From Death to Life: Key Themes in Plato's Phaedo

Description

This book addresses a range of highly debated problems among scholars of Plato’s Phaedo and provides an overall interpretation of the dialogue. Contents Introduction 1 Why Publish This Book? 2 Detailed Synopsis of the Book 2.1 Chapter 1, “Death” 2.2 Chapter 2, ‘Suicide’ 2.3 Chapter 3, “Virtue” 2.4 Chapter 4, ‘The (True) Philosopher’ 2.5 Chapter 5, “Recollection” 2.6 Chapter 6, “Harmony” 2.7 Chapter 7, “Causes” 2.8 Chapter 8, “Voyage(s)” 2.9 Chapter 9, “Life” 1 Death 1 Dogmatism, Scepticism, etc. 2 Plato’s ‘Third Way’ 3 Philosophy or Religion? 4 Immortality 5 Between Science and Ignorance 6 Conclusion 2 Suicide 1 Cebes’ Amazement 2 The Argument 3 The Morality of Happiness 3 Virtue 1 The Philosopher and Virtue: A Digression? 2 A Contradiction between Phaedo and Republic? 3 Philosophy as Politics 4 Popular and Philosophical Virtue 5 The Philosopher according to Plato 6 The Political Relevance of Asceticism 7 Conclusion 4 The (True) Philosopher 1 Sokratismusstreit 2 The True Philosopher: The Identity between Theory and Practice 3 Antisthenes and the Use of Pleasures: From Xenophon’s Symposium to Plato’s Gorgias 4 Antisthenes in the Phaedo 5 Philosophy and the Use of λόγοι 6 The Philosopher’s Life and Death 5 Recollection 1 Recollection as Proof of Immortality 2 Recollection as the Condition of Possibility of Knowledge 3 Problems Solved 4 Recollection as an Explanation for Human’s Middle Condition 5 Meno 85c–d 6 Episteme and Doxa 6 Harmony 1 The Soul as Harmony: The Pythagorean Background 2 Socrates’ Second Argument 3 Socrates’ Third Argument 4 The Crucial Premise of the Third Argument 5 The Philosophical Significance of Socrates’ Refutation 7 Causes 1 Methodological Problems 2 The Causes of Generation, Corruption, and Being 3 The Physical Causes: Socrates’ Dissatisfaction 4 What Is the Problem? 5 The Eleatic Background 6 Conclusion 8 Voyage(s) 1 The Deuteros Plous 2 What Is the “First Voyage?” 3 Images 4 The Logos “Hardest to Disprove” 5 The Deuteros Plous in Philebus 6 The Deuteros Plous in Statesman 7 Conclusion 9 Life 1 The ‘Last Argument’ 2 What Occupies What? 3 Immortal and Indestructible 4 Conclusion Works Cited Editions and Translations of the Phaedo Other Works Index