Browsing by Subject "Plato -- Criticism and interpretation"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Love as Recollection in Plato's Symposium
    (2010) LeFrancois, Meghan; Mulligan, Bret
    In Plato's Symposium, the interlocutors take turns giving speeches about love. The careful reader can draw several parallels between love as it is discussed throughout this dialogue and recollection as it is presented in Plato's Meno and Phaedo. According to the recollection thesis, humans have latent, innate knowledge, and throughout our lives, we recollect it, making it explicit and articulate. In the Symposium's culminating speech—that of Socrates—I argue that we learn that love is, in fact, a kind of recollection; we learn that love is the recollection of the form of beauty. In this speech, Socrates argues that love is an ascent. When we love correctly, we complete this ascent, and recollect the form of beauty. When we love incorrectly, we only ascend partially and so we partially recollect; in the process, we give birth not to knowledge, but to ideas. Socrates' speech invites us to reconsider the dialogue's other speeches. I argue that each speech not only shows parallels between love and recollection, but contributes to Socrates' argument that love is a species of recollection. The speeches of Pausanias and Eryximachus, for example, anticipate the distinction Socrates later draws between a correct and an incorrect kind of love. Alicibiades' speech—the only speech after Socrates'—reiterates, in a story, Socrates' argument for love's being a kind of recollection. I argue that this reading of the dialogue supports an interpretation of the recollection thesis according to which not only philosophers, but all humans recollect. Finally, I provide a possible reason that Socrates is the first interlocutor to explicitly mention recollection; perhaps he is the only interlocutor with something like explicit knowledge of what love is.
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    Making Sense of Socrates in a Dialogue of Contradictions: Studies in Plato's Protagoras
    (2008) Rodriguez, Evan; Hamilton, Richard, 1943-
    Examines Plato's Protagoras as a masterpiece of writing where literary and dramatic elements constitute its philosophical import. Part one, "A Dialogue of Contradictions," helps us understand the Protagoras as an exploration of the differences between philosophical and sophistic method through an analysis of its complex cast of characters. Part two, "Making sense of Socrates," focuses on a close textual reading of the last fifteen pages of the dialogue to clarify the significance of the confrontation between Socrates and Protagoras.
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    Perversions in Plato: An Analysis of Jacques Derrida's Critique of Plato and the Western Metaphysical Tradition
    (1988) Blume, David; Bernstein, Richard J.; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-
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    Sophrosyne in Plato and Methodius
    (2014) Mongoven, Emma Karkkainen; Roberts, Deborah H.
    This thesis examines the concept and sphere of application of sophrosyne (moderation, temperance) in Plato's Charmides, Republic and Symposium and in Methodius of Olympus' Symposium. It considers Methodius' Symposium as an instance of the reception of Plato, and examines the similarities and differences in usage of sophrosyne between Plato and Methodius and the ways in which each author's use differs from that of his contemporaries. While Methodius's general concept of sophrosyne is nearly identical to Plato's and his application of sophrosyne to people regardless of any social distinction closely parallels that of Plato, he offers a different perspective on the place of individual sophrosyne in a community and reintroduces the idea of gender by suggesting that sophrosyne has an inherent masculinity.
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    Story-Telling, Truth, and Plato
    (1996) Foy, Stephen
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    What is the Virtue of a Philosopher?: Plato, Nietzsche, and the Love of Wisdom.
    (2013) Duncan, Robin; Yurdin, Joel; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-
    To answer the question of how a philosophical life and character are a virtuous life and character, I begin by surveying Plato and Nietzsche, both directly and through secondary commentaries. For each, I develop a view of their ideal, virtuous philosopher. For Plato this ideal is partly embodied in the natural philosophers of the Republic, but more fully displayed in the figure of Socrates. Figures defined by a philosophic Eros, which drives them to pursue wisdom and truth unrelentingly and despite all resistance. For Nietzsche, the chosen figure is that of the philosopher of the future, a character of supreme mental strength, self-confidence, and a playful experimentalism. Both Plato and Nietzsche's philosophers are seen to have an interest in education, at least insofar as it can cultivate exceptional individuals to achieve true philosophic character. Based on the points of agreement between these two philosophers, I present an ideal of philosophic virtue that focuses on the motivating love of wisdom and the strength of mind and character to pursue that love to its fullest in the face of all obstacles, which I claim will be available only to few, even potentially. Following the formulation of this ideal virtue, I defend the virtuous character of the love of wisdom as the fullest development of a human excellence in knowing the world; it is a virtuous excellence in both answering questions and in determining which questions are worthy of deep study. This second part of philosophic excellence, the determination of what is worth valuing, addresses concerns about the objective value of truth and allows us to argue against reliance on motivational value alone. Finally I answer the objection that may stem from my assertion that most people do not have even the potential to achieve philosophic virtue, this restriction however, is seen to follow naturally from the formulation of philosophic virtue presented.
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    Πολιτικός Ἔρως: Alcibiades’ Love in Thucydides and Plato
    (2013) Olin, Nicholas J.; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-
    My senior thesis, titled Πολιτικός Ἔρως: Alcibiades’ Love in Thucydides and Plato, concerns the decline of Athenian politics during the late 5th century BCE and the Peloponnesian War. I argue that Thucydides attributes Athens’ success under Pericles to the ideal erotic relationship between the citizen and the πόλις that the general sets forth in his famous Funeral Oration. This relationship is based off of the educational and sexual relationship that prevailed between older male lovers and younger male beloveds in the classical period, what I call the ἐραστής-ἐρώμενος relationship. I examine the structure of this homoerotic relationship, the gender norms that constitute it, and how it informs Pericles’ Ideal. I then show how Thucydides attributes Athens’ decline from Pericles’ wartime leadership to the kind of erotic relationship Alcibiades cultivates with the Athenian people, or δῆμος. This relationship was fundamentally one of erotic ambiguity, in which Alcibiades took on perverted roles as ἐραστής and ἐρώμενος of the people. I use Plato’s depiction of Alcibiades’ and Socrates’ ambiguous relationship to determine the extent to which Alcibiades transgressed the norms of behavior of model ἐρασταί and ἐρώμενοι as they constitute Pericles’ Ideal. In sum, after detailing Pericles’ Ideal and the ἐραστής-ἐρώμενος relationship, I first detail Alcibiades as a bad lover of the δῆμος and of Socrates, then his erotic ambiguity in Plato, and then his courting the δῆμος as a bad beloved. I then examine Thucydides’ lengthy digression on the myth of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton. He comments on how the Athenians err in their response to widespread sacrilegious vandalism on the eve of their fateful departure for Sicily due to a faulty interpretation of the myth. As a consequence, they ultimately exile Alcibiades, and in doing so, precipitate their failure in subduing Sicily and their failure in the wider war with the Spartans. I link their love for Alcibiades with their overwhelming desire to invade Sicily, with their failure to adequately (i.e. rationally) respond to the sacrilegious vandalism, and with their exile of their foremost general.