A Companion to Plato

478 Pages·2006·2.6 MB·english

by  Hugh H. Benson

A Companion to Plato
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A Companion to Plato
Edited by
Hugh H. Benson
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© 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
except for editorial material and organization © 2006 by Hugh H. Benson
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to Plato / edited by Hugh H. Benson.
p. cm. — (Blackwell companions to philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-1521-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-1521-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Plato. I. Benson, Hugh H., 1956–
II. Series.
B395.C64 2006
184—dc22
2005034699
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Preface xii
Abbreviations xiv
1 The Life of Plato of Athens 1
DEBRA NAILS
2 Interpreting Plato 13
CHRISTOPHER ROWE
3 The Socratic Problem 25
WILLIAM J. PRIOR
Part I PLATONIC METHOD AND THE DIALOGUE FORM 37
4 Form and the Platonic Dialogues 39
MARY MARGARET MCCABE
5 The Socratic Elenchus 55
CHARLES M. YOUNG
6 Platonic Definitions and Forms 70
R. M. DANCY
7 Plato’s Method of Dialectic 85
HUGH H. BENSON
Part II PLATONIC EPISTEMOLOGY 101
8 Socratic Ignorance 103
GARETH B. MATTHEWS
9 Plato on Recollection 119
CHARLES KAHN
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contents
10 Plato: A Theory of Perception or a Nod to Sensation? 133
DEBORAH K. W. MODRAK
11 Knowledge and the Forms in Plato 146
MICHAEL FEREJOHN
Part III PLATONIC METAPHYSICS 163
12 The Forms and the Sciences in Socrates and Plato 165
TERRY PENNER
13 Problems for Forms 184
MARY LOUISE GILL
14 The Role of Cosmology in Plato’s Philosophy 199
CYNTHIA FREELAND
15 Plato on Language 214
DAVID SEDLEY
16 Plato and Mathematics 228
MICHAEL J. WHITE
17 Platonic Religion 244
MARK L. MCPHERRAN
Part IV PLATONIC PSYCHOLOGY 261
18 The Socratic Paradoxes 263
THOMAS C. BRICKHOUSE and NICHOLAS D. SMITH
19 The Platonic Soul 278
FRED D. MILLER, JR.
20 Plato on Eros and Friendship 294
C. D. C. REEVE
21 Plato on Pleasure as the Human Good 308
GERASIMOS SANTAS
Part V PLATONIC ETHICS, POLITICS, AND AESTHETICS 323
22 The Unity of the Virtues 325
DANIEL DEVEREUX
23 Plato on Justice 341
DAVID KEYT
24 Plato’s Concept of Goodness 356
NICHOLAS WHITE
25 Plato on the Law 373
SUSAN SAUVÉ MEYER
vi
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contents
26 Plato and the Arts 388
CHRISTOPHER JANAWAY
Part VI PLATONIC LEGACY 401
27 Learning about Plato from Aristotle 403
CHRISTOPHER SHIELDS
28 Plato and Hellenistic Philosophy 418
A. A. LONG
29 Plato’s Influence on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy 434
SARA AHBEL-RAPPE
Index 452
vii
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Notes on Contributors
Sara Ahbel-Rappe is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of
Michigan. She is the author of Reading Neoplatonism (2000) and the co-editor of
The Blackwell Companion to Socrates (Blackwell, 2006).
Hugh H. Benson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Oklahoma, and was a Samuel Roberts Noble Presidential Professor
from 2000 to 2004. He is the editor of Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates (1992) and
author of Socratic Wisdom (2000) as well as various articles on the philosophy of
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Thomas C. Brickhouse is a Professor of Philosophy at Lynchburg College and the
co-author (with N. D. Smith) of four books and numerous articles on the philosophy of
Socrates. He has also written on Plato and Aristotle.
R. M. Dancy is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of
Sense and Contradiction: A Study in Aristotle (1975), Two Studies in the Early Academy
(1991), Plato’s Introduction of Forms (2004), and editor of Kant and Critique (1993).
Daniel Devereux is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. He is
the author of articles on the philosophy of Socrates, Plato’s ethics and metaphysics,
and Aristotle’s ethics and theory of substance. He contributed a chapter, “Plato:
Metaphysics,” to The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy (2003). His most recent
work has focused on the development of Plato’s ethics.
Michael Ferejohn is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He has
held visiting positions at the University of Pittsburgh and Tufts University and a Mellon
Faculty Fellowship at Harvard University. Ferejohn is the author of The Origins of
Aristotelian Science (1991) as well as numerous articles on early Platonic ethics and
metaphysics, and Aristotelian metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science.
He is currently working on a book on the place of definition in ancient epistemology.
Cynthia Freeland is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Houston. She has written articles on ancient philosophy and is the editor
of Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle (1998). She also works in aesthetics, where her
books include Philosophy and Film (co-edited with Thomas Wartenberg, 1995), The
Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror (1999), and But Is It Art? (2001).
viii
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notes on contributors
Mary Louise Gill is Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Brown University. She is
the author of “Method and metaphysics in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman” in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005), Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity (1989),
and Plato: Parmenides, Introduction and co-translation (1996). She is co-editor of
A Companion to Ancient Philosophy (Blackwell, 2006).
Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton.
He is the author of Images of Excellence: Plato’s Critique of the Arts (1995) and has
published extensively in aesthetics. His other publications include Self and World in
Schopenhauer’s Philosophy (1989), Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction (2002), and
Reading Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art (Blackwell, 2006).
