Carneades the Socratic.doc

Mediterranean Antiquity, 2016

A study of the Academic philosopher Carneades and the "philosophical embassy" to Rome in 155 BCE. It considers Carneades' career as both philosophy and diplomat, and how he reconciled his two callings. Keywords: Carneades, Academic philosophy, skepticism, Stoicism, Greek and Roman diplomacy

Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science, 2015

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity, 2018

This chapter deals with the Life of Plato which precedes the Alcibiades commentary. It focuses on the function of this biography within the context of the isagogical questions, as a preparation to the commentaries on Plato which follow. The author analyses how Olympiodorus worked on older material, giving it philosophical consistency. She discusses possible didactic strategies, implications for Olympiodorus’ view on ethical development and intratextual links between the biography and the preserved commentaries. The hypothesis put forward is that Olympiodorus reveals how and why Plato’s biography, influenced by Neoplatonic theories about the grades of excellence, served a protreptic function in Late Antiquity.

This essay is a review of Catherine Zuckert's monumental new book, Plato's Philosophers, and an explanation of how is should revolutionize Plato scholarship.

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.

is is a collection of essays written by leading experts in honour of Christopher Rowe, and inspired by his groundbreaking work in the exegesis of Plato. e authors represent scholarly traditions which are very di erent in their approaches and interests, and rarely brought into dialogue with each other. is volume, by contrast, aims to explore synergies between them. Key topics include: the literary and philosophical unity of Plato’s works; the presence and role of his contemporaries in his dialogues; the function of myth (especially the Atlantis myth); Plato’s Socratic heritage, especially as played out in his discussions of psychology; his views on truth and being. Prominent among the dialogues discussed are Euthydemus, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, eaetetus, Timaeus, Sophist and Laws. George Boys-Stones is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Durham University. Dimitri El Murr is lecturer in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Junior member of the institut Universitaire de France. Christopher Gill is Professor of Ancient ought at the University of Exeter.

Athens Journal of Humanities and Arts, 2017

Anyone who studies the Platonic work finds great difficulty in interpreting the precise meaning of his ontological terms, which are most often enveloped in an obscure and mystical language. Aristotle already emphasized the allegorical and poetic meaning of the platonic terms "imitation" and "participation," related to the sensible things, "copies" of the "ideas." I have asked myself then the following question: Is there a rational and logical nucleus within the mystical and mythological shell of Platonism? Studying the mathematical ideography of Peano, a great logician, mathematician and contemporary linguist, elicited the following question: can we make an ideographic translation of Platoʼs ontological terms in the same way Peano did for aspects of Euclidʼs work? We demonstrate a possible valid, rational, and logical nucleus of certain Platonic nomenclature beyond the mists of certain metaphysical interpretation, while also showing Platoʼs criticism of Parmenides to be invalid in the light of Peanoʼs ideography. Difficulty in the Interpretation of Platonic Theory in Educational and Historiographical Processes Many students have experienced the darkness, ambiguity and vagueness of philosophical language in the study of the history of philosophy. This turns into difficulty whenever the teacher has to explain to young students the thoughts of a philosopher, using the most limpid and clear language possible. Thus, texts on the history of philosophy instead of helping young people to escape from imprecise, vague and primitive ways of reasoning, rather accentuate this aspect, exposing the thinking of philosophers in even more obscure and ambiguous ways than seen in the original source. We live this experience in particular in the teaching and daily work of philosophical and epistemological research, striving to achieve the formation and evolution of concepts and conceptions of the world, without making the absurd and ahistorical distinction between history of philosophy and history of science. After the study of the so-called period of "Presocratics," which usually are made to look like illogical and stuttering children, we pass to the study of Platonic philosophy. The teacher or scholar, in absence of a precise definition of Platoʼs idea, tries his best to facilitate the understanding of his students. The texts do not help and indeed confuse and entangle things more; thus, young people  President, Cultural Association, The Italic School, Italy. 6. Plato, The Dialogues of Plato translated into English with Analyses and Introductions by B. Jowett, M.A. in Five Volumes. 3rd edition revised and corrected (London: Oxford University Press, 1892). Retrieved from goo.gl/CSZRMH.

Classical Philology, 2011