In the Socratic Tradition

In the Socratic Tradition
Author: Tziporah Kasachkoff
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1998
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780847684793

This practical guide for teaching philosophy brings together essays by two dozen distinguished philosophers committed to pedagogy. Addressing primarily practical issues, such as how to motivate students, construct particular courses, and give educational exams, the essays also touch on theoretical issues such as whether moral edification is a proper goal of teaching ethics. An excellent sourcebook for graduate students just learning to teach as well as for professors searching for new strategies and inspiration or called upon to teach courses outside of their specialties.

The Socratic Tradition

The Socratic Tradition
Author: Matti Sintonen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2009
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781904987642

Man by nature desires to know, and the most natural way of satisfying this desire is to find answers to the questions that arise from wonder and perplexity. Questioning is our default view of method. I was turned into a cornerstone of western thought in the Socratic elenchus and Aristotles doctrine of explanation and inquiry. Aristotles dialogical games, especially as they find expression in Topics, survived medieval dialectical games and had a profound impact on practices in academic life. And even when Aristotelianism came under fire during the renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, questioning as method was not jettisoned but rather transformed into a new form in which the questions were to be addressed to Nature herself. Questioning is not just a method but also a philosophy in its own right. Man not only desires to know, but wonder and perplexity are at the very heart of mans essence. As Karl- Otto Apel persuasively argues, Gadamers Truth and Method was not just, or perhaps even mainly, a methodological insight into how knowledge was to be obtained. Rather, in philosophical hermeneutics questioning has a more profound standing, marking, as Apel puts it, "logos-reflection" and hence dialogue in the full sense. This collection of essays by leading philosophers probes questioning as philosophy and as method both from a historical and a systematic perspective. The authors include J. Hintikka, P. Aubenque, R. Smith, M.-L. Kakkuri-Knuuttila, E. Moutsopoulos, T. Calvo Martinez, M. Yrjonsuuri, J.-F. Courtine, K.-O. Appel, V. A. Lektorsky, G. Schurz, M. Sintonen, and W. Rabinowicz & L. Bovens

The Concept of Presocratic Philosophy

The Concept of Presocratic Philosophy
Author: André Laks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691191484

When we talk about Presocratic philosophy, we are speaking about the origins of Greek philosophy and Western rationality itself. But what exactly does it mean to talk about “Presocratic philosophy” in the first place? How did early Greek thinkers come to be considered collectively as Presocratic philosophers? In this brief book, André Laks provides a history of the influential idea of Presocratic philosophy, tracing its historical and philosophical significance and consequences, from its ancient antecedents to its full crystallization in the modern period and its continuing effects today. Laks examines ancient Greek and Roman views about the birth of philosophy before turning to the eighteenth-century emergence of the term “Presocratics” and the debates about it that spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He analyzes the intellectual circumstances that led to the idea of Presocratic philosophy—and what was and is at stake in the construction of the notion. The book closes by comparing two models of the history of philosophy—the phenomenological, represented by Hans-Georg Gadamer, and the rationalist, represented by Ernst Cassirer—and their implications for Presocratic philosophy, as well as other categories of philosophical history. Other figures discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Nietzsche, Max Weber, and J.-P. Vernant. Challenging standard histories of Presocratic philosophy, the book calls for a reconsideration of the conventional story of early Greek philosophy and Western rationality.

Shifting the Paradigm

Shifting the Paradigm
Author: Paolo C. Biondi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 656
Release: 2014-05-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110369117

Induction, which involves a leap from the particular to the universal, has always been a puzzling phenomenon for those attempting to investigate the origins of knowledge. Although traditionally accepted as the engine of first principles, the authority of inductive reasoning has been undermined in the modern age by empiricist criticisms that derive notably from Hume, who insisted that induction is an invalid line of reasoning that ends in unreliable future predictions. The present volume challenges this Humean orthodoxy. It begins with a thorough consideration of Hume’s original position and continues with a series of state-of-the-art essays that critique the received view while offering positive alternatives. The experts assembled here draw on a perennial historical tradition that stretches as far back as Socrates and extends through such luminaries as Aristotle, Aquinas, Whewell, Goethe, Lonergan, and Rescher. They inquire into the creative moment of intellectual insight that makes induction possible, consider relevant episodes from the history of science, advance scholarly exegeses of historical interpretations of inductive reasoning, and reflect critically on the scientific and logical ramifications of epistemological and metaphysical realism.

