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169Exotericism after Lessing: The Enduring Influence of F. H. Jacobi on Leo StraussJournal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 15 (1): 59-83. 2007.This study shows that despite the fact that Leo Strauss published little about Jacobi, the misunderstood thinker about whom he wrote his doctoral dissertation exercised a crucial influence on what is often thought to be Strauss's most enduring achievement: his rediscovery of exotericism. A consideration of several of Strauss's writings that do mention Jacobi but remained unpublished at the time of his death—in particular his studies on Moses Mendelssohn, who was Jacobi's principal target in the …Read more
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155A Brief Prehistory of Philosophical ParaconsistencyPrincipia: An International Journal of Epistemology 14 (1): 1-14. 2010.In celebration of Newton da Costa’s place in the history of paraconsistency, this paper considers the use and abuse of deliberate self-contradiction. Beginning with Parmenides, developed by Plato, and continued by Cicero, an ancient philosophical tradition used deliberately paraconsistent discourses to reveal the truth. In modern times, decisionism has used deliberate self-contradiction against Judeo-Christian revelation. • DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n1p1.
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122Review essay: Pyrrhic Victories and a Trojan Horse in the Strauss warsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (2): 294-323. 2009.A careful reading of Harvey C. Mansfield's Manlines s and the recent translation of Daniel Tanguay's Leo Strauss; une biographie intellectuelle reveals that neither text supports the view that Leo Strauss was a harmless if qualified friend of liberal democracy. Key Words: Leo Strauss • Straussians • Nietzsche • Carl Schmitt • Heidegger • National Socialism • Liberalism • Redlichkeit • Hobbes • Hegel • Viktor Trivas
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110A Tale of Two Drinking Parties: Plato’s Laws in ContextPolis 27 (2): 240-264. 2010.In accordance with Leo Strauss’s ingenious suggestion, the Athenian Stranger of Plato’s Laws is best understood as an alternative ‘Socrates’, fleeing from the hemlock to Crete. Situated between Crito and Phaedo, Laws effectively tests the reader’s loyalty to the real Socrates who obeys Athenian law and dies cheerfully in Athens. Having separated Plato from the Stranger, a nuanced defence of Karl Popper’s suspicions about Laws confronts the apologetic readings of both Strauss and Christopher Bobo…Read more
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86The Alpine Limits of Jewish Thought: Leo Strauss, National Socialism, and Judentum ohne GottJournal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 17 (1): 1-46. 2009.Writing in 1935 as "Hugo Fiala," Karl Löwith not only connected Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt to an apparently contentless "decisionism" but drew attention to the fact that his correspondent Leo Strauss had attacked Schmitt—like Heidegger an open Nazi since 1933— from the Right in 1932. In opposition to the views of Peter Eli Gordon, Heidegger's bellicose stance at the Davos Hochschule of 1929 is presented as "political" in Schmitt's sense of the term while Strauss's embrace of Heidegger, ne…Read more
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81The Hindenburg Line of the Strauss warsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 40 (1): 118-153. 2010.Bringing continental sensibilities and skill to his project, David Janssens has abandoned the line of defense heretofore used by North American intellectuals to shield Leo Strauss from criticism: Janssens wastes no time trying to prove Strauss was a liberal democrat, frankly admits his atheism, and emphasizes the continuity and European origins of his thought. Nevertheless committed to defending Strauss even at his most vulnerable points, Janssens is compelled to anchor his new defensive positio…Read more
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76Likeness and Likelihood in the Presocratics and Plato. By Jenny Bryan (review)Ancient Philosophy 33 (1): 194-198. 2013.
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62Leo Strauss on ''German Nihilism'': Learning the Art of WritingJournal of the History of Ideas 68 (4): 587-612. 2007.The year Leo Strauss published "Persecution and the Art of Writing" (1941), he prepared a lecture ("German Nihilism") that he never published. An analysis of this lecture shows that Strauss hadn't fully mastered the art of writing he'd discovered in others: his secrets are too exposed. In the context of "German Nihilism," it becomes clear that "Persecution and the Art of Writing" is about liberal persecution of authoritarianism, no the reverse, as liberals would assume. In response to recent apo…Read more
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57Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political PhilosophyAncient Philosophy 38 (1): 225-229. 2018.
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48The Socratic Way of Life: Xenophon’s Memorabilia. By Thomas L. PangleAncient Philosophy 39 (1): 224-229. 2019.
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45A Brief Prehistory of Philosophical ParaconsistencyPrincipia: An International Journal of Epistemology 14 (1): 1-14. 2010.Celebrando o papel de Newton da Costa na história da paraconsistência, este trabalho examina o uso e abuso da deliberada auto-contradição. Iniciado por Parmênides, desenvolvido por Platão, e continuado por Cícero, uma antiga tradição filosófica usava deliberadamente discursos paraconsistentes para revelar a verdade. Nos tempos modernos, o decisionismo tem usado uma deliberada auto-contradição contra a revelação Judaico-Cristã. DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n1p1
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45A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical Politics, by Yelena BarazAncient Philosophy 33 (2): 454-457. 2013.
