Socrates : an approach /

This collection of five of Montuori's essays are geared toward specialists, although advanced undergraduates may find at least two of the essays instructive. The author worries that the skepticism expressed more than 40 years ago by Olof Gigon (in Sokrates; sein Bild in Dichtung und Geschichte, Bern, 1947) might erase from the history of civilization the name of Plato's reknown teacher. In these essays Montouri combats this threat by "collecting and coordinating those elements (insofar as they exist) which explain the reasons for the death of Socrates." All of the essays were previously published in Italian--three are from 1967--and are linked to his Socrates: Physiology of a Myth (Amsterdam, 1981). The essays are important for their insight into Continental scholarship too frequently ignored by English-language scholars. Strangely enough, such accusation of scholarly neglect can be brought to bear against Montouri, who ignores the wealth of recent English-language scholarship on The Socratic Problem encapsulated so well in the G. Vlastos and A.R. Lacey essays in The Philosophy of Socrates, ed. by G. Vlastos (1971). Although most of the essays are heavily footnoted and laced with untranslated passages, the essays on the trial of Anaxagoras and on Aspasia of Miletus will be more readily accessible to undergraduate readers. -R. Epp, Choice