Ancient Philosophy Commons^™

In And Out Of Character: Socratic Mimēsis, Mateo Duque

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the Republic, Plato has Socrates attack poetry’s use of mimēsis, often translated as ‘imitation’ or ‘representation.’ Various scholars (e.g. Blondell 2002; Frank 2018; Halliwell 2009; K. Morgan 2004) have noticed the tension between Socrates’ theory critical of mimēsis and Plato’s literary practice of speaking through various characters in his dialogues. However, none of these scholars have addressed that it is not only Plato the writer who uses mimēsis but also his own character, Socrates. At crucial moments in several dialogues, Socrates takes on a role and speaks as someone else. I call these moments “Socratic mimēsis.” …

Sagp Newsletter 2018/19.2, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Announcement of the 2019 meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.

Learning To Read In The Theaetetus: The Recuperation Of Writing In Plato's Philosophy, Luke Lea

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In my thesis, I take up the popular question of the status of writing in Plato’s dialogues, but from a fresh perspective. Instead of approaching the question of writing head-on, I attend to the philosophical message about reading presented by two dialogues, the Phaedrus and the Theaetetus. My thesis offers interpretations of two individual dialogues whose emphasis on writing and reading as both literary themes and philosophical problems ensure that the overall meanings of these dialogues cannot be reached without attention to this subject.

Although I examine the dialogues in isolation, believing that the setting and characters unique to …

The Meno, Recollection, And The Role Of Hypothesis, Joseph A. Novak

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The aim of this paper is to present Plato's doctrine within a perspective that will both explain why Plato found himself prompted to formulate it, as well as explore some enduring insights exhibited in its applications. First, the paper will argue that Plato was prompted to adopt the doctrine given the difficulties that had arisen from the employment of the Socratic elenchus. Second, it will argue that hypothesis, already implicit in the elenchic method, will begin to be developed into a more complex and refined method that Plato sees necessary for the whole learning process. The retention of a hypothesis …

The Philosophical Economy Of Plato's Psychology: Common Concepts In The Timaeus, Dorothea Aline Frede

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato's insistence that the eternal immobile model is “the real thing” and the mobile world only an image is to stress the sincerity of his conviction that the intelligible pattern, the unchangeable network of principles, must be the foundation of the physical reality. Only because there is such a fundamentum in re can we have concepts that allow us to understand and explain the world. Without such really existing concepts our thinking would be nothing, it would be a groping for stability in a changing world that could at best provide similarities without any fix point to determine their nature. …

Episteme And Logos In Plato's Later Thought, Alexander Nehamas

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

"What is knowledge?" Plato does try to answer this question, asked at the beginning of the Theaetetus, but the answer is not in the dialogue itself, either negatively (as Cornford argued) or positively (as Fine suggested). His answer is partially given in the Sophist and Statesman: the project of definition has been shown to involve the mastery of the whole field to which the object of definition belongs, and hence a science of the field in question. The dramatic sequels to the Theaetetus are also its doctrinal complements. By making knowledge the object of knowledge, Plato was able to …

The Platonic Dream, David Gallop

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The author writes (12/13/16): "The 1965 paper concerned Plato's use of dreaming and waking as metaphors for various contrasts in different philosophical contexts, and especially for its relevance to the Divided Line and Cave of Republic VI-VII. It was a companion piece to my study of Images in the Republic, published in the Archiv sur Geschichte der Philosophie in 1965, and was originally written with it as part of a single long paper. That 1965 paper dealt with Plato's attacks on images and mimesis, and tried to reconcile them with his own constant use of images, especially in Republic V-VII."

The Biographical Tradition Of The Presocratics, John B. Mcdiarmid

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Traces the influence of Aristotle and Theophrastus on later accounts of Presocratic philosophy. This is especially clear in the matter of the relationship between Xenophanes and Parmenides.