In this international and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays, distinguished contributors examine a crucial premise of traditional readings of Plato's dialogues: that Plato's own doctrines and arguments can be read off the statements made in the dialogues by Socrates and other leading characters. The authors argue in general and with reference to specific dialogues, that no character should be taken to be Plato's mouthpiece. This is essential reading for students and scholars of Plato.

This article updates “The State of the Question in the Study of Plato” (Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1996) based on research covering the years from 1995–2015. Its three major parts examine: (1) how the mid‐twentieth‐century consensus has fared, (2) whether the new trends identified in that article have continued, and (3) identify trends either new or missed in the original article. On the whole, it shows the continuing decline of dogmatic and nondramatic Plato interpretation and the expansion and ramification of (...) the more literary, dramatic, and nondogmatic “new Platonism.” What was a growing insurgency twenty years ago can now be described as a, if not the, dominant approach. (shrink)

This comprehensive reference guide includes over 140 entries on every aspect of Plato's thought.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editorial AnnouncementGerald A. PressIt is my pleasure to announce that Jan Wojcik of Auburn University is the new Book Review Editor of the Journal of the History of History of Philosophy. All correspondence concerning book reviews should be directed to Professor Wojcik in Alabama effective immediately. The mailing address is: Prof. Jan Wojcik, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, AL 36849–5210. E-mail: [email protected] thank (...) the former Book Review Editor, Manfred Kuehn, for hi service to the Journal.Copyright © 2001 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc... (shrink)

Gerald A. Press - Virtue in the Cave: Moral Inquiry in Plato's Meno - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 535-536 Book Review Virtue in the Cave: Moral Inquiry in Plato's Roslyn Weiss. Virtue in the Cave: Moral Inquiry in Plato's Meno. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. x + 229. Cloth, $39.95. Few monographs have been written on the Meno in English; and much of what is written takes a piecemeal (...) approach, emphasizing the dilemma about the impossibility of learning what one doesn't know, the slave boy sequence, knowledge as recollection, concepts of teaching and learning, or right opinion which is sometimes taken as being asserted by Socrates or Plato. Weiss's book has a lot to recommend it. It is the first monographic study on this dialogue in English since Sternfeld and Zyskind's in 1978. Like Weiss's earlier Socrates Dissatisfied ,.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Craig Walton 1934-2007Rudolf A. Makkreel and Gerald A. PressThe Journal of the History of Philosophy is saddened to report that Craig Walton died on October 11th, 2007. Professor Walton served the Journal for many years. He was involved with it from its inception in 1963 and knew personally many of the founding philosophers, who had been at the Claremont Graduate Center. He was the Book Review Editor from 1975 (...) until 1981 and was a member of the Board of Directors from 1978 until 2004, where he promoted the study of the history of philosophy in many ways and maintained our institutional memory. For instance, it was Craig who remembered the important roles Salih Alich and Oskar Piest played in our early history. From 2001–03, he was the Treasurer of the Board. He believed strongly in the cosmopolitan nature of scholarship, and, as Book Review Editor, he was tireless in his efforts to review books on the history of philosophy written in languages other than English.Craig was born on December 6, 1934, in Los Angeles and earned his doctorate in philosophy at Claremont Graduate University in 1965. His dissertation, De la recherche du bien: A Study of Malebranche's Science of Ethics, was approved in 1964 by a doctoral committee that included Theodore Waldman, Herbert Schneider, and Philip Merlan, though he also worked with Richard Popkin, the founder of the Journal. He taught at the University of Southern California, Northern Illinois University and Emory University before moving to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1972. Craig was Chair of the Philosophy Department there from 1986 to 1989 and became the Director of the Institute for Ethics and Policy at UNLV in 1987. He held this post until his retirement in 2004. After his early work on Malebranche, for much of his career he was a scholar of David Hume and Thomas Hobbes; but he spent the last decade of his life urging that ethical issues be studied across the curriculum. Upon retiring from teaching, Craig extended his work in ethics by founding the Nevada Center for Public Ethics. The Chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education praised Craig as the voice of ethics in Nevada.As members of the Board of Directors of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, we remember Craig Walton for his enthusiasm for the history of philosophy and his warmth as a human being.Copyright © 2007 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

