Awakening Plato's Meno: Translation and Commentary

Past and Future, 2023

This overview of the thought of Socrates and Plato begins by placing them and their sources in their historic content, situating Socrates as an active citizen of Athens. Socrates’ investigative way of life is explored, assessing how this led to a wide range of ideas and texts that were developed by his student, Plato. Specific philosophical methods, including elenchus, dialogue and dialectic, are explained, followed by a brief exploration of the wider significance of Plato’s Republic, a book which has sometimes been misunderstood as straightforward political blueprint. The main legacies Socrates and Plato have given us are the commitment to, and engagement with, the process of achieving true understanding, and providing approaches whereby we can continue this journey to explore the nature of love, justice, and the Good.

Cambridge Companion to Plato, 2022

This chapter offers a guide to reading Plato’s dialogues, including an overview of his corpus. We recommend first considering each dialogue as its own unified work, before considering how it relates to the others. In general, the dialogues explore ideas and arguments, rather than presenting parts of a comprehensive philosophical system that settles on final answers. The arc of a dialogue frequently depends on who the individual interlocutors are. We argue that the traditional division of the corpus (into Socratic, middle, late stages) is useful, regardless of whether it is a chronological division. Our overview of the corpus gives special attention to the Republic, since it interweaves so many of his key ideas, even if nearly all of them receive longer treatments in other dialogues. Although Plato recognized the limits inherent in written (as opposed to spoken) philosophy, he devoted his life to producing these works, which are clearly meant to help us seek the deepest truths. Little can be learned from reports of Plato’s oral teaching or the letters attributed to him. Understanding the dialogues on their own terms is what offers the greatest reward.

So if the way round is a long one, don't be surprised; for it is for the sake of great things that the journey is to be made, not for those you have in mind (Plato, Phaedrus, 274a2-4 i )

Ancient Philosophy, 2013

PLATO JOURNAL, 2023

This paper challenges the prevailing interpretations about the role and the function of recollection in Plato’s "Meno" by suggesting that recollection is a cognitive process inaugurated by a myth. This process sets out the methodological and epistemological context within which two transitions are attainable: on the one hand, the methodological transition from the elenchus to the method of hypothesis, and on the other hand, the cognitive upshift from opinion(s) to knowledge. This paper argues, furthermore, that Socrates uses the myth of recollection just when Meno begins to object and tries to give up on their inquiry. Socrates’ myth accordingly imprints on Meno’s soul a true belief that facilitates the process of recollection by emboldening Meno to continue the inquiry.

Philosophy in Review, 2011

Peterson's book addresses a familiar puzzle in Platonic scholarship: in dialogues such as the Apology and Euthyphro, the depicted Socrates disavows wisdom and avoids advancing views of his own, focusing instead on elenctic examination of his interlocutors' positions. In dialogues such as the Republic and Phaedo, however, Socrates no longer scrutinizes the views of his interlocutors, but rather seems to advocate ambitious philosophical theses of his own. The question is, how can we explain the shift? The traditional response is to understand changes in the depicted Socrates as indicative of changes the author. We eventually find a doctrinal Socrates who no longer engages in elenchus, the view goes, because we eventually have a doctrinal Plato who no longer thinks the elenctic method is the best.

A Short History of Ethics and Economics

This paper extends an earlier work (Alvey 2010a), which sets the context of the ancient ethics and economy, and is a companion to (Alvey 2010b), which deals with Xenophon (434-355 BC). In this paper I discuss Plato (427-347 BC). Like Xenophon, he was a student of Socrates (469-399 BC). Subsequently, Plato became the teacher of Aristotle (384-322 BC). Plato wrote primarily dialogues, rather than treatises. These have been classified, according to assumed composition date, into 'early', 'middle', and 'late' dialogues. I propose to show some of the ethical elements in the political economy of Plato's 'early' and 'middle' dialogues. In these dialogues Plato sometimes claims that possession of intellectual and moral virtue is sufficient for eudaimonia (human flourishing). Plato says little, in these dialogues, about household management (oikonomia or oikonomikē), or microeconomics. His analysis focuses on the psychology (i.e. the soul) of the individual and the Greek city (polis). In the language of Amartya Sen, there is a strong 'ethics-related' view of motivation in these dialogues. After a brief introduction, in the second section I discuss the rule of reason and hedonism in the Gorgias (one of the 'early' dialogues). The third section discusses the Euthydemus (another 'early' dialogue) and the Phaedo (a 'middle' dialogue). The final section discusses Plato's most famous work, the Republic (another 'middle' dialogue).