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43Review Symposium of David Corey, The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues: SUNY Press, 2015Studies in Philosophy and Education 37 (4): 417-431. 2017.
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30Xenophon and Plato’s MenoAncient Philosophy 42 (1): 33-47. 2022.Not only was it a reference to Ismenias the Theban (Men. 90a4-5) that allowed nineteenth-century scholars to establish a date of composition for Plato’s Meno on the basis of Xenophon’s Hellenica but beginning with “Meno the Thessalian” himself, immortalized as a scoundrel in Xenophon’s Anabasis, each of the four characters in Plato’s dialogue is shown to have a Xenophontic resonance, thus revealing Meno to be Plato’s tombeau de Xénophon.
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23The Missing Speech of the Absent Fourth: Reader Response and Plato’s Timaeus-CritiasPlato Journal 13 7-26. 2013.Recent Plato scholarship has grown increasingly comfortable with the notion that Plato’s art of writing brings his readers into the dialogue, challenging them to respond to deliberate errors or lacunae in the text. Drawing inspiration from Stanley Fish’s seminal reading of Satan’s speeches in Paradise Lost, this paper considers the narrative of Timaeus as deliberately unreliable, and argues that the actively critical reader is “the missing fourth” with which the dialogue famously begins. By cont…Read more
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21Parmenidean pedagogy in Plato's TimaeusDissertatio 36 131-156. 2012.No livro Plato’s Philosophers, Catherine Zuckert olha para o Timeu de Platão de maneira renovada e revive implicitamente a tese de A. E. Taylor, segundo a qual Timeu não fala por Platão. Taylor devotou seu escrupuloso comentário de 1927 para construir esse argumento, o qual, porém, encalhou diante da questão colocada dez anos depois por F. M. Cornford, no livro Plato’s Cosmology : “Qual poderia ter sido o seu motivo?” O motivo de Platão era tanto pedagógico quanto parmenídico: assim como a deusa…Read more
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19Socrates in Plato’s PhilebusIn Socrates and the Socratic Philosophies: Selected Papers from Socratica IV, Academia Verlag. pp. 141-150. 2022.
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16Why Plato Wrote Epinomis: Leonardo Tarán and the Thirteenth Book of Plato’s LawsPolis 29 (1): 83-107. 2012.Tarán’s case against the authenticity of Epinomis depends on the claim that it is incompatible with Plato’s Laws. Behind this claim is the uncritical assumption that the Athenian Stranger of Laws speaks for Plato. While the Athenian Stranger of Epinomis clearly does not do so, the same is equally true, albeit more difficult to detect, of the Stranger in Laws. Once the Athenian is recognized as both ambitious and impious, a reconstruction of the last sentence of Epinomis — on which Tarán’s incomp…Read more
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16Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: The Philosopher of the Second ReichLexington Books. 2012.By subjecting Nietzsche to a Platonic critique, author William H. F. Altman punctures his “pose of untimeliness” while making use of Nietzsche’s own aphoristic style of presentation. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche—named for a Prussian King—is thereby revealed to be the representative philosopher of the Second Reich
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13Plato and Demosthenes: recovering the old academyLexington Books. 2023.In this book, William H. F. Altman turns to Demosthenes-universally regarded as Plato's student in antiquity-and Plato's other Athenian students in order to add external and historical evidence for Plato's original curriculum.
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13[Review] Socratic and Platonic Political Philosophy: Practicing a Politics of Reading. By Christopher P. Long (review)Plato Journal 15 109-113. 2015.
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12The Guardians on Trial: The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues From Euthyphro to PhaedoLexington Books. 2016.In this book, William H. F. Altman argues that it is not order of composition but reading order that makes Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo “late dialogues,” and shows why Plato’s decision to interpolate the notoriously “late” Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro and Apology deserves more respect from interpreters.
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12The relay race of virtue: Plato's debts to XenophonState University of New York Press. 2022.Demonstrates that Plato and Xenophon ought to be regarded less as rivals and more as engaged in a dialogue advancing a common goal of preserving the Socratic legacy.
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12Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the RepublicLexington Books. 2012.The pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student, is the subject of Plato the Teacher. “The crisis of the Republic” refers to the decisive moment in his central dialogue when philosopher-readers realize that Plato’s is challenging them to choose justice by going back down into the dangerous Cave of political life for the sake of the greater Good, as both Socrates and Cicero did.
William H.F. Altman
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Alumnus, 2010
Areas of Specialization
History of Western Philosophy |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
19th Century German Philosophy |