•  99
    Storytelling and Philosophy in Plato’s Republic
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79 (2): 213-232. 2005.
    Scholarly convention holds that logos and muthos are in Plato’s mind fundamentally opposed, the former being the medium of philosophy and the latter of poetry. I argue that muthos in the broad sense of story or narrative in fact plays an indispensable philosophical role in the Republic. In particular, any account of the nature and power of justice and injustice must begin with powers of the soul that can come to light only through the telling and interpretation of stories. This is implicit in Gl…Read more
  •  88
    Plato’s Dionysian Music?
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 12 (1): 17-47. 2007.
    Like Aristophanes’ Frogs, Plato’s Symposium stages a contest between literary genres. The quarrel between Socrates and Aristophanes constitutes the primary axis of this contest, and the speech of Alcibiades echoes and extends that of Aristophanes. Alcibiades’ comparison of Socrates with a satyr, however, contains the key to understanding Socrates’ implication, at the very end of the dialogue, that philosophy alone understands the inner connectedness, and hence the proper nature, of both tragedy …Read more
  •  61
    This volume is a study of the relationship between philosophy and faith in Søren Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments. It is also the first book to examine the role of Socrates in this body of writings, illuminating the significance of Socrates for Kierkegaard's thought. Jacob Howland argues that in the Fragments, philosophy and faith are closely related passions. A careful examination of the role of Socrates demonstrates that Socratic, philosophical eros opens up a path to faith. At the same t…Read more
  •  55
  •  52
    Plato’s Socrates as Educator (review)
    Ancient Philosophy 22 (1): 180-184. 2002.
  •  48
    Stanley Rosen’s Plato’s Statesman: The Web of Politics (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 20 (2-1): 529-536. 1998.
  •  36
    Colloquium 4 Glaucon’s Fate: Plato’s Republic and the Drama of the Soul
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 29 (1): 113-136. 2014.
    I argue that the internal evidence of the Republic supports a conjecture first advanced by the historian Mark Munn: Glaucon was an accomplice of the so-called Thirty Tyrants who most likely died at the side of his relatives Critias and Charmides in the Battle of Munychia. If Munn is right, the Republic must be read as a poignant philosophical drama, the tragedy of Socrates’ unsuccessful struggle to save Plato’s brother from the corrupting influence of his family and his city. This perspective ra…Read more
  •  34
    Three Minutes of Hope: Hugo Gryn on The God Slot
    The European Legacy 18 (6): 779-780. 2013.
    No abstract
  •  33
    Plato and Kierkegaard: Two Philosophical Stories
    The European Legacy 12 (2): 173-185. 2007.
    This essay argues that muthos in the broad sense of “story” or “narrative” is essential to a philosophical understanding of the roots of justice and injustice within the soul. I examine the use of narrative in two different contexts: the tale of the Gygean ring of invisibility that Glaucon tells in Plato's Republic, and the parable of Agnes and the Merman in Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. These two muthoi make possible a direct, inner experience of the fundamental difference between jus…Read more
  •  27
    Dialectic and Dialogue (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 35 (4): 267-268. 2003.
  •  23
    David Rapport Lachterman 1944-1991
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 69 (5). 1996.
  •  21
    Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 49 (3): 646-648. 1996.
    If philosophy weaves its speeches by distinguishing the basic elements of human experience and then collecting them into significant wholes, Dorter's wise book exemplifies the essential movement of philosophical thought. This polished, scholarly, insightful study explores the unity, not only of the four dialogues mentioned in its title, but in an important sense of the Platonic corpus as a whole. Dorter's fresh defense of the unorthodox view that in the so-called later dialogues Plato "retained …Read more
  •  19
  •  17
    This article concerns the ‘ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’. With the guidance of Leo Strauss, and with reference to French cultural anthropology and the Hebrew Bible, I offer close readings of the origin myths told by the characters of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium and Socrates in book 2 of the Republic. I contrast Aristophanes’ prudential and political esotericism with Socrates’ pedagogical esotericism, connecting the former with poetry’s affirmation of the primacy of chaos a…Read more
  •  17
    The Explosive Maieutics of Kierkegaard's Either/Or
    Review of Metaphysics 71 (1). 2017.
