The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies

Cover
Backcover
Title page
Copyright
Contents
Preface
1. Introduction: A Short History of Platonic Interpretation and the 'Third Way'
I. Philosophy and Speech: Plato's Dialogues Between Oral and Written Discourse
2. Reflections on the Orality and Literacy of Plato's Dialogues
3. Plato's Audiences, or How Plato Replies to the Fifth-Century Intellectual Mistrust of Letters
1. Tradition and Transmission
2. Plato's Audiences
3. A Fresh Distinction Between Socrates and Plato
4. Neither Published Nor Perished: The Dialogues as Speech, Not Text
II. Philosophy and Rhetoric: Between Persuasion and Proof
5. Socrates' Rhetorical Attack on Rhetoric
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6. Apodeiknusthai, Dialegesthai, Peithein: A Reconstruction of Plato's Methods of Argument in the Phaedo
III. Philosophy as Myth, Drama and Enactment: Between Imagination and Reason, Plot and Argument
7. Methodology in the Reading of the Timaeus and Politicus
8. How to Read a Platonic Dialogue
9. Plato's Dialogues and Enactments
IV. Dialectic and Dialogue: Between Skepticism and Dogmatism
10. Self-Knowledge, Pratical Knowledge, and Insight: Plato's Dialectic and the Dialogue Form
1. A New Alternative: Three Characteristics of Plato's Philosophy
2. Philosophy as Reflexive: General Description and Hypothesis
Hypothesis: Reflexivity and the Dialogue Form
3. Philosophy as Temperance: Reflexivity in the Charmides
4. Philosophy as Courage: Reflexivity in the Laches
Limitations of Conclusions: "Early" versus "Middle" Dialogues
5. Philosophy and the Good: Reflexivity in the Republic
6. Further Evidence for Reflexive Character of Plato's Philosophy
7. Necessity of Dialogue Form Confirmed
8. Philosophy as Pratical: General Description and Hypothesis
9. "User's Knowledge" in Republic, Cratylus and Euthydemus
10. Philosophy as Nonpropositional: General Description and Hypothesis
11. Nonpropositional Knowledge in the Seventh Letter
12. Conclusion
11. Dogma, Skepticism, and Dialogue
I. Dogmatic, Skeptical, and Dialogic Interpretations of Plato
Introduction: The History of the Interpretation of Plato
1. Truth: Divine or Human?
2. Reality: Particular or Universal?
3. Dialectic: Refutative or Affirmative?
4. The Dialogues: Independent or Unified?
Summary
II. Dogma and Skepticism in the Dialogues
12. The Dialogical Composition of Plato's Parmenides
1. Young Socrates' Supererogatory Appeal to a Theory about Ideas
2. How are We to Take Parmenides' Rehearsal of the Difficulties in the Theory of Ideas?
3. Discussion of the Proper Method of Intellectual Training for the Pursuit of Knowledge or Philosophia (135c-137b5)
4. The Demonstration as also a Satire on Sophistic Deductionism
V. Between Unwritten Doctrines and Written Dialogue
13. The Choice between the Dialogues and the "Unwritten Teachings": A Scylla and Charybdis for the Interpreter?
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Appendix: Reconstruction of the List of Fifteen Kinds (Statesman 287b-2091a, 303-305e)
Select Bibliography of Works Pertaining to the "Third Way"
Name Index
Subject Index
Notes on Contributors