Trials of Reason
Subtitle: Plato and the Crafting of Philosophy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Oxford University Press
Published: December 18, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 296
ISBN-13: 9780195327328
Subjects: Literary studies: general; Literary Criticism; Philosophy; Hellenic languages; History & Surveys - Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism & Collections / Ancient & Classical; Ancient and Classical; Philosophy, Ancient; Plato
Description: "Scholarship on Plato's dialogues persistently divides its focus between the dramatic or literary and the philosophical or argumentative dimensions of the texts. But this hermeneutic division of labor is naive, for Plato's arguments are embedded in dramatic dialogues and developed through complex, largely informal exchanges between literary characters. Consequently, it is questionable how readers can even attribute arguments and theses to the author himself. The answer lies in transcending the scholarly divide and integrating the literary and philosophical dimensions of the texts. This is the task of Trials of Reason." "The study focuses on a set of fourteen so-called early dialogues, beginning with a methodological framework that explains how to integrate the argumentation and the drama in these texts. Unlike most canonical philosophical works, the early dialogues do not merely express the results of the practice of philosophy. Rather, they dramatize philosophy as a kind of motivation, the desire for knowledge of goodness, and as a discursive practice motivated by this desire and ideally governed by reason. They also dramatize the trails to which desire and reason are subject, that is the difficulties of realizing philosophy as a form of motivation a practice, and an epistemic achievement. In short, Trials of Reason argues that Plato's early dialogues are as much works of metaphilosophy as philosophy itself."--Jacket.