Title: Socrates and Aesop : a comparative study of the introduction of Plato's Phaedo /
Authors: Zafiropoulos, Christos A.
Publisher: Academia Verlag,
Year: 2015
Subjects: Socrates.; Aesop; Plato; Aesopus; Plato,; Socrates
Abstract: "This book is a study of Plato's portraiture of Socrates and of his bios philosophikos as well as of the cultural semantics that underlie it. It focuses on the introductory part of this particular dialogue (57a-61c) with particular emphasis on the repeated references to Aesop and on Socrates' reported versification of fables. The intended parallelism between Socrates and Aesop in the Phaedo, both of them charter figures for philosophical and fable discourse respectively, alongside the accentuation throughout the dialogue of Socrates' exceptional attitude in the face of death, served Plato's strategy to inscribe his model philosophos in the traditions of the unjustly murdered and posthumously exonerated and vindicated pharmakos and of heroized eminent men. It is hoped that this view of Plato's heroic portrait of Socrates as the result of a fusion of well-established, preceding cultural notions and traditions shall provide another interpretative viewpoint of Plato's work, with respect both to its literary aspect (our reading of the dialogues) and to its institutional aspect (the sociopolitics involved in the establishment of the Academy)"--
Contents: The scope and the structure of the book -- The opening scene -- The place, the time and Socrates' condition -- The last conversation and Socrates' interlocutors -- Socrates ligatus -- Socrates and Apollo -- The oracle to Chaerephon and the origins of the elenchos -- Deciphering the oracle and the voice of the daimonion -- Socrates and Apollo in the Phaedo -- Socrates somniens -- Music and the Muses -- Socrates cycneus -- The dominion of the ugly -- Aesop's life and death -- Demetrius of Phalerum -- The Grottaferrata or Perriana Life of Aesop -- Aesop in his Life -- Aesop's death at Delphi -- The death of the ugly -- Aesop as pharmakos -- The pharmakos -- Socrates as pharmakos -- Socrates and Aesop : affinities and differences in their literary portraits -- The blame poet and the pharmakos -- Heroes, poets and philosophers -- Aesop as a hero -- Plato's heroization of Socrates -- Socrates as a hero in later sources -- Socrates' statues -- The question of Socrates' heroization in the Academy -- Conclusions.