The Plato Paradigm

Socrates completes his argument moving virtue away from the "what" to the "how", from particular activities appropriate to types of people and towards virtue as the appropriate way in which any activity is done. This allows all types of people to be good in just one way, common to all - they do what they do "well" - which is in stark contrast to Meno's first answer, the list of many different virt...

Socrates attempts to steer Meno away from regarding virtue as the task appropriate for each particular individual to do, towards the way in which anything is done (well, justly, with self-control). The means by which Socrates attempts to do this suggest that he realizes that Meno is not amenable to strict logical. We may also note that despite Socrates emphasizing that he is looking for the one as...

Socrates explains that he is looking for the aspect of arete (virtue), the one thing which is common to all the different types of arete. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Socrates turns the tables. Instead of saying what sort of thing he thinks arete (virtue) is, he manipulates Meno into telling him what Gorgias says arete is. Meno answers in the style of Gorgias, generously and without fear. Each type of person according to gender, age, and social status has an appropriate role or task, and this is a virtue. Meno is happy to say that there are very many virtues, h...

Socrates finally manages to get Meno to react despite not selecting one of the choices Meno gave him regarding the sort of thing arete (virtue) is. Meno reacts to the suggestion that someone not knowing Meno at all would not know what sort of person Meno is, but immediately turns to the scoop that Socrates doesn't know at all what arete (virtue) is ( for which reason Socrates claims not to know wh...

Socrates continues his reply to. Meno's first question since Meno fails to react to any of the shocking things Socrates says. Having portrayed Gorgias as a seller of sophia, teaching people to be able to answer any question put to them, and having adopted Meno's conception of abstracts as concrete things, it follows that Gorgias' move from Attica to Thessaly has resulted in a drought of sophia in...

Socrates begins his reply to Meno's first question Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Meno's first question is not what it is usually considered to be. It is about the sort of thing arete (virtue) is, and not whether Socrates can tell Meno how to acquire virtue. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

This is a barebones summary of my full analysis of Politeia in my 2015 book entitled Plato's Republic as a Philosophical Drama on Doing Well, Lexington Books, with special emphasis on the explicit use of paradeigmata in the dialogue. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

Final part of the summary of my analysis of Hippias Major. The original analysis was published as Hippias Major: An Interpretation (Palingenesia XXXVII), Stuttgart 1991 My more recent article assessing Hippias Major and Minor together may be found in “Plato on the Good: Hippias Minor and Hippias Major ”, in Y.Z. Liebersohn, I. Ludlam, A. Edelheit edd. For a Skeptical Peripatetic: Festschrift in Ho...

What scholars tend to treat as a flawed philosophical argument is actually much worse than that. The dynamics of the dialogue require Socrates to appear impressed by Hippias, while Hippias must appear good (by being expert) to Socrates. Socrates is beneficial in that he continually applies dialectic and attempts to make Hippias think dialectically; Hippias is harmful, especially here, where he att...

Hippias acts as if he is the expert on reputation (eudoxia), on how to appear beneficial despite not being beneficial. Socrates is obliged to frame everything he says in a way which allows Hippias to believe that his audience of one is continually impressed by him. To create more dissonance within this stricture, Socrates invents what I call the Questioner, a rude man who criticizes Socrates; Socr...

This is a four-part summary of Hippias Major. I had analysed this dialogue already in the 1980s, and published the analysis in 1991. A thorough read-through of this particularly eristic dialogue would take around 80 episodes. There are other dialogues I would like to analyse now, so it seemed reasonable to produce a short summary updating the published analysis - Hippias Major: an Interpretation....

This final episode of the Euthyphro series discusses the central idea, its aspects, the paradeigmata, the deigmata, and a red herring Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

The characters are not only remarkably consistent, but they are also extreme and clear-cut. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

The dialogue's surface argument is philosophically unsatisfactory, to say the least Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com

In this last section of the dialogue, we see Euthyphro choosing to walk away rather than propose another definition of the holy (to hosion). Socrates still praises Euthyphro for his wisdom, but in such a way that anyone with thicker skin than Euthyphro would rethink his prosecution of his father. Socrates claims to want to know what the holy is not only to prevent his own case from coming to court...

The art of commerce seems not to benefit both sides, humans and gods, but humans only. Euthyphro, equating pleasant things with gratitude (keCHARISmena, with CHARIS), explains that the gods receive gratitude (i.e, thanks for goods received from them) in the form of presents. Euthyphro does not see why this is a problem, even when Socrates spells the problem out - the holy as the god-beloved has al...

By means of question and answer, Euthyphro's suggestion that holy are those things pleasing to the gods, performed through the sacrifices and prayers of humans, is transformed into the holy being the techne of commerce, whereby humans and gods obtain from each other things which they need. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting a...

We learn a little more about dialectic. The questioner allows the questioned to feel in charge of the conversation, but it is in fact the questioner who steers the conversation by means of the type of questions asked. One of the examples in this dialogue is the sustained attempt by Socrates to turn every concept Euthyphro raises into a version of techne. He has construed Euthyphro's therapeia as t...

When pressed to explain what the gods actually do in their therapeia, Euthyhphro avoids the question but actually reveals an important aspect of the holy. Humans, subservient to the gods, pray and do things pleasing to the gods, and these things are holy; things displeasing to the gods are disrespectful and unholy. It is up to the court of the archon basileus to turn away the anger of the gods in...

Euthyphro attempts to explain what he means by dividing justice into the therapeia of gods and the therapeia of men, but Socrates continues to treat therapeia ("tending") as if it is techne (craft). Last time the therapeiai made animals better, while this time the therapeiai lead to positive ends, such as health. Euthyphro's portrayal of the relationship between men and gods as between slaves and...

Euthyphro has defined justice as the therapeia (tending) of gods on the one hand and the therapeia of men on the other. Socrates treats therapeia as if it is techne (skill, craft, art), suggesting that there is an expert for every therapeia, and Euthyphro the expert on the gods naturally agrees. However, while the therapeia of animals leads to their improvement, the therapeia of the gods cannot po...

Euthyphro has made what might appear to be a division of the genus justice into two species - the tending of gods and the tending of men. He has in fact allowed the holy to become the species of justice exemplified by Socrates' court case, and being unable to leave his own court case for a single minute, he has his exemplify justice as the tending of men. When Socrates begins to use "tending" (the...

Euthyphro gives the answer to Socrates' question that the holy is that part of justice which is the therapeia of the gods, while the rest of justice is the therapeia of humans. Here I read through Platonic dialogues, translating and commenting on the Greek text as I go. The resulting analyses may be found at: https://theplatoparadigm.com