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52One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: The Central Books by Edward C. Halper (review)Classical World: A Quarterly Journal on Antiquity 88 55-55. 1994.A review of Edward Halper's brilliant exegesis of the middle books of Aristotle's Metaphysics, in which he shows that Aristotle keys his search for the hierarchy of senses of being to his quest for the hierarchical array of the senses of unity.
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380The Pleasures of the Comic and of Socratic InquiryArethusa 41 (2): 263-289. 2008.At Apology 33c Socrates explains that "some people enjoy … my company" because "they … enjoy hearing those questioned who think they are wise but are not." At Philebus 48a-50b he makes central to his account of the pleasure of laughing at comedy the exposé of the self-ignorance of those who presume themselves wise. Does the latter passage explain the pleasure of watching Socrates at work? I explore this by tracing the admixture of pain, the causes, and the "natural harmony" that Socrates' gen…Read more
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331Non-bifurcatory Diairesis and Greek Music Theory: A resource for Plato in the Statesman?In Ales Havlicek, Jakub JIrsa & Karel Thein (eds.), Plato's Statesman: Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, Oikoymenh. pp. 178-200. 2013.At 287c of the Statesman the Eleatic Visitor — or, more deeply, Plato — faces a daunting task. Because statesmanship has been shown to collaborate with “countless” other arts that share with it the work of “caring” for the city, to understand statesmanship requires distinguishing these arts into an intelligible set of kinds and recognizing how these might go together. Accordingly, the Visitor abandons the mode of division he has practiced without exception up until this moment, bifurcation or …Read more
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294Review essays-dialectic and dialogue-by Dmitri NikulinGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 32 (1): 177. 2011.Dmitri Nikulin extends his earlier study of oral dialogue (On Dialogue [Lexington, 2006]) to an investigation of dialectic, moving from a narrative of its development in Plato and the history of philosophy (ch.s 1-3) through a renewed phenomenological account of oral dialogue (ch.s 4-5) to a critique, from the perspective of oral dialogue, of the limitations of written dialectic (ch. 6). I take up some of the provocations of his bold and open-ended argument. Does his own “writing against writi…Read more
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42The God-Given WayIn Daniel John and Shartin Cleary (ed.), Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 6, University Press of America. pp. 323-359. 1990.A close reading of the presentation of the method of dialectic at Philebus 16c-18d and, I argue, of its display in the account of the kinds of art necessary for a good city at Statesman 287c-290a and 303d-305e.
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407The Attainment of the Absolute in Hegel's PhenomenologyIn Jon Stewart (ed.), The Phenomenology of Spirit Reader: A Collection of Critical and Interpretive Essays, State University of New York Press. pp. 427-443. 1998.A close reading of the final chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology, with special attention to phenomenological method, to the structure of overcomings and preservations that makes for the integrated totality of the ascent to the absolute, to the determinate negations that bind ch.s 6c on Objective Spirit and 7c on Revealed Religion to one another and to ch. 8 on Absolute Spirit, and to the relations of the absolute standpoint to time and to history.
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762Essay Review of Eva Brann, The Music of the Republic (review)International Journal of the Classical Tradition 13 (4): 628-633. 2007.The essays in this collection, though ranging in their keys from the teacherly to the scholarly, are united by their search for the deepest questions Plato gives us. The title essay on the Republic is a paradigm case, exploring with a mix of speculative daring and Socratic pleasure in aporia the ring structure of the dialogue, the emergent perspective of a "knowing soul," dianoetic eikasia, and the implicit presence of the One and the Dyad in the metaphysical figures of the central books. See …Read more
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42Unity and LogosAncient Philosophy 12 (1): 87-111. 1992.A close reading of the dilemmatic argument and of the discussions of the three senses of logos by which Socrates appears to refute the proposal that knowledge is true judgment together with a logos. I argue that the determinateness of each of Socrates' arguments implies further lines of thought for the reader and that these lead to an understanding of the relations of intuition and discourse in inquiry and of the compossible simplicity and complexity of the object of knowledge. These lines of …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |
History of Western Philosophy |
Plato |