Ascent to the Beautiful

Plato the Teacher and the Pre-Republic Dialogues from Protagoras to Symposium

William H. F. Altman (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

618 Seiten

2020
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-1-7936-1595-4 (ISBN)

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With Ascent to the Beautiful, William H. F. Altman completes his five-volume reconstruction of the Reading Order of the Platonic dialogues. Although published last, this book covers Plato’s elementary dialogues, grappling from the start with F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who created an enduring prejudice against the works Plato wrote for beginners. Recognized in antiquity as the place to begin, Alcibiades Major was banished from the canon but it was not alone: with the exception of Protagoras and Symposium, Schleiermacher rejected as inauthentic all seven of the dialogues this book places between them. In order to prove their authenticity, Altman illuminates their interconnections and shows how each prepares the student to move beyond self-interest to gallantry, and thus from the doctrinal intellectualism Aristotle found in Protagoras to the emergence of philosophy as intermediate between wisdom and ignorance in Symposium en route to Diotima’s ascent to the transcendent Beautiful. Based on the hypothesis that it was his own eminently teachable dialogues that Plato taught—and bequeathed to posterity as his Academy’s eternal curriculum—Ascent to the Beautiful helps the reader to imagine the Academy as a school and to find in Plato the brilliant teacher who built on Homer, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

William Henry Furness Altman devoted his professional life to the cause of public education; since retiring in 2013, he has been working as an independent scholar on the continuation of Plato the Teacher.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface: Plato the Teacher and Reading Order

Introduction: Schleiermacher and Plato

1 Protagoras as Gateway

§1. Protagoras before Alcibiades

§2. Xenophon before Plato

§3. Taking the Measure of Protagoras

§4. Interpreting the Misinterpretation of Simonides

2 The Elementary Dialogues: the Alcibiades dyad and Lovers

§5. The Εὖ Πράττειν Fallacy

§6. The More Perfect Mirror

§7. Between Alcibiades and Lovers

3 Hippias Major: Between Protagoras and Symposium

§8. Reading Order and Authenticity

§9. Plato’s pons asinorum

§10. Deceiving with the Double

4 The Musical Dialogues: Hippias Minor, Ion, and Menexenus

§11. Deception Defended?

§12. Inspired Interpretation?

§13. Rhetoric Rejected?

5 Symposium as τέλος

§14. Integrating Symposium

§15. History and Tragedy

§16. Alcestis, Codrus, and Achilles

§17. Catching Sight of the Sea

Epilogue: Imagining Plato’s Academy

Bibliography

Index

Index locorum

Index verborum

About the Author

Erscheinungsdatum	10.05.2021
Verlagsort	Lanham, MD
Sprache	englisch
Maße	162 x 228 mm
Gewicht	1089 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie Altertum / Antike
ISBN-10	1-7936-1595-0 / 1793615950
ISBN-13	978-1-7936-1595-4 / 9781793615954
Zustand	Neuware