Trials of Reason

David Wolfsdorf received a doctorate in Classics from the University of Chicago in 1997. He currently teaches in the Philosophy Department at Temple University where he specializes in Ancient Greek philosophy.

• INTERPRETATION: ; Introduction; ; Interpreting Plato; ; The Political Culture of Plato's Early Dialogues; ; Dialogue; ; Character and History; ; The Mouthpiece Principle; ; Forms of Evidence ; DESIRE: ; Socrates as an Erotic Figure; ; The Subjectivist Conception of Desire; ; Instrumental and Irrational Desires; ; Desire in the Critique of Akrasia; ; Interpreting Lysis; ; The Deficiency Conception of Desire; ; Inathentic Friendship; ; The Three-Dimensional Conception of Desire; ; Anti-Philosophical Desires ; KNOWLEDGE: ; Excellence as Wisdom; ; The Epistemic Unity of Excellence; ; Dunamis and Techne; ; Goodness and Form; ; The Epistemological Priority of Definitional Knowledge; ; Ordinary Ethical Knowledge ; METHOD: ; The Socratic Fallacy; ; Socrates' Pursuit of Definitions; ; Hupothesis; Two Postulates; ; The Geometrical Illustration; ; Geometrical Analysis; ; The Method of Reassuring from a Postulate; ; Elenchus and Hupothesis; ; Knowledge and Aitia; ; F-conditions; ; Cognitive Security ; APORIA: ; Forms of Aporia; ; Dramatic Aporia; ; The Example of Charmides; ; Charmides as Autobiography; ; The Politics of Sophrosune; ; Critias' Philotimia; ; Self-Knowledge and the Knowledge of Knowledge; ; Knowledge of Knowledge and Knowledge of the Good Philosophy in the Polis ; APPENDICES: ; List of Commonly Used Greek Words; ; The Irony of Socrates ; BIBLIOGRAPHY

Trails of Reason is a provocative and original book... its complexity is a testament to its author's admirable ambition.