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The description of the elenctic method in the Sophist (230a–e) is often believed to be merely retrospective. However, some parallels with Aristotle’s Sophistical refutations suggest that the dialogue as a whole has a clear elenctic dimension. Having faced an apparent refutation (falsehood paradox), the interlocutors find themselves in an impasse. According to Aristotle, to solve such aporiai one must eliminate ambiguity and homonymy by making distinctions, i.e. recur to the diairesis. The same tactics is applied by the Stranger and Theaetetus.
The paper offers an interpretation of Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in the context of post- Nietzschean political thought (M. Heidegger, L. Strauss, H. Arendt, G. Deleuze, M. Foucault). Each interlocutor of the dialogue claims that his speech is free. Two different political logics are introduced: «geometrical» (as in the conversation between Socrates and Polus) and «erotic» (as in the conversation between Socrates and Kallikles). The philosopher is able to make use of both languages. In the end, it is only Socrates who truly speaks freely, because philosophy doesn’t seek to be loyal to any of these two logics as it only aspires to solve a political collision between freedom and justice.
The surge of interest in philosophy in Russia throughout the first decades of the last century and the ensuing publishing activity showed great promise for the translations of philosophical classics as well: there was every reason to hope that the nearest future would see the Russian translations of the works of Plato achieve the same refreshing diversity as it came to be the fact with the English, German, French and, slightly later, the Italian and Spanish Plato. The break in this development brought about by the October revolution had a fatal effect on the prospects of the “Russian Plato”: the very manner in which publishing process became organized under the new regime meant that the new strategy was to undertake a collective translation of every major author which was to remain for decades as a “standard” reference work. This is why we have the four familiar volumes of Plato's dialogues where the better and finer translations are printed alongside those that are total failure. Even the best and most successful translations among these, however, inevitably suffer from not relying on a long tradition of attempts to interpret and render in Russian the subtleties of Plato's thought. This paper demonstrates the latter point by submitting to examination the passage from Plato's Republic containing the simile of the Cave as translated by A.N. Egunov, one of the greatest connoisseurs of Greek to be born in Russia. The results are discouraging: it turns out that Egunov fails to convey some of the most important images and metaphors present in the simile. It is obvious that this situation can be overcome only by building a solid tradition by producing more different translations of the same key philosophical.
The paper offers an interpretation of Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in the context of post- Nietzschean political thought (M. Heidegger, L. Strauss, H. Arendt, G. Deleuze, M. Foucault). Each interlocutor of the dialogue claims that his speech is free. Two different political logics are introduced: «geometrical» (as in the conversation between Socrates and Polus) and «erotic» (as in the conversation between Socrates and Kallikles). The philosopher is able to make use of both languages. In the end, it is only Socrates who truly speaks freely, because philosophy doesn’t seek to be loyal to any of these two logics as it only aspires to solve a political collision between freedom and justice.
This article is devoted to conceptual translation of the terms "transcendence" and, connected with the former, "symbol". Difficulties which appear in the translation of those concepts into the language of contemporary culture are due to the fact that the terms are descriptive, not explanatory. This indicates a special type of ontology, that refers to Plato. Symbol, which is at the same time transcendent and immanent, will be analyzed through the examples of Merab Mamardashvili's philosophy and Andrey Tarkovsky's films. Their understanding of symbol is linked to Pavel Florensky's philosophy of art and Pseudo-Dionysius's theology of symbol.
The scope of this paper is to enquire into the nature of the so called ‘Socratic protreptic’. P. Harlich (1889) and K. Gaiser (1959) suggested that the ‘Socratic protreptic’ was a kind of transitional form from sophistic presentations to early Plato’s dialogues. Diogenus Laertius only mentions the protreptics of Antisthenes (VP VI. 2) and Aristippus (VP II. 85), but there are two texts that came to be considered as protreptics as a result оf Gaiser’s Protreptik und Paränese bei Platon: Xenophons’ Memorabilia 4.2 and the Alcibiades of Aeschines. These texts, along with the spurious First Alcibiades, were included into the protreptic corpus by S.R. Slings (1999). We argue that Gaiser’s approach is somewhat problematical, since the influence of Aeschines is not beyond any doubt. In the end, we focus on differences (both in structure and in content) between the ‘Socratic protreptic’ and those texts that were explicitly marked as protreptic in the IV century BC (Euthydemus, Clitiphon), which brings us to the problem of genre-definition.
