Mark Ralkowski

In the Panathenaic Games, there was a torch race for teams of ephebes that started from the altars of Eros and Prometheus at Plato’s Academy and finished on the Acropolis at the altar of Athena, goddess of wisdom. It was competitive, yes, but it was also sacred, aimed at a noble goal. To win, you needed to cooperate with your teammates and keep the delicate flame alive as you ran up the hill. Likewise, Plato’s philosophy combines competition and cooperation in pursuit of the goal of wisdom. On one level, agonism in Plato is explicit: he taught in a gymnasium and featured gymnastic training in his educational theory. On another level, it is mimetic: Socratic dialogue resembles intellectual wrestling. On a third level, it is metaphorical: the athlete’s struggle illustrates the struggle to be morally good. And at its highest level, it is divine: the human soul is a chariot that races toward heaven. This volume explores agonism in Plato on all of these levels, inviting the reader—as Plato does—to engage in the megas agōn of life. Once in the contest, as Plato’s Socrates says, we’re allowed no excuses.

Introduction -- What is platonism? -- Schleiermacher's pedagogical interpretation of Plato -- What's wrong with the current debate -- The romantic rediscovery of Plato's ineffable ontology -- Conclusions: Ineffability and dialogue form -- Untying Schleiermacher's gordian knot -- Metaphysical ineffability : the argument from language and human finitude -- Spiritual ineffability: the argument from self-transformation -- Existential ineffability : the argument from life choice -- Platonism reconsidered -- The context of Heidegger's interpretation of Plato -- What it all means and why it matters -- Stage one: the realm of shadows -- Stage two: the fire -- Stage three: the realm of light -- The good : Heidegger's Plato is the later Heidegger -- Stage four: the return to the shadows -- The virtues of heidegger's plato -- Heidegger's crisis and opportunity -- Setting the stage -- Heidegger's crisis -- Understanding Heidegger's crisis : Nietzsche -- Heidegger as reformed madman -- Revolutionary thinker or utopian social engineer -- The Greeks and university reform -- Theoria and fundamental ontology -- A community of similarly striving researchers -- University reform and nihilism -- Back from Syracuse : four reasons to rethink Heidegger's politics -- The ontological problem -- The epistemological problem -- The moral problem -- The political problem -- What was plato doing in Syracuse -- Back from Syracuse or Eros Tyrannos -- How Heidegger should have read Plato -- Plato anticipate Heidegger's critique of technology -- Plato's problems with periclean Athens -- Alcibiades as embodiment of periclean Athens -- Alcibiades as inverted image of Socrates -- Conclusions: What Heidegger missed.

The New York Times have praised Dave Chappelle as "an American folk hero" for his ability to communicate across lines of race, class, and culture at a time when Americans are more polarized than they have ever been. Dave Chappelle and Philosophy brings together twenty-five chapters by philosophers of diverse backgrounds and varying points of view, looking closely at the hilarious, annoying, exhilarating, upsetting, and thought-provoking aspects of Chappelle's wonderfully rich output. This volume of the Series serves as an invitation to think about some of the most urgent moral and political questions of our time.

This book is born from a desire to understand how Plato influenced and was influenced by the intellectual culture of Western Greece, the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. In 2018, a seminar on Plato at Syracuse was organized, in which a small group of scholars discussed a new translation of the Seventh Letter and several essays on the topic. The seminar was intense but friendly, having attracted a diverse group of scholars that ranged from graduate students to senior professors, hailing from at least three different continents, and representing a variety of academic specialties. We tried to create a book that would invite further study of the topic by identifying new questions to be asked while addressing enduring issues. The essays consider the historical, political, and philosophical implications of Plato’s involvement in Syracuse. They also look at the reception of his voyage among fellow philosophers, ancient and modern. Readers may come to their own conclusions, but one thing is clear: the history of philosophy was profoundly influenced by Plato’s voyages in Western Greece. The book begins with a new translation of Plato’s Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding, as well as the epitaph for Dion attributed to Plato. An introduction by editors Heather Reid and Mark Ralkowski is followed by essays from Carolina Araújo, Christos C. Evangeliou, Filippo Forcignanò, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Jill Gordon, Andrew Hull, Tony Leyh, Marina Marren, Mary R. McHugh, Robert Metcalf, Marion Theresa Schneider, Karen Sieben, and Nickolas Pappas.

What can we learn about the trial of Socrates from Plato's Dialogues? Most scholars say we can learn a lot from the Apology, but not from the rest. Plato's Trial of Athens rejects this assumption and argues that Plato used several of his dialogues to turn the tables on Socrates' accusers: they blamed Socrates for something the city had done to itself. Plato wanted to set the record straight and save his city from repeating her worst mistakes of the 5th century. Plato's Trial of Athens addresses challenging questions about the historicity of Plato's Dialogues, and it traces Plato's critique of Athenian public life and polis culture from the trial in 399 up through the Laws and the Atlantis myth in the Critias and Timaeus. In the end, Ralkowski shows that what began as a bitter response to the unjust, politically-charged trial of Socrates, evolved into a pessimistic reflection on the role of philosophy in a democratic society, a theory about Athens' 5th century decline, and cautionary tale about the corrupting influences of naval imperialism.