Presocratics and Papyrological Tradition

Presocratics and Papyrological Tradition
Author: Christian Vassallo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 702
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110666103

The papyri transmit a part of the testimonia relevant to pre-Socratic philosophy. The ʼCorpus dei Papiri Filosofici‛ takes this material only partly into account. In this volume, a team of specialists discusses some of the most important papyrological texts that are major instruments for reconstructing pre-Socratic philosophy and doxography. Furthermore, these texts help to increase our knowledge of how pre-Socratic thought – through contributions to physics, cosmology, ethics, ontology, theology, anthropology, hermeneutics, and aesthetics – paved the way for the canonic scientific fields of European culture. More specifically, each paper tackles (published and unpublished) papyrological texts concerning the Orphics, the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the early Atomists, and the Sophists. For the first time in the field of pre-Socratics studies, several papers are devoted to the Herculanean sources, along with others concerning the Graeco-Egyptian papyri and the Derveni Papyrus.

Religion of Socrates

Religion of Socrates
Author: Mark L. McPherran
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780271040325

This study argues that to understand Socrates we must uncover and analyze his religious views, since his philosophical and religious views are part of one seamless whole. Mark McPherran provides a close analysis of the relevant Socratic texts, an analysis that yields a comprehensive and original account of Socrates' commitments to religion (e.g., the nature of the gods, the immortality of the soul). McPherran contends that Socrates saw his religious commitments as integral to his philosophical mission of moral examination and, in turn, used the rationally derived convictions underlying that mission to reshape the religious conventions of his time. As a result, Socrates made important contributions to the rational reformation of Greek religion, contributions that incited and informed the theology of his brilliant pupil, Plato.

Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition

Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition
Author: Laura Viidebaum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2021-11-18
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1108836569

A new account of the emergence of the ancient rhetorical tradition, from Classical Athens to Augustan Rome.

Socratic Puzzles

Socratic Puzzles
Author: Robert Nozick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 422
Release: 1997
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780674816534

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.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1027
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004396756

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates, edited by Christopher Moore, provides almost unbroken coverage, across three-dozen studies, of 2450 years of philosophical and literary engagement with Socrates – the singular Athenian intellectual, paradigm of moral discipline, and inspiration for millennia of philosophical, rhetorical, and dramatic composition. Following an Introduction reflecting on the essentially “receptive” nature of Socrates’ influence (by contrast to Plato’s), chapters address the uptake of Socrates by authors in the Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Late Antique (including Latin Christian, Syriac, and Arabic), Medieval (including Byzantine), Renaissance, Early Modern, Late Modern, and Twentieth-Century periods. Together they reveal the continuity of Socrates’ idiosyncratic, polyvalent, and deep imprint on the history of Western thought, and witness the value of further research in the reception of Socrates.

The Rebirth of Dialogue

The Rebirth of Dialogue
Author: James P. Zappen
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0791484904

Dialogue has suffered a long eclipse in the history of philosophy and the history of rhetoric but has enjoyed a rebirth in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Buber, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Among twentieth-century figures, Bakhtin took a special interest in the history of the dialogue form. This book explores Bakhtin's understanding of Socratic dialogue and the notion that dialogue is not simply a way of persuading others to accept our ideas, but a way of holding ourselves, and others, accountable for all of our thoughts, words, and actions. In supporting this premise, Bakhtin challenges the traditions of argument and persuasion handed down from Plato and Aristotle, and he offers, as an alternative, a dialogical rhetoric that restructures the traditional relationship between speakers and listeners, writers and readers, as a mutual testing, contesting, and creating of ideas. The author suggests that Bakhtin's dialogical rhetoric is not restricted to oral discourse, but is possible in any medium, including written, graphic, and digital.