Description
Book SynopsisThe overall aim of the volume is to explore the relation of Socratic philosophizing, as Plato represents it, to those activities to which it is typically opposed. The essays address a range of figures who appear in the dialogues as distinct others against whom Socrates is contrastedmost obviously, the figure of the sophist, but also the tragic hero, the rhetorician, the tyrant, and the poet. Each of the individual essays shows, in a different way, that the harder one tries to disentangle Socrates' own activity from that of its apparent opposite, the more entangled they become. Yet, it is only by taking this entanglement seriously, and exploring it fully, that the distinctive character of Socratic philosophy emerges. As a whole, the collection sheds new light on the artful ways in which Plato not only represents philosophy in relation to what it is not, but also makes it strange to itself. It shows how concerns that seem to be raised about the activity of philosophical questioning (from
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Strange Fellows Part I: Friendship, Resistance, and the Question of the Good Chapter 1: Why Socrates and Thrasymachus Become Friends Chapter 2: The Daimonic Soul: On Plato’s Theages Part II: Philosophy and Sophistry: The Limits of ‘Logos’ Chapter 3: Philosophy and Sophistry in Plato’s ‘Euthydemus’ Chapter 4: Socrates Talking to Himself? On the ‘Greater Hippias’ Chapter 5: The Sophist Hippias and the Problem of Polytropia Chapter 6: On Wolves and Dogs: The Eleatic Stranger’s Socratic Turn in the ‘Sophist’ Part III: Imagery, Tragedy, and Tyranny Chapter 7: Philosophers as Painters: On the Corruptibility of the Philosophic Nature in Plato’s ‘Republic’ Chapter 8: Plato’s ‘Apology’ as Tragedy Chapter 9: Sophist and Philosopher in Plato’s Sophist Chapter 10: Socrates’ Odyssean Return: On Plato’s Charmides Part IV: Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Dialogue Chapter 11: Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the Question of Harmony in Plato’s ‘Phaedrus’ Chapter 12: Philosophy in the Perfect Tense: On Plato’s ‘Lovers’ About the Contributors
