Plato’s Theaetetus 4
PLATO’S THEAETETUS 4 JUDITH STOVE From Section 166, Socrates now assumes the persona of the late Protagoras, and gives a long speech (until 168c). It’s pretty funny. He perfectly reproduces the ‘more in sorrow than in anger,’ pompous, demeanour which we might associate with such a senior sophist. There are rhetorical questions and lots of […]
Plato’s Theaetetus 3
Plato’s Theaetetus 3 JUDITH STOVE Socrates sums up, that motion is beneficial to body and soul, and inaction the opposite. To illustrate, he recalls the image in Homer’s Iliad VIII.17-27, in which Zeus boasts that he could tie up the earth with a golden cord and suspend it from the top of Mount Olympus – […]
Plato’s Theaetetus 2
Plato’s Theaetetus 2 JUDITH STOVE Theaetetus, who we know from the opening scenes of the dialogue is a young man of rare courage, rises to the challenge. At once, he asserts that a person who knows something perceives that he knows it, and so ‘as it appears at present (hōs ge nuni phainetai), knowledge is […]
Plato’s Theaetetus 1
Plato’s Theaetetus 1 JUDITH STOVE Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus is considered one of the key works in the Western philosophical tradition dealing with epistemology, or how we know things. It was my introduction to the Platonic tradition, along with Republic, and – alas – in neither case was much of an impression, to use the Stoic […]
Plato’s Meno 4 (Final)
Plato’s Meno 4 – Final JUDITH STOVE Encouraging Meno, Socrates proposes a thorough investigation of virtue. Once again, the question arises: can virtue be taught? If it is a kind of knowledge, then the answer will be yes (87c). More questions and answers emerge: “So virtue is something beneficial? (Meno) That necessarily follows from what […]
Plato’s Meno 3
Plato’s Meno 3 JUDITH STOVE Socrates claims to be even more confused than Meno is. ‘I myself do not have the answer when I perplex others, but I am more perplexed than anyone when I cause perplexity in others’ (80c). But Meno protests – and this problem is sometimes called ‘the Meno paradox’ – that […]
Plato’s Meno 2
Plato’s Meno 2 JUDITH STOVE August 4, 2022 If you’re a parent, you’ll readily be able to think about what kind of behaviour you’d like to see in your child or children. If you’re not a parent, perhaps treat this as a thought-experiment. First off, parents say that they want their child to be happy. […]
Plato’s Meno 1
As a quick scan of Plato’s complete works will indicate, there are many dialogues to choose from, and everyone has their personal favourites. Meno wasn’t one of mine in the past, but more recently I have come to love it.
Why Read Plato?
WHY READ PLATO? JUDITH STOVE Roosevelt Montás, now a lecturer at Columbia University, has described how, as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic in the 1980s, he found some volumes of Shakespeare and Plato thrown away beside the street in New York. In my case, the great treasure I found was a set of […]
