Vol. 15 (2015): Plato Journal #15

The present volume contains six articles, two of which are dedicated to Plato’s Symposium and represent revised versions of papers presented at the X Symposium Platonicum in Pisa in July 2013. The volume also contains articles on Socrates in Plato’s dialogues, on the preface of the Crito, on the preface of the Timaeus, and on the Phaedrus, along with two reviews of recent publications. We start with an article by Thomas C. Brickhouse (Lynchburg College, Virginia) and Nicholas D. Smith (Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregorn) on ‘Socrates on the Emotions’. The article begins with the analysis of a passage in Plato’s Protagoras, which indicates, according some scholars, that Socrates believes that the only way to change how others feel about things is to engage them in rational discourse. Brickhouse and Smith show, on the contrary, that Socrates can consistently be a cognitivist about emotion, while also recognizing different etiologies of belief and appealing to non-rational strategies for dealing with emotions. In the article ‘Socrates, wake up! An analysis and exegesis of the “preface” in Plato’s Crito’ (43a1-b9) Yosef Z. Liebersohn (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) offers a close analysis of the first scene of Plato’s Crito. Liebersohn argues that the two apparently innocent questions Socrates asks at the beginning of the Crito are an essential part of the philosophical discussion, by showing that they anticipate Crito’s main problems in the dialogue. In the third article Nathalie Nercam (Independent Scholar, Île-de-France) deals with ‘L’introduction problématique du Timée (17a-27a)’. The aim of the article is to reconsider the prologue of the Timaeus in order to show that with this preface Plato invites the reader to demystify the discourses of the Greek political elite of the fifth century B.C. According to Nercam, the chôra of Critias’ story, compared with Republic, is in fact the phobic projection of the aristocracy’s desires. Christopher Moore (The Pennsylvania State University) is the author of the fourth article in the present volume: ‘Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus’. Moore identifies in the Phaedrus fourteen remarks about philosophy and argues, in opposition to other scholars, that none of them are parodies of Isocrates’ competing definition of philosophy. He then reassesses the Republic-inspired view that philosophy refers essentially to contemplation of the Forms, arguing that the term mainly refers to conversations that aim at mutual self-improvement.