I agree with the substance of Prof. Byrd’s argument, that what she calls ‘summoners’ are to be found in supposedly ‘early’ as well as supposedly ‘middle’ dialogues and that this serves to undermine the strong Vlastos thesis of a radical difference between those groups. But Vlastosian and other forms of developmentalism have been in retreat for some time. I think the term παρακαλοῦντα is better translated as ‘provocations’; and I would argue that they are to be found in all of (...) Plato’s dialogues and that their presence supports a more deeply uni-tarian approach than Byrd explicitly offers here. On the other hand, provocation is only a pedagogical strategy and, although its presence constitutes a kind of unity across the Platonic corpus, the problem developmentalism was intended to solve—apparent inconsistencies and contradictions between views apparently asserted in various dialogues—remains in need of solution. (shrink)

An extensive scholarly literature, written in the past century holds that in ancient Greek and Roman thought history is understood as circular and repetitive - a consequence of their anti-temporal metaphysics - in contrast with Judaeo-Christian thought, which sees history as linear and unique - a consequence of their messianic and hence radically temporal theology. Gerald Press presents a more general view - that the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian cultures were fundamentally alien and opposed cultural forces and that, therefore, Christianity's victory (...) over paganism included the replacement or supersession of one intellectual world by another - and then shows that, contrary to this view, there was substantial continuity between "pagan" and Christian ideas of history in antiquity, rather than a striking opposition between cyclic and linear patterns. He finds that the foundation of the Christian view of history as goal-directed lies in the rhetorical rather than the theological motives of early Christian writers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editorial AnnouncementGerald A. PressIt is my pleasure to announce that Jan Wojcik of Auburn University is the new Book Review Editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy. All correspondence concerning book reviews should be directed to Professor Wojcik in Alabama effective immediately. The mailing address is: Prof. Jan Wojcik, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, AL 36849-5210. E-mail: [email protected] thank the former (...) Book Review Editor, Manfred Kuehn, for his service to this Journal.Copyright © 2000 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editorial AnnouncementGerald A. PressIt is my pleasure to announce that Jan Wojcik of Auburn University is the new Book Review Editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy. All correspondence concerning book reviews should be directed to Professor Wojcik in Alabama effective immediately. The mailing address is: Prof. Jan Wojcik, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, AL 36849-5210. E-mail: [email protected] thank the former (...) Book Review Editor, Manfred Kuehn, for his service to this Journal.Copyright © 2000 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 415 [Access article in PDF] Editor's Note THIS ISSUE MARKS THE COMPLETION of the Journal's fortieth year of publication. In recognition of that milestone we include a few special items. First is a birthday message from the Journal's Founding Editor, Richard H. Popkin. Then, in the Notes and Discussions, we carry on our tradition of occasional debates about what we do (...) and why it is important, with remarks by Richard A. Watson and Margaret J. Osler. For earlier discussions, see 2 (1961), 1-14 and 31 (1993), 95-123. Gerald A. Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.4 (2005) 483-484 [Access article in PDF] Société d'études platoniciennes. Études Platoniciennes. Vol. 1, Annuaire européen d'études platoniciennes. Edited by Luc Brisson and Jean-François Pradeau. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004. Pp. 348, e 35,00. This is the first volume in what is projected to be an annual series published under the auspices of the Société d'études platoniciennes, with sponsorship in France, italy, and (...) Spain. The introductory editorial note by Jean-François Pradeau (7) states the Society's intention for the series to publish in five languages (German, English, Spanish, French, and italian), sometimes on a particular theme or particular work, but always to contribute to the knowledge of Plato's works and the Platonic tradition. Here one can only briefly indicate the range of contents of this first volume.There are three parts. The first, entitled "Platon," includes six articles on Plato. Anne Merker, "Corps et châtiment chez Platon" (11–50), reviews relevant sections of Gorgias, Timaeus, and Laws and argues that, in fact, the body has most significantly both a semantic and a cosmological function in Plato's view. Klaus Schöpsdau, "Richten und Strafen. Zum Strafrecht in Platons Nomoi" (51–72), offers a more general explanation of judgment and punishment in Plato and thus might more usefully have preceded Merkur's article. For Francisco Lisi, "El mito del Politico" (73–90), the myth, perhaps paradoxically, turns out to reveal Plato as a philosopher of history. Francesco Gregorio, elements pour une métacritique de l'interprétation de la République de Platon" (91–112) examines in detail the reading of Plato's text that can be extrapolated from Aristotle's criticisms of it. Among the surprises, he finds an Aristotelian irony which he considers a sure sign that Aristotle [End Page 483] read Plato well (111). Walter Leszl's long article, "Plato's Attitude to poetry and the fine arts, and the origins of aesthetics" (113–98), is, in fact, only part i of a longer discussion, the second part of which will appear in volume ii of this series (asterisked note to 199) in which he tries to replace Kristeller's view that the system of "fine arts" is a distinctively modern idea and hence absent in ancient authors. The weakness of the case as stated thus far is that Leszl fails to recognize the important distinction between concepts explicitly articulated and those which later scholars find "implied" by what ancients "must have" thought and confirmed by certain "traces" in what they write. Like Leszl's article, Francesco Bearzi's "il contesto noetico del Simposio" (199–251) is part of a much longer connected study of the four passages—Diotima's speech in the Symposium, Republic, excursus in Seventh Letter, and Phaedrus 247–50—in which intellectual intuition is treated. Despite its seemingly mysterious language, he sees the view presented as rigorously rational.The second part, "Tradition platonicienne," contains only two articles, and thus is not in balance with part one. Francesco Fronterotta's "La genèse et la succession des réalités atemporelles. Un argument paradoxal chez Plotin (Ennéades V 1 [10] 6, 19–22)" (255–70) finds that Plotinus's argument leads to the paradoxical conclusion, reminiscent of certain conclusions in the Parmenides, that a truly atemporal reality could be neither thought nor spoken. in "La doctrine des degrés de vertus chez les néo-platoniciens. Une analyse de la Sentence 32 de Porphyre, de ses antecedents et de ses consequences" (271–86), Luc Brisson introduces the views of virtue in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, before expounding the four types in Porphyry, who, he claims, first makes possible the idea of degrees of virtue, and looking briefly at some later Neoplatonic formulations.The third part, "Notes et lectures critiques," includes a review article by Francisco Fronterrota, "L'unità del Platonismo : Alcuni studi sulla tradizione medioplatonica e neoplatonica" (289–98) and a "Bibliographie des études... (shrink)

