In Praise of Recklessness

Abstract

Catherine Zuckert's Plato's Philosophers argues that the central concern of the Platonic dialogues, read as a single corpus, is to examine the character of philosophy as represented in the activities of five different Platonic characters. The activity of philosophy is most clearly triangulated by showing the advantages and limitations of Socratic philosophy as set against the practices of others laying claim to that title. This article endorses Zuckert's interpretation while raising questions concerning Socrates' eventual philosophic status, the relationship between philosophy and irony, and the standing of philosophy as a social practice.     

Homeric Resonances

Abstract

This “Homeric” appreciation of Catherine Zuckert's Plato's Philosophers focuses on the significance of the revised chronology for reading the Platonic dialogues and how this changes the conventional understanding of the relation between Plato and Socrates: Plato become Socrates' biographer, not his replacement.     

Cropsey on Plato and the Unity of Philosophy

Abstract

Cropsey's book, Plato's World, contains his longest and most sustained reflections on a set of Platonic dialogues, but it is not the first work he published on Plato or the last he intended to write. His last collection of essays, On Humanity's Intensive Introspection, shows that in his writings on Plato Cropsey was attempting to answer a broader question: What is philosophy?     

Two Theories of Toleration: Locke versus Mill

Abstract

In her book, Zuckert presents a new interpretation of the Platonic corpus based on the internal dramatic chronology of all the dialogues. According to Zuckert, once the dialogues are ordered in this way, then it is possible to understand Plato's story of the development of Socratic philosophy, especially in relation to the other non-Socratic philosophers: Parmenides, Timaeus, the Eleatic Stranger, and the Athenian Stranger. For Plato, Socratic philosophy is superior to these other types of philosophy because of its acute understanding of both the limitations and the erotic character of human knowledge. It is only with his account of erôs in the Symposium that Socrates was able to account for the ways in which the eternal and intelligible ideas of the noble, the just, and the good could come to be exemplified in the life of mortal human beings, via the cooperative practice of philosophic virtue.     

A Revolution in Plato Scholarship

Abstract

Catherine Zuckert's new book on Plato is a monumental work that should revolutionize Plato scholarship. I argue that its principal claims about ordering Plato's dialogues according to their dramatic chronology and about the development of Socrates in relation to Plato's other philosophers are highly plausible and powerfully presented. The book also makes the case for Socrates as “Plato's hero” whose greatness lies in understanding the human realm of the noble and the good independently of cosmology or metaphysics; and it challenges us to ask if Plato and Catherine Zuckert embrace this model of Socratic philosophy as the highest and happiest way of life.     

The Presidency and the News Media

Abstract

Leo Strauss, often considered a critic of modernity, is famous for his claim that Machiavelli, in turning away from the classical tradition, is its originator. Yet his “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero” presents a concise indictment of that tradition and a remarkably sympathetic account of the political and philosophic motives that led to the rupture. In light of this tension, Strauss's interest in Xenophon appears as a useful counterweight to both.     

Between the General and the Particular: Reminiscences of Plato's Timaeus in Piotr Rawicz's Le sang du ciel

Piotr Rawicz's novel Le sang du ciel depicts a Jewish protagonist, Boris, who manages to escape the Nazi genocide and, as a result, doubts his own legitimacy to bear witness to the other Jews' fate during that period. His difficult relationships with the Jewish community find expression in an intertextual construction, founded on the ontocosmology developed in Plato's Timaeus. Boris uses—and sometimes perverts—Plato's world vision both to measure his own inauthenticity and to define new ways of creating a state of "fusion" with the "beings" surrounding him. Another technique to overcome Boris's inability to testify is the use of a frame narrative, which, moreover, sheds new light on the protagonist's identity as a witness.     

De Quelques présents latins

Plato and Xenophon ‐ contrary to Dover's interpretation of the Clouds ‐ provide the background to Aristophanes’ caricature of Socrates: viewed against that background, Aristophanes’ jokes in the Clouds lose their obscurity, his comedy gains on poignancy and artistic unity; Plato's and Xenophon's Socrates regains historicity.     

Teaching Political Science in China: Observations and Suggestions from a Foreign Visitor

Abstract

In responding to the other participants in the Symposium on Plato's Philosophers I attempt to clarify the reasons for, and the results of, my attempt to bring out the interrelations among the dialogues in order to determine what Plato thought. Recognizing that the indications of the dramatic dates of some the dialogues are controversial, I argue that the dates point to an over-arching narrative–the story of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. Plato uses his other philosophers—the Athenian Stranger, Parmenides, Timaeus, and the Eleatic Stranger—to bring out the problems that gave rise to Socratic philosophy and the limitations of his responses. Plato makes Socrates his “hero,” because Socrates provides the best account of the human beings who engage in the search for wisdom. By contrasting him with the other philosophers, Plato dramatizes the insoluble problems that make philosophy always a search for wisdom.     

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ABSTRACT

This article deals with the application of Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural analysis of myths to the Hebrew Bible. By comparing the stories of Abraham and Moses with the epic of the Argonauts, and by comparing Plato's ideal State in the Laws with the laws and organisation of biblical Is-rael, I suggest that the books from Genesis to Kings were written by one sin-gle writer living during the Hellenistic era.     

Proëmial Prolepsis in Plato's Politeia

A recently proposed proleptic, or anticipatory reading of the Platonic dialogues insufficiently modifies the conventional doctrinal-developmental reading of these. Fuller literary consideration of the way Republic 1 anticipates the following books suggests how a genuine appreciation of a principle previously applied to Aeschylean drama invites deeper re-assessment both of Plato's philosophical manner of writing and of his political philosophy.     

