Trials of Reason

Plato and the Crafting of Philosophy

AvDavid Wolfsdorf

Inbunden, Engelska, 2008

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Beskrivning

Scholarship on Plato's dialogues persistently divides its focus between the dramatic or literary and the philosophical or argumentative dimensions of the texts. But this hermeneutic division of labor is naïve, for Plato's arguments are embedded in dramatic dialogues and developed through complex, largely informal exchanges between literary characters. Consequently, it is questionable how readers can even attribute arguments and theses to the author himself. The answer to this question lies in transcending the scholarly divide and integrating the literary and philosophical dimensions of the texts. This is the task of Trials of Reason. The study focuses on a set of fourteen so-called early dialogues, beginning with a methodological framework that explains how to integrate the argumentation and the drama in these texts. Unlike most canonical philosophical works, the early dialogues do not merely express the results of the practice of philosophy. Rather, they dramatize philosophy as a kind of motivation, the desire for knowledge of goodness. They dramatize philosophy as a discursive practice, motivated by this desire and ideally governed by reason. And they dramatize the trials to which desire and reason are subject, that is, the difficulties of realizing philosophy as a form of motivation, a practice, and an epistemic achievement. In short, Trials of Reason argues that Plato's early dialogues are as much works of meta-philosophy as philosophy itself.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2008-04-10
Mått:236 x 157 x 27 mm
Vikt:596 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:296
Förlag:OUP USA
ISBN:9780195327328

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Mer om författaren

David Wolfsdorf received a doctorate in Classics from the University of Chicago in 1997. He currently teaches in the Philosophy Department at Temple University where he specializes in Ancient Greek philosophy.

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Trails of Reason is a provocative and original book... its complexity is a testament to its author's admirable ambition.

Innehållsförteckning

INTERPRETATION: ; Introduction; ; Interpreting Plato; ; The Political Culture of Plato's Early Dialogues; ; Dialogue; ; Character and History; ; The Mouthpiece Principle; ; Forms of Evidence ; DESIRE: ; Socrates as an Erotic Figure; ; The Subjectivist Conception of Desire; ; Instrumental and Irrational Desires; ; Desire in the Critique of Akrasia; ; Interpreting Lysis; ; The Deficiency Conception of Desire; ; Inathentic Friendship; ; The Three-Dimensional Conception of Desire; ; Anti-Philosophical Desires ; KNOWLEDGE: ; Excellence as Wisdom; ; The Epistemic Unity of Excellence; ; Dunamis and Techne; ; Goodness and Form; ; The Epistemological Priority of Definitional Knowledge; ; Ordinary Ethical Knowledge ; METHOD: ; The Socratic Fallacy; ; Socrates' Pursuit of Definitions; ; Hupothesis; Two Postulates; ; The Geometrical Illustration; ; Geometrical Analysis; ; The Method of Reassuring from a Postulate; ; Elenchus and Hupothesis; ; Knowledge and Aitia; ; F-conditions; ; Cognitive Security ; APORIA: ; Forms of Aporia; ; Dramatic Aporia; ; The Example of Charmides; ; Charmides as Autobiography; ; The Politics of Sophrosune; ; Critias' Philotimia; ; Self-Knowledge and the Knowledge of Knowledge; ; Knowledge of Knowledge and Knowledge of the Good Philosophy in the Polis ; APPENDICES: ; List of Commonly Used Greek Words; ; The Irony of Socrates ; BIBLIOGRAPHY