The Teleology of Action in Plato's Republic

The Teleology of Action in Plato's Republic PDF Author: Andrew Payne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198799020
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
In many discussions of ancient philosophy, teleology is acknowledged as an important theme. How do we act for a particular end or purpose? One common answer describes humans as acting with the intention of achieving a goal. A person selects particular actions with the thought that these actions will lead to that goal. Andrew Payne accepts that this is one good answer to our question but proposes that it is not the only one. In Plato's Republic, Socrates appeals to a different understanding of how humans act for the sake of ends as they live together in political communities and pursue knowledge. As they carry out activities that are necessary for human flourishing, their actions can produce unintended results that signal the full completion of human capacities. For example, performing the actions of a just individual can help promote the establishment of a just society as an unintended result. Such unintended results qualify as ends or purposes of human action. This volume fully explores this functional teleology of action in Plato's Republic.

The Teleology of Action in Plato's Republic

The Teleology of Action in Plato's Republic PDF Author: Andrew Payne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198799020
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book

Book Description
In many discussions of ancient philosophy, teleology is acknowledged as an important theme. How do we act for a particular end or purpose? One common answer describes humans as acting with the intention of achieving a goal. A person selects particular actions with the thought that these actions will lead to that goal. Andrew Payne accepts that this is one good answer to our question but proposes that it is not the only one. In Plato's Republic, Socrates appeals to a different understanding of how humans act for the sake of ends as they live together in political communities and pursue knowledge. As they carry out activities that are necessary for human flourishing, their actions can produce unintended results that signal the full completion of human capacities. For example, performing the actions of a just individual can help promote the establishment of a just society as an unintended result. Such unintended results qualify as ends or purposes of human action. This volume fully explores this functional teleology of action in Plato's Republic.

The Teleology of Action in Plato's Republic

The Teleology of Action in Plato's Republic PDF Author: Andrew Payne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192536699
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In many discussions of ancient philosophy, teleology is acknowledged as an important theme. How do we act for a particular end or purpose? One common answer describes humans as acting with the intention of achieving a goal. A person selects particular actions with the thought that these actions will lead to that goal. Andrew Payne accepts that this is one good answer to our question but proposes that it is not the only one. In Plato's Republic, Socrates appeals to a different understanding of how humans act for the sake of ends as they live together in political communities and pursue knowledge. As they carry out activities that are necessary for human flourishing, their actions can produce unintended results that signal the full completion of human capacities. For example, performing the actions of a just individual can help promote the establishment of a just society as an unintended result. Such unintended results qualify as ends or purposes of human action. This volume fully explores this functional teleology of action in Plato's Republic.

Socrates' Second Sailing

Socrates' Second Sailing PDF Author: Seth Benardete
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226042448
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
In this section-by-section commentary, Benardete argues that Plato's Republic is a holistic analysis of the beautiful, the good, and the just. This book provides a fresh interpretation of the Republic and a new understanding of philosophy as practiced by Plato and Socrates. "Cryptic allusions, startling paradoxes, new questions . . . all work to give brilliant new insights into the Platonic text."—Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Political Theory

Plato on Justice and Power

Plato on Justice and Power PDF Author: Kimon Lycos
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349084859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Book 1 of Plato's Republic is often treated as a merely negative prelude to the theory of justice presented in the main body of that book. This study argues that, though an introduction to later ideas, Book 1 has its own positive theme and function: to press for the acceptance of a certain perspective on justice that is opposed to conventional interpretations of it. This perspective requires that justice be seen as 'internal' to the power human beings have to render things (including themselves and their societies) good. The analysis of Plato's dramatic characterisation, as well as the discussion of Socrates' arguments, is guided by the thought that they form aspects of a complex overall strategy through which Plato hopes to overcome the resistance of his contemporaries to the 'Socratic' perspective on justice.

Cooperative Flourishing in Plato’s 'Republic'

Cooperative Flourishing in Plato’s 'Republic' PDF Author: Carolina Araújo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350257052
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In this pathbreaking interpretation of Plato's foundational text of political philosophy, Carolina Araújo reveals how the Republic remains ripe for an interpretation grounded in notions of cooperation, flourishing and justice relevant to the diversity of contemporary life. Plato's Republic has the Greek name of Politeia that Araújo translates as “the way of life of the citizens,” not “the State” or “the form of government” as it more traditionally rendered. Plato's treatise, Politeia, depicts the rich array of patterns emerging from human interaction and enquires into the best amongst them. Cooperative Flourishing in Plato's Republic returns to these important questions about society – how to live with a vast diversity of personalities, with different interests and abilities, all of them trying to flourish – and asks how best can we share our environment? With rigorous philosophical analysis of the Greek text, accompanied by original translations of the most important passages, Araújo upends mainstream scholarship to progress Socrates' “bottom-up” view of politics and rejects previous readings of the Republic as a proto-totalitarian text, psychological study or lengthy analogy. By defending a theory of Platonic justice that is rooted in cooperative flourishing, the public education of all citizens and the contribution of philosophers to political life, “the beautiful city”, which Plato called Kallipolis, emerges as a hopeful possibility.

