Why does Mark's Jesus speak in parables? Why does Plato's Socrates make bad arguments? Why are Beckett's novels so inscrutable? And why don't stage magicians even pretend to summon spirits anymore? In a series of captivating chapters on Mark, Plato, Beckett, Mallarmé, and Chaucer, Joshua Landy not only answers these questions but explains why they are worth asking in the first place. Witty and approachable, How to Do Things with Fictions challenges the widespread assumption that literary texts must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit.
Plato,mathematician, philosopher and founder of the Academy in Athens, is, together with his teacher,Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, universally considered to have laid thefoundations of Western philosophy. His philosophical dialogues remain among themost widely read and influential of all philosophical texts and his enduringinfluence on virtually every area of philosophical enterprise cannot be exaggerated.
Plato's dialogues were part of a body of fourth-century literature in which Socrates questioned (and usually got the better of) friends, associates, and supposed experts. A. G. Long considers how Plato explained the conversational character of Socratic philosophy, and how Plato came to credit first Socrates and then, more generally, the philosopher with an alternative to conversation—internal dialogue or self-questioning.
The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus
Added by: avro | Karma: 1098.18 | Other | 25 September 2014
4
Gail Fine presents an original interpretation of a compelling puzzle in ancient philosophy. Meno's Paradox, which is first formulated in Plato's Meno, challenges the very possibility of inquiry.
Plato was the first person to organize and record the issues and questions that define philosophy. As Socrates' student, Plato preserved the teachings of his great mentor in many famous "dialogues"; these deal with classic issues like law and justice, perception and reality, death and the soul, mind and body, reason and passion, and the nature of love. The dialogues also discuss the value of moral principle vs. the value of life itself; how to achieve virtue; and how each of us can fulfill our true nature.
