Download or read book Socratic Puzzles written by Robert Nozick and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the foremost philosophers of our time, Robert Nozick continues the Socratic tradition of investigation. This volume, which illustrates the originality, force, and scope of his work, also displays Nozick's trademark blending of extraordinary analytical rigor with intellectual playfulness. As such, Socratic Puzzles testifies to the great pleasure that both doing and reading philosophy can be. Comprising essays and philosophical fictions, classics and new work, the book ranges from Socrates to W. V. Quine, from the implications of an Israeli kibbutz to the flawed arguments of Ayn Rand. Nozick considers the figure of Socrates himself as well as the Socratic method (why is it a "method" of getting at the truth?). Many of these essays bring classic methods to bear on new questions about choice. How should you choose in a disconcerting situation ("Newcomb's Problem") when your decisions are completely predictable? Why do threats and not offers typically coerce our choices? How do we make moral judgments when we realize that our moral principles have exceptions? Other essays present new approaches to familiar intellectual puzzles, from the stress on simplicity in scientific hypotheses to the tendency of intellectuals to oppose capitalism. As up to date as the latest reflections on animal rights; as perennial as the essentials of aesthetic merit (doggerel by Isaac Newton goes to prove that changing our view of the world won't suffice); as whimsical as a look at how some philosophical problems might appear from God's point of view: these essays attest to the timeliness and timelessness of Nozick's thinking. With a personal introduction, in which Nozick discusses the origins, tools, and themes of his work, Socratic Puzzles demonstrates how philosophy can constitute a way of life.
Download or read book Socratic Questions written by Barry S. Gower and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1992, introduces some of Socrates’ problems and some of the problems about him. It seeks at the same time to advance new views, arguments and information on Socrates’ mission, techniques, ethics and later reception. From civil disobedience to ethics, this collection provides stimulating discussions of Socrates’ life, thought and historical significance.
Download or read book Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age without Plato written by Yehuda Halper and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Goldstein-Goren Book Award from the Goldstein-Goren International Center for Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Yehuda Halper examines Jewish depictions of Socrates and Socratic questioning of the divine among European and North African Jews of the 12th-15th centuries. Without direct access to Plato, their understanding of Socrates is indirect, based on legendary material, on fragmentary quotations from Plato, or on Aristotle. Out of these sources, Jewish authors of this period formed two distinct views of Socrates: one as a wise, ascetic, monotheist, and the other as a vocal skeptic. The latter view has its roots in Plato's Apology where Socrates describes his divine mandate to question all knowledge, including knowledge of the divine. After exploring how this and similar questions arise in the works of Judah Halevi and the Hebrew Averroes, Halper traces how such open-questioning of the divine arises in the works of Maimonides, Jacob Anatoli, Gersonides, and Abraham Bibago.
Download or read book Remembering Socrates written by Lindsay Judson and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-01-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lindsay Judson and Vassilis Karasmanis present a selection of philosophical papers by an outstanding international team of scholars, assessing the legacy and continuing relevance of Socrates' thought 2,400 years after his death. Socrates' life, philosophical activity, and death not only had a formative effect on his follower Plato, and thus indirectly on almost the whole course of Greek philosophy, but also represented a moral and philosophical ideal which has been the inspiration, or the despair, of many philosophers and other thinkers down to the present day. The topics of the papers include Socratic method as portrayed by Plato and by Xenophon; the notion of definition; Socrates' intellectualist conception of ethics; famous arguments in the Euthyphro and Crito, and a not-so famous argument in the Hippias Major; and aspects of the later portrayal and reception of Socrates as a philosophical and ethical exemplar - by Plato, the Sceptics, and in the early Christian era. The collection demonstrates the vitality as well as the diversity of Socratic studies, and will interest many ancient philosophers, historians of philosophy, and classicists.
Download or read book Robert Nozick written by Alan Lacey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although best known for the hugely influential Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick (1938-2002) eschewed the label 'political philosopher' because the vast majority of his writings and attention have focused on other areas. Indeed the breadth of Nozick's work is perhaps greater than that of any other contemporary philosopher. This book is the first to give full and proper discussion of Nozick's philosophy as a whole, including his influential work on the theory of knowledge, his notion of 'tracking the truth', his metaphysical writings on personal identity and free will, his evolutionary account of rationality, his varying treatments of Newcomb's paradox and his ideas on the meaning of life. Illuminating and informative, the book will be welcomed as an authoritative guide to Nozick's philosophical thinking.