The Republic

The Republic PDF Author: Plato
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Book Description
"The Republic" is a Socratic dialogue, authored by the famed Greek Philosopher Plato around 375 BC, concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. It is Plato's best-known work, and one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically. In the dialogue, Socrates discusses the meaning of justice and whether the just man is happier than the unjust man with various Athenians and foreigners. They consider the natures of existing regimes and then propose a series of different, hypothetical cities in comparison, culminating in Kallipolis, a utopian city-state ruled by a philosopher-king. They also discuss the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the role of the philosopher and of poetry in society. The dialogue's setting seems to be during the Peloponnesian War.

Summoning Knowledge in Plato's Republic

Summoning Knowledge in Plato's Republic PDF Author: Nicholas D. Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192580612
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Nicholas D. Smith presents an original interpretation of the Republic, considering it to be a book about knowledge and education. Over the course of Summoning Knowledge in Plato's Republic, he argues for four main theses. Firstly, the Republic is not just a work that has a lot to say about education; it is a book that depicts Socrates as attempting to engage his interlocutors in such a way as to help to educate them and also engages us, the readers, in a way that helps to educate us. Secondly, Plato does not suppose that education, properly understood, should have as its primary aim putting knowledge into souls that do not already have it. Instead, the education Plato discusses, represents occurring between Socrates and his interlocutors, and hopes to achieve in his readers is one that aims to arouse the power of knowledge in us and then to begin to train that power always to engage with what is more real, rather than what is less real. Thirdly, Plato's conception of knowledge is not the one typically presented in contemporary epistemology. It is, rather, the power of conceptualization by the use of exemplars. And finally, Plato engages this power of knowledge in the Republic in a way he represents as only a kind of second-best way to engage knowledge - and not as the best way, which would be dialectic. Instead, Plato uses images that summon the power of knowledge to begin the process by which the power may become fully realized.

A Wolf in the City

A Wolf in the City PDF Author: Cinzia Arruzza
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190678860
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The problem of tyranny preoccupied Plato, and its discussion both begins and ends his famous Republic. Though philosophers have mined the Republic for millennia, Cinzia Arruzza is the first to devote a full book to the study of tyranny and of the tyrant's soul in Plato's Republic. In A Wolf in the City, Arruzza argues that Plato's critique of tyranny intervenes in an ancient debate concerning the sources of the crisis of Athenian democracy and the relation between political leaders and demos in the last decades of the fifth century BCE. Arruzza shows that Plato's critique of tyranny should not be taken as veiled criticism of the Syracusan tyrannical regime, but rather of Athenian democracy. In parsing Plato's discussion of the soul of the tyrant, Arruzza will also offer new and innovative insights into his moral psychology, addressing much-debated problems such as the nature of eros and of the spirited part of the soul, the unity or disunity of the soul, and the relation between the non-rational parts of the soul and reason.

Reading Plato's Dialogues to Enhance Learning and Inquiry

Reading Plato's Dialogues to Enhance Learning and Inquiry PDF Author: Mason Marshall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000328252
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This scholarly volume proposes protreptic as a radically new way of reading Plato’s dialogues leading to enhanced student engagement in learning and inquiry. Through analysis of Platonic dialogues including Crito, Euthyphro, Meno, and Republic, the text highlights Socrates’ ways of fostering and encouraging self-examination and conscionable reflection. By focusing his work on Socrates’ use of protreptic, Marshall proposes a practical approach to reading Plato, illustrating how his writings can be used to enhance intrinsic motivation amongst students, and help them develop the thinking skills required for democratic and civic engagement. This engaging volume will be of interest to doctoral students, researchers, and scholars concerned with Plato’s dialogues, the philosophy of education, and ancient philosophy more broadly, as well as post-graduate students interested in moral and values education research.

Lectures on the Republic of Plato

Lectures on the Republic of Plato PDF Author: Richard Lewis Nettleship
Publisher: Theclassics.Us
ISBN: 9781230231686
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... IX. PHILOSOPHY AND THE STATE I [Republic, V. 471 c to VI. 503 c] 471 c to AFTER this interlude Socrates can no longer postpone 474 a meeting the third and greatest of the 'three great waves' of the argument: All that has been said of the ideal state is excellent, and we can say a great deal more about it; but is it possible? Before revealing the paradoxical secret which he has got in store, Socrates makes some preliminary remarks on the relation of ideals generally to reality. An ideal, he tells us, is none the worse for being unrealizable. We started with asking, What is justice? and that means, What is justice in itself or as such? Now we must not expect any human being whom we call just to be, so to say, embodied justice, but must be content to regard justice as a -napibeiyna or pattern, to which the justest man approximates most nearly, but only approximates. In other words there will always be, in Plato's phraseology, a certain difference between things as they are in themselves (rd 8ma), and things as they come into existence in our actual experience (ra yiyv6ieva)1. 1 Ct, for example, 485 B. The same difference may be expressed as the difference between the ideal and the actual. Justice being of the nature of a pattern for human action, we may say boldly that what we decided to be the ideal community is the truth of human life; true human life would be as we have described it. All actual forms of human life are to a certain extent falsifications of the truth; they fall short of it. When we are asked to show the possibility of an ideal, we must first lay down that no ideal is actually possible, and that to expect it to be so is to misunderstand it. i-For it is in the nature of things that action should get less hold of the truth...