The predominant scholarly opinion argues that, for the ancients, the idea of history held no meaning because time was regarded as a circular pattern in which events are repeated. Only human thought and art were meaningful. This opinion, however, is based on an a priori definition of history as the whole temporal process. If the term "history" is examined from the standpoint of its use during antiquity, the analyses of the notions of time and history change. Rather than being regarded (...) as circular and repetitious, time had no pattern at all. Though this concept posed some philosophical problems for ancient thinkers, including Aristotle, time was not discussed as a medium of history. The interest in history as an academic discipline and its view as a linear process with an origin and an end independent of human thought occurred only with the gradual and rhetorical transition to Judaeo-Christian belief. (shrink)

Book Reviews James c. Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith, eds., Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 1992. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. ~8o. Cloth, $65.oo. The modern debate about how to interpret Plato and his dialogues has been going on at least since Schleiermacher argued for the interpretive importance of literary and dramatic characteristics, against the prevailing practice of reading Platonic doctrines directly out of the texts as if they were disguised treatises (...) 9 Important contributions to the discussion earlier in the twentieth century were made by Schaerer and Gold- schmidt, Friedl~inder, Stefanini, Woodbridge and Randall, Strauss, Kr~imer and Gaiser, and the disciples of these scholars, although you would hardly know it from the present volume. For those who are new to the discussion, and especially for those who come from the.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.4 (2005) 483-484 [Access article in PDF] Société d'études platoniciennes. Études Platoniciennes. Vol. 1, Annuaire européen d'études platoniciennes. Edited by Luc Brisson and Jean-François Pradeau. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004. Pp. 348, e 35,00. This is the first volume in what is projected to be an annual series published under the auspices of the Société d'études platoniciennes, with sponsorship in France, italy, and (...) Spain. The introductory editorial note by Jean-François Pradeau (7) states the Society's intention for the series to publish in five languages (German, English, Spanish, French, and italian), sometimes on a particular theme or particular work, but always to contribute to the knowledge of Plato's works and the Platonic tradition. Here one can only briefly indicate the range of contents of this first volume.There are three parts. The first, entitled "Platon," includes six articles on Plato. Anne Merker, "Corps et châtiment chez Platon" (11–50), reviews relevant sections of Gorgias, Timaeus, and Laws and argues that, in fact, the body has most significantly both a semantic and a cosmological function in Plato's view. Klaus Schöpsdau, "Richten und Strafen. Zum Strafrecht in Platons Nomoi" (51–72), offers a more general explanation of judgment and punishment in Plato and thus might more usefully have preceded Merkur's article. For Francisco Lisi, "El mito del Politico" (73–90), the myth, perhaps paradoxically, turns out to reveal Plato as a philosopher of history. Francesco Gregorio, elements pour une métacritique de l'interprétation de la République de Platon" (91–112) examines in detail the reading of Plato's text that can be extrapolated from Aristotle's criticisms of it. Among the surprises, he finds an Aristotelian irony which he considers a sure sign that Aristotle [End Page 483] read Plato well (111). Walter Leszl's long article, "Plato's Attitude to poetry and the fine arts, and the origins of aesthetics" (113–98), is, in fact, only part i of a longer discussion, the second part of which will appear in volume ii of this series (asterisked note to 199) in which he tries to replace Kristeller's view that the system of "fine arts" is a distinctively modern idea and hence absent in ancient authors. The weakness of the case as stated thus far is that Leszl fails to recognize the important distinction between concepts explicitly articulated and those which later scholars find "implied" by what ancients "must have" thought and confirmed by certain "traces" in what they write. Like Leszl's article, Francesco Bearzi's "il contesto noetico del Simposio" (199–251) is part of a much longer connected study of the four passages—Diotima's speech in the Symposium, Republic, excursus in Seventh Letter, and Phaedrus 247–50—in which intellectual intuition is treated. Despite its seemingly mysterious language, he sees the view presented as rigorously rational.The second part, "Tradition platonicienne," contains only two articles, and thus is not in balance with part one. Francesco Fronterotta's "La genèse et la succession des réalités atemporelles. Un argument paradoxal chez Plotin (Ennéades V 1 [10] 6, 19–22)" (255–70) finds that Plotinus's argument leads to the paradoxical conclusion, reminiscent of certain conclusions in the Parmenides, that a truly atemporal reality could be neither thought nor spoken. in "La doctrine des degrés de vertus chez les néo-platoniciens. Une analyse de la Sentence 32 de Porphyre, de ses antecedents et de ses consequences" (271–86), Luc Brisson introduces the views of virtue in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, before expounding the four types in Porphyry, who, he claims, first makes possible the idea of degrees of virtue, and looking briefly at some later Neoplatonic formulations.The third part, "Notes et lectures critiques," includes a review article by Francisco Fronterrota, "L'unità del Platonismo : Alcuni studi sulla tradizione medioplatonica e neoplatonica" (289–98) and a "Bibliographie des études... (shrink)

