Table Of ContentPhilosophy as Drama
i
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Philosophy as Drama
Plato’s Th inking through Dialogue
Hallvard Fossheim , Vigdis Songe-M ø ller and
Knut Å gotnes
iii
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2019
Copyright © Hallvard Fossheim, Vigdis Songe-Mø ller, Knut Å gotnes and
contributors, 2019
Hallvard Fossheim, Vigdis Songe-Mø ller and Knut Å gotnes have asserted their right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as
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Cover image: Head and other parts of a life-sized bronze statue from ca 230 BC, called the
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iv
Contents
List of Contributors vii
A note on transcribed Greek versus Greek fonts xi
Preface xiii
Introduction Knut Å gotnes, Hallvard Fossheim and Vigdis Songe-M ø ller 1
Part 1 Genre and the Philosophical Dialogue
1 Th e Whole Comedy and Tragedy of Philosophy: On Aristophanes’
Speech in Plato’s S ymposium Drew A. Hyland 15
2 A Praise of the Philosophical Written Speech? Ethics and
Philosophical Progression in Plato’s Symposium Elena Irrera 29
3 Socrates’ Appeals to Homer’s Achilles in Plato’s A pology of Socrates
and Crito Hayden W. Ausland 51
4 Plato’s Ring of Gyges and Das Leben der Anderen
Jacob Howland 79
Part 2 Virtue and Soul- shaping
5 Plato’s Inverted Th eatre: Displacing the Wisdom of the Poets
Paul Woodruff 95
6 Gods, Giants and Philosophers: On Being, Education and
Dialogue in Plato’s S ophist 245e6-249d5 Jens Kristian Larsen 107
7 Philotimia . On Rhetoric, Virtues and Honour in the S ymposium
Knut Å gotnes 123
Part 3 Reason and Irrationality
8 Th e Signifi cance of the Ambiguity of Music in Plato
Kristin Sampson 143
9 Pleasure, Perception and Images in Plato C ynthia Freeland 161
10 Th e Limits of Rationality in Plato’s Phaedo
Hallvard Fossheim 179
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Contents
Part 4 Place and Displacement
11 Place (t opos ) and Strangeness (a topia ) in the P haedrus
Erlend Breidal 191
12 Hunt: Method and Metaphor. A Reading of the Sophist
216a1-226a6 G ro R ø rstadbotten 209
13 Plato’s S ophist : A Diff erent Look J ohn Sallis 231
Index 241
List of Contributors
Hayden W. Ausland is Professor of Classics at the University of Montana. His
publications include: ‘Socrates in the Early Nineteenth Century, Come to Be Young and
Beautiful’, forthcoming in B rill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates ; ‘Th e Treatment
of Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras’, in Plato’s Protagoras. Essays on the Confrontation of
Philosophy and Sophistry (2017); ‘Th e Decline of Political Virtue in R epublic 8–9’,
Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (2013); ‘Socratic
Induction in Plato and Aristotle’, in D ialectic and Dialogue. Th e Development of Dialectic
from Plato to Aristotle (2012); ‘Pro ë mial Prolepsis in Plato’s Politeia’, S ymbolae Osloenses
(2008).
Erlend Breidal has been a philosophy teacher at the University of Bergen for more
than a decade and wrote a PhD on Plato in 2015, entitled Th e Intermediate Being of
Socratic Philosophy and its Suppression in Plato’s Th eaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman.
Hallvard Fossheim is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bergen. He has
published widely on Plato and Aristotle, focusing much of his work on their moral
psychology, with inquiries into questions of motivation, interaction and identity. He
also has interests in virtue ethics and research ethics, as well as questions of dialectic
and dialogue. He has recently co- edited the anthology Th e Quest for the Good Life:
Ancient Philosophers on Happiness (2015).
Cynthia Freeland is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Houston. She
is past president of the American Society for Aesthetics (2015–17). Her publications
include articles and books on ancient philosophy, feminist theory, fi lm theory and
aesthetics. Her book B ut Is It Art? (2001) has been translated into fi ft een languages. Her
most recent book was P ortraits and Persons (2010).
Jacob Howland is McFarlin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa. His
research focuses on ancient Greek philosophy, history, epic and tragedy; the Hebrew
Bible and the Talmud; Kierkegaard; and literary and philosophical responses to the
Holocaust and Soviet totalitarianism. His books are G laucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and
Character in Plato’s Republic (2018); P lato and the Talmud (Cambridge University
Press, 2011); K ierkegaard and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith (2006); Th e
Paradox of Political Philosophy: Socrates’ Philosophic Trial (1998); and Th e Republic: Th e
Odyssey of Philosophy (1993 and 2004).
