Nehamas, Alexander. "Plato's Pop Culture Problem, and Ours." NEW YORK TIMES August 29, 2010.

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that may have the unusual result of establishing a philosophical link between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Plato.

The case in question is the 2008 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals striking down a California law signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2005, that imposed fines on stores that sell video games featuring “sexual and heinous violence” to minors. The issue is an old one: one side argues that video games shouldn’t receive First Amendment protection since exposure to violence in the media is likely to cause increased aggression or violence in real life. The other side counters that the evidence shows nothing more than a correlation between the games and actual violence. In their book “Grand Theft Childhood,” the authors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson of Harvard Medical School argue that this causal claim is only the result of “bad or irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports.”

The issue, which at first glance seems so contemporary, actually predates the pixel by more than two millennia. In fact, an earlier version of the dispute may be found in “The Republic,” in which Plato shockingly excludes Homer and the great tragic dramatists from the ideal society he describes in that work.

Could Plato, who wrote in the 4th century B.C., possibly have anything to say about today’s electronic media? As it turns out, yes, It is characteristic of philosophy that even its most abstruse and apparently irrelevant ideas, suitably interpreted, can sometimes acquire an unexpected immediacy. And while philosophy doesn’t always provide clear answers to our questions, it often reveals what exactly it is that we are asking. . . .

Read the rest here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/platos-pop-culture-problem-and-ours/.

Zuckert, Catherine H. Review of Alan Kim, PLATO IN GERMANY. NDPR (August 2010).

Kim, Alan. Plato in Germany: Kant -- Natorp -- Heidegger. Gent: Academia, 2010.

Like Hans Georg Gadamer in his Philosophical Apprenticeships, Alan Kim suggests that we will understand Heidegger's thought better if we know more about his debates with his colleagues at the University of Marburg. In particular, Kim contends that we will not truly understand Heidegger until we understand the position Heidegger was most immediately and directly critiquing in his interpretation of Plato -- that taken by Paul Natorp in his Platos Ideenlehre. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=21108.

Brill, Sarah. Review of Max Statkiewicz, RHAPSODY OF PHILOSOPHY. NDPR (July 2010).

Statkiewicz, Max. Rhapsody of Philosophy: Dialogues with Plato in Contemporary Thought. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2009.

Like many of the contemporary thinkers with whom he engages, Max Statkiewicz diagnoses the impact of Platonism on contemporary western thought as a function of a selective reading of Plato's critique of poetry, one which overlooks the complexity of the dialogues' treatment of representation. Thus, at its most general, his Rhapsody of Philosophy: Dialogues with Plato in Contemporary Thought comprises a series of meditations upon Gilles Deleuze's oft-quoted claim that Plato himself made the first step in overturning Platonism. More specifically, the book has two trajectories: to illustrate an element of Platonic thought (its "rhapsodic" dimension) that has not been sufficiently attended to by what Statkiewicz identifies as the two main camps of Plato scholarship (the traditional and the dramatic) and to draw out the connection between this element and the work of a number of contemporary theorists, a connection which should point the way toward a fuller dialogue between ancient and contemporary thought. What Statkiewicz means by "rhapsodic" unfolds throughout the book, but is presented in the introduction as "the mode of thinking -- Plato's mode, replayed in the texts of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Deleuze, Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe -- that challenges the dominance of univocal interpretation, as well as the corresponding treatise format, in the modern philosophical tradition" (4).

According to Statkiewicz, both the approach to the dialogues that seeks rigorously maintained propositions and the approach that emphasizes the dramatic and dialogic character of Plato's work share the assumption that an interpretation of the dialogues rises and falls with one's capacity to uncover the intention of Plato the author. Because the variety of voices and gestures that appear in the dialogues defy reduction to the single voice of Plato, appeals to authorial intent overlook the radical polysemia of the dialogues; that is, according to Statkiewicz, such appeals overlook their rhapsodic character. What is gained, then, in attempting a rhapsodic dialogue with Plato, is resistance to a trend that fails to do justice to the dialogues themselves and that forecloses the possibility of "authentic dialogue" with Plato: "Only a genuinely rhapsodic reading will be able to respect the integrality of a dialogue and at the same time set into play its mimetic character" (14).

