Author: Shlomy Mualem Publisher: Iberoamericana Editorial ISBN: 8484895955 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
This comparative approach shows how the Platonic viewpoint sheds new light on Borges' essayistic and fictional work. Analyses to which extent his thought is deeply rooted in classical philosophical doctrines.
Author: Carlos Fraenkel Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139851047 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
Many pagan, Jewish, Christian and Muslim philosophers from Antiquity to the Enlightenment made no meaningful distinction between philosophy and religion. Instead they advocated a philosophical religion, arguing that God is Reason and that the historical forms of a religious tradition serve as philosophy's handmaid to promote the life of reason among non-philosophers. Carlos Fraenkel provides the first account of this concept and traces its history back to Plato. He shows how Jews and Christians appropriated it in Antiquity, follows it through the Middle Ages in both Islamic and Jewish forms and argues that it underlies Spinoza's interpretation of Christianity. The main challenge to a philosophical religion comes from the modern view that all human beings are equally able to order their lives rationally and hence need no guidance from religion. Fraenkel's wide-ranging book will appeal to anyone interested in how philosophy has interacted with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious traditions.
Author: Catherine H. Zuckert Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226993388 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 898
Book Description
Faced with the difficult task of discerning Plato’s true ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express them, scholars have never fully made sense of the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In the magisterial Plato’s Philosophers, Catherine Zuckert explains for the first time how these prose dramas cohere to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy. To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in their supposed order of composition but according to the dramatic order in which Plato indicates they took place. This unconventional arrangement lays bare a narrative of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the drama’s earliest dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers introduce the political and philosophical problems to which Socrates tries to respond. A second dramatic group shows how Socrates develops his distinctive philosophical style. And, finally, the later dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal his philosophy’s limitations. Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes, Plato made Socrates the dialogues’ central figure because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: what is the best way to live? Plato’s dramatization of Socratic imperfections suggests, moreover, that he recognized the apparently unbridgeable gap between our understandings of human life and the nonhuman world. At a time when this gap continues to raise questions—about the division between sciences and the humanities and the potentially dehumanizing effects of scientific progress—Zuckert’s brilliant interpretation of the entire Platonic corpus offers genuinely new insights into worlds past and present.
Author: Donald H. Roy Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1498571581 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
Recently, in the past thirty years, there has been an upsurge in serious treatment of Platonic mythoi, which were once thought to be only literary decoration and/or the simplistic presentation of philosophic conclusions for the demos (dummies in effect). Nevertheless, the dominant tendency in the exegesis of Platonic mythoi still is to subordinate them to philosophic logos (reason) and not to recognize that such mythoi are philosophic in themselves in the broad sense of “the love of wisdom”. There is something conversional about Plato’s philosophic mythos, reformulating and superseding traditional Greek mythos and then charting the drama of the human soul from Socratic aporia, up and out of the cave, and into the beyond, the Idea of the Good. The late Professor Eric Voegelin understood this existential drama, and his exegesis of Platonic mythos, from engendering pathos to symbols, is revelatory to say the least. My understanding is that logos (reason) is a fundamental and necessary check on mythos, but logos and mythos are complementary via medias; neither are dispensable nor reducible, one to the other. Also crucial to my study of Platonic mythoi is the “analogy of being,” that Voegelin only touches on, but Erich Przywara explores and develops. The relationship between the human and the divine is analogical (likenesses but also significant unlikenesses), and Plato certainly explored the play of opposites and affinities covering the difficult philosophical problems of becoming and being and the temporal and the eternal. Most philosophic commentators on Plato ignore the suffusive presence of the divine in Plato’s love of wisdom. Perhaps only Platonic mythos at its best offers the philosophic imagination the vision of transcendence.
Author: M. Ross Romero, SJ Publisher: State University of New York Press ISBN: 1438460201 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
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. Plato's recounting of Socrates's death fits many of the conventions of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual. Among these are the bath, the procession, Socrates's appearance as a bull, the libation, the offering of a rooster to Asclepius, the treatment of Socrates's body and corpse, and Phaedo's memorialization of Socrates. Yet in a powerful moment, Socrates's 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 Socrates's death is more fittingly described as self-sacrifice than merely an execution or suicide. After considering the implications of these themes for the soul's immortality and its relationship to the body, the book concludes with an exploration of the place of sacrifice within ethical life.