Drew A. Hyland is Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus at Trinity College in Hartford,
CT. He has also taught graduate courses at University of Toronto, Th e New School for
vii
viii List of Contributors
Social Research, Boston University, and Suff olk University. His major research areas are
Ancient Greek Philosophy, nineteenth and twentieth century European philosophy,
and philosophy of sport. Among his major publications are F initude and Transcendence
in the Platonic Dialogues (1995), Questioning Platonism: Continental Interpretations of
Plato (2004), and P lato and the Question of Beauty (2008).
Elena Irrera is Senior Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the University of
Bologna. She is also member of Instituto ‘Lucio Anneo S é neca’ of Universidad Carlos
III de Madrid. Her research interests concern aspects of ancient philosophy and
contemporary political thought. Her publications include two books: I l bello come
causalit à metafi sica in Aristotele (Beauty as Metaphysical Causation in Aristotle, 2011)
and Sulla bellezza della vita buona. Fini e Criteri dell’agire umano in Aristotele (On the
Beauty of the Good life. Aims and Criteria of Human Agency in Aristotle, 2012), as well
as several articles on Plato’s and Aristotle’s political thought.
Jens Kristian Larsen is a Marie Sk ł odowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Bergen.
His primary area of research is ancient philosophy, with a particular emphasis on
Socratic philosophy and Plato. He also works on the reception of themes from ancient
philosophy in the phenomenological tradition and is currently co- editing an anthology
focused on this reception. His most recent published papers are ‘Measuring Humans
Against Gods: On the Digression of Plato’s Th eaetetus ’ (2019), ‘By What Is the Soul
Nourished? On the Art of the Physician of Souls in Plato’s P rotagoras ’ (2017), and ‘Plato
and Heidegger on Sophistry and Philosophy’ (2016).
Gro R ø rstadbotten teaches philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of
Bergen, Norway. She is the co- author of the books T idslinjer (Time Lines, 2008) and
Fortiede alternativer (Silenced Alternatives, 2015). Her most recent articles are ‘Turning
Towards Philosophy: A Reading of P rotagoras 309a1-314e2’, in Plato’s Protagoras.
Essays on the Confrontation of Philosophy and Sophistry (2017) and ‘Socrates’s Telling of
the Truth: A reading of the Apology 17a1-35d9’, in R eadings of Plato’s Apology of
Socrates. Defending the Philosophical Life , (2018).
John Sallis is Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He has
also held Chairs at Pennsylvania State University, Vanderbilt University, Loyola
University of Chicago, and Duquesne University. He is the author of more than twenty
books; among the most recent are L ogic of Imagination (2012), Senses of Landscape
(2015), Th e Figure of Nature (2016) and Th e Return of Nature (2016). His books have
been translated into many languages including French, German, Spanish and Chinese.
Kristin Sampson is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Bergen, Norway. She is working mainly within the areas of ancient Greek
philosophy and feminist philosophy, with a special focus on Plato and early Greek
thinking previous to him. Her later publications on Plato include articles on the S ophist
(2015), the P rotagoras (2017), and the A pology (2018).
List of Contributors ix
Vigdis Songe-Mø l ler is Professor Emerita at the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Bergen, Norway. Her area of research is ancient Greek philosophy,
especially the pre-Socratics and Plato, and Greek tragedy, as well as contemporary
feminist philosophy. She is the author of Philosophy Without Women. Th e Birth of
Sexism in Western Th ought (2002) and co- author of S exuality, Death and the Feminine.
Philosophies of Embodiment (2010).
Paul Woodruff teaches philosophy and classics at the University of Texas at Austin. He
has been working on ancient and modern theories of the virtues. His best- known book
is Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (2nd edition, 2014). He has recently edited a
volume of essays by philosophers on Oedipus in the plays of Sophocles.
Knut Å gotnes is Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Bergen. His main
interests are Plato and Aristotle, especially the dramatic form of Plato’s dialogues and
his ethics. Recent papers are ‘Plato’s Socrates in the Apology: Speaking in Two Voices’
in Readings of Plato’s Apology of Socrates. Defending the Philosophical Life (2018), and
‘Socrates’ Sophisticated Attack on Protagoras’ in Plato’s Protagoras. Essays on the
confrontation of Philosophy and Sophistry (2017).
