Download or read book Likeness and Likelihood in the Presocratics and Plato written by Jenny Bryan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies the philosophical development of the meaning of the Greek word eoikos, which can be used to describe similarity, plausibility or even suitability. It focuses on Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato's Timaeus and shows how such a study serves to enhance our understanding of their epistemology and methodology.
Download or read book Plato s Theaetetus as a Second Apology written by Zina Giannopoulou and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zina Giannopoulou argues that Theaetetus—Plato's most systematic examination of knowledge—is a philosophically sophisticated elaboration of Apology that successfully differentiates Socrates from the sophists. In Apology Socrates defends his philosophical activity partly by distinguishing it from sophistic practices, and in Theaetetus he enacts this distinction: the self-proclaimed ignorant and pious Socrates of Apology poses as the barren practitioner of midwifery, an art that enjoys divine support, and helps his pregnant interlocutor to engender his ideas. Whereas sophistic expertise fills others' souls with items of dubious epistemic quality, Socratic midwifery removes, tests, and discards falsities. In Theaetetus Plato drapes the Socrates of Apology with obstetric garb and stages a philosophical contest between him and the seemingly wise men with whose definitions Theaetetus' soul teems, chief among whom is Protagoras. By proving the indefensibility of these definitions, Socrates challenges their authors' wisdom—since for him no one can justifiably be said to have knowledge if he cannot give an account of knowledge. On the other hand, his own inability to procure the definition he seeks confirms his assertion that he lacks wisdom. Giannopoulou goes on to explore how in Apology Socrates claims that his wisdom consists in his awareness of his lack of wisdom, and in Theaetetus he validates this claim: his attempt to discover what knowledge is, coupled with his intellectual barrenness, shows both that he does not have what he is looking for and why this is the case.
Download or read book Cosmos and Perception in Plato s Timaeus written by Mark Eli Kalderon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-19 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a wide-ranging study on perception in the Timaeus, not only discussing senses such as touch, taste, and olfaction alongside audition and vision but also engaging with Timaeus’ wider cosmological project. Most studies of perception in the Timaeus focus on a few narrow passages on vision and audition. By taking the broader approach of this volume, important lessons about the nature of perception may be gleaned from Timaeus’ cosmogony, psychogony, and anthropogony. While there is an emerging modern consensus that the Timaeus should be read literally, this study argues against a literal interpretation of the spatial and kinetic properties of the soul in favour of a metaphorical understanding. Not only does this yield a rich account of the intentionality of cognition but also sheds light onto the nature of the soul-body union. In addition, this volume argues for the largely overlooked significance of Timaean anatomy, as it contributes to our understanding of the providential scheme of Timaeus’ cosmology more generally. Cosmos and Perception in Plato’s Timaeus is of interest to students and scholars of the Timaeus and Plato’s thought more broadly, as well as those working on ancient theories of perception and the philosophy of mind.
Download or read book Philosophy and Religion in Plato s Dialogues written by Andrea Nightingale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-06 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient Greece, philosophers developed new and dazzling ideas about divinity, drawing on the deep well of poetry, myth, and religious practices even as they set out to construct new theological ideas. Andrea Nightingale argues that Plato shared in this culture and appropriates specific Greek religious discourses and practices to present his metaphysical philosophy. In particular, he uses the Greek conception of divine epiphany - a god appearing to humans - to claim that the Forms manifest their divinity epiphanically to the philosopher, with the result that the human soul becomes divine by contemplating these Forms and the cosmos. Nightingale also offers a detailed discussion of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Orphic Mysteries and shows how these mystery religions influenced Plato's thinking. This book offers a robust challenge to the idea that Plato is a secular thinker.
Download or read book Plato s Timaeus and the Latin Tradition written by Christina Hoenig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-02 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores the development of Platonic philosophy by Roman writers between the first century BCE and the early fifth century CE. Discusses the interpretation of Plato's Timaeus by Cicero, Apuleius, Calcidius, and Augustine, and examines how they contributed to the construction of the complex and multifaceted genre of Roman Platonism.
