Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philosophy

Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philosophy
Author: Gareth B. Matthews
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2003
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780198238881

Gareth Matthews suggests that we can better understand the nature of philosophical inquiry if we recognize the central role played by perplexity. The seminal representation of philosophical perplexity is in Plato's dialogues; Matthews examines the intriguing shifts in Plato's attitude to perplexity and suggests that these may represent a course of philosophical development that philosophers follow even today.

Socrates and Self-Knowledge

Socrates and Self-Knowledge
Author: Christopher Moore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2015-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107123305

The first systematic study of Socrates' interest in selfhood, examining ancient philosophical ideas of what constitutes the self.

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.

Why Plato Lost Interest in the Socratic Method

Why Plato Lost Interest in the Socratic Method
Author: Gareth B. Matthews
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2022-11-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 303113690X

The Socratic method of questioning and refutation (elenchus) predominates the early Platonic dialogues. But things change in the middle dialogues, as Socrates goes beyond merely asking questions and begins to provide answers to his questions. And the method virtually disappears in the late dialogues. The standard explanation of this phenomenon is that the early dialogues were intended to commemorate Socrates and the elenchus, while in the middle and late dialogues Plato went beyond Socrates to present his own mature philosophical thought. In this book, Matthews revises this explanation by uncovering the shortcomings that Plato came to find in the Socratic method and the reasons why Plato lost interest in it.

Religious Ethics

Religious Ethics
Author: William Schweiker
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2020-06-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1405198575

An inclusive and innovative account of religious ethical thinking and acting in the world. Rather than merely applying existing forms of philosophical ethics, Religious Ethics defines the meaning of the field and presents a distinct and original method for ethical reflection through comparisons of world religious traditions. Written by leading scholars and educators in the field, this unique volume offers an innovative approach that reveals how religions concur and differ on moral matters, and provides practical guidance on thinking and living ethically. The book’s innovative method—integrating descriptive, normative, practical, fundamental, and metaethical dimensions of reflection—enables a far more complex and nuanced exploration of religious ethics than any single philosophical language, method, or theory can equal. First introducing the task of religious ethics, the book moves through each of the five dimensions of reflection to compare concepts such as good and evil, perplexity and wisdom, truth and illusion, and freedom and bondage in various theological contexts. Guides readers on understanding, assessing, and comparing the moral teachings and practices of world religions Applies a disciplined, scholarly approach to the subject of religious ethics Explores the distinctions between religious ethics and moral philosophy Provides a methodology which can be applied to comparative ethics for various religions Compares religious traditions to illuminate each of the five dimensions of ethical and moral reflection Religious Ethics: Meaning and Method will help anyone interested in the relation between religion and ethics in the modern world, including those involved in general and comparative religion studies, religious and comparative ethics, and moral theory.

Philosophy at the Gymnasium

Philosophy at the Gymnasium
Author: Erik Kenyon
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2024-09-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1501776770

Philosophy at the Gymnasium returns Greek moral philosophy to its original context—the gyms of Athens—to understand how training for the body sparked training for the mind. The result is an engaging inroad to Greek thought that wrestles with big questions about life, happiness, and education, while providing fresh perspectives on standing scholarly debates. In Philosophy at the Gymnasium, Erik Kenyon reveals the egalitarian spirit of the ancient gym, in which clothes—and with them, social markers—are shed at the door, leaving individuals to compete based on their physical and intellectual merits alone. The work opens with Socratic dialogues set in gyms that call for reform in character education. It explores Plato's moral and political philosophy through the lens of mental and civic health. And it holds up Olympic victors as Aristotle's model for the life of happiness through training.

Philosophy and Education

Philosophy and Education
Author: Joanna Haynes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317585305

Written specifically for education studies students, this accessible text offers a clear introduction to philosophy and education. It skilfully guides readers through this challenging and sometimes complex area bringing key philosophical ideas and questions to life in the context and practice of education. There is also a companion website to accompany the book, featuring live weblinks for each activity which can be visited at www.routledge.com/cw/haynes. The authors consider the implications of educational trends and movements through a variety of philosophical lenses such as Marxism, utopianism, feminism and poststructuralism. The book explores enduring themes such as childhood and contemporary issues such as the teaching of critical thinking and philosophy in schools. Features include: a range of individual and group activities that invite questioning and discussion case studies and examples from a variety of formal and informal education settings and contexts reference to philosophically informed practices of research, reading, writing and teaching suggestions for further reading in philosophy and education overviews and - and key questions for each chapter Drawing on readers’ experiences of education, the book reveals the connections between philosophical ideas and educational policy and practice. Part of the Foundations in Education Studies series, this timely textbook is essential reading for students coming to the study of philosophy and education for the first time.

Remembering Socrates

Remembering Socrates
Author: Lindsay Judson
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2006-01-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191557056

Lindsay Judson and Vassilis Karasmanis present a selection of philosophical papers by an outstanding international team of scholars, assessing the legacy and continuing relevance of Socrates' thought 2,400 years after his death. Socrates' life, philosophical activity, and death not only had a formative effect on his follower Plato, and thus indirectly on almost the whole course of Greek philosophy, but also represented a moral and philosophical ideal which has been the inspiration, or the despair, of many philosophers and other thinkers down to the present day. The topics of the papers include Socratic method as portrayed by Plato and by Xenophon; the notion of definition; Socrates' intellectualist conception of ethics; famous arguments in the Euthyphro and Crito, and a not-so famous argument in the Hippias Major; and aspects of the later portrayal and reception of Socrates as a philosophical and ethical exemplar - by Plato, the Sceptics, and in the early Christian era. The collection demonstrates the vitality as well as the diversity of Socratic studies, and will interest many ancient philosophers, historians of philosophy, and classicists.

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

Belief and Truth

Belief and Truth
Author: Katja Maria Vogt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-08-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199916829

Katja Maria Vogt's Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato explores a Socratic intuition about the difference between belief and knowledge. Beliefs -- doxai -- are deficient cognitive attitudes. In believing something, one accepts some content as true without knowing that it is true; one holds something to be true that could turn out to be false. Since our actions reflect what we hold to be true, holding beliefs is potentially harmful for oneself and others. Accordingly, beliefs are ethically worrisome and even, in the words of Plato's Socrates, "shameful." As Vogt argues, this is a serious philosophical proposal and it speaks to intuitions we are likely to share. But it involves a notion of belief that is rather different from contemporary notions. Today, it is a widespread assumption that true beliefs are better than false beliefs, and that some true beliefs (perhaps those that come with justifications) qualify as knowledge. Socratic epistemology offers a genuinely different picture. In aiming for knowledge, one must aim to get rid of beliefs. Knowledge does not entail belief -- belief and knowledge differ in such important ways that they cannot both count as kinds of belief. As long as one does not have knowledge, one should reserve judgment and investigate by thinking through possible ways of seeing things. According to Vogt, the ancient skeptics and Stoics draw many of these ideas from Plato's dialogues, revising Socratic-Platonic arguments as they see fit. Belief and Truth retraces their steps through interpretations of the Apology, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, and Philebus, reconstructs Pyrrhonian investigation and thought, and illuminates the connections between ancient skepticism and relativism, as well as the Stoic view that beliefs do not even merit the evaluations "true" and "false."