PHL109: Ancient Philosophy: Plato

Even after twenty-three centuries Plato's work remains the starting-point for the study of logic, metaphysics, and moral and political philosophy. But though his dialogues retain their freshness and immediacy, they can be difficult to follow. Professor Hare has provided a short introduction to Plato's thought that makes their meaning clear.

This incisive book fills the longstanding need for a sound, reliable, and balanced guide to the whole of Plato's philosophical work. Melling describes the different stages in Plato's philosophical development, introduces his different methods and styles of philosophy, and explains why the debates were important then and what sense we can make of them now. Against the background of the ancient Greek world, Melling illuminates Plato the man, his writings, and, above all, why his ideas should be considered important two thousand years after his death.

Contents: The Dialogues as dramatic vision -- Plato the man -- The Platonic corpus -- The Greek heritage of Plato -- Plato's heritage from the early Greek philosophers -- Plato's immediate background : the Sophists -- The historical and the Platonic Socrates -- Plato's circle and audience -- Plato the artist-philosopher -- The philosophy of the artist and the artistic experience -- The theme of the good life -- The efficiently organized city : the Republic -- The good life : "later" treatment -- Plato's "ideas" -- Platonic idealism -- Platonic immortality -- Plato's "later" philosophy -- Plato's mathematical cosmology : his "unwritten philosophy" -- Plato's ethical cosmology : the Timaeus -- Epilogue : Plato and the tradition of "Platonism."

Plato stands as the fount of our philosophical tradition, being the first Western thinker to produce a body of writing that touches upon a wide range of topics still discussed by philosophers today. In a sense he invented philosophy as a distinct subject, for although many of these topics were discussed by his intellectual predecessors and contemporaries, he was the first to bring them together by giving them a unitary treatment. This volume contains fourteen essays discussing Plato's views about knowledge, reality, mathematics, politics, ethics, love, poetry, and religion. There are also analyses of the intellectual and social background of his thought, the development of his philosophy throughout his career, the range of alternative approaches to his work, and the stylometry of his writing.
Contents: Introduction to the study of Plato / Richard Kraut -- Plato : the intellectual background / T.H. Irwin -- Stylometry and chronology / Leonard Brandwood -- Socrates and the early dialogues / Terry Penner -- Mathematical method and philosophical truth / Ian Mueller -- Inquiry in the Meno / Gail Fine -- Plato and Greek religion / Michael L. Morgan -- Platonic love / G.R.F. Ferrari -- Plato's metaphysical epistemology / Nicholas P. White -- The defense of justice in Plato's Republic / Richard Kraut -- Plato on poetic creativity / Elizabeth Asmis -- Good-bye to the third man / Constance C. Meinwald -- Plato's Sophist on false statements / Michael Frede -- Disintegration and restoration : pleasure and pain in Plato's Philebus / Dorothea Frede -- Plato's later political thought / Trevor J. Saunders.

Combining research with analysis, the authors present fourteen essays on various dimensions of Plato's thought. The studies themselves reflect the varied backgrounds and allegiances of the many authors. Both Anglo-Saxon and continental traditions of philosophy and philosophical scholarship are represented.