Socrates and philosophy in the dialogues of Plato /

Socrates and philosophy in the dialogues of Plato /

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Peterson, Sandra, 1940-
Imprint:Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Description:xvi, 293 p. ; 24 cm.
Language:English
Subject:
Plato. -- Dialogues.
Socrates.
Socrates.
Dialogues (Plato)
Philosophy.
Philosophy.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8400918
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780521190619 (hardback)
0521190614 (hardback)
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (p. 262-276) and indexes.
Summary:"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 new 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"--
"The Socrates of some of Plato's dialogues is the avowedly ignorant figure of the Apology who knows nothing important and who gave his life to examining himself and others. In contrast, the Socrates of other dialogues such as the Republic and Phaedo gives confident lectures on topics of which the examining Socrates of the Apology professed ignorance. It is a longstanding puzzle why Socrates acts so differently in different dialogues. To explain the two different manners of Socrates a current widely accepted interpretation of Plato's dialogues offers this two-part, Platocentered, hypothesis: (i) the character Socrates, of the dialogues is always Plato's device for presenting Plato's own views; and (ii) Plato had different views at different times. The Socrates who confidently lectures presents these famous four doctrines: Plato's blueprint for the best state, Plato's "Theory of Forms," Plato's view that philosophy is the knowledge of those Forms that fits the knower for the highest government stations, and Plato's arguments for the immortality of the soul"--
Table of Contents:
  • Acknowledgments
  • List of abbreviations
  • Preface
  • 1. Opposed hypotheses about Plato's dialogues
  • 1.1. A datum: the two different modes of speaking of Plato's Socrates
  • 1.2. Two hypotheses to explain the datum
  • 1.3. More on the grand hypothesis and my alternative
  • 1.4. One approach that leads naturally to my alternative hypothesis
  • 1.5. A second approach to my hypothesis from four observations
  • 1.6. This book's plan to discuss the Socrates of Plato's dialogues
  • 1.7. The author Plato and the character Socrates
  • 1.8. Plato and the reader
  • 2. Socrates in the Apology
  • 2.1. Looking for the Socrates of the Apology
  • 2.2. The label ôwiseö is a terrible slander
  • 2.3. Socrates is neither an investigator of nature nor a sophist
  • 2.4. Socrates is not a sage
  • 2.5. The thoughtfulness (phronêsis) that Socrates considers so important
  • 2.6. The ôgreatest thingsö
  • 2.7. Why the label ôwiseö is a terrible slander
  • 2.8. Socrates in the Apology sometimes echoes his accusers
  • 2.9. While knowing nothing big, Socrates does know some things
  • 2.10. Socrates' knowledge that the god orders him to test people is not big
  • 2.11. The Socrates of the Apology
  • 3. Socrates in the digression of the Theaetetus: extraction by declaration
  • 3.1. The digression and its setting
  • 3.2. The first part of the digression
  • 3.3. An acute interpretative problem
  • 3.4. Theodorus
  • 3.5. Extraction by declaration
  • 3.6. Reflections on the extraction from Theodorus
  • 3.7. The second half of the digression: homoiôsis theô(i)
  • 3.8. The solution to our problems about the digression
  • 3.9. Conclusion: Theodorus again, and Theaetetus
  • 4. Socrates in the Republic, part I: speech and counter-speech
  • 4.1. Strangeness and discontinuity
  • 4.2. Question and answer discussion in book 1
  • 4.3. A different kind of conversation in books 2-10: speech against speech
  • 4.4. A question about Glaucon and a temporary puzzle about Socrates
  • 4.5. Jostling conventions: question-and-answer conversation within persuasive speech
  • 4.6. Glaucon and Adeimantus require of Socrates a made-to-order speech
  • 4.7. The city of books 2-10 is Glaucon's, built under a condition he imposes
  • 4.8. The ôbestö city Socrates describes in the Timaeus
  • 4.9. Three reasons against finding Socrates committed to his proposals in books 2-10
  • 5. Socrates in the Republic, part II: philosophers, forms, Glaucon, and Adeimantus
  • 5.1. When can we say that Socrates does not believe proposals he makes in books 2-10?
  • 5.2. Socrates'depiction of the philosopher
  • 5.3. Glaucon's agreements about forms in books 5-7 do not survive examination
  • 5.4. What Adeimantus accepts concerning philosophers does not survive examination
  • 5.5. What can we conclude from the description of the philosopher for Adeimantus?
  • 5.6. The effect of distancing Socrates from the content of his speech in books 2-10
  • 5.7. The characters of Glaucon and Adeimantus
  • 5.8. The Socrates of the Republic
  • 5.9. The piety of Socrates' speech to Plato's brothers and its worth for Plato's readers
  • 6. Socrates in the Phaedo: another persuasion assignment
  • 6.1. The famous proposals of the Socrates of the Phaedo
  • 6.2. Setting and participants
  • 6.3. The emphasis on persuasion
  • 6.4. Remarks on the logical structure of Socrates' persuasive argument
  • 6.5. ôTrue philosophersö
  • 6.6. Socrates is not among the ôtrue philosophersö he describes
  • 6.7. Why is Socrates not more straightforward?
  • 7. Others' conceptions of philosophy in the Euthydemus, Lovers, and Sophist
  • 7.1. Comparison of some accounts of philosophy
  • 7.2. The conception of philosophy of an unnamed observer in the Euthydemus
  • 7.3. The Lovers as a compendium of current conceptions of philosophy
  • 7.4. The setting of the Sophist
  • 7.5. The Eleatic visitor's conception of philosophy
  • 7.6. Why does the Eleatic visitor not count Socratic cleansing refutation as philosophy?
  • 8. Socrates and Plato in Plato's dialogues
  • 8.1. Socrates in Plato's dialogues
  • 8.2. What does Socrates believe?
  • 8.3. Socrates and Plato according to Kahn
  • 8.4. The Delphic oracle and a problem for two views about Plato's development
  • 8.5. Development and Plato's creativity
  • 8.6. The testimony of Aristotle about doctrines of Plato
  • 8.7. More about Plato
  • 8.8. Something else to explain and a pure speculation
  • 8.9. A possible objection: the traditional interpretation of Plato
  • 8.10. Plato's doctrines
  • 8.11. The argument of love; Plato and the historical Socrates
  • 9. Socrates and philosophy
  • 9.1. Which of Plato's dialogues call Socrates a philosopher?
  • 9.2. Classification of previously considered passages
  • 9.3. Some more statements from observers
  • 9.4. More passages in which Socrates suggests a conception of the philosopher
  • 9.5. Passages of Socrates' self-description
  • 9.6. Why did Socrates, as depicted, call his activity ôphilosophizingö?
  • 9.7. One possible reason why Socrates calls his own activities ôphilosophizingö
  • 9.8. Another possible reason why Socrates calls his activities ôphilosophizingö
  • 9.9. Plato and philosophy: one view
  • 9.10. Plato and philosophy: a second view
  • 9.11. Socrates, philosophy, and Plato
  • Bibliography
  • Index of passages cited
  • General index
The Helen Lee Memorial Fund bookplate

Similar Items