12 found
Order:
  1. ‘Pushing Through’ in Plato’s Sophist: A New Reading of the Parity Assumption.Evan Rodriguez - 2020 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 102 (2):159-188.
    At a crucial juncture in Plato’s Sophist, when the interlocutors have reached their deepest confusion about being and not-being, the Eleatic Visitor proclaims that there is yet hope. Insofar as they clarify one, he maintains, they will equally clarify the other. But what justifies the Visitor’s seemingly oracular prediction? A new interpretation explains how the Visitor’s hope is in fact warranted by the peculiar aporia they find themselves in. The passage describes a broader pattern of ‘exploring both sides’ that lends (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  2. Aristotle's Platonic Response to the Problem of First Principles.Evan Rodriguez - 2020 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 58 (3):449-469.
    how does one inquire into the truth of first principles? Where does one begin when deciding where to begin? Aristotle recognizes a series of difficulties when it comes to understanding the starting points of a scientific or philosophical system, and contemporary scholars have encountered their own difficulties in understanding his response. I will argue that Aristotle was aware of a Platonic solution that can help us uncover his own attitude toward the problem.Aristotle's central problem with first principles arises from the (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  3. Untying the Gorgianic ‘Not’: Argumentative Structure in On Not-Being.Evan Rodriguez - 2019 - Classical Quarterly 69 (1):87-106.
    Gorgias’ On Not-Being survives only in two divergent summaries. Diels–Kranz's classic edition prints the better-preserved version that appears in Sextus’ Aduersus Mathematicos. Yet, in recent years there has been rising interest in a second summary that survives as part of the anonymous De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia. The text of MXG is more difficult; it contains substantial lacunae that often make it much harder to make grammatical let alone philosophical sense of. As Alexander Mourelatos reports, one manuscript has a scribal note (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  4. More than a Reductio: Plato's Method in the Parmenides and Lysis.Evan Rodriguez - 2019 - Études Platoniciennes 15.
    Plato’s Parmenides and Lysis have a surprising amount in common from a methodological standpoint. Both systematically employ a method that I call ‘exploring both sides’, a philosophical method for encouraging further inquiry and comprehensively understanding the truth. Both have also been held in suspicion by interpreters for containing what looks uncomfortably similar to sophistic methodology. I argue that the methodological connections across these and other dialogues relieve those suspicions and push back against a standard developmentalist story about Plato’s method. This (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  5.  40
    Structure and Aim in Socratic and Sophistic Method.Evan Rodriguez - 2020 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 23 (1):143-166.
    I begin this paper with a puzzle: why is Plato’s Parmenides replete with references to Gorgias? While the Eleatic heritage and themes in the dialogue are clear, it is less clear what the point would be of alluding to a well-known sophist. I suggest that the answer has to do with the similarities in the underlying methods employed by both Plato and Gorgias. These similarities, as well as Plato’s recognition of them, suggest that he owes a more significant philosophical and (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  6.  40
    A Homeric Lesson in Plato's Sophist.Evan Rodriguez - 2023 - Classical Quarterly 73 (2):593-601.
    Plato's closing reference to the Iliad in the Sophist has been largely overlooked in contemporary scholarship. The reference, a quotation from the confrontation between Glaucus and Diomedes in Book 6, forms part of a broader frame to the dialogue. The frame, with its recurring themes of identification and misidentification, helps us make better sense of the dialogue's final description of the sophist and its central concerns about the relationship between philosophy and sophistry. It also provides a revealing case study of (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. A Long Lost Relative in the Parmenides? Plato’s Family of Hypothetical Methods.Evan Rodriguez - 2022 - Apeiron 55 (1):141-166.
    The Parmenides has been unduly overlooked in discussions of hypothesis in Plato. It contains a unique method for testing first principles, a method I call ‘exploring both sides’. The dialogue recommends exploring the consequences of both a hypothesis and its contradictory and thematizes this structure throughout. I challenge the view of Plato’s so-called ‘method of hypothesis’ as an isolated stage in Plato’s development; instead, the evidence of the Parmenides suggests a family of distinct hypothetical methods, each with its own peculiar (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. Problems of Being.Evan Rodriguez - 2023 - In Joshua Billings & Christopher Moore (eds.), The Cambridge companion to the Sophists. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 200–224.
    Sophists were active participants in ancient discussions about being or what-is at the most general level. This chapter discusses the contributions of Gorgias, Protagoras, Xeniades, and Lycophron in the context of the Eleatic philosophers Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus. All of these figures share a serious commitment to ontological inquiry as well as a concern with the problems that arise when discussing being or what-is. They also share an approach to these problems that is at times paradoxical and self-undermining. -/- The (...)
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Review of Samuel Scolnicov, Plato’s Method of Hypothesis in the Middle Dialogues, edited by Harold Tarrant. [REVIEW]Evan Rodriguez - 2019 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 57 (3):549-550.
    This volume, a lightly-edited version of Professor Samuel Scolnicov’s 1974 Ph.D. thesis, is a fitting tribute to his impressive career. It will perhaps be most useful for those interested in better understanding Scolnicov’s work and his views on Plato as a whole, not least for the comprehensive list of his publications that requires a full twelve pages of print. Scholars with an interest in Plato’s method of hypothesis will also find some useful remarks on key passages in the Meno, Phaedo, (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10.  25
    Review of Anna Marmodoro, Forms and Structure in Plato’s Metaphysics. [REVIEW]Evan Rodriguez - 2022 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
  11.  31
    Review of Marina McCoy, Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists. [REVIEW]Evan Rodriguez & Ravi Sharma - 2008 - Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008 (12.36).
  12.  18
    Review of Olof Pettersson & Vigdis Songe-Møller (eds.) Plato's Protagoras: Essays on the Confrontation of Philosophy and Sophistry. [REVIEW]Evan Rodriguez - 2017 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 201704.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark