A01=William H. F. Altman
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ancient literature
ancient philosophy
Aristotle
Author_William H. F. Altman
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBB
Category=HP
Category=HPCA
Category=QD
Category=QDHA
Charmides
Christopher Rowe
Classical studies
Classics
Cleitophon
continental philosophy
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eudemonism
Euthydemus
Gorgias
Gregory Vlastos
Laches
Language_English
Lysis
metaphysics
PA=Available
philosophy of education
Plato the teacher
political philosophy
Price_€100 and above
PS=Active
Reading Order
Republic
Socrates
Socratic
softlaunch
Terry Penner
Theages
Product details
- ISBN 9781498574617
- Weight: 1125g
- Dimensions: 159 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 29 Nov 2018
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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At the crisis of his Republic, Plato asks us to imagine what could possibly motivate a philosopher to return to the Cave voluntarily for the benefit of others and at the expense of her own personal happiness. This book shows how Plato has prepared us, his students, to recognize that the sun-like Idea of the Good is an infinitely greater object of serious philosophical concern than what is merely good for me, and thus why neither Plato nor his Socrates are eudaemonists, as Aristotle unquestionably was. With the transcendent Idea of Beauty having been made manifest through Socrates and Diotima, the dialogues between Symposium and Republic—Lysis, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Gorgias, Theages, Meno, and Cleitophon— prepare the reader to make the final leap into Platonism, a soul-stirring idealism that presupposes the student’s inborn awareness that there is nothing just, noble, or beautiful about maximizing one’s own good. While perfectly capable of making the majority of his readers believe that he endorses the harmless claim that it is advantageous to be just and thus that we will always fare well by doing well, Plato trains his best students to recognize the deliberate fallacies and shortcuts that underwrite these claims, and thus to look beyond their own happiness by the time they reach the Allegory of the Cave, the culmination of a carefully prepared Ascent to the Good.
William H. F. Altman,having been persuaded by Plato’s Republic that Justice requires the philosopher to go back down into the Cave, has devoted his professional life to the cause of public education. Since retiring in 2013, he has been working as an independent scholar on the continuation of Plato the Teacher (2012).
