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IV. Philosophy and Science: The Authority of Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

Socrates is one of the iconic figures of the classical city – yet he wrote nothing. His teaching consisted in conversations with the people he met (we are told), particularly in the very highest circles of the cultivated and the powerful. He was prosecuted and put to death – and his execution has become the paradigmatic image of the man of principle standing firmly and calmly by his principles to the point of death, an image that Christian martyrology learnt a lot from. Socrates, however, is written about by many. He appears on the comic stage of Aristophanes as a leading sophist, he is memorialized by his followers, for example by Xenophon in his Memorabilia, Apology and Oikonomikos, and in particular he is the leading figure in the dialogues of Plato. It is first with Plato’s massive contribution to the invention of prose that this chapter is concerned.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2002

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References

1 On the non-Platonic treatments see Vander Waerdt ed. (1994); Kahn (1995), 1–35.

2 Phaedrus 274c3-276e5: see Ferrari (1987); Derrida (1981), 61–172.

3 See Press ed. (2000) for the most recent discussions – though the quality of the essays is very varied.

4 See Nehamas (1998); Griswold ed. (1988); Nightingale (1995); Vlastos (1991).

5 The most strident arguments are around Schiappa (1990) and (1999).

6 See Brickhouse and Smith (1989); Stone (1988).

7 See Nussbaum (1986), 165–99; Halperin (1992); Price (1989); Gagarin (1977); Penwill (1978), each with lengthy bibliographies.

8 See Halperin (1990), 113–51, with plenty of further bibliography; also Henderson (2000).

9 On Thersites see Thalmann (1988); in general on the body and worth, see Foucault (1987); Vernant (1991), 50–75; Stewart (1997).

10 Plato, Symp. 216e2-217a1.

11 Plato, Symp. 218b8-c7.

12 For the protocols of male desire, see Dover (1978), Foucault (1987) and Winkler (1990); for the scene here see also Nussbaum (1986), 165–99; Gagarin (1977); Nehamas (1998), 60–9.

13 See Nussbaum (1986), 165–99; Gagarin (1977).

14 So Nussbaum (1986), provocatively.

15 On Charmides see von Reden and Goldhill (1999); McKim (1985); Kahn (1995), 163–209; and, for extensive bibliography to philosophical treatments, Schmid (1998).

16 Plato, Charmides 153a1-4.

17 Plato, Symp. 219d3-221c1.

18 It is extraordinary – but typical of many philosophers’ responses to Plato’s writing – that Charles Kahn’s lengthy treatment of ‘self-knowledge’ in the Charmides fails to mention that it is a first-person fictional narrative – even when he asks (Kahn (1996), 200): ‘How can one know what someone else knows or does not know?’!

19 Plato, Charmides 154b7-c5.

20 Plato, Charmides 155c8-e1.

21 For different responses to that heritage see e.g. Nehemas (1998) (Montaigne to Nietzsche) and Zanker (1995) (later intellectual types of antiquity).

22 See Kraut (1984) and, most recently, Weiss (1998).

23 Good introduction to this in Vlastos (1994), 1–37.

24 See Schmid (1998).

25 Plato, Charmides 159b7-160d2.

26 Plato, Charmides 162c1.

27 Plato, Charmides 175b2-4.

28 The dating of Plato’s dialogues is extremely contentious, however, and always tied up with ideas of the ‘development’ (or lack of development) within the Platonic corpus: that Plato’s dialogues refer to each other does indicate an important idea for the history of prose: that different prose works of an author could/should be considered «25 parts of a corpus. Nothing in my argument here depends on the date of the Lysis or the Charmides.

29 Plato, Lysis 223b3-9.

30 See von Reden and Goldhill (1999), with bibliography.

31 See for an introduction to the Republic Annas (1981).

32 See in particular Nightingale (1995).

33 This is the starting point of both Saxenhouse (1992) and Monoson (2000), though neither is wholly convincing in the full range of their arguments. Gouldner (1965) is still valuable. Gill (1995) puts such a development within ‘Greek Thought’.

34 Many answers of varying types and convincingness: see e.g. Kahn (1983); the contributors to Griswold ed. (1988), especially Desjardins and Griswold; Coventry (1990); Sayre (1995); Press ed. (1993).

35 See e.g. Vlastos (1991); Nightingale (1995); Nehemas (1998); Nehemas (1999); Monoson (2000).

36 On the Meno see especially Day (1994); Weiss (2001) and, more generally, Scott (1995). Good brief introduction in Fine (1992) and Nehemas (1999), 3–26.

37 Plato, Meno 80d5-e5.

38 See Fine (1992); Nehemas (1999), 3–26; Day (1994); Weiss (2001) and, more generally, Scott (1995).

39 Plato, Meno 82b8-85b7.

40 Plato, Meno 83b1-c1.

41 See Robinson (1953); Mueller (1992); Gonzalez (1998); Nehemas (1999), 108–22.

42 Burnyeat ( 1990) is a great if taxingly difficult start. difficult start.

43 Elegant accounts of Aristotle’s life and work in Barnes ed. (1995), 1–26 and Lloyd (1968).

44 For good introductions to Aristotle’s thought and writing, see Lloyd (1968), Lear (1988) and Barnes ed. (1995) – which has a huge bibliography on many aspects of Aristotle’s work, conveniently organized.

45 Aristotle, Physics 2. 3, 194b23-35.

46 Good introductory discussion in Hankinson (1995), with further bibliography 327 and 353–4. See also, for Artistotle’s theory of how knowledge is produced, his Posterior Analytics and Prior Analytics, discussed briefly below.

47 See Gotthelf and Lennox edd. (1985); and especially Lloyd (1983).

48 Aristotle, Historia Animalium 501b19 – discussed by Lloyd (1983), 102–4.

49 Aristotie, Sophistical Refutations 34, 183b34-6. Aristotle’s Logic is finely introduced by Smith in Barnes ed. (1995), 27–65, with bibliography 308–23.

50 Aristotle, Prior Analytics 1.1, 24a10-16.

51 Aristotle, Prior Analytics 1. 5, 27a 18–22.

52 See King (1998), 76: she thinks it is probably late 5th/early 4th century BCE.

53 Best discussion is King (1998), 75–98. Crucial background also in Dean-Jones (1994), Lloyd (1983), 58–111, and Rihll (1999).

54 See King (1998), 75–98, and especially Lloyd (1983).

55 King (1998); also e.g. Showalter (1985).

56 See Loraux (1987); King (1983).

57 See Seaford (1987); Goldhill (1990b), 103–4.

58 On modern science and gender, see e.g. Keller (1985); Harraway (1991).