According to the widely spread opinion among historians of philosophy, Plato makes a philosophical conceptualization of word αἰών, using it in the sense of “eternity” and implying infinity and timelessness. However, a careful analysis of Plato’s cosmological ideas in the context of early usage of αἰών gives a basis for rejection of this traditional point of view. The paper presents an attempt to interpret the concept relying on the most reliable meaning of the word – “Life”, extended to the sense of the fullness of being. Thus, our approach seems not only hermeneutically adequate, but gives a new perspective on the central questions of the Plato’s cosmology.
This volume approaches the 'Socratic question' from a viewpoint that departs radically from mainstream lines of interpretation. The focus is not on the 'formal order' of the Socratics, that is on their subdivision in 'schools' and the 'doctrines' peculiar to each, but on the theoretical issues that these thinkers were able to develop in the fierce struggle among themselves. This collection features the revised versions of the papers presented at 'Socratica III - a conference on Socrates, the Socratics, and the ancient Socratic literature'. This conference is the latest of a series of Socratica symposia, previously held in Senigallia (2005) and Naples (2008), which were devoted to the developments of the research on the complex world serving as a context for Plato and his dialogues. This volume approaches the 'Socratic question' from a viewpoint that departs radically from mainstream lines of interpretation. The focus is not on the 'formal order' of the Socratics, that is on their subdivision in 'schools' and the 'doctrines' peculiar to each, but on the theoretical issues that these thinkers were able to develop in the fierce struggle among themselves. The papers dwell on the dynamic context in which these issues were posed, discussed, and eventually fixed in dogmatic theories within the philosophical and non-philosophical Greek literature of the V and IV centuries B.C. Following topics are examined: 1. the 'intellectual movement' around Socrates, i.e. Aristophanes and Comedy, Isocrates, Antisthenes, Chaerephon, Aeschines, Plato, and Xenophon; 2. the literary context in which the texts of the Socratics are framed; 3. major topics discussed within this movement, and their development within and outside the Socratic circle (apologetics, dialectics, politics, misology, eudaimonia, eusebeia, Eros, enthousiasmos, parrhesia, protreptics, spoudaiogeloion, epistemology and teleology); the reception of these issues in Late Antiquity, from Aristotle up to the Stoic, Neoplatonic and Arab traditions; 4. the state of the art of the 'Socratic question', and reviews of the major publications that appeared on Socrates and the Socratics between 2010 and 2011 (D. Morrison's Companion, L.-A. Dorion's and F. Bevilacqua's editions of the Memorabilia, and V. Gray's works on Xenophon and G. Danzig's book on the apologetic side of the earlier Socratic literature).
The paper deals with the political sense of the dialectical method of Plato. Dialectics is often understood as a pure logical procedure. However the two forms of the dialectical discourse (mentioned in the “Phaedrus”) must be interpreted politically: the first one is a movement of freedom, the second one is a movement of justice. The paper offers a comparison of different conception of dialectics by Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Paul Ricoeur.
The description of the elenctic method in the Sophist (230a–e) is often believed to be merely retrospective. However, some parallels with Aristotle’s Sophistical refutations suggest that the dialogue as a whole has a clear elenctic dimension. Having faced an apparent refutation (falsehood paradox), the interlocutors find themselves in an impasse. According to Aristotle, to solve such aporiai one must eliminate ambiguity and homonymy by making distinctions, i.e. recur to the diairesis. The same tactics is applied by the Stranger and Theaetetus.