Tag: Sophistry

Topics

Major Works

  • Gorgias

    - Recommended Translation: Plato. The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus. Translated by Seth Benardete. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
    From the publisher: “The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, one of the most groundbreaking works of twentieth-century Platonic studies, is now back in print for a new generation of students and scholars to discover. In this volume, distinguished… More

  • Theaetetus

    - Recommended translation: "Theaetetus" in The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman,  trans. Seth Benardete (University of Chicago Press: 1984).
    About the dialogue: In the Theaetetus, Plato explores the nature of knowledge.

  • Sophist

    - Recommended translation: Plato. "Sophist." In The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, translated by Seth Benardete, 123–234. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
    In the Sophist, which takes place the day after the Theaetetus and was written c. 360 BCE, Plato explores what constitutes sophistry and how sophists differ from philosophers and statesmen.   From the publisher: The Being of the Beautiful collects… More

Other Works

  • Euthydemus

    - Recommended translations: "Euthydemus," trans. S. Lombardo in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997). "Euthydemus." trans. G. McBrayer and M. Nichols in Plato: Euthydemus. Ed. D. Schaeffer (Focus, 2011)
    Excerpt: Crito Who was it, Socrates, that you were talking with yesterday at the Lyceum? Why, there was such a crowd standing about you that when I came up in the hope of listening I could hear nothing distinctly: still, by craning over I got a glimpse, and… More

Commentary

  • Plato’s Trilogy: “Theaetetus,” “The Sophist,” and “The Statesman”

    - Klein, Jacob, Plato's Trilogy:"Theaetetus," "The Sophist," and "The Statesman", Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

  • On the Euthydemus

    - Strauss, Leo, "On the Euthydemus," Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983, 67-88.
    Excerpt: From the Crito we are led to the Euthydemus by the consideration that the Euthydemus contains the only other conversation between Socrates and Kriton. The two dialogues stand indeed as opposite poles. The Euthydemus is the most bantering, not to… More

  • Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original & Image

    - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Sophist: The Drama of Original & Image, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

  • Sophist

    - Cropsey, Joseph, "Sophist," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 69-110.
    Excerpt: The transition to the Sophist is made complex by the complexity of what precedes it, for this dialogue is preceded in one way by Theaetetus and in another by Euthyphro. As preceded by Theaetetus, the transition is from the atmosphere of… More

  • Theaetetus

    - Cropsey, Joseph, "Theaetetus," Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
    Excerpt: The dialogue Theaetetus reports a conversation between Socrates and Theaetetus that occurred when the latter was perhaps fifteen years old. The conversation took place in the weeks or months preceding the death of Socrates, as the end of the… More

  • Plato’s Sophist

    - Heidegger, Martin, Plato's Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1997.
    Excerpt: This book is a translation of Platon: Sophistes, which was published in 1992 as volume 19 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works). The text is a reconstruction of the author’s lecture course delivered under the same title at the… More

  • On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues

    - Bruell, Christopher, On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
    Excerpt: Nothing is so well established in our Western democracies today as the right of each to seek happiness in his or her own way. It is as if a pass to that effect had been issued to us at birth. This much is obvious. Less obvious is the fact that… More

  • Protagoras’s Myth and Logos

    - Benardete, Seth, "Protagoras's Myth and Logos," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 186-97.

  • On Plato’s Sophist

    - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Sophist," The Argument of the Action, Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, eds., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 323-52.
    Excerpt: Once the stranger takes over the discussion at the beginning of the Sophist and agrees to discuss the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher, it is hard to remember that Socrates had arranged to meet with Theodorus, Theaetetus, and young… More

  • Plato’s Theaetetus: On the Way of the Logos

    - Benardete, Seth, "Plato's Theaetetus: On the Way of the Logos," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, eds. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
    Excerpt: The opening of the Theaetetus is curious. The report we have of another opening of nearly the same length indicates that it was always a curiosity. If both openings are Plato’s, and the rest of the dialogue they preface were not different,… More

  • The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias

    - Stauffer, Devin, The Unity of Plato's Gorgias Rhetoric, Justice, and the Philosophic Life, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
    Excerpt: Few philosophers have endured more criticism and abuse in modern times than Plato. As one of the great figures of the classical tradition, Plato was subjected to powerful attacks by the founders of modern philosophy and their followers, who set out… More

  • Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame

    - Tarnopolsky, Christina H., Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato's Gorgias and the Politics of Shame, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
    About: In recent years, most political theorists have agreed that shame shouldn’t play any role in democratic politics because it threatens the mutual respect necessary for participation and deliberation. But Christina Tarnopolsky argues that not every… More

  • Plato’s Sophist 223 b1-7

    - Benardete, Seth, "Plato's Sophist 223 b1-7," The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy, Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, eds., South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 2010.

  • Introduction to the Sophist

    - Brann, Eva, "Introduction to the Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 278-93.
    Excerpt: The drama of the Sophist is part of a continuing conversation. Three of its participants had talked the day before: Socrates who is known to the world as a philosopher; the brilliant young geometer Theaetetus who so uncannily resembles the ugly… More

  • Nonbeing Enfolded in Being: The Sophist

    - Brann, Eva, "Nonbeing Enfolded in Being: The Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 294-303.
    Excerpt: Parmenides’ discovery of Being as One and as the one and only truth is, I think, the primordial event of First Philosophy. But in named Nonbeing so as to proscribe it as unthinkable and unsayable, he establishes it—an unintended… More

  • On Translating the Sophist

    - Brann, Eva, "On Translating the Sophist," The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings, Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011, 304-20.
    Excerpt: In 1995, I was asked by the series adviser Keith Whitaker to do a translation for the nascent Focus Philosophical Library; Plato was suggested as a possibility. The Focus Press under its editor Ron Pullins publishes fresh translations, intended to be… More