In this highly original and provocative book, Sara Ahbel-Rappe argues that the Platonic dialogues contain an esoteric Socrates who signifies a profound commitment to self-knowledge and whose appearances in the dialogues are meant to foster the practice of self-inquiry. According to Ahbel-Rappe, the elenchus, or inner examination, and the thesis that virtue is knowledge, are tools for a contemplative practice that teaches us how to investigate the mind and its objects directly. In other words, the Socratic persona of the dialogues represents wisdom, which is distinct from and serves as the larger space in which Platonic knowledge—ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics—is constructed. Ahbel-Rappe offers complete readings of the
Apology,
Charmides,
Alcibiades I,
Euthyphro,
Lysis,
Phaedrus,
Theaetetus, and
Parmenides, as well as parts of the
Republic. Her interpretation challenges two common approaches to the figure of Socrates: the thesis that the dialogues represent an ’early’ Plato who later disavows his reliance on Socratic wisdom, and the thesis that Socratic ethics can best be expressed by the construct of eudaimonism or egoism.
Innehållsförteckning
Preface: Socrates as an Esoteric Figure
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge
1. Socratic Philosophy
2. Socratic Receptions
3. Socrates and Self‑Knowledge
4.
Euthydemus: Native and Foreign
5.
Alcibiades I: The Mirror of Socrates
6.
Lysis: The Aporetic Identity of the First Friend
7. From Virtues to Forms in the
Phaedrus
8.
Theaetetus: Socrates’s Interrogation of Platonic Knowledge
9. “He Who Is Wisest among You”: Socratic Ignorance between the
Parmenides and the
Apology
Conclusion. The Socratic Paradigm
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Om författaren
Sara Ahbel-Rappe is Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. She is the author of
Socrates: A Guide for the Perplexed and
Reading Neoplatonism: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius; translator of Damascius’s
Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles; and coeditor (with Rachana Kamtekar) of
A Companion to Socrates.
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