Charles Kahn is Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania. He is the
author of Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (1960), The Verb “Be” in
Ancient Greek (1973; reprinted with new Introduction, 2003), The Art and Thought of
Heraclitus (1979), Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (1996), and Pythagoras and the
Pythagoreans (2001).
David Keyt has for many years been Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Washington in Seattle, and has also taught at Cornell University, the University of
Hong Kong, Princeton University, and the Los Angeles and Irvine campuses of the
University of California, and held research appointments at the Institute for Research
in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, the Center for Hellenic Studies
in Washington, DC, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Social
Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University. He is the author of
Aristotle, Politics Books V and VI (1999) and co-editor with Fred D. Miller, Jr. of A
Companion to Aristotle’s Politics (Blackwell, 1991).
A. A. Long is Professor of Classics and Irving Stone Professor of Literature at the
University of California, Berkeley. His recent work, as author, includes Stoic Studies
(1996) and Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002), and, as editor and con-
tributor, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (1999).
Gareth B. Matthews is Professor of Philosophy (emeritus) at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst. He taught previously at the University of Virginia and the
University of Minnesota. He is the author of a number of books and articles on ancient
and medieval philosophy, including Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philosophy
(1999), and Augustine (Blackwell, 2005).
Mary Margaret McCabe is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at King’s College
London.She is the author of Plato on Punishment (1981), Plato’s Individuals (1994),
and Plato and his Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason (2000). She is also the
general editor of the Cambridge University Press series Studies in the Dialogues of Plato.
For 2005–8 she is a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow.
Mark L. McPherran is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine at
Farmington.He is the author of The Religion of Socrates (1996; pbk: 1999), the editor
of Wisdom, Ignorance, and Virtue: New Essays in Socratic Studies (1997), Recognition,
Remembrance, and Reality: New Essays on Plato’s Epistemology and Metaphysics (1999),
and a number of articles on Socrates, Plato, and ancient skepticism.
ix
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notes on contributors
Susan Sauvé Meyer received her PhD in Philosophy at Cornell University in 1987
and taught at Harvard University before joining the faculty of the University of
Pennsylvania in 1994, where she is now Associate Professor of Philosophy. Her
current work focuses on Greek and Roman ethics, and she is presently completing a
book, Ancient Ethics.
Fred D. Miller, Jr. is Professor of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Social
Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University.He is the author of
Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (1995), co-editor with David Keyt of
A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics (Blackwell, 1991), and editor, in association with
Carrie-Ann Khan, of A History of the Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the
Scholastics (2006).He has published many articles on ancient philosophy and on moral
and political philosophy.He was President of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy
from 1998 until 2004.
Deborah K. W. Modrak is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester.
She is the author of two books, Aristotle’s Theory of Language and Meaning (2001) and
Aristotle: The Power of Perception (1987). She has also written numerous articles on
topics in ancient Greek philosophy of mind, theories of cognition and language, and
epistemology.
Debra Nails is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. She is author of
The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (2002), Agora, Academy,
and the Conduct of Philosophy (1995); and articles on Socrates and Plato in various
journals and collections. She also writes on Spinoza and pursues investigative work
for the APA’s Committee for the Defense of Professional Rights of Philosophers and
the AAUP.
Terry Penner is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, and was for a time Affiliate
Professor of Classics, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Spring 2005 he was
the A. G. Leventis Visiting Research Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh.
He has written numerous articles on Socrates, on Plato’s psychology of action, and on
Plato’s Theory of Forms, as well as The Ascent from Nominalism (1987) and, with
Christopher Rowe, Plato’s Lysis (2005).
William J. Prior is Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. He received his
PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. He is the author of Unity and
Development in Plato’s Metaphysics (1985) and Virtue and Knowledge (1991), and the
editor of Socrates: Critical Assessments (4 vols., 1996), and numerous articles in Greek
philosophy. He is currently working on the Socratic problem and on Greek cosmology.
C. D. C. Reeve is Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author of Love’s Confusions (2005)
andSubstantial Knowledge: Aristotle’s Metaphysics (2000). His Philosopher-Kings: The
Argument of Plato’s Republic will be reissued in 2006.
Christopher Rowe is Professor of Greek at the University of Durham. He held a
Leverhulme Personal Research Professorship from 1999 to 2004, and was co-editor of
Phronesis (Leiden) from 1997 to 2003. He is the author of commentaries on several
dialogues of Plato and has edited The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political
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