The Continuum Companion to Plato

by Gerald A. Press (Editor)

Overview

Plato, mathematician, philosopher and founder of the Academy in Athens, is, together with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, universally considered to have laid the foundations of Western philosophy. His philosophical dialogues remain among the most widely read and influential of all philosophical texts and his enduring influence on virtually every area of philosophical enterprise cannot be exaggerated.

This comprehensive and accessible guide to Plato's life and times includes more than 140 entries, written by a team of leading experts in the field of ancient philosophy, covering every aspect of Plato's thought. The Companion presents details of Plato's life, historical, philosophical and literary context, synopses of all the dialogues attributed to Plato, a comprehensive overview of the various features, themes and topics apparent in the dialogues, and a thorough account of his enduring influence and the various interpretative approaches applied to his thought throughout the history of philosophy. This is an essential reference tool for anyone working in the field of ancient philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826435354
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/28/2012
Series:	Bloomsbury Companions
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Gerald A. Press is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, USA, and has published widely on Plato.

Table of Contents

Listof Contributors \ Acknowledgements \ List of Abbreviations \ Introduction \ PartI: Plato's Life, Historical, Literary and Philosophic Context\ Life of Plato \ Aristophanes andintellectuals \ Education \ Eleatics \ Isocrates and Logography \ Orality andLiteracy \ Poetry (epic and lyric) \ Presocratics \ Pythagoreans \ Rhetoric andspeech-making \ Socrates (historical) \ Socratics other than Plato) \ Sophists\ Part II: The Dialogues \The Platonic Corpus and ManuscriptTradition \ Alcibiades \ Apology\ Charmides \ Clitophon \ Cratylus \ Crito \ Dubious and spurious dialogues(Alcibiades II, Hipparchus, Minos, Rival Lovers, Axiochus, Definitions, OnJustice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Eryxias, Sisyphus) \ Euthydemus \ Euthyphro \ Gorgias \ Hippias Major \ Hippias Minor \ Ion\ Laches \ Laws \ Letters \ Lysis \ Menexenus \ Meno \ Parmenides \ Phaedo \Phaedrus \ Philebus \ Politicus (Statesman) \ Protagoras \ Republic \ Sophist \ Symposium \ Theaetetus \ Theages \ Timaeus-Critias\ Part III: Special Features of the Dialogues \ Anonymity \ Characters\ Drama \ History \ Humor \Irony \ Language \ Literary composition \ Musical structure \ Myths and stories\ Pedagogical structure \Pedimental structure \ Play and seriousness \ Proleptic composition \ Socrates(the character) \ Part IV: Concepts, Themes and Topics treated in theDialogues \ Aesthetics \ Akrasia \ Antilogy and eristic \ Appearance andreality \ Art \ Beauty \ Being and becoming \ Causality \ Cave \ City \ Cosmos\ Daimon \ Death \ Desire \ Dialectic \ Divided Line \ Education \ Elenchus \ Epistemology\ Ethics \ Excellence \ Forms \ Friendship \ Goodness \ Happiness \ Image \Imitation \ Inspiration \ Intellectualism \ Justice \ Language \ Law \ Logic \logos Account \ Love \ Madness and possession\ Mathematics \ Medicine \ Method \ Music \ Myth \ Nature \ Non-propositionalknowledge \ One, the \ Ontology \ Paederasteia \ Participation \ Perception andsensation \ Philosophy and the philosopher \ Piety \ Pleasure \ Poetry \ Reason \ Recollection \ Rhetoric\ Self-knowledge \ Sophists \ Soul \ Sun simile \ Theology \ Vision \ Women \Writing \ Part V: Later Reception, Interpretation and Influence \ The Ancient World \ Ancient Hermeneutics\ Aristotle and Plato \ Academy of Athens, Ancient History of \ Ancient JewishPlatonism \ Neoplatonism and its diaspora \ TheMiddle Ages and Renaissance \ Medieval Islamic Platonism \ Medieval Jewish Platonism\ Medieval Christian Platonism \ Renaissance Platonism \ Cambridge Platonism \ Modern and Contemporary Philosophy \ Earlymodern philosophy: from Descartes to Berkeley\ Nineteenth-century idealisms \ Nineteenth Century Plato scholarship \Developmentalism \ Compositional chronology \ Analytic approaches \ Vlastosianapproaches \ Continental approaches \ Straussian approaches \ Plato's‘Unwritten doctrines' \ Esoterism \ The Tübingen Approach \ Anti-Platonism,ancient to modern
Bibliography \ Index of Names (other than Plato andSocrates) \ Index of Topics