Thus, to take up a metaphor Statkiewicz uses in his introduction, this book fights a battle on many fronts. In between its "Polemic Introduction" and its "Rhapsodic Conclusion," its four chapters develop the book's main themes by presenting the engagement of a variety of thinkers with passages from the Republic, the Phaedrus, the Sophist and the Timaeus. . . .


Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=20387.

"Manchester Historian Deciphers Hidden 'Plato Code.'" BBC NEWS June 29, 2010.

A science historian in Manchester claims to have deciphered secret messages hidden in the ancient writings of the philosopher Plato. Dr Jay Kennedy from the University of Manchester has revealed that the legendary Greek philosopher Plato used a regular pattern of symbols to give his books a musical structure. Plato's books had a key role in establishing the foundations of Western culture. But the existence of a so-called 'Plato Code' has long been disputed. By unravelling Plato's 'hidden' messages, Dr Kennedy believes he has thrown a new light on the origins of science, mathematics, music, and philosophy. . . .

Read the rest here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/manchester/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8773000/8773564.stm.

Further information on Kennedy's research may be found here: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/.

Halteman-Zwart, Megan. Review of Francisco J. Gonzalez, PLATO AND HEIDEGGER. NDPR (May 2010).

Gonzalez, Francisco J. Plato and Heidegger: a Question of Dialogue. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2009. There is broad consensus that Heidegger's 'relationship' with Plato is one of misrepresentation, caricature, and dismissal. Those unsympathetic to Heidegger point to his coercive readings of Plato's dialogues, his single-minded focus on Plato as prototypical metaphysician and his violent use of history of philosophy in general. Those with more sympathy for Heidegger, while acknowledging these points, allow themselves to wistfully imagine what might have been if Heidegger had had the good sense to undertake a meaningful dialogue with Plato's work, rather than merely to force Plato into a role that suited Heidegger's agenda. Few, if any, have devoted significant attention to the many points in Heidegger's lengthy career where Heidegger undertakes sympathetic and profitable engagements with Plato, largely because these charitable readings are hard to fit into the story of Heidegger's Plato as original metaphysician -- a story so forcefully and clearly laid out by Heidegger himself in the only work devoted to Plato which he choose to publish: the 1940 essay 'Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit'. Francisco J. Gonzalez's Plato and Heidegger: a Question of Dialogue makes many important contributions to our view of Heidegger's Plato, but none is more important than its success at complicating this consensus story that Heidegger is merely a bad reader of Plato. Gonzalez's avowed goal is to take the dialogue between Plato and Heidegger further than Heidegger himself was willing or able to go. By undertaking an exhaustive look at both Heidegger's sustained engagements with Plato and passing comments, Gonzalez rounds out our picture of Heidegger's Plato to include many surprising affinities between the two thinkers. In most cases, Gonzalez admirably resists the temptation to downplay the charitable elements of Heidegger's Plato even though attending to these elements calls for a more complicated story. Through the twists and turns of Heidegger's often contradictory accounts of Plato, Gonzalez leads us to a surprisingly clear and compelling conclusion: Heidegger's Plato is substantially more sympathetic than we have come to expect, but there is a deep and abiding difference between the two that presented a persistent road block to Heidegger's reading of Plato; as Gonzalez puts it, "there was something genuinely foreign to Heidegger's thought in Plato's texts, something that Heidegger could not appropriate without fundamentally changing the direction of his own thinking" (2). By the book's conclusion, this obstacle is clear:

While neither Plato nor Heidegger looks for the truth of beings in beings themselves, Plato turns to logoi and how the truth of being manifests itself therein, whereas Heidegger insists on attempting to see and say being directly in a way that bypasses both beings and logoi. (335)

Gonzalez characterizes this as a root difference in their very approaches to thinking being: Plato recognizes that our best efforts will remain 'dialectical/dialogical'; Heidegger persists in aiming towards a 'phenomenological/tautological' approach (345). Due to this fundamentally different orientation, Heidegger is never able to really do justice to Plato's thought. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19488.

