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

SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plato.

Socrates.

Ontology.

Questioning.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (291 p.)

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Winner of the 2013 Symposium Book Award, presented by the Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental PhilosophyModern 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.

Contents:

Intro

The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato's Early Dialogues

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations for Ancient Works Cited

Introduction: Socrates and the Hermeneutic of Estrangement

Part I: Socratic Phenomenology

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

Aristotelian Assessments of Plato's Socrates

Construction or Destruction in the Early Dialogues

From Excessive Being to Objective Reality and Back

Articulating Plato's Anti-Relativism

Distinguishing Socrates' Search for Definitions from Twentieth-Century Nominalism

Excavating the Everyday Understanding of Being in Plato

Consequences of Presupposing an Understanding of Being as Objective

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

Doxa Versus Opinion

Phainesthai and Doxa

Part II: Virtue's Ontological Excess and Distance

Chapter 3: The Excessive Truth of Socratic Discourse

The Indefensibility of Philosophy in Plato 's Apology of Socrates

Socrates' Muthos

Socrates' Logos

The Prooimion to Socrates' Apologia

The Rhetorical Discourse of Socrates' Accusers

Socrates' Way of Discourse in His Defense

Socratic Truth as Deinos

Socrates' Way of Discourse in His Philosophical Activity

Chapter 4: The Sheltering of Technē versus the Exposure of Human Wisdom

Socrates versus the Sophists

From Shelter to Exposure

The Technē-Tuchē Antithesis

The Socratic Understanding of Technē in Light of Metaphysics Alpha

The Non-Knowing of Virtue as Socrates' Aim

Socrates and the Technē-Model of Virtue

Chapter 5: The Truthful Elenctic Pathos of Painful Concern

Elenctic Pain and Being Concerned by Virtue

Meletē in the Apology and Aporia throughout the Early Dialogues

A Phenomenological Consideration of Meletē/Aporia.

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

Meletē/Aporia as Itself the Alētheia of 'What Virtue Is'

Distance and Excess versus Transcendence or Immanence

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

Finite Transcendence and Socratic "Being With"

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

The Unity of the Question 'What is Virtue?'

Being Many Everyday

Aristotle on Socrates and Definition Katholou

Meno 71d-73d

Euthyphro 5c-7a

Socrates' Interlocutors and the Confusion of Appearance and Being

Aporia and the Truth of Appearances

The Socratic Here and Now

Conclusion: Aporia in the Middle Dialogues

Idea/Eidos as 'Look' and Phenomenal Being in the Middle Dialogues

Alētheia as Divine Wandering

The Good beyond Being and the Ideas as Excessive Measures

Human Monstrosity and Being between One and Many

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781461918011

1461918014

9781438444055

1438444052

OCLC:

826659735