Download or read book Sculpture weaving and the body in Plato written by Zacharoula Petraki and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato’s Timaeus is unique in Greek Antiquity for presenting the creation of the world as the work of a divine demiurge. The maker bestows order on sensible things and imitates the world of the intellect by using the Forms as models. While the creation-myth of the Timaeus seems unparalleled, this book argues that it is not the first of Plato’s dialogues to use artistic language to articulate the relationship of the objects of the material world to the world of the intellect. The book adopts an interpretative angle that is sensitive to the visual and art-historical developments of Classical Athens to argue that sculpture, revolutionized by the advent of the lost-wax technique for the production of bronze statues, lies at the heart of Plato’s conception of the relation of the human soul and body to the Forms. It shows that, despite the severe criticism of mimēsis in the Republic, Plato’s use of artistic language rests on a positive model of mimēsis. Plato was in fact engaged in a constructive dialogue with material culture and he found in the technical processes and the cultural semantics of sculpture and of the art of weaving a valuable way to conceptualise and communicate complex ideas about humans’ relation to the Forms.
Download or read book Without the Least Tremor written by M. Ross Romero, SJ and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reading of the death of Socrates as a self-sacrifice, with implications for ideas about suffering, wisdom, and the souls relationship to the body. In Without the Least Tremor, M. Ross Romero considers the death of Socrates as a sacrificial act rather than an execution, and analyzes the implications of such an understanding for the meaning of the Phaedo. Platos recounting of Socratess death fits many of the conventions of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual. Among these are the bath, the procession, Socratess appearance as a bull, the libation, the offering of a rooster to Asclepius, the treatment of Socratess body and corpse, and Phaedos memorialization of Socrates. Yet in a powerful moment, Socratess death deviates from a sacrifice as he drinks the pharmakon without the least tremor. Developing the themes of suffering and wisdom as they connect to this scene, Romero demonstrates how the embodied Socrates is setting forth an eikôn of the death of the philosopher. Drawing on comparisons with tragedy and comedy, he argues that Socratess death is more fittingly described as self-sacrifice than merely an execution or suicide. After considering the implications of these themes for the souls immortality and its relationship to the body, the book concludes with an exploration of the place of sacrifice within ethical life.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Plato written by Gail Fine and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2019 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato is the best known, and continues to be the most widely studied, of all the ancient Greek philosophers. The updated and original essays in the second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Plato provide in-depth discussions of a variety of topics and dialogues, all serving several functions at once: they survey the current academic landscape; express and develop the authors' own views; and situate those views within a range of alternatives. The result is a useful state-of-the-art reference to the man many consider the most important philosophical thinker in history. This second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Plato differs in two main ways from the first edition. First, six leading scholars of ancient philosophy have contributed entirely new chapters: Hugh Benson on the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro; James Warren on the Protagoras and Gorgias; Lindsay Judson on the Meno; Luca Castagnoli on the Phaedo; Susan Sauvé Meyer on the Laws; and David Sedley on Plato's theology. This new edition therefore covers both dialogues and topics in more depth than the first edition did. Secondly, most of the original chapters have been revised and updated, some in small, others in large, ways.
Download or read book Bizarre Privileged Items in the Universe written by Paul North and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An imaginative new theory of likeness that ranges widely across history and subjects, from physics and evolution to psychology, language, and art A butterfly is like another butterfly. A butterfly is also like a leaf and at the same time like a paper airplane, an owl’s face, a scholar flying from book to book. The most disparate things approach one another in a butterfly, the sort of dense nodule of likeness that Roger Caillois once proposed calling a “bizarre-privileged item.” In response, critical theorist Paul North proposes a spiritual exercise: imagine a universe made up solely of likenesses. There are no things, only traits acting according to the law of series, here and there a thick overlap that appears “bizarre.” Centuries of thought have fixated on the concept of difference. This book offers a theory that begins from likeness, where, at any instant, a vast array of series proliferates and remote regions come into contact. Bizarre-Privileged Items in the Universe follows likenesses as they traverse physics and the physical universe; evolution and evolutionary theory; psychology and the psyche; sociality, language, and art. Divergent sources from an eccentric history help give shape to a new trans-science, “homeotics.”
Download or read book Early Greek Ethics written by David Conan Wolfsdorf and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-05-22 with total page 828 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Greek Ethics is the first volume devoted to philosophical ethics in its "formative" period. It explores contributions from the Presocratics, figures of the early Pythagorean tradition, sophists, and anonymous texts, as well as topics influential to ethical philosophical thought such as Greek medicine, music, friendship, and justice.
Download or read book Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy written by Jenny Bryan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a collection of essays exploring notions of authority and authorship through ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.
Download or read book The Guardians in Action written by William H. F. Altman and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you’ve ever wondered why Plato staged Timaeus as a kind of sequel to Republic, or who its unnamed missing fourth might be; or why he joined Critias to Timaeus, and whether or not that strange dialogue is unfinished; or what we should make of the written critique of writing in Phaedrus, and of that dialogue’s apparent lack of unity; or what is the purpose of the long discussion of the One in the second half of Parmenides, and how it relates to the objections made to the Theory of Forms in its first half; or if the revisionists or unitarians are right about Philebus, and why its Socrates seems less charming than usual, or whether or not Cratylus takes place after Euthyphro, and whether its far-fetched etymologies accomplish any serious philosophical purpose; or why the philosopher Socrates describes in the central digression of Theaetetus is so different from Socrates himself; then you will enjoy reading the continuation of William H. F. Altman’s Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington; 2012), where he considers the pedagogical connections behind “the post-Republic dialogues” from Timaeus to Theaetetus in the context of “the Reading Order of Plato’s dialogues.”
Download or read book Resemblance and Reality in Greek Thought written by Arum Park and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Resemblance and Reality in Greek Thought follows the construction of reality from Homer into the Hellenistic era and beyond. Not only in didactic poetry or philosophical works but in practically all genres from the time of Homer onwards, Greek literature has shown an awareness of the relationship between verbal art and the social, historical, or cultural reality that produces it, an awareness that this relationship is an approximate one at best and a distorting one at worst. This central theme of resemblance and its relationship to reality draws together essays on a range of Greek authors, and shows how they are unified or allied in posing similar questions to classical literature.
Download or read book Cosmos in the Ancient World written by Phillip Sidney Horky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the concept of kosmos as order, arrangement, and ornament in ancient philosophy, literature, and aesthetics.
Download or read book Aristotle and the Eleatic One written by Timothy Clarke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Timothy Clarke examines Aristotle's response to Eleatic monism, the theory of Parmenides of Elea and his followers that reality is 'one'. Clarke argues that Aristotle interprets the Eleatics as thoroughgoing monists, for whom the pluralistic, changing world of the senses is a mere illusion. Understood in this way, the Eleatic theory constitutes a radical challenge to the possibility of natural philosophy. Aristotle discusses the Eleatics in several works, including De Caelo, De Generatione et Corruptione, and the Metaphysics. But his most extensive treatment of their monism comes at the beginning of the Physics, where he criticizes them for overlooking the fact that 'being is said in many ways' - in other words, that there are many ways of being. Through a careful analysis of this and other criticisms, Clarke explains how Aristotle's engagement with the Eleatics prepares the ground for his own theory of the principles of nature. Aristotle is commonly thought to be an unreliable interpreter of his Presocratic predecessors; in contrast, this book argues that his critique can shed valuable light on the motivation of the Eleatic theory and its influence on the later philosophical tradition.
Download or read book Probabilities Hypotheticals and Counterfactuals in Ancient Greek Thought written by Victoria Wohl and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines ancient Greek thinking about the probable, hypothetical, and counterfactual across a variety of disciplines (philosophy, science, politics, literature, art).
Download or read book Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae written by Ashley Clements and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the engagement of Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae with Parmenidean philosophy to issue a political critique of tragic deception and its effects.