In Phaedo 95A4-102A9, we find the famous account by Socrates of his own intellectual history. Our best evidence, including Aristotle's testimony, leads us to suppose that this is Plato's own autobiography on display. It contains, as I shall argue, the most concise and complete statement of the nature of Platonism, both its distinction and separation from the philosophies of Plato's predecessors and the outline of its positive construct. In this autobiography, Socrates rejects the explanations of the natural philosophers given for scientific problems. Instead, he posits separate Forms as the source of true explanation. The naturalism of Plato's predecessors, explicitly here that of Anaxagoras, presumes materialism and mechanism as the matrix for scientific explanation. The positing of the explanatory role of Forms entails the rejection of those presumptions. In addition, these Forms as participatable οὐσίαι can only fulfill their explanatory roles if nominalism is false, that is, if it is false that the only things that exist are unique individuals. So, Plato announces in this passage his rejection of materialism, mechanism, and nominalism. In addition, the focus on Forms as explanatory entities is preceded by the argument that we already know these Forms prior to embodiment. So, the claim of Pre-Socratic skeptics that knowledge of the ultimate explanation of things is not available to us, particularly if these explanations are non-sensible, is rejected, too. Finally, insofar as the Forms fulfill an explanatory role, both the epistemological and ethical relativism of Sophists like Protagoras is rejected. This is owing to the objectivity of Forms as well as their universality. The rejection of materialism, mechanism, nominalism, skepticism, and relativism is the matrix for Plato's positive metaphysical construct. The autobiography 'hypothesizes' Forms as explanations, adding that any hypothesis is provisional until one comes to 'something adequate' (τι ἱκανόν). I argue here, on the basis of an analysis of the meaning of 'hypothesis' in Republic and elsewhere, that what would be 'adequate' cannot be another hypothetical entity, but rather the unhypothetical entity that the Idea of the Good is explicitly said to be and that, as Aristotle tells us, is identical with the One. That which is 'adequate' cannot be anything that is complex, that is, anything that exists and has an οὐσία. That is why the unhypothetical first principle of all must be ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας. Further, the claim that there must be a unique first principle of all reveals a great deal about the entire explanatory framework of Platonism. First, it tells us that no explanation can be ultimate or adequate if it does not end in the adduction of the first principle. Thus, Socrates’ ‘simple hypothesis’ to the effect that something has a property f owing to the causal operation of Fness is, indeed, too simple; it is only provisional. The ‘clever hypothesis’ that adduces relations among Forms to explain the original phenomena must also be provisional. The reason why this is so, I argue, is every Form, regardless of its relations to other Forms, is essentially complex. It is ‘composed’ of its existence and its nature or essence. To claim that x is g because x is g and G always accompanies F may be true, but it leaves entirely unexplained how an eternal and immutable and apparently simple entity can implicate the nature of another entity. For example, participation in a Form of Hot may be provisionally explained by participation in a Form of Fire and an assertion that a Form of Fire and a Form of Hot are necessarily connected. But the putative necessary connectedness of Fire and Hot is problematic, particularly if we insist that Fire itself is not really hot. Without the explanation for this necessary connectedness, there is no adequate explanation for the initial phenomenon. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, without such an explanation, both the simple and the cleverer hypothesis do not really explain anything at all. They are equivalent to maintaining that x is f because just because it is f. Every adequate must conclude with a principle that is self-explanatory, that in which existence and essence are identical. The 'adequate' explanation for all natural phenomena unifies the elements of the matrix of Plato's negative assessment of the natural philosophy of his predecessors. Thus, the unhypothetical first principle of all shows why anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-skepticism, and anti-relativism are all necessarily connected. Accordingly, 'Platonism' does not name a smorgasbord of philosophical theories or positions from which one can pick and choose, variously making qualified accommodations for the polar opposite of Platonism, namely, naturalism. The intellectual autobiography in Phaedo is, in short, an epitome of Platonism. All of the dialogues written after this likely early work are attempts to apply the principles of Platonism to the full range of philosophical problems left to Plato by his predecessors and still current in the 4th century. Finally, this dialogue provides good philosophical evidence that Plato thinking is at least well along the trajectory which ends in the doctrine to which Aristotle’s testimony testifies, namely, the identification of the Idea of the Good with the One.

2012

The goal of this thesis is ultimately to answer the two questions raised and left unresolved in Plato’s Protagoras: What is virtue? Is virtue teachable? Following the dramatic order of Plato’s dialogues as outlined by Catherine Zuckert, I intend to show that the Meno returns to the issues raised and left unresolved in the Protagoras, but now with the idea of recollection. My intention is to look at how the idea of recollection, developed and associated with eros in the intervening dialogues, can help explain the nature of virtue and its teachability. I believe that we can come to answer both questions, “What is virtue?” and “Is virtue teachable?” posed in the Protagoras and the Meno by drawing on the ideas of anamnesis and eros as they appear in the Meno, Phaedrus, and Symposium.