    This article aims to clarify the ethical and theological importance of the conclusion of Either/Or. The author argues that the fundamental psychological, philosophical, and theological contradictions and conflicts of the book’s protagonists—an accidental editor, an alienated litterateur, a didactic judge, a solitary pastor—are most radically expressed in the Ultimatum, and are no less radically resolved therein. The first half of the article concerns the literary structure and existential drama …Read more
  •  14
    "Jacob Howland's book is an engaging, readable, and extremely suggestive addition to the literature on Plato's magnum opus." --Ancient Philosophy
  •  12
    Plato’s Dionysian Music?
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 12 (1): 17-47. 2007.
    Like Aristophanes’ Frogs, Plato’s Symposium stages a contest between literary genres. The quarrel between Socrates and Aristophanes constitutes the primary axis of this contest, and the speech of Alcibiades echoes and extends that of Aristophanes. Alcibiades’ comparison of Socrates with a satyr, however, contains the key to understanding Socrates’ implication, at the very end of the dialogue, that philosophy alone understands the inner connectedness, and hence the proper nature, of both tragedy …Read more
  •  9
    Dialectic and Dialogue (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 35 (4): 267-268. 2003.
  •  9
    Stanley Rosen’s Plato’s Statesman: The Web of Politics (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 20 (2-1): 529-536. 1998.
  •  9
    Plato and the Talmud
    Cambridge University Press. 2010.
    This innovative study sees the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem through the lens of the Platonic dialogues and the Talmud. Howland argues that these texts are animated by comparable conceptions of the proper roles of inquiry and reasoned debate in religious life, and by a profound awareness of the limits of our understanding of things divine. Insightful readings of Plato's Apology, Euthyphro and chapter three of tractate Ta'anit explore the relationship of prophets and philosophers, fat…Read more
  •  6
    Socratic Philosophy and its Others (edited book)
    with Michael Davis, Catherine H. Zuckert, Gwenda-lin Grewal, Mary P. Nichols, Denise Schaeffer, Christopher A. Colmo, David Corey, Matthew Dinan, Evanthia Speliotis, Ronna Burger, and Christopher Dustin
    Lexington Books. 2013.
    Engaging a broad range of Platonic dialogues, this collection of essays by distinguished scholars in political theory and philosophy explores the relation of Socratic philosophizing to those activities with which it is typically opposed—such as tyranny, sophistry, poetry, and rhetoric. The essays show that the harder one tries to disentangle Socrates’ own activity from that of its apparent opposite, the more entangled they become; yet, it is only by taking this entanglement seriously that the di…Read more
  •  3
    In engaging five of Plato's dialogues—Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Cratylus, Sophist, and Statesman—and by paying particular attention to Socrates' intellectual defense in the "philosophic trial" by the Stranger from Elea, Jacob Howland illuminates Plato's understanding of the proper relationship between philosophy and politics. This insightful and innovative study illustrates the Plato's understanding of the difference between sophistry and philosophy, and it identifies the innate contradictions of p…Read more
  •  1
    A Shimmering Socrates
    In Jon Stewart (ed.), A Companion to Kierkegaard, Blackwell. 2015.
    Kierkegaard's relationship to the literary Socrates of antiquity, an ironic and ambiguous figure who reflects the uncertain nature of reality itself, uniquely recapitulates Plato's relationship to the historical Socrates. For Kierkegaard as for Plato, contact with Socrates results in an explosion of poetic and philosophical creativity—a demonstration of Socrates’ pedagogical potency that implicitly resolves what Plato calls the “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.” This chapter reflec…Read more