Bloomsbury Handbook of Plato

Gerald A. Press was Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center, USA.Mateo Duque is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University, USA.

• List of Contributors AcknowledgementsList of Dialogue Abbreviations How to Use This Book Introduction 1. PLATO’S LIFE, HISTORICAL, LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHIC CONTEXT Plato’s life Aristophanes and intellectuals Comedy Education Eleatics Isocrates and logographyOrality and literacy Poetry (epic and lyric)Pre-socratic philosophersPythagoreans Rhetoric and speechmakingSocrates (historical)Socratics (other than Plato)The SophistsXenophon2. THE DIALOGUES The Platonic corpus and manuscript tradition Alcibiades 1 The Apology of Socrates Charmides Clitophon Cratylus Crito Dubia and Spuria (Alcibiades 2, Hipparchus, Minos, Rival Lovers, Axiochus, Definitions, On Justice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Eryxias, Sisyphus) Epinomis Euthydemus Euthyphro Gorgias Hippias Major Hippias Minor IonLaches Laws Letters Lysis Menexenus Meno Parmenides Phaedo Phaedrus Philebus Politicus (Statesman) Protagoras Republic Sophist Symposium Theaetetus Theages Timaeus and Critias 3. IMPORTANT FEATURES OF THE DIALOGUES Anonymity Characters Comedy Drama History Emotions (pathe, pathemata) Humour Irony Language Literary composition Musical structure Myth (muthos) Pedagogical structure Pedimental structure Play (paidia) Proleptic composition Reading order Socrates (the character) Tragedy 4. CONCEPTS, THEMES AND TOPICS TREATED IN THE DIALOGUES Account (see Logos) Aesthetics Akrasia (incontinence, weakness of will) Animals Antilogy and eristic Aporia Appearance and reality Argument (see Logos) Art (techne) Beauty (kalon) Being and becoming (on, onta; gignesthai) Cause (aitia) Cave, the allegory of the Character City (polis) Convention (see Law) Cosmos (kosmos) Cross-examination (see Elenchus) Daimon Death Definition (see Logos) Desire (appetite, epithumia) Dialectic (dialektike) The divided line Education Elenchus (cross-examination, refutation) Epistemology (knowledge) Eristic (see Antilogy and Eristics) Eros (see Love) Eschatology Ethics Eudaimonia (see Happiness) Excellence (virtue, arete?) Forms (eidos, idea) Friendship (philia) Gender Goodness (the good, Agathon) Happiness (eudaimonia) Hermeneutics Idea (see forms) Image (eikon) Imitation (see Mimesis) Incontinence (see Akrasia) Inspiration Intellectualism Justice (dikaion, dikaiosune) Knowledge (see Epistemology) Language Law, convention (nomos) Logic Logos (account, argument, definition) Love (eros) Madness and possession Mathematics (mathematike) Medicine (iatrike) Metaphysics (see Ontology) Metatheatre Method Mimesis (imitation) Music Mysteries Myth (muthos) Nature (phusis) Nomos (see Law) Non-propositional knowledge The one (to hen) Ontology (metaphysics) Orphism Paiderastia (pederasty) Participation Perception and sensation (aisthesis, aisthanomai) Philosophy and the philosopher Phusis (see Nature) Piety (eusebeia, hosios) Pleasure (hedone) Poetry (poiesis) Politics and the (figure of the) Politicus Reality (see Appearance and reality) Reason Recollection (anamnesis) Refutation (see Elenchus) Rhetoric (rhetorike) Self-knowledge Sensation (see Perception and sensation) The Sophists Soul (psyche) The sun simile Theology Time Virtue (see Excellence) Vision Weakness of will (see Akrasia) Women Writing 5. LATER RECEPTION, INTERPRETATION AND INFLUENCE OF PLATO AND THE DIALOGUES Section A: Plato in the Ancient World Ancient hermeneutics Aristotle Academy of Athens, ancient history of Jewish Platonism (ancient) Neoplatonism and its diaspora Section B: Plato in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Medieval Islamic Platonism Medieval Jewish Platonism Medieval Christian Platonism Renaissance Platonism The Cambridge Platonists Section C: Plato in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy Early modern philosophy from Descartes to Berkeley Nineteenth-century German idealism Nineteenth-century Plato scholarship Developmentalism Compositional chronology Analytic approaches to Plato Vlastosian approaches Continental approaches Straussian readings of Plato Plato’s unwritten doctrines Esotericism The Tübingen approach Anti-Platonism, from ancient to modern References Index

This well conceived and thoughtfully organized collection brings together scores of lucid and authoritative essays by many of the leading Plato scholars in the world. In this revised and updated second edition, it remains a reliable and congenial guide to the perplexities of Plato’s philosophy.