Image and Paradigm in Plato's Sophist

Image and Paradigm in Plato's Sophist
Author: David K. Ambuel
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2007-06-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1930972520

The Sophist sets out to explain what the sophist does by defining his art. But the sophist has no art. Plato lays out a challenging puzzle in metaphysics, the nature of philosophy, and the limitation of philosophy that is unraveled in this new and unconventional interpretation. The Sophist is presented now not as an artefact of the intellectual past or precursor of late 20th century philosophical theories, but as living philosophy. In a new translation and interpretation, this late dialogue is shown to be a defense of not a departure from Plato's metaphysics. The book is intended to provide a complete interpretation of Plato's Sophist as a whole. Central to the methodology adopted is the assumption that all elements of the dialogue to be understood must be understood in the context of the dialogue as a whole and in its relation to other works in the Platonic corpus.

Paradigm, Logos, and Myth in Plato's Sophist and Statesman

Paradigm, Logos, and Myth in Plato's Sophist and Statesman
Author: Conor Barry
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2022-10-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1793649049

In a sustained study of the Sophist and Statesman, this book explores the use of paradigm, logos, and myth. Plato introduces in these dialogues the term “paradigm” to signify an image or model that can be used to yield insight into higher, ethical realities that are themselves beyond direct visual portrayal. He employs the term to signify an inductive example that can be defined. Finally, Plato shows how to rework existing narrative and myth to an ethically appropriate end. Since this exercise in the Statesman is described as training in dialectic, in Paradigm, Logos, and Myth in Plato's Sophist and Statesman Conor Barry demonstrates how these later works expand the compass of dialectic beyond narrow conceptions that restrict the scope of dialectic to the use of logical techniques. Rather, dialectic is the practice of dialogue as portrayed in the Platonic dialogues, which can involve appeal to analogies and figurative expressions in the search for an understanding of the ethical good. Plato’s dialogues, as works of literary art, aim to lead people to seek such understanding. Nevertheless, insofar as the dialogues are themselves artistic productions, they must also be objects of critical scrutiny and questioning.

Plato's Parmenides

Plato's Parmenides
Author: Samuel Scolnicov
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2003-07-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0520925114

Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic metaphysics to seeing it as a collection of sophisticated tricks, or even as an elaborate joke. This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology. Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here re-formulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues. Scolnicov’s analysis is crisp and lucid, offering a persuasive approach to a complicated dialogue. This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov’s interpretation emerges from the text. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.

Looking Through Images

Looking Through Images
Author: Emmanuel Alloa
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231547579

Images have always stirred ambivalent reactions. Yet whether eliciting fascinated gazes or iconoclastic repulsion from their beholders, they have hardly ever been seen as true sources of knowledge. They were long viewed as mere appearances, placeholders for the things themselves or deceptive illusions. Today, the traditional critique of the spectacle has given way to an unconditional embrace of the visual. However, we still lack a persuasive theoretical account of how images work. Emmanuel Alloa retraces the history of Western attitudes toward the visual to propose a major rethinking of images as irreplaceable agents of our everyday engagement with the world. He examines how ideas of images and their powers have been constructed in Western humanities, art theory, and philosophy, developing a novel genealogy of both visual studies and the concept of the medium. Alloa reconstructs the earliest Western media theory—Aristotle’s concept of the diaphanous milieu of vision—and the significance of its subsequent erasure in the history of science. Ultimately, he argues for a historically informed phenomenology of images and visual media that explains why images are not simply referential depictions, windows onto the world. Instead, images constantly reactivate the power of appearing. As media of visualization, they allow things to appear that could not be visible except in and through these very material devices.

The Unity of Plato's Sophist

The Unity of Plato's Sophist
Author: Noburu Notomi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 1999-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521632591

Plato's later dialogue, the Sophist, is deemed one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, but scholars have been shy of confronting the central problem of the dialogue. For Plato, defining the sophist is the basic philosophical problem: any inquirer must face the 'sophist within us' in order to secure the very possibility of dialogue, and of philosophy, against sophistic counterattack. Examining the connection between the large and difficult philosophical issues discussed in the Sophist (appearance, image, falsehood, and 'what is not') in relation to the basic problem of defining the sophist, Dr Notomi shows how Plato struggles with and solves all these problems in a single line of inquiry. His interpretation of the whole dialogue finally reveals how the philosopher should differ from the sophist.

Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics

Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics
Author: Michael James Bennett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2017-07-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 147428468X

In 1988 the philosopher Gilles Deleuze remarked that, throughout his career, he had always been 'circling around' a concept of nature. Providing critical analysis of his highly original readings of Stoicism, Aristotle, and Epicurus, this book shows that it is Deleuze's interpretations of ancient Greek physics that provide the key to understanding his conception of nature. Using the works of Aristotle, Plato, Chrysippus, and Epicurus, Michael Bennett traces the development of Deleuze's key concepts of event, difference, and problem. Arguing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand these ideas without an appreciation of Deleuze's Hellenistic influences, Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics situates his commentaries in the context of contemporary scholarship on ancient Greek philosophy. Delving into the original Greek and Latin texts, this book shows that Deleuze's readings are more complex and controversial than they first appear, simultaneously advancing Deleuze as a new voice in interpretations of ancient Greek philosophy. Generating both new critical analyses of Deleuze and a new appreciation for his classical erudition, Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in ancient Greek philosophy, Deleuze's philosophical project or his unique methodology in the history of philosophy.

Plato's Sophist

Plato's Sophist
Author: Plato
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 022677340X

Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman are a trilogy of Platonic dialogues that show Socrates formulating his conception of philosophy as he prepares the defense for his trial. Originally published together as The Being of the Beautiful, these translations can be read separately or as a trilogy. Each includes an introduction, extensive notes, and comprehensive commentary that examines the trilogy's motifs and relationships. "Seth Benardete is one of the very few contemporary classicists who combine the highest philological competence with a subtlety and taste that approximate that of the ancients. At the same time, he as set himself the entirely modern hermeneutical task of uncovering what the ancients preferred to keep veiled, of making explicit what they indicated, and hence...of showing the naked ugliness of artificial beauty."—Stanley Rose, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal Seth Benardete (1930-2001) was professor of classics at New York University. He was the author or translator of many books, most recently The Argument of the Action, Plato's "Laws," and Plato's "Symposium," all published by the University of Chicago Press.

The Being of the Beautiful

The Being of the Beautiful
Author: Plato
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226670392

The Being of the Beautiful collects Plato’s three dialogues, the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesmen, in which Socrates formulates his conception of philosophy while preparing for trial. Renowned classicist Seth Benardete’s careful translations clearly illuminate the dramatic and philosophical unity of these dialogues and highlight Plato’s subtle interplay of language and structure. Extensive notes and commentaries, furthermore, underscore the trilogy’s motifs and relationships. “The translations are masterpieces of literalness. . . . They are honest, accurate, and give the reader a wonderful sense of the Greek.”—Drew A. Hyland, Review of Metaphysics

Model

Model
Author: Ladislav Kesner
Publisher: Pierot s.r.o
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2015-08-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 8073534851