The Ontology Of Socratic Questioning In Plato S Early Dialogues

Winner of the 2013 Symposium Book Award, presented by the Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy Modern interpreters of Plato's Socrates have generally taken the dialogues to be aimed at working out objective truth. Attending closely to the texts of the early dialogues and the question of virtue in particular, Sean D. Kirkland suggests that this approach is flawed—that such concern with discovering external facts rests on modern assumptions that would have been far from the minds of Socrates and his contemporaries. This isn't, however, to accuse Socrates of any kind of relativism. Through careful analysis of the original Greek and of a range of competing strands of Plato scholarship, Kirkland instead brings to light a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates, for whom "what virtue is" is what has always already appeared as virtuous in everyday experience of the world, even if initial appearances are unsatisfactory or obscure and in need of greater scrutiny and clarification.

This book offers a new interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues as the expression of a unified philosophical vision. Whereas the traditional view sees the dialogues as marking successive stages in Plato's philosophical development, we may more legitimately read them as reflecting an artistic plan for the gradual, indirect and partial exposition of Platonic philosophy. The magnificent literary achievement of the dialogues can be fully appreciated only from the viewpoint of a unitarian reading of the philosophical content.

Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue provides the most complete study of the immediate literary reaction to Socrates, by his contemporaries and the first-generation Socratics, and of the writings from Aristotle to Proclus addressing Socrates and the literary work he inspired.

While the early Platonic dialogues have often been explored and appreciated for their ethical content, this is the first book devoted solely to the epistemology of Plato's early dialogues. Author Hugh H. Benson argues that the characteristic features of these dialogues--Socrates' method of questions and answers (elenchos), his fascination with definition, his professions of ignorance, and his thesis that virtue is knowledge--are decidedly epistemological. In this thoughtful study, Benson uncovers the model of knowledge that underlies these distinctively Socratic views. What emerges is unfamiliar, yet closer to a contemporary conception of scientific understanding than ordinary knowledge.

While the early Platonic dialogues have often been explored and appreciated for their ethical content, this is the first book devoted solely to the epistemology of Plato's early dialogues. Author Hugh H. Benson argues that the characteristic features of these dialogues--Socrates' method of questions and answers (elenchos), his fascination with definition, his professions of ignorance, and his thesis that virtue is knowledge--are decidedly epistemological. In this thoughtful study, Benson uncovers the model of knowledge that underlies these distinctively Socratic views. What emerges is unfamiliar, yet closer to a contemporary conception of scientific understanding than ordinary knowledge.

This book examines the Socratic method of elenchus, or refutation. Refutation by its very nature is a conflict, which in the hands of Plato becomes high drama. The continuing conversation in which it occurs is more a test of character than of intellect. Dialogue and Discovery shows that, in his conversations, Socrates seeks to define moral qualities—moral essences—with the goal of improving the soul of the respondent. Ethics underlies epistemology because the discovery of philosophic truth imposes moral demands on the respondent. The recognition that moral qualities such as honesty, humility, and courage are necessary to successful inquiry is the key to the understanding of the Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge. The dialogues receiving the most emphasis are the Apology, Gorgias, Protagoras, and Meno.