The Unity Of Oneness And Plurality In Plato S Theaetetus

The Unity of Oneness and Plurality in Plato's Theaetetus offers a reading of the Theaetetus that shows how the characters’ failure to give an acceptable account (i.e a logos) of knowledge is really a success; the failure being a necessary result of the dialogue’s implicit proof that there can never be a complete logos of knowledge. The proof of the incompatibility of knowledge and logos rests on the recognition that knowledge is always of what is, and hence is always of what is one, while logos is inherently multiple. Thus, any attempt to give a logos of what is known amounts to turning what is one into something multiple, and hence, that which is expressed by any logos must be other than that which is known. In this way The Unity of Oneness and Plurality in Plato's Theaetetus provides its readers with developed sketches of both a Platonic epistemology, and a Platonic ontology. An account of the incompleteness of all accounts is, obviously, a very slippery undertaking. Plato's mastery of his craft is on full display in the dialogue. Besides offering a reading of Plato's epistemology and ontology, The Unity of Oneness and Plurality in Plato's Theaetetus investigates the insights and difficulties that arise from a close reading of the dialogue through a sustained analysis that mirrors the movement of the dialogue, offering a commentary on each of the primary sections, and showing how these sections fit together to supply an engaged reader with a unified whole.

Based on a conception of Reading Order introduced and developed in his Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington; 2012) and The Guardians in Action: Plato the Teacher and the Post-Republic Dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus (Lexington; 2016), William H. F. Altman now completes his study of Plato’s so-called “late dialogues” by showing that they include those that depict the trial and death of Socrates. According to Altman, it is not Order of Composition but Reading Order that makes Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo “late dialogues,” and he shows why Plato’s decision to interpolate the notoriously “late” Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro and Apology deserves more respect from interpreters. Altman explains this interpolation—and another, that places Laws between Crito and Phaedo—as part of an ongoing test Plato has created for his readers that puts “the Guardians on Trial.” If we don’t recognize that Socrates himself is the missing Philosopher that the Eleatic Stranger never actually describes—and also the antithesis of the Athenian Stranger, who leaves Athens in order to create laws for Crete—we pronounce ourselves too sophisticated to be Plato’s Guardians, and unworthy of the Socratic inheritance.

This collected volume is inspired by the work of Edward Halper and is historically focused with contributions from leading scholars in Ancient and Medieval philosophy. Though its chapters cover a diverse range of topics in epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy, the collection is unified by the contributors’ consideration of these topics in terms of the fundamental questions of metaphysics. The first section of the volume, “Knowing and Being,” is dedicated to the connection between metaphysics and epistemology and includes chapters on Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, and the Ancient Daoists. The second section, “Goodness as Knowing How to Be,” addresses ethics as an outgrowth of human metaphysical concerns and includes chapters on Plato, Aristotle, and Maimonides. Contributors include William H. F. Altman, Luc Brisson, Ronna Burger, Miriam Byrd, Owen Goldin, Lenn Goodman, Mitchell Miller, Richard Parry, Richard Patterson, Nastassja Pugliese, John Rist, May Sim, Roslyn Weiss, and Chad Wiener.

Did Plato abandon, or sharply modify, the Theory of Forms in later life? In the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republicit is generally agreed that Plato held that universals exist. But in Parmenides, he subjected that theory to criticism. If the criticism were valid, and Plato knew so, then the Parmenidesmarks a turning point in his thought. If, however, Plato became aware that there are radical differences in the logical behaviour of concepts, and the later dialogues are a record of his attempt to analyse those differences, then Plato’s thought can be said to have moved in a new and vitally important direction after the Parmenides. Studies in Plato’s Metaphysicsbrings together twenty essays by leading philosophers from the UK and the USA reflecting upon this important issue and upon the questions arising from it.

Plato is perhaps the best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers. A pupil of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, his ideas have inspired and influenced scholars of nearly every era. His famous series of dialogues have become a standard part of the western philosophical canon – from the Euthyphro and Gorgias of his early period, the Republic, Phaedrus and Symposium of his middle period, to the Theaetetus and Laws of his late period.The Routledge Library Edition makes available in a single set an outstanding range of scholarship devoted to Plato’s philosophical work. Routledge Library Editions:Plato makes available in a single set an outstanding range of scholarship devoted to Plato’s philosophical work. The 21 volumes provide detailed analysis of his writings and philosophical ideas. From the classic works of Francis Cornford, G. C. Field and A.E. Taylor to more recent approaches and interpretations, this set provides libraries and scholars with a century of outstanding scholarship on this key philosopher.

In his Second Paralogism of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant described what he called the "Achilles of all dialectical inferences in the pure doctrine of the soul". This argument, which he took to be powerful yet fatally flawed, purports to establish the simplicity of the human mind, or soul, on the basis of the unity of consciousness. It is the aim of this volume to treat the major figures who have advanced the Achilles argument, or who have held views bearing on it.

If you’ve ever wondered why Plato staged Timaeus as a kind of sequel to Republic, or who its unnamed missing fourth might be; or why he joined Critias to Timaeus, and whether or not that strange dialogue is unfinished; or what we should make of the written critique of writing in Phaedrus, and of that dialogue’s apparent lack of unity; or what is the purpose of the long discussion of the One in the second half of Parmenides, and how it relates to the objections made to the Theory of Forms in its first half; or if the revisionists or unitarians are right about Philebus, and why its Socrates seems less charming than usual, or whether or not Cratylus takes place after Euthyphro, and whether its far-fetched etymologies accomplish any serious philosophical purpose; or why the philosopher Socrates describes in the central digression of Theaetetus is so different from Socrates himself; then you will enjoy reading the continuation of William H. F. Altman’s Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington; 2012), where he considers the pedagogical connections behind “the post-Republic dialogues” from Timaeus to Theaetetus in the context of “the Reading Order of Plato’s dialogues.”