The ontology of Socratic questioning in Plato's early dialogues / Sean D. Kirkland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kirkland, Sean D.

Series:

SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy

SUNY series in ancient Greek philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plato.

Socrates.

Ontology.

Questioning.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 265 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2012]

Summary:

Modern interpreters of Plato's Socrates have generally taken the dialogues to be aimed at working out objective truth. Attending closely to the texts of the early dialogues and the question of virtue in particular, Sean D. Kirkland suggests that this approach is flawed-that such concern with discovering external facts/rests on modern assumptions that would have been far from the minds of Socrates and his contemporaries. This isn't, however; to accuse Socrates of any kind of relativism. Through careful analysis of the original Greek and of a range of competing strands of Plato scholarship, Kirkland instead brings to light a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates, for whom "what virtue is" is what has always already appeared as virtuous in everyday experience of the world, even if initial appearances are unsatisfactory or obscure and in need of greater scrutiny and clarification. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Socratic Phenomenology

Chapter 1 Setting Aside the Subject-Object Framework in Reading Plato 3

Aristotelian Assessments of Plato's Socrates 3

Construction or Destruction in the Early Dialogues 8

From Excessive Being to Objective Reality and Back 12

Articulating Plato's Anti-Relativism 13

Distinguishing Socrates' Search for Definitions from Twentieth-Century Nominalism 14

Excavating the Everyday Understanding of Being in Plato 16

Consequences of Presupposing an Understanding of Being as Objective 17

Chapter 2 On Doxa as the Appearing of 'What Is' 23

Doxa versus Opinion 23

Phainesthai and Doxa 25

Part II Virtue's Ontological Excess and Distance

Chapter 3 The Excessive Truth of Socratic Discourse 35

The Indefensibility of Philosophy in Plato's Apology of Socrates 36

Socrates' Muthos 38

Socrates' Logos 41

The Prooimion to Socrates' Apologia 43

The Rhetorical Discourse of Socrates' Accusers 43

Socrates' Way of Discourse in His Defense 46

Socratic Truth as Deinos 48

Socrates' Way of Discourse in His Philosophical Activity 55

Chapter 4 The Sheltering of Techné versus the Exposure of Human Wisdom 59

Socrates versus the Sophists 65

From Shelter to Exposure 73

The Techne-Tuche Antithesis 74

The Socratic Understanding of Techne in Light of . Metaphysics Alpha 76

The Non-Knowing of Virtue as Socrates' Aim 82

Socrates and the Techne-Model of Virtue 87

Chapter 5 The Truthful Elenctic Pathos of Painful Concern 93

Elenctic Pain and Being Concerned by Virtue 94

Melete in the Apology and Aporia throughout the Early Dialogues 96

A Phenomenological Consideration of Meletel Aporia 101

Serenity in the Interpretations of Nehamas, Vlastos, and the Stoics 105

Meletel Aporia as Itself the Aletheia of 'What Virtue Is' 109

Distance and Excess versus Transcendence or Immanence 111

Part III Socratic Virtue in the Face of Excessive Truth

Chapter 6 The Courage of Virtue and the Distant Horizon of the Whole in the Laches 119

Finite Transcendence and Socratic "Being With" 120

Sophistication and the Everyday Attitude in the Introduction of the Two Generals 123

The Unity of the Question 'What is Virtue?' 126

Being Many Everyday 132

Aristotle on Socrates and Definition Katholou 133

Meno 71d-73d 136

Euthyphro 5c-7a 138

Socrates' Interlocutors and the Confusion of Appearance and Being 140

Aporia and the Truth of Appearances 144

The Socratic Here and Now 150.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438444031

1438444036

OCLC:

768417899