Fowler, Ryan C. Review of Seth Bernardete, THE RHETORIC OF MORALITY AND PHILOSOPHY. BMCR (January 2010).

Bernardete, Seth. The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. Rpt. 2009. This work, now nearly 20 years old, has recently been reissued in paperback. In it the late Seth Benardete reads these two seminal Platonic dialogues together as pointing to "a psychology in which the locus of moral indignation and the love of the beautiful in the human soul are properly understood" (2). For Benardete, the Gorgias is a work concerned with the rhetoric of morality, and one intended to test the efficacy of Gorgianic rhetoric. The Phaedrus represents an inquiry into the possibility of an effective philosophically-grounded rhetoric, which can also properly be called the science of eros. This interpretation, to an extent novel in 1991 though now widely accepted (see e.g., Nichols 1998, Stauffer 20061), addresses numerous issues central to Platonic studies, including the relationship between the structure of the Gorgias and the image of soul and city in the Republic, and that between the structure of Phaedrus and the concept of eros. . . . Read the whole review here: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-01-21.html.

Cfp: "Plato's PHAEDRUS," West Coast Plato Workshop, Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego, May 22-23, 2010.

Keynote speaker: Rachana Kamtekar, Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona The conference organizer invites proposals for 30 minute talks (to be followed by 45 minutes of commentary or discussion) on any topic related to Plato's Phaedrus. Please send proposals (abstracts) to monte@ucsd.edu by 15 December 2009. Also, please forward this announcement to anyone who might be working on the Phaedrus or interested in attending. The first conference, on Plato's Theaetetus, was held in 2008 at the University of California, Davis; the second, on the Euthydemus, in 2009 at the University of California, Berkeley. The conferences are open to all students and faculty, and are organized on an ad hoc basis by the host university.

Thaler, Naly. Review of Catalin Partenie, ed. PLATO'S MYTHS. NDPR (October 2009).

Partenie, Catalin, ed. Plato's Myths. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. This volume contains ten papers, eight of which have not been previously published, dealing with Plato's use of myth in the dialogues. Of these ten papers, eight contain interpretations of a single myth from a particular dialogue, one contains an attempt to extract a coherent doctrine from Plato's several eschatological myths, and one, the last, discusses the portrayal of themes from Platonic myths in Renaissance art. The volume also contains a helpful introductory essay by the editor surveying and discussing different interpretative approaches to Platonic myth. The introductory essay announces that the papers contained in the volume all treat myth and philosophy as tightly bound together. This however, should not be taken to indicate that the various contributors share a common view as to the nature of this connection. The papers contained in the volume display a wide variety of approaches to their chosen myths. Some of the readings are fairly literal whereas others thoroughly symbolic; some authors read their chosen myth as a support for the dialogue's main argument, whereas others see it as intended to cast doubt on the viability of its conclusion. This fact will be viewed as a shortcoming of the volume only by readers who approach it with the intention of discovering a unified account of what Platonic myth is. Those, on the other hand, who read it in the hope of acquiring a new perspective on the arguments of particular dialogues will be richly rewarded, as the majority of the papers are highly successful in using the myths to shed new and sometimes surprising light on these arguments. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17945.

Vernon, Mark. "Plato's Dialogues, Part 8: A Man for All Seasons." GUARDIAN September 21, 2009.

