Download or read book God and Forms in Plato written by Richard D. Mohr and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of dovetailing essays which together interpret and assess the chief arguments and texts which make up Plato's cosmology. Arguments in the Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws X are analyzed with an eye to problems which affect the wider understanding of Plato's metaphysics, theology, epistemology, psychology, and physics. New interpretations are given to Plato's views on the role and characteristics of his craftsman God, the nature and status of Forms, the nature of time and eternity, the status and nature of space and the phenomenal realm, and the nature of and relations between reason, souls, bodies, and motion.
Download or read book Plato A Very Short Introduction written by Julia Annas and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-02-13 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively and accessible introduction to Plato focuses on the philosophy and argument of his writings, drawing the reader into Plato's way of doing philosophy, and the general themes of his thinking. This is not a book to leave the reader standing in the outer court of introduction and background information, but leads directly into Plato's argument. It looks at Plato as a thinker grappling with philosophical problems in a variety of ways, rather than a philosopher with a fully worked-out system. It includes a brief account of Plato's life and the various interpretations that have been drawn from the sparse remains of information. It stresses the importance of the founding of the Academy and the conception of philosophy as a subject. Julia Annas discusses Plato's style of writing: his use of the dialogue form, his use of what we today call fiction, and his philosophical transformation of myths. She also looks at his discussions of love and philosophy, his attitude to women, and to homosexual love, explores Plato's claim that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and touches on his arguments for the immortality of the soul and his ideas about the nature of the universe. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Plato s Gods written by Gerd Van Riel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive study into Plato's theological doctrines, offering an important re-valuation of the status of Plato's gods and the relation between metaphysics and theology according to Plato. Starting from an examination of Plato's views of religion and the relation between religion and morality, Gerd Van Riel investigates Plato's innovative ways of speaking about the gods. This theology displays a number of diverging tendencies - viewing the gods as perfect moral actors, as cosmological principles or as celestial bodies whilst remaining true to traditional anthropomorphic representations. Plato's views are shown to be unified by the emphasis on the goodness of the gods in both their cosmological and their moral functions. Van Riel shows that recent interpretations of Plato's theology are thoroughly metaphysical, starting from aristotelian patterns. A new reading of the basic texts leads to the conclusion that in Plato the gods aren't metaphysical principles but souls who transmit the metaphysical order to sensible reality. The metaphysical principles play the role of a fated order to which the gods have to comply. This book will be invaluable to readers interested in philosophical theology and intellectual history.
Download or read book Plato s Forms written by William A. Welton and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "theory of forms" usually attributed to Plato is one of the most famous of philosophical theories, yet it has engendered such controversy in the literature on Plato that scholars even debate whether or not such a theory exists in his texts. Plato's Forms: Varieties of Interpretation is an ambitious work that brings together, in a single volume, widely divergent approaches to the topic of the forms in Plato's dialogues. With contributions rooted in both Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, the book illustrates the contentious role the forms have played in Platonic scholarship and suggests new approaches to a central problem of Plato studies.
Download or read book Images of the Spirit written by Meredith G. Kline and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 1999-01-05 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The underlying concept developed here is the paradigmatic function of the theophanic Glory-cloud in the creation of the image of God. Dr. Kline identifies the major symbolic models employed in Scripture to expound the nature of the divine image in humanity - the priestly and the prophetic.
Download or read book Platonisms written by Kevin Corrigan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By questioning the modern categories of Plato and Platonism, this book offers new ways of reading the Platonic dialogues and the many traditions that resonate in them from Antiquity to Post-Modernity.
Download or read book Plato s Parmenides written by Samuel Scolnicov and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-07-08 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic metaphysics to seeing it as a collection of sophisticated tricks, or even as an elaborate joke. This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology. Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here re-formulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues. Scolnicov’s analysis is crisp and lucid, offering a persuasive approach to a complicated dialogue. This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov’s interpretation emerges from the text. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.
Download or read book From Stoicism to Platonism written by Troels Engberg-Pedersen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-13 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the process during 100 BCE-100 CE by which dualistic Platonism became the reigning school in philosophy.
Download or read book Plato s Cosmology and its Ethical Dimensions written by Gabriela Roxana Carone and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although a great deal has been written on Plato's ethics, his cosmology has not received so much attention in recent times and its importance for his ethical thought has remained underexplored. By offering accounts of Timaeus, Philebus, Politicus and Laws X, the book reveals a strongly symbiotic relation between the cosmic and human sphere. It is argued that in his late period Plato presents a picture of an organic universe, endowed with structure and intrinsic value, which both urges our respect and calls for our responsible intervention. Humans are thus seen as citizens of a university that can provide a context for their flourishing even in the absence of good political institutions. The book sheds light on many intricate metaphysical issues in late Plato and brings out the close connections between his cosmology and the development of his ethics.