Liberty and Community: A Liberal Resolution

Much has been written in the last few years regarding Leo Strauss's political attachments, especially with respect to his purported influence over American neoconservatives. Problematically, Strauss scrupulously avoided explicit ideological entanglements, rarely addressed particular policy debates, and left little guidance for the statesman or thoughtful commentator interested in drawing practical political inferences from his philosophical writing. To add further ambiguity to already muddy waters, Strauss's discussion of the relation between prudence and philosophic insight coupled with the many and incompatible roles he assigns to the philosopher within the city make it unclear if there is anything at all that philosophy can teach us of political significance. The following essay aims to explain Strauss's view of the political function of philosophy in light of his distinction between classic and modern utopianism and what he calls in On Tyranny "philosophic politics."     

Comments on Yoram Hazony,The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture

Hazony's insightful book advances three theses: (1) The Tanakh, the canonical Hebrew Scripture, is coherent, by virtue of its distinctive vision of the Whole and of the Israelite People's special place in it. (2) The Tanakh is a philosophic as well as a religious text. (3) The study of the Tanakh should find a home in departments of philosophy and political science as well as religion or religious studies. Granting the first and third points, we may raise questions about the second: Does philosophy require a concept of Nature qua Necessity, which is at odds with the Scriptural God's radical freedom? Does Hazony, to present the Tanakh as philosophic, overrationalize it, and therewith offer interpretations that, although fruitful and inspiring, fall wide of the mark? Of particular interest are his translation of the Hebrew word lev, literally “heart,” as “mind”; his sketches of five of the Patriarch Jacob's sons as politically relevant character types; and especially his take on the Patriarch Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Isaac, which understates this text's poignancy and wonder. An alternative reading reveals the Book of Genesis as a set of cautionary tales about the hazards of unaided human reason, for which the Mosaic Law provides a needed corrective. On the other hand, Hazony should not be judged too harshly for his critical comments on a dogmatic strand (but only a strand) of Christian thinking that he associates with the early Church Father Tertullian.     

Leo Strauss's “On Classical Political Philosophy”

Abstract

Leo Strauss's “On Classical Political Philosophy” contrasts classical political philosophy with modern political philosophy and present-day political science. Strauss stresses two seemingly contrary features of classical political philosophy: its direct relation to political life and its transcendence of political life. Its direct relation to political life prevented it from taking for granted the necessity and possibility of political philosophy. The classical political philosopher appears as good citizen, umpire among the parties, or ultimately teacher of lawgivers. He was compelled to transcend political life when he realized its ultimate aim can be reached only by the philosophic life. Philosophy must concern itself with political life, yet political philosophy's highest subject must be the philosophic life.     

Rethinking the Polis: Implications of Heidegger's questioning the political

Heidegger's thought has, in recent years, been relentlessly examined for glimpses of the political. This paper approaches that debate by looking at one of themes of Heidegger's lectures during the Nazi years: one which explicitly questions the notion of the political itself. This questioning, through a rethinking of the Greek word πóλις [polis], is a result of Heidegger's retreat from his own political involvement. Heidegger's active political career was theoretically underpinned by his interpretation of Plato's call for philosopher-kings: his rethinking is important in understanding his turn away from Nazism. In his rethinking Heidegger suggests that looking at the polis with our modern, political, eyes does not give us fundamental insights into the meaning of this word. Heidegger looks to the choral ode in Sophocles' Antigone, and focuses on a line which begins “hypsipolis apolis”. Through a detailed reading, Heidegger suggests that polis should be understood not as “city” or “state” but as “site”, the historical site of being. We cannot use our modern understanding of politics to understand the polis, but we can use our understanding of polis to rethink the notion of the political. The political, means relating to the site of abode of human history, and is therefore primarily spatial, or better, platial. Such an understanding allows us to understand Heidegger's work on technology from a better position; to distance ourselves from the modern, Schmittian notion of the political; and to rethink the principle concepts of politics with due attendance to the role of space, or place.     

Liberal Education and the Study of Politics in a Catholic University

Abstract

Rousseau seems to exemplify an understanding of the philosophic life in general and the quest for self-knowledge in particular as a solitary enterprise. An examination of the Confessions, however, reveals that Rousseau holds that the most important discoveries about ourselves are made not in solitude, but with others. It is furthermore the case that, for Rousseau, the philosophic quest to truly know oneself entails the public articulation of one's self-understanding as a part of a comprehensive account of human things, a social activity fraught with political implications. Therefore, the problem of self-knowledge in Rousseau's thought should be understood as a social and political problem (albeit not a problem with a political solution). That this is so even for the famously solitary Rousseau tells us something important both about the thought of that philosopher and about the quest for self-knowledge as such.     

There is Something of One (God): Lacan and Political Theology

Abstract

For both Lacan and Badiou, Plato's Parmenides is a primary locus for the question of the One. Moreover, for both Lacan and Badiou, the One ultimately takes on political valence, as key to the problematics of representation and the discursive conditions of collectivity. However, unlike Badiou, Lacan's exploration of the question of One also passes through theology— through what I am calling "something of One God"— and I want to argue that it is only by bringing the One into explicit relationship with those monotheistic issues that we can fully understand its implications for analytic discourse and political life. Lacan's thinking on the "something of One" takes a necessary swerve back through a theological problematic, and in the process articulates the terms of a political theology, an essential conjunction of political and religious understandings of sovereignty, subjectivity and collectivity.