterson offers a hypothesis which explains the puzzle of Socrates' two contrasting manners. She argues that the apparently confident doctrinal Socrates is in fact conducting the first step of an examination: by eliciting his interlocutors' reactions, his (...) apparently doctrinal lectures reveal what his interlocutors believe is the best way to live. She tests her hypothesis by close reading of passages in the Theaetetus, Republic and Phaedo. Her provocative conclusion, that there is a single Socrates whose conception and practice of philosophy remain the same throughout the dialogues, will be of interest to a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and classics. (shrink)

Presents translations of five dialogues from Plato, as well as additional notes on history and mythology.

Much of what we know about his life and work comes from the accounts of his disciple Plato. Plato described Socrates as the ultimate teacher as well as the creator of modern argument and rhetoric.

Comment, Socrate, personnage historique et citoyen notoire de l’Athènes, est-il devenu une fiction littéraire dans les dialogues de Platon? Serait-il une réaction, assez étrange, au refus de socrate d’écrire? Quoi qu’il en soit, peu après la mort de Socrate, fait son apparition un nouveau genre nommé Socratikoi logoi. Outre Platon d’autres écrivains ont donné de telles compositions en dialogue: Eschine de Sphattos, Antistene, Aristipe, Bryson, Cebes, Criton, Euclide de Megara, Phaidon. Est-ce que les dialogues de jeunesse de Platon sont autre (...) chose que les plus réussies Socratikoi logoi. La thématique de ces dialogue en manière socratique est la démonstration savoureuse que l’interlocuteur de Socrate, malgré le fait qu’il semble savoir beaucoup de choses, il ne sait, en fin de compte, rien. Presque tous les jeunes de l’entourage de Socrate avaient emprunté cette technique de Socrate et dialoguaient avec les citoyen d’Athènes, faisant de Socrate un nom notoire, tout en l’exposant aussi à la haine de ceux qu’il avait directement humilié et que ses disciples avaient humilié. Cette technique de montret au savant qu’il ne sait rien; a enchanté les disciples qui ont inventé ultérieurement Socratikoi logoi. Souvent, Platon lui-même, en choisissant des enjeux impossibles dans ses dialogues de jeunesse (la définition d’une vertu) crée des Socratikoi logoi. (shrink)

In reply to Seddon's charge that Long's analysis in Reason and Value rests on a mistaken reading of Plato, Long both defends his interpretation of Plato and argues that nothing in Reason and Value depends on Plato interpretation in any case.

Edition de l'ensemble des quarante-cinq dialogues de Platon et de seize dialogues attribués ou apocryphes. Avec une introduction générale.

Da tempo era vivamente sentita l’esigenza di una nuova edizione degli scoli a Platone, che sostituisse quella di Greene del 1938. Questo volume contiene una nuova edizione degli scoli relativi ai dialoghi delle prime sette tetralogie, fondata su una completa collazione dei testimoni principali, aumentati di due unità rispetto all’edizione precedente, e corredata da un apparato di fonti e paralleli, il cui rapporto con gli scoli è stato del tutto rimeditato alla luce delle recenti acquisizioni della critica.

Plato's 4th-century BC Dialogues rank among Western civilization's most important and influential philosophical works. With Socrates as the central disputant in a series of arguments, they probe a broad range of enduringly relevant issues. All 6 of these works feature authoritative translations by the distinguished classical scholar Benjamin Jowett.

The ontological distinctiveness of a work of art, which consists, among other things, in the fact that it creates its own universe, does not preclude a work of art from occasionally pointing beyond the unity of this very universe. This may take place in a direct way, say, when a statement that occurs within the context of the aesthetic universe created by the author is intelligible if it is attributed to the author herself, but not within the aesthetic universe. The (...) parabases delivered by the chorus in Old Comedy are a well-known example, and, since the transgression of illusions has a special affinity to the nature of the comical and the direct contact with the audience was expected at this point, they are aesthetically warranted. (shrink)

In these four dialogues Plato considers virtue and its definition. Charmides, Laches, and Lysis investigate the specific virtues of self-control, courage, and friendship; the laterMeno discusses the concept of virtue as a whole, and whether it is something that can be taught.

This is the first comprehensive study of the Theages, a dialogue whose Platonic authorship was not questioned in antiquity but has been doubted by most modern ...