The most famous image of Plato is found in the Vatican mural by Raphael, The School of Athens. Positioned centrally are Plato, pointing to the heavens, and Aristotle, pointing to the earth. It conveys a presumed difference between the two philosophers, Plato being the idealist, Aristotle the materialist. And yet it was Aristotle who wrote the following: "We must be like immortals insofar as possible and do everything toward living in accordance with the best thing in us." That's a sentiment with which his teacher, Plato, could readily agree, and the painting is misleading. Moreover, if materialism is associated with humanism today, and so Aristotle tends to be preferred over Plato, for much of the Renaissance, it was Aristotle who was sidelined. He was the philosopher most closely associated with the theology of the Middle Ages. For the Renaissance humanists, Plato was the thinker who seemed new and free of the excesses of scholastic speculation. It's funny how the ancient Greeks fall in and out of favour. Plato is never likely to be forgotten; he's too seminal a figure. Bernard Williams once asked what makes a great philosopher. He listed intellectual depth; a grasp of the scientific, the political, the creative and the destructive capabilities of humankind; imagination; an ability to unsettle; and ideally the gifts of a writer. "If we ask which philosopher has, more than any other, combined all these qualities," he continued, "to that question there is certainly an answer, Plato." That said, a number of spheres in contemporary thought today suggest that Plato can play more of a role for us than just as a giant in the history of ideas. One is physics and mathematics. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/21/plato-dialogues-philosophy.

Vernon, Mark. "Plato's Dialogues, Part 7: Plato and Christianity." GUARDIAN September 14, 2009.

The year 529 is a seminal date, and a handy one to keep in mind when trying to untangle Plato first from Platonism and then from Christianity. In that year, Plato's Academy was finally closed in Athens, almost 900 years after it had opened. Plato's successors had fallen foul of the Christian emperor Justinian. Death penalties were issued. The philosophers fled. Plato's philosophy had evolved dramatically in the centuries since his death in 347BC. For . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/14/plato-platonism-plotinus-christianity.

Vernon, Mark. "Plato's Dialogues, Part 6: The Philosophical School." GUARDIAN September 7, 2009.

What would it have been like to attend the Academy, Plato's ancient school? You didn't have to pay, though you did have to have wealth to afford the leisure. A pupil of Aristotle, Dicearchus, stressed that Plato's academicians were treated as free and equal. Women were not only allowed to take part, but two women were remembered in antiquity by name, Axiothea and Lastheneia. They all wore simple cloaks. One lecture that was delivered by Plato was on "The Good". We know about it because whilst the audience arrived thinking they might learn something about the good life, they were actually subjected to a celebration of mathematics. They should have known better: "Let no one unskilled in geometry enter," was purportedly written over the entrance. Plato would have put geometry at the top of Philosophy 101. There is a parody of life in the Academy written by the comic playwright Epicrates. He mocks the activities of the students, picturing them discussing the nature of a pumpkin: "Well now, first of all they took up their places, and with heads bowed they reflected for a long time. Then suddenly, whilst they were still bent low in study, one of the lads said it was a round vegetable, another that it was a grass, another that it was a tree." What is striking about this "account" is that the academic way of life provided grounds for mirth at all: it must have struck ancient Greeks as decidedly odd, and novel, for groups of people to gather together to contemplate, discuss and study. Education is a crucial concern here, and Plato believed it was the foundation of any healthy politics. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/07/plato-dialogues-philosophy.

Vernon, Mark. "Plato's Dialogues, Part 5: Love and the Perception of Forms." GUARDIAN September 1, 2009.

That there might be a link between love and knowledge is not an idea that many philosophers think about today. But for Plato, the link is deep. In several dialogues, he implies that if you stir up the capacity to love inside you, and apply reason to direct your love in the right way, then you might achieve an understanding of what is good, beautiful and true. It is via this route that he appears to have gained an intuition that has become very influential in western philosophy, the possible existence of transcendent Forms. But before coming to these elusive entities, let us first press this link between love and knowledge. By doing so, we'll approach the question of Forms in the way that Plato himself presents it. . . . Read the whole article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/01/plato-dialogues-forms.

Vernon, Mark. "Plato's Dialogues, Part 4: What Do You Love?" GUARDIAN August 24, 2009.

