The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato's Early Dialogues

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations for Ancient Works Cited xi Introduction: Socrates and the Hermeneutic of Estrangement xv Part I. Socratic Phenomenology Chapter 1. Setting Aside the Subject-Object Framework in Reading Plato 3 Aristotelian Assessments of Plato’s Socrates 3 Construction or Destruction in the Early Dialogues 8 From Excessive Being to Objective Reality and Back 12 Articulating Plato’s Anti-Relativism 13 Distinguishing Socrates’ Search for Definitions from Twentieth-Century Nominalism 14 Excavating the Everyday Understanding of Being in Plato 16 Consequences of Presupposing an Understanding of Being as Objective 17 Chapter 2. On Doxa as the Appearing of ‘What Is’ 23 Doxa versus Opinion 23 Phainesthai and Doxa 25 v vi Contents Part II. Virtue’s Ontological Excess and Distance Chapter 3. The Excessive Truth of Socratic Discourse 35 The Indefensibility of Philosophy in Plato’s Apology of Socrates 36 Socrates’ Muthos 38 Socrates’ Logos 41 The Prooimion to Socrates’ Apologia 43 The Rhetorical Discourse of Socrates’ Accusers 43 Socrates’ Way of Discourse in His Defense 46 Socratic Truth as Deinos 48 Socrates’ Way of Discourse in His Philosophical Activity 55 Chapter 4. The Sheltering of TechnĒ versus the Exposure of Human Wisdom 59 Socrates versus the Sophists 65 From Shelter to Exposure 73 The Technē-Tuchē Antithesis 74 The Socratic Understanding of Technē in Light of Metaphysics Alpha 76 The Non-Knowing of Virtue as Socrates’ Aim 82 Socrates and the Technē-Model of Virtue 87 Chapter 5. The Truthful Elenctic Pathos of Painful Concern 93 Elenctic Pain and Being Concerned by Virtue 94 Meletē in the Apology and Aporia throughout the Early Dialogues 96 A Phenomenological Consideration of Meletē/Aporia 101 Serenity in the Interpretations of Nehamas, Vlastos, and the Stoics 105 Meletē/Aporia as Itself the Alētheia of ‘What Virtue Is’ 109 Distance and Excess versus Transcendence or Immanence 111 Part III. Socratic Virtue in the Face of Excessive Truth Chapter 6. The Courage of Virtue and the Distant Horizon of the Whole in the Laches 119 Finite Transcendence and Socratic “Being With” 120 Sophistication and the Everyday Attitude in the Introduction of the Two Generals 123 Contents vii The Unity of the Question ‘What is Virtue?’ 126 Being Many Everyday 132 Aristotle on Socrates and Definition Katholou 133 Meno 71d–73d 136 Euthyphro 5c–7a 138 Socrates’ Interlocutors and the Confusion of Appearance and Being 140 Aporia and the Truth of Appearances 144 The Socratic Here and Now 150 Conclusion: Aporia in the Middle Dialogues 153 Idea/Eidos as ‘Look’ and Phenomenal Being in the Middle Dialogues 156 Alētheia as Divine Wandering 159 The Good beyond Being and the Ideas as Excessive Measures 162 Human Monstrosity and Being between One and Many 166 Notes 173 Bibliography 247 Index 261 ...