Download or read book Plato on God as Nous written by Stephen Philip Menn and published by Journal on the History of Phil. This book was released on 1995 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first sustained modern investigation of Plato's theology. A central thesis of the book is that Plato had a theology--not just a mythology for the ideal city, not just the theory of forms or the theory of cosmic souls, but also, irreducible to any of these, an account of God as Nous (Reason), the source of rational order both to souls and the world of bodies. The understanding of God as Reason, and of the world as governed directly or indirectly by Reason, is worked out in the dialogues of Plato's last period, the Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, and Laws. These dialogues offer a strategy for explaining the physical world that goes beyond anything in the middle dialogues, and gives the best starting point for understanding the cosmologies and theologies of Aristotle, the Stoics, and later ancient thinkers. Menn focuses on the Timaeus as Plato's most sustained effort to provide what (according to the Phaedo) Anaxagoras had failed to deliver: an explanation of the world through Reason, showing that things are as they are because it is best, or because it best serves the order of the world as a whole. Anaxagoras was disappointed because he explained things through their material constituents, without explaining why the constituents are ordered as they are; but the theory of forms has the same defect, since itcannot explain why different parts of the universe participate in different forms according to a particular order. The Timaeus and other late dialogues attempt to supply the missing explanation of the ordering of the physical world. These dialogues do not retreat from the middle dialogue theory of forms, nor do they escape into an esoteric theory of numbers; but they add to the middle dialogues an analysis of the principles necessary to account for the existence and partial intelligibility of the sensible world--not only forms and a material substance but also Nous and souls. Although the demiurge of the Timaeus (and his counterpart the Nous of Philebus) is represented as a cause both to souls and bodies, most scholars have been reluctant to identify the demiurge as a being separate from and superior to souls, because they think that both the meaning of the Greek word nous and Plato's own statements require that Nous iseither a kind of soul (mind or rational soul) or something inseparable from souls (rational mental activity). Reexamining the linguistic evidence and the Platonic texts, Menn argues that nous can mean something separate from souls, namely the virtue of rationality or intelligence that souls participate in. Menn argues that Anaxagoras' Nous should be construed as such a virtue; then he examines what status this virtue has in the context of the Platonic theory of forms, and how itis a cause both to souls and to bodies. Soul plays a crucial role in mediating the causality of Nous and introducing rational order into the world of bodies, but neither soul in general nor the world-soul in particular can be identified with Nous. Menn stresses the pre-Socratic context for the cosmology and theology of Plato's late dialogues; he argues for the importance of Diogenes of Appolonia in particular, and he reconstructs a possible new fragment of Diogenes from the Timaeus and from the Hippocratic treatise On Breaths. In the Timaeus and other late dialogues Plato attempts to do better than his predecessors by standards implicit in Socrates' critique of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo, but what Plato offers remains consciously provisional. Aristotle argues that the Timaeus remains liable to some of the same criticisms that Socrates had leveled against Anaxagoras, and Aristotle's own cosmology and theology take up Plato's challenge to carry out Anaxagoras' promise of an explanation of the world through Nous, and attempt to improve on the Timaeus asPlato had improved on Anaxagoras. In this way the Timaeus serves as an essential starting point, not onlyfor those later ancient philosophers who took it as an authoritative statement on the world and on God but also for those who took it as a challenge to do better.
Download or read book Platonic cosmology written by Richard D. Mohr and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Timaeus and Critias written by Plato and published by 1st World Publishing. This book was released on 1929 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plato Metaphysics and the Forms written by Francis A. Grabowski and published by Continuum. This book was released on 2008-06-24 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important new monograph on Plato's metaphysics, focusing on the theory of the forms, which is the central philosophical concept in Plato's theory.
Download or read book Plato s Euthyphro and Earlier Theory of Forms written by Reginald E. Allen and published by New York : Humanities Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato's 'Euthyphro' is important because it gives an excellent example of Socratic dialogue in operation and of the connection of that dialectic with Plato's earlier 'Theory of Forms'. This edition of the dialogue provides a translation with interspersed commentary.
Download or read book Plato written by Edward Moore and published by Humanities-Ebooks. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 1: Life and Times discusses Plato's early development in the context of Athenian politics, his love of poetry, and turn to philosophy. Chapter 2: Intellectual Background examines earlier philosophers who influenced Plato, notably Parmenides, Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, and Socrates. Chapter 3: The Dialogues provides information on chronology and development of the Dialogues, and examines ancient and contemporary approaches to their interpretation. Chapter 4: Other Platonic Productions deals with works of questionable or spurious attribution, and the Unwritten Doctrines. Chapter 5: The Forms is an exposition of Plato's most famous and controversial doctrine. Chapter 6: God and the Soul concludes with Plato's theology and psychology, with an emphasis on government and the state.
Download or read book The Doctrine of the Imitation of God in Plato written by Culbert Gerow Rutenber and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Platonic Philosophy of Religion written by Daniel A. Dombrowski and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Platonic Philosophy of Religion challenges traditional views of Plato's religious thought, arguing that these overstate the case for the veneration of Being as opposed to Becoming. Daniel A. Dombrowski explores how process or neoclassical perspectives on Plato's view of God have been mostly neglected, impoverishing both our view of Plato and our view of what can be said in contemporary philosophy of religion on a Platonic basis. Looking at the largely ignored later dialogues, Dombrowski finds a dynamic theism in Plato and presents a new and very different Platonic philosophy of religion. The work's interpretive framework derives from the application of process philosophy and discusses the continuation of Plato's thought in the works of Hartshorne and Whitehead.