Download or read book Socratic Platonic and Aristotelian Studies Essays in Honor of Gerasimos Santas written by Georgios Anagnostopoulos and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-08-12 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains outstanding studies by some of the best scholars in ancient Greek Philosophy on key topics in Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian thought. These studies provide rigorous analyses of arguments and texts and often advance original interpretations. The essays in the volume range over a number of central themes in ancient philosophy, such as Socratic and Platonic conceptions of philosophical method; the Socratic paradoxes; Plato's view on justice; the nature of Platonic Forms, especially the Form of the Good; Aristotle's views on the faculties of the soul; Aristotle's functionalist account of the human good; Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian views on the nature of desire and its object. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient philosophy and classics.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Socrates written by Donald R. Morrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays from a diverse group of experts providing a comprehensive guide to Socrates, the most famous Greek philosopher.
Download or read book Interpreting Plato s Dialogues written by Angelo J. Corlett and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new way of approaching Plato neither sees Plato's words as doctrines according to which the dialogues are to be interpreted, nor does it reduce Plato's dialogues to dramatic literature. Rather, it seeks to interpret the primary aim of Plato's writings as being influenced primarily by Plato's respect for his teacher, Socrates, and the manner in which Socrates engaged others in philosophical discourse. It places the focus of philosophical investigation of Plato's dialogues on the content of the dialogues themselves, and on the Socratic way of doing philosophy.
Download or read book Routledge Library Editions Socrates written by Owen Grazebrook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 1368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This five-volume set of previously out-of-print titles reissues some key works on Socrates, examining the man, his philosophy and the debates surrounding it, and his influence. With a mixture of newer and older books, this collection encompasses a wide spectrum of scholarship.
Download or read book The Death of Socrates written by Emily R. Wilson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socrates's death in 399 BCE has figured largely in our world, shaping how we think about heroism and celebrity, religion and family life, state control and individual freedom--many of the key coordinates of Western culture. Wilson analyzes the enormous and enduring power the trial and death of Socrates has exerted over the Western imagination.
Download or read book Socratic Wisdom written by Hugh H. Benson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the early Platonic dialogues have often been explored and appreciated for their ethical content, this is the first book devoted solely to the epistemology of Plato's early dialogues. Author Hugh H. Benson argues that the characteristic features of these dialogues--Socrates' method of questions and answers (elenchos), his fascination with definition, his professions of ignorance, and his thesis that virtue is knowledge--are decidedly epistemological. In this thoughtful study, Benson uncovers the model of knowledge that underlies these distinctively Socratic views. What emerges is unfamiliar, yet closer to a contemporary conception of scientific understanding than ordinary knowledge.
Download or read book Why Plato Lost Interest in the Socratic Method written by Gareth B. Matthews and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-07 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Socratic method of questioning and refutation (elenchus) predominates the early Platonic dialogues. But things change in the middle dialogues, as Socrates goes beyond merely asking questions and begins to provide answers to his questions. And the method virtually disappears in the late dialogues. The standard explanation of this phenomenon is that the early dialogues were intended to commemorate Socrates and the elenchus, while in the middle and late dialogues Plato went beyond Socrates to present his own mature philosophical thought. In this book, Matthews revises this explanation by uncovering the shortcomings that Plato came to find in the Socratic method and the reasons why Plato lost interest in it.
