Plato and his Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason

by Mary Margaret McCabe

• ISBN13: 9780521653060
• ISBN10: 0521653061
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-08-15
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

How does Plato view his philosophical antecedents? Plato and his Predecessors considers how Plato represents his philosophical predecessors in a late quartet of dialogues: the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Politicus and the Philebus. Why is it that the sophist Protagoras, or the monist Parmenides, or the advocate of flux, Heraclitus, are so important in these dialogues? And why are they represented as such shadowy figures, barely present at their own refutations? The explanation, the author argues, is a complex one involving both the reflective relation between Plato's dramatic technique and his philosophical purposes, and the very nature of his late philosophical views. For in these encounters with his predecessors we see Plato develop a new account of the principles of reason, against those who would deny them, and forge a fresh view of the best life - the life of the philosopher.

Author Biography

Mary Margaret McCabe is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at King's College, London.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(22)
Reading dialogues	1	(7)
Frames and reflection	8	(2)
Historical fictions	10	(3)
Mean-minded opponents	13	(4)
Teleology and reason	17	(6)
PART I THE OPPONENTS	23	(116)
Measuring sincerity	25	(35)
Socrates' methods	25	(7)
`Each person is self-sufficient as to wisdom.'	32	(4)
Protagoras and Socrates	36	(4)
The refutation of Protagoras	40	(11)
Socrates revived	51	(9)
Appendix: sincerity texts	54	(6)
Missing persons	60	(33)
A murder mystery	60	(6)
Corpus delicti	66	(7)
Grinding down the giants	73	(6)
Parsimony	79	(6)
Mind over matter	85	(4)
Plato's history of philosophy	89	(4)
Can the Heraclitean live his Heracliteanism?	93	(46)
Heraclitus' early appearances	93	(3)
Measuring flux	96	(8)
Dealing with the men from Ephesus	104	(13)
Reasons, reflection and reason	117	(11)
Are you a man or a mollusc?	128	(6)
Myth and history	134	(5)
PART II TELEOLOGY	139	(56)
Myth and its end	141	(24)
The cosmos back to front: Politicus 268-275	141	(8)
Old stories, other mythologies	149	(10)
The judgement of lives	159	(6)
Outwitting the cunning man	165	(30)
Microcosm and macrocosm	165	(13)
A cunning man?	178	(7)
Teleology is said in many ways	185	(10)
PART III REASON AND THE PHILOSOPHER	195	(96)
Tracking down the philosopher	197	(33)
Disappearances and reappearances	197	(8)
Talking of wind-eggs ...	205	(3)
A gift-horse or a nightmare?	208	(3)
Ordering parts and wholes	211	(9)
Collection, division and due measure	220	(10)
The sufficiency of reason	230	(33)
Reason and self-determination	230	(12)
On the road to the good	242	(7)
Living a life: rethinking completeness	249	(3)
Rethinking sufficiency: explaining a life	252	(6)
True lives	258	(5)
Meeting Socrates' challenge	263	(28)
Protarchus and Socrates	263	(3)
Progress and perfectibility	266	(7)
Meeting Socrates' challenge	273	(5)
Conversation and dialectic	278	(3)
History back to front?	281	(6)
The dramatisation of the principles of reason	287	(4)
Bibliography	291	(10)
General index	301	(10)
Index locorum	311