The classical Athenian philosopher Socrates was tried in 399 BCE on the basis of two notoriously ambiguous charges: corrupting the youth and impiety (in Greek, asebeia). A majority of the 501 dikasts (Athenian citizen-jurors) voted to convict him. Socrates was ultimately sentenced to death by drinking a hemlock-based liquid. This well-known account of the trial is by Plato, one of Socrates' students and a famous philosopher in his own right. Whether Socrates was punished unjustly is a contested issue which to (...) this day inspires discussions about the nature and meaning of justice. (shrink)

Benjamin Jowett's translations of Plato have long been classics in their own right. In this volume, Professor Hayden Pelliccia has revised Jowett's renderings of five key dialogues, giving us a modern Plato faithful to both Jowett's best features and Plato's own masterly style. Gathered here are many of Plato's liveliest and richest texts. Ion takes up the question of poetry and introduces the Socratic method. Protagoras discusses poetic interpretation and shows why cross-examination is the best way to get at the (...) truth. Phaedrus takes on the nature of rhetoric, psychology, and love, as does the famous Symposium. Finally, Apology gives us Socrates' art of persuasion put to the ultimate test--defending his own life. Pelliccia's new Introduction to this volume clarifies its contents and addresses the challenges of translating Plato freshly and accurately. In its combination of accessibility and depth, Selected Dialogues of Plato is the ideal introduction to one of the key thinkers of all time. (shrink)

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)

The title theme is explored in seven chapters, five of which are revisions of previously published papers. As sketched in the introduction, the central claim is that the dialogues not only always present their explicit themes in a context of "finitude, limitation or negation", but also depict three different responses to such finitude, "domination, submission, or an acknowledgment of the finitude which transforms it into possibility", of which the latter is to be preferred. Moreover, subsequent chapters argue that this mode (...) of presentation is a form of irony which is not merely a literary device or a tactic of political prudence or of pedagogical method, but a reflection of a core tenet of Platonic philosophy, that is, that while the whole has an arche which is in principle intelligible, the finitude and erotic character of human nature render any complete or adequate grasp of that arche humanly impossible. Consequently, the philosophic enterprise, insofar as it is engaged in a necessarily unsuccessful striving for an unattainable goal, partakes of certain elements of tragedy, including the tragic sense that such striving is somehow ennobling. Yet insofar as it yields to the temptation to believe that its goal is attainable, it runs the risk of turning comic in its ignorance of its own limitations. Hence it seems to be self-knowledge about its own finitude which makes the philosophic life finally neither tragic nor comic. (shrink)

This 1995 book takes as its starting point Plato's incorporation of specific genres of poetry and rhetoric into his dialogues. The author argues that Plato's 'dialogues' with traditional genres are part and parcel of his effort to define 'philosophy'. Before Plato, 'philosophy' designated 'intellectual cultivation' in the broadest sense. When Plato appropriated the term for his own intellectual project, he created a new and specialised discipline. In order to define and legitimise 'philosophy', Plato had to match it against genres of (...) discourse that had authority and currency in democratic Athens. By incorporating the text or discourse of another genre, Plato 'defines' his new brand of wisdom in opposition to traditional modes of thinking and speaking. By targeting individual genres of discourse Plato marks the boundaries of 'philosophy' as a discursive and as a social practice. (shrink)

Apology -- Crito -- Phaedo -- Symposium -- Republic.

Plato is one of the key ancient authors studied by both classicists and philosophers. This long-awaited new edition contains seven of the dialogues of Plato, and is the first in the five-volume complete edition of his works in the Oxford Classical Texts series. The result of many years of painstaking scholarship, the new volume will replace the now nearly 100 year old original edition, and is destined to become just as long-lasting a classic.

Dr Brandwood's book presents a factual and critical account of the more important of the various attempts that have been made to establish the order of composition of Plato's dialogues by analysing his diction and prose style. Plato's literary activity covered fifty years and there is almost no direct evidence, either external or internal, to help in establishing the relative order of his writings. Until the middle of the nineteenth century people were dependent on personal interpretation of the probable line (...) of development of Plato's thought and doctrines, but then a less subjective method was discovered, which relied instead on the observation of changes in Plato's prose style. Dr Brandwood examines the investigations of each scholar individually, checking the correctness of the methodology and the accuracy of the statistics, before arriving at fairly definite conclusions of his own, at least as far as the works of Plato's middle and old age are concerned. (shrink)