Author: José M. González Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110422980 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 378
Book Description
Not a few of the more prominent and persistent controversies among classical scholars about approaches and methods arise from a failure to appreciate the fundamental role of time in structuring the interpretation of Greek culture. Diachrony showcases the corresponding importance of diachronic models for the study of ancient Greek literature and culture. Diachronic models of culture reach beyond mere historical change to the systemically evolving dynamics of cultural institutions, practices, and artifacts. The papers collected here illustrate the construction and proper use of such models. They emphasize the complementarity of synchronic and diachronic perspectives and highlight the need to assess how well diachronic models fit history. The contributors to this volume strive to be methodologically explicit as they tackle a wide range of subjects with a variety of diachronic approaches. Their work shows both the difficulty and the promise of diachronic analysis. Our incomplete knowledge of Greek antiquity throughout time and the Greeks' own preoccupation with the past in the construction of their present make diachronic analysis not just invaluable but indispensable for the study of ancient Greek literature and culture.
Author: Kathryn A. Morgan Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139427520 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 325
Book Description
This book explores the dynamic relationship between myth and philosophy in the Presocratics, the Sophists, and in Plato - a relationship which is found to be more extensive and programmatic than has been recognized. The story of philosophy's relationship with myth is that of its relationship with literary and social convention. The intellectuals studied here wanted to reformulate popular ideas about cultural authority and they achieved this goal by manipulating myth. Their self-conscious use of myth creates a self-reflective philosophic sensibility and draws attention to problems inherent in different modes of linguistic representation. Much of the reception of Greek philosophy stigmatizes myth as 'irrational'. Such an approach ignores the important role played by myth in Greek philosophy, not just as a foil but as a mode of philosophical thought. The case studies in this book reveal myth deployed as a result of methodological reflection, and as a manifestation of philosophical concerns.
Author: Julius A. Elias Publisher: SUNY Press ISBN: 9780873958073 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
Ignorant, irrational and irresponsible: these are the terms used by Plato when referring to poets. Yet the philosopher acknowledged that he was not insensible to the charms of poetry, and many would agree that Platos myths are themselves poetry of the very first rank. In Platos Defence of Poetrythe first full-scale treatment of the subject since 1905Julius A. Elias demonstrates that Plato offers a defence of poetry in response to his own famous challenge. This study restores the myths to their proper place in the Platonic corpus by showing their methodological relationship to the dialectic and their substantive connection to Platos theories of knowledge, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. While agreeing that for Plato, poetry must be harnessed to the service of truth and socially desirable values, Elias shows that poetry is indispensable to the philosopher: when the audience would reject a more obviously didactic approach, poetry makes accessible and palatable truths demonstrable by reason. Furthermoreand this is the most novel and important feature of this studyElias argues that the myths embody the indemonstrable axioms of Platos system. Plato was aware that in every system, including mathematics, certain fundamental presuppositions necessarily remain unproven. Rather than assert them dogmatically, Plato expresses these undercurrents poetically so as to capture their emotional persuasiveness while defining their relevance. In Platos Defence of Poetry, the myths themselves are interpreted afresh in light of these claims.
Author: Catherine Craig Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1666919675 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
In Memory and the Political Art in Plato’s Statesman, Catherine Craig provides an original reading of Plato’s Statesman by bringing memory to the foreground. The dialogue itself explores various components of political memory, such as common speech, myths, and laws, and argues that these create a framework in which we live our political lives. Each of these aspects of political memory serves as an image to move the individual to rational inquiry. In this way, the dialogue suggests that political memory can serve as a starting point for philosophic recollection, allowing for a move from knowledge of the rational soul to first principles. Craig shows how Plato weaves together the personal, political, and philosophic dimensions of memory, providing a richer understanding of the significance of memory for political life. Beyond providing an analysis of the Statesman, this book helps readers consider the challenges of political memory in contemporary political life, while also arguing that memory mediates between universal, rational principles and the particular ends and circumstances of human life.
Author: Shlomy Mualem
Author: Carlos Fraenkel
Author: Catherine H. Zuckert
Author: Donald H. Roy
Author: Glen W. Bowersock
Author: M. Ross Romero, SJ
Author: José M. González
Author: Kathryn A. Morgan
Author: Julius A. Elias
Author: Catherine Craig