Gerald A. Press - Platon: Penseur du visuel - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.3 487-488 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Gerald A. Press Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center Michail Maiatsky. Platon: Penseur du visuel. Commentaires philosophiques. Paris: l'Harmattan, 2005. Pp. 299. €25.50. Recent philosophers and cultural critics have written a new chapter in the long history of anti-Platonism, making Plato the evil genius (...) of a visual prejudice allegedly infecting the heart of Western metaphysics. Some find it contradictory that Plato expresses anti-visual thoughts but seems nevertheless deeply pro-visual; thus, his frequent use of visual language confuses his project. Others (the present reviewer.. (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)

Gerald A. Press - Plato's Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 167-168 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Gerald A. Press Hunter College and City University of New York Graduate Center James Lesher, Debra Nails, and Frisbee Sheffield, editors. Plato's Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006. Pp. xi + 446. Paper, $29.95. Plato's Symposium has been a (...) fertile source of philosophical, literary, and artistic inspiration for more than two thousand years. It continues to inspire debates amid the changing fashions in contemporary Plato interpretation. This volume of papers, which grew out of a conference at the Center for Hellenic Studies in 2005, is divided into four parts. Most of the papers are richly rewarding, but there is space here to do little more than hint at their main points. Part I, "The Symposium and.. (shrink)

