Virtues of Authenticity ESSAYS ON PLATO AND SOCRATES ...

Virtues of Authenticity
ESSAYS ON PLATO AND
SOCRATES
Alexander
Nehamas
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
tX
xiii
xv
I. Socrates: Questions of Goodness and Method
ONE
Meno's
Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher
Two
Socratic Intellectualism
THREE
What Did Socrates Teach and to Whom Did He Teach It?
FOUR
Voices of Silence: On Gregory Vlastos's Socrates
FIVE
Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato's Demarcation of
Philosophy from Sophistry
3
27
59
83
108
II. Plato: Questions of Metaphysics and Epistemology
SIX
On Parmenides'
Three Ways of Inquiry
SEVEN
Plato on the Imperfection of the Sensible World (,41Y~ '1 r&~ UPjPl?lrt(j)
EIGHT
Confusing Universals and Particulars in Plato's Early Dialogues
NINE
Self-Predication and Plato's Theory of Forms
TEN
Participation and Predication in Plato's Later Thought
ELEVEN
Episteme and Logos in Plato's Later Thought
125
138
159
176
196
224

Vlll
TWELVE
Plato on Imitation
CONTENTS
III. Plato: Questions of Beauty and the Arts
ThIRTEEN
Plato and the Mass Media
FOURTEEN
The Symposium
FIFTEEN
The Republic
SIXTEEN
The Phaedrus
Index of Passages Cited
General Index
and Poetry in Republic X
IV: Plato: Individual
Works
251
279
303
316
329
359
365
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ThE ESSAYScollected here were written over roughly the past twenty-five
years. They cover a number ofissues raised by Plato's writing, and I would
never have been able to compose them if it had not been for the help,
criticism, and encouragement I received from all those named in various
notes throughout this volume, and others besides. Some must also be
named here.
Gregory Vlastos, to whom these essays are dedicated, stands behind
many of the questions I have asked of Plato so far. My ideas on Socrates
and on Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language
were sparked by his own brilliant work. My answers have not always been
the same as his, but the questions, and, by and large, the framework within
which I have tried to answer them, have been established by him and are
common to us both. I would hope that our divergences, particularly in
what he probably would have described as my more "literary" approach to
Plato's treatment of Socrates and to the nature of the dialogues as a whole,
are only instances of what Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote that one
repays a teacher badly if one always remains only a pupil. I owe him an
immense debt of gratitude.
Since 1971, I have had the good fortune to have always been a friend
and, for most of that time as well, a colleague of John Cooper. We have
discussed Greek philosophy on innumerable occasions, in public and in
private. We have often disagreed, but I have learned more from his remarkable
dialectical ability and his even more remarkable persistence in
the pursuit of philosophical understanding than from anyone else. He has
established for me the standards for the clear, textured, productive, and
philosophical interpretation of all the texts and issues that concern us in
common and many that do not. His own collected essays, which are to
appear at about the same time as this volume, represent philosophical
thinking of a level to which it is as easy to aspire as it is difficult to attain.
Paul Guyer, whose own interests lie far from the Greek authors, but who
has a sense of the philosophical importance of the history of philosophy,
has also been a friend and, on two distinct occasions, a colleague during
this period. He has been the most generous and sympathetic of listeners,
always able and willing to make the effort to translate the often abstruse
discussions of classical scholars and to translate them into clear and philosophically
significant terms. He has given me a rare gift-a sense that
philosophy is unified, that we need not remain isolated each within our
own little area, and that the effort to cross the limits of the many narrow