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9Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy. By Robin WaterfieldAncient Philosophy 44 (1): 247-251. 2024.
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5The Socratic ProblemIn Hugh H. Benson (ed.), A Companion to Plato, Blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Reliability of our Sources What our Sources tell us about Socrates The Problem of Socrates’ Doctrines.
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8SocratesPolity. 2019.Socrates is one the most important thinkers in western philosophy, yet he remains enigmatic, having left behind no works of his own. Instead, his thought is understood primarily through the work of his followers. In this accessible introduction, William Prior assesses Socrates the man, his famous trial, and the nature of his philosophy.
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Socrates MetaphysicianIn David Sedley (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Xxvii: Winter 2004, Clarendon Press. 2004.
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17The Historicity of Plato’s ApologyPolis 18 (1-2): 41-57. 2001.Scholars who seek in Plato’s early dialogues an accurate account of the philosophy of the historical Socrates place special weight on the Apology as a source of historical information about him. Even scholars like Charles Kahn, who generally reject this historicist approach to the early dialogues, accept the Apology as a ‘quasi-historical’ document. In this paper I attempt to raise doubts about the historical reliability of the Apology. I argue that the claims used to support the historicity of …Read more
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The Portrait of Socrates in Plato's SymposiumOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 31 137-166. 2006.
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20Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away (review)Ancient Philosophy 37 (1): 221-226. 2017.
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Plato's Intellectual Development: A Critique of the Owen ThesisDissertation, The University of Texas at Austin. 1975.
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6The Concept of "Paradeigma" [Greek] in Plato's Theory of FormsApeiron 17 (1): 33-42. 1983.Scholars often assume that when Plato said that Forms are paradeigmata he meant that they were exemplars of the property they represent. I argue that "paradeigma" is better read as "pattern" than "exemplar." This reading is compatible with Plato's use of the term in all passages except Parm. 132d, where Parmenides misinterprets the term to make the theory of Forms susceptible to the Third Man Argument.
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41Richard D. Mohr, "The Platonic Cosmology" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (4): 585. 1987.
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13Plato's Analysis of Being and Not‐Being in the SophistSouthern Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 199-211. 1980.
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67Why Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues?Apeiron 30 (4). 1997.I argue that it was not Plato's intention in his Socratic dialogues to provide a biography of Socrates. Rather, his intention was to describe and defend the philosophical life against its critics. The Socratic dialogues are "unhappy encounters" between Socrates, defender of the life of philosophy, and those who do not comprehend or who reject that life.
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10Alice Swift Riginos, "Platonica: The Anecdotes concerning the Life and Writings of Plato" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 18 (1): 80. 1980.
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12The Historicity of Plato’s ApologyPolis 18 (1-2): 41-57. 2001.Scholars who seek in Plato's early dialogues an accurate account of the philosophy of the historical Socrates place special weight on the Apology as a source of historical information about him. Even scholars like Charles Kahn, who generally reject this historicist approach to the early dialogues, accept the Apology as a ‘quasi-historical’ document. In this paper I attempt to raise doubts about the historical reliability of the Apology. I argue that the claims used to support the historicity of …Read more
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1Socratic metaphysicsIn John Bussanich & Nicholas D. Smith (eds.), The Bloomsbury companion to Socrates, Continuum. pp. 68-93. 2013.In this article I argue (against the views of Russell Dancy and Gregory Vlastos, but in support of the views of R. E. Allen, Gail Fine, and Francesco Fronterotta) that Euthyphro 5c-d and 6d-e show that Socrates had a metaphysics, early version of the theory of forms. I disagree with Fronterotta only on the separation of the forms in the Euthyphro.
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164Virtue and Knowledge: An Introduction to Ancient Greek EthicsRoutledge. 1991.Originally published in 1991, this book focuses on the concept of virtue, and in particular on the virtue of wisdom or knowledge, as it is found in the epic poems of Homer, some tragedies of Sophocles, selected writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. The key questions discussed are the nature of the virtues, their relation to each other, and the relation between the virtues and happiness or well-being. This book provides the background and interpretative framework…Read more
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26Thomson on the Moral Specification of RightsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (4): 837-845. 1996.
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29Reshotko (N.) Socratic Virtue. Making the Best of the Neither-Good-nor-Bad. Pp. xiv + 204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Cased, £48, US$85. ISBN: 978-0-521- 84618- (review)The Classical Review 58 (1): 68-70. 2008.
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321Parmenides 132c-133a and the Development of Plato's ThoughtPhronesis 24 (3): 230-240. 1979.In this paper I argue against the view of G.E.L. Owen that the second version of the Third Man Argument is a sound objection to Plato's conception of Forms as paradigms and that Plato knew it. The argument can be formulated so as to be valid, but Plato need not be committed to one of its premises. Forms are self-predicative, but the ground of self-predication is not the same as that of ordinary predication.
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41Zeno’s First Argument Concerning PluralityArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 60 (3): 247-256. 1978.
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6Socrates MetaphysicianOxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 27 1-14. 2004.Following R. E. Allen I argue, against the view of Gregory Vlastos that the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues was exclusively a moral philosopher, that there is a metaphysics, an early version of the theory of Forms, in the Euthyphro and other early dialogues. I respond to several of Vlastos's objections to this view.
Santa Clara, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Normative Ethics |