Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato's Early Dialogues

Sean D. Kirkland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University.

• AcknowledgmentsList of Abbreviations for Ancient Works CitedIntroduction: Socrates and the Hermeneutic of EstrangementPART I. SOCRATIC PHENOMENOLOGY1. Setting Aside the Subject-Object Framework in Reading PlatoAristotelian Assessments of Plato’s SocratesConstruction or Destruction in the Early DialoguesFrom Excessive Being to Objective Reality and BackArticulating Plato’s Anti-RelativismDistinguishing Socrates’ Search for Definitions from Twentieth-Century NominalismExcavating the Everyday Understanding of Being in PlatoConsequences of Presupposing an Understanding of Being as Objective2. On Doxa as the Appearing of ‘What Is"Doxa versus OpinionPhainesthai and DoxaPART II. VIRTUE’S ONTOLOGICAL EXCESS AND DISTANCE3. The Excessive Truth of Socratic DiscourseThe Indefinsibility of Philosophy in Plato’s Apology of SocratesSocrates’ MuthosSocrates’ LogosThe Prooimioni to Socrates’ ApologiaThe Rhetorical Discourse of Socrates’ AccusersSocrates’ Way of Discourse in His DefenseSocratic Truth as DeinosSocrates’ Way of Discourse in His Philosophical Activity4. The Sheltering of Thechnē versus the Exposure of Human WisdomSocrates versus the SophistsFrom Shelter to ExposureThe Technē-Tuchē AntithesisThe Socratic Understanding of Technē in Light of Metaphysics AlphaThe Non-Knowing of Virtue as Socrates’ AimSocrates and the Technē-Model of Virtue5. The Truthful Elenctic Pathos of Painful ConcernElenctic Pain and Being Concerned by VirtueMeletē in the Apology and Aporia throughout the Early DialoguesA Phenomenological Consideration of Meletē/AporiaSerenity in the Interpretations of Nehamas, Vlastos, and the StoicsMeletē/Aporia as Itself the Alētheia of ‘What Virtue Is’Distance and Excess versus Transcendence of ImmanencePART III. SOCRATIC VIRTUE IN THE FACE OF EXCESSIVE TRUTH6. The Courage of Virtue and the Distant Horizon of the Whole in the LachesFinite Transcendence and Socratic "Being With"Sophistication and the Everyday Attitude in the Introduction of the Two GeneralsThe Unity of the Question ‘What is Virtue?’Being Many EverydayAristotle on Socrates and Definition KatholouMeno 71d–73dEuthyphro 5c–7aSocrates’ Interlocutors and the Confusion of Appearance and BeingAporia and the Truth of AppearancesThe Socratic Here and NowCONCLUSION: APORIA IN THE MIDDLE DIALOGUESIdea/Eidos as ‘Look’ and Phenomenal Being in the Middle DialoguesAlētheia as Divine WanderingThe Good beyond Being and the Ideas as Excessive MeasuresHuman Monstrosity and Being between One and ManyNotesBibliographyIndex