An extensive scholarly literature, written in the past century holds that in ancient Greek and Roman thought history is understood as circular and repetitive - a consequence of their anti-temporal metaphysics - in contrast with Judaeo-Christian thought, which sees history as linear and unique - a consequence of their messianic and hence radically temporal theology. Gerald Press presents a more general view - that the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian cultures were fundamentally alien and opposed cultural forces and that, therefore, Christianity's victory (...) over paganism included the replacement or supersession of one intellectual world by another - and then shows that, contrary to this view, there was substantial continuity between "pagan" and Christian ideas of history in antiquity, rather than a striking opposition between cyclic and linear patterns. He finds that the foundation of the Christian view of history as goal-directed lies in the rhetorical rather than the theological motives of early Christian writers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Database of Classical Bibliography ed. by Dee. L. ClaymanGerald A. PressDee. L. Clayman, editor. The Database of Classical Bibliography. CD-ROM and manual. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997. Pp. xvi + 120. $85 (individual); $340-2400 (institutional).L ’Annee Philologique (APh) has long been one of the most important scholarly resources for students of the history of ancient philosophy. Even though in print form it contains errors and omissions, has become (...) of unwieldy size, and does not appear promptly enough for up-to-date research, there is no other single source of such international comprehensiveness. It is far more inclusive in many respects than The Philosopher’s Index.The Database of Classical Bibliography (DCB) is a long-term project sponsored by the N.E.H., the American Philological Association and others to make the full contents of APh accessible from a CD-ROM either from individual PCs or on a local network. Unlike the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the DCB CD-ROM comes with its own search software (DCB CompLex) on the disk. This software is set up both for IBM and MAC machines, installs quickly, and operates extremely well. The manual gives clear instructions both for general use and for detailed search strategies. CompLex enables the user to search DCD in many different ways; e.g., by ancient or modern authors and works, by titles, publisher, place of publication, year of publication, journal, modern language, or series name, as well as by APh volumes, years, page numbers, rubrics, and topics. It can also search by any word in a modern language (i.e., in Roman characters) or for words in a Greek index. And CompLex enables one to perform more complex searches utilizing wildcards and Boolean operators in a user-friendly form.DCB Version 2, containing Volumes 45–60 (1974–1989), fulfills the editor’s initial commitment to make a new release available each year with the addition of three to five years, since it includes four years of APh (1973–74 and 1988–89) not on Version 1. Also new in Version 2 is a French interface and manual.DCB has faults, however. It repeats mistakes that appeared in the print version of APh and contains other mistakes that did not originate in APh. Many were noted in reviews of Version 1, but this should not be surprising in a work of such magnitude as either APh or DCB. What is perhaps disturbing is that errors noted in Version 1 have not been corrected in Version 2, though it would not seem difficult to make use of the information provided by careful reviewers.Nevertheless, DCB is a terrific scholarly tool. No college or university library should be without it. [End Page 619]Gerald A. PressHunter CollegeCopyright © 1998 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc... (shrink)

An extensive scholarly literature, written in the past century holds that in ancient Greek and Roman thought history is understood as circular and repetitive - a consequence of their anti-temporal metaphysics - in contrast with Judaeo-Christian thought, which sees history as linear and unique - a consequence of their messianic and hence radically temporal theology. Gerald Press presents a more general view - that the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian cultures were fundamentally alien and opposed cultural forces and that, therefore, Christianity's victory (...) over paganism included the replacement or supersession of one intellectual world by another - and then shows that, contrary to this view, there was substantial continuity between "pagan" and Christian ideas of history in antiquity, rather than a striking opposition between cyclic and linear patterns. He finds that the foundation of the Christian view of history as goal-directed lies in the rhetorical rather than the theological motives of early Christian writers. (shrink)

For fifteen years, the authors have been working together on what they call, following the convention established by Gregory Vlastos and his associates, "Socratic philosophy." The project of Socratic philosophy is to reconstruct and assess the philosophic beliefs, doctrines, and arguments of Socrates from rigorous examination of Plato's early dialogues. Whereas Vlastos and others have believed that the philosophy so extracted is that of the historical Socrates, Brickhouse and Smith "are agnostic about whose philosophy is accurately represented in Plato's early (...) dialogues" ; and their more particular contribution to the discussion has been to argue, again in contrast to others who work on Socratic philosophy, that a consistent philosophy can be derived from the plain sense of the words, without either convicting Socrates of logical blunders or having recourse to irony, humor, or any other literary or dramatic mode of explanation. Thus they are rebels in the Socratic philosophy society. This is their second jointly authored monograph, and, like Socrates on Trial, it builds on a number of jointly authored articles. (shrink)

Book Reviews James c. Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith, eds., Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 1992. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. ~8o. Cloth, $65.oo. The modern debate about how to interpret Plato and his dialogues has been going on at least since Schleiermacher argued for the interpretive importance of literary and dramatic characteristics, against the prevailing practice of reading Platonic doctrines directly out of the texts as if they were disguised treatises (...) 9 Important contributions to the discussion earlier in the twentieth century were made by Schaerer and Gold- schmidt, Friedl~inder, Stefanini, Woodbridge and Randall, Strauss, Kr~imer and Gaiser, and the disciples of these scholars, although you would hardly know it from the present volume. For those who are new to the discussion, and especially for those who come from the... (shrink)

Unlike many other dialogues, Plato’s Charmides has never elicited much sustained scholarly attention, even though it focuses on an important moral excellence, sôphrosunê (temperance, moderation), features two of Plato’s relatives who were members of the oligarchic government of 304–303 BC, and includes two refutations of the Republic’s formula, “doing one’s own things,” as well as a long, complex discussion of “knowledge of knowledge.” The present work is therefore a welcome addition to the small collection of English books on it (Tuckey, (...) Plato’s Charmides; Hyland, The Virtue of Philosophy; Schmid, Plato’s Charmides and the Socratic Ideal of Rationality). Early chapters, comprising nearly half the .. (shrink)