Descent of Socrates: Self-Knowledge and Cryptic Nature in the Platonic Dialogues

by Peter Warnek

Overview

Since the appearance of Plato's Dialogues, philosophers have been
preoccupied with the identity of Socrates and have maintained that successful
interpretation of the work hinges upon a clear understanding of what thoughts and
ideas can be attributed to him. In Descent of Socrates, Peter Warnek offers a new
interpretation of Plato by considering the appearance of Socrates within Plato's
work as a philosophical question. Warnek reads the Dialogues as an inquiry into the
nature of Socrates and in doing so opens up the relationship between humankind and
the natural world. Here, Socrates appears as a demonic and tragic figure whose
obsession with the task of self-knowledge transforms the history of philosophy. In
this uncompromising work, Warnek reveals the importance of the concept of nature in
the Platonic Dialogues in light of Socratic practice and the Ancient ideas that
inspire contemporary philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253111517
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	12/21/2005
Series:	Studies in Continental Thought
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	397 KB

About the Author

Peter Warnek is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Oregon. He is co-translator of Martin Heidegger's Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta 1--3
(IUP, 1995). He is a founding member of the Society for Ancient
Philosophy.

Table of Contents

<FMO>Contents<\>

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart
1. Writing Socrates1. Reading Plato with a Difference: Socrates, Beautiful and New2.
Socrates and the Retreat of Nature: Suffering a Simple Teacher of EthicsPart 2.
Dreams, Oracles, and Silenic Affirmations3. The Purest Thinker of the West and the
Older Accusations in the Apology4. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Nature,
Rhetoric, and Refutation in the Gorgias5. Silenic Wisdom in the Apology and
PhaedoPart 3. Kinship of Nature6. Teiresias in Athens: Socrates as Educator in the
Meno7. Typhonic Eros and the Place of the Phaedrus8. Truth and FriendshipAn
EndingNotesBibliographyIndex