Download or read book Belief and Truth written by Katja Maria Vogt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Katja Maria Vogt's Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato explores a Socratic intuition about the difference between belief and knowledge. Beliefs -- doxai -- are deficient cognitive attitudes. In believing something, one accepts some content as true without knowing that it is true; one holds something to be true that could turn out to be false. Since our actions reflect what we hold to be true, holding beliefs is potentially harmful for oneself and others. Accordingly, beliefs are ethically worrisome and even, in the words of Plato's Socrates, "shameful." As Vogt argues, this is a serious philosophical proposal and it speaks to intuitions we are likely to share. But it involves a notion of belief that is rather different from contemporary notions. Today, it is a widespread assumption that true beliefs are better than false beliefs, and that some true beliefs (perhaps those that come with justifications) qualify as knowledge. Socratic epistemology offers a genuinely different picture. In aiming for knowledge, one must aim to get rid of beliefs. Knowledge does not entail belief -- belief and knowledge differ in such important ways that they cannot both count as kinds of belief. As long as one does not have knowledge, one should reserve judgment and investigate by thinking through possible ways of seeing things. According to Vogt, the ancient skeptics and Stoics draw many of these ideas from Plato's dialogues, revising Socratic-Platonic arguments as they see fit. Belief and Truth retraces their steps through interpretations of the Apology, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, and Philebus, reconstructs Pyrrhonian investigation and thought, and illuminates the connections between ancient skepticism and relativism, as well as the Stoic view that beliefs do not even merit the evaluations "true" and "false."
Download or read book Socratic Wisdom The Model of Knowledge in Plato s Early Dialogues written by Hugh H. Benson Professor of Philosophy University of Oklahoma and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000-01-05 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the early Platonic dialogues have often been explored and appreciated for their ethical content, this is the first book devoted solely to the epistemology of Plato's early dialogues. Author Hugh H. Benson argues that the characteristic features of these dialogues--Socrates' method of questions and answers (elenchos), his fascination with definition, his professions of ignorance, and his thesis that virtue is knowledge--are decidedly epistemological. In this thoughtful study, Benson uncovers the model of knowledge that underlies these distinctively Socratic views. What emerges is unfamiliar, yet closer to a contemporary conception of scientific understanding than ordinary knowledge.
Download or read book The Socratic Method written by Rebecca Bensen Cain and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-02-26 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a new account of Socratic method, based on a psychological model of Plato's dramatic depiction of Socrates' character and conduct. Socratic method is seen as a blend of three types of philosophical discourse: refutation, truth-seeking, and persuasion. Cain focuses on the persuasive features of the method since, in her view, it is this aspect of Socrates' method that best explains the content and the value of the dialectical arguments. Emphasizing the persuasive aspect of Socratic method helps us uncover the operative standards of dialectical argumentation in fifth-century Athens. Cain considers both the sophistic style of rhetoric and contentious debate in Socrates' time, and Aristotle's perspective on the techniques of argument and their purposes. An informal, pragmatic analysis of argumentation appropriate to the dialectical context is developed. We see that Socrates uses ambiguity and other strategic fallacies with purposeful play, and for moral ends. Taking specific examples of refutations from Plato's dialogues, Cain links the interlocutors' characters and situations with the dialectical argument that Socrates constructs to refute them. The merit of this interpretation is that it gives broad range, depth, and balance to Socrates' argumentative style; it also maintains a keen sensitivity to the interlocutors' emotional reactions, moral values, and attitudes. The book concludes with a discussion of the overall value, purpose, and success of Socratic method, and draws upon a Platonic/Socratic conception of the soul and a dialectical type of self-knowledge.
Download or read book The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato s Early Dialogues written by Sean D. Kirkland and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative close reading revealing a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates. Modern interpreters of Platos Socrates have generally taken the dialogues to be aimed at working out objective truth. Attending closely to the texts of the early dialogues and the question of virtue in particular, Sean D. Kirkland suggests that this approach is flawedthat such concern with discovering external facts rests on modern assumptions that would have been far from the minds of Socrates and his contemporaries. This isnt, however, to accuse Socrates of any kind of relativism. Through careful analysis of the original Greek and of a range of competing strands of Plato scholarship, Kirkland instead brings to light a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates, for whom what virtue is is what has always already appeared as virtuous in everyday experience of the world, even if initial appearances are unsatisfactory or obscure and in need of greater scrutiny and clarification.
Download or read book From the Beginning to Plato written by C.C.W. Taylor and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first volume in the series traces the development of philosophy over two-and-a-half centuries, from Thales at the beginning of the sixth century BC to the death of Plato in 347 BC.