Iris Murdoch is sometimes not numbered amongst great Plato scholars today. However, the unique combination of her philosophical and literary talents means that, to my mind, she captures the nature of his philosophical way of life as few have. It might be said to revolve around a single question: what do you love? No one would doubt that love was a major theme for Plato. Three of his dialogues explicitly address it – the Lysis, Symposium and Phaedrus. It is never far from the surface in the others. There are various stories about Plato that emphasise the association too, and though they are undoubtedly apocryphal, they must have been remembered because they made sense. Some of the stories remember his affairs of the heart. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/24/plato-dialogues-philosophy.

Vernon, Mark. "Plato's Dialogues, Part 3: Philosophy as a Way of Life." GUARDIAN August 17, 2009.

Plato wrote dialogues. This is striking not only because it differs so wildly from the usual philosophical style today; often dry, usually abstract, always tightly argued prose. It matters because we can be sure Plato believed dialogues were the best way to do written philosophy: scholars are confident we have all of his "published" works, so there are no treatises waiting to be found that would imply Plato believed prose was as good a way of doing philosophy too. Given that's true, what can be made of it? In a word, much. Today, scholars try to place the Dialogues in chronological order, and thereby discern something of Plato's development. However, the ancient world made no such attempt. Instead, they were read according to their content and the aptitude of the reader. This is, perhaps, closer to Plato's own intention. For one thing, it is obvious that the dialogues differ substantially in terms of their sophistication and subject. Some seem more designed to draw a novice philosopher into the subject. Others seem more targeted at an audience with an already developed knowledge of the matter in hand. Others again seem to be summaries of arguments that originally took place between members of the Academy. In other words, the attempt to track Plato's changing ideas could be a mistake: it may be that he wrote different dialogues for different purposes. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/17/philosophy-plato-dialogues.

Vernon, Mark. "Plato's Dialogues."

Part 1: "Why Plato?" Guardian August 3, 2009:

Why bother with Plato? Isn't this bearded man from ancient Athens ancient history? It is true that AN Whitehead declared European philosophy to be "a series of footnotes to Plato". But why should that matter? Modern physics originates in the work of Isaac Newton and, though we read about him, few read his actual words, and no one expects the future of physics to flow from his centuries-old pen. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/03/plato-dialogues-philosophy)

Part 2: "Who was Plato's Socrates?" Guardian August 10, 2009:

Plato was not the only ancient Greek to write about Socrates: Socratic dialogues – written discourses featuring the gadfly of Athens as protagonist – became a literary sub-genre in antiquity. However, it is Plato's Socrates who sustains our most vivid image of the man. So who was he, this sage who, if Plato is right, launched a project that has lasted for millennia and shaped a civilisation? (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/10/plato-dialogues-socrates)

Pub: Partenie, Catalin. "Plato's Myths." STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY July 23, 2009.

What the ancient Greeks—at least in the archaic phase of their civilisation—called muthos was quite different from what we and the media nowadays call “myth”. For them a muthos was a true story, a story that unveils the true origin of the world and human beings. For us a myth is something to be “debunked”: a widespread, popular belief that is in fact false. In archaic Greece the memorable was transmitted orally through poetry, which often relied on myth. However, starting with the beginning of the seventh century BC two types of discourse emerged that were set in opposition to poetry: history (as shaped by, most notably, Thucydides) and philosophy (as shaped by the peri phuseōs tradition of the sixth and fifth centuries BC). These two types of discourse were naturalistic alternatives to the poetic accounts of things. Plato broke to some extent from the philosophical tradition of the sixth and fifth centuries in that he uses both traditional myths and myths he invents and gives them some role to play in his philosophical endeavor. He thus seems to attempt to overcome the traditional opposition between muthos and logos. There are many myths in Plato's dialogues: traditional myths, which he sometimes modifies, as well as myths that he invents, although many of these contain mythical elements from various traditions. Plato is both a myth teller and a myth maker. In general, he uses myth to inculcate in his less philosophical readers noble beliefs and/or teach them various philosophical matters that may be too difficult for them to follow if expounded in a blunt, philosophical discourse. More and more scholars have argued in recent years that in Plato myth and philosophy are tightly bound together, in spite of his occasional claim that they are opposed modes of discourse. . . . Read the rest here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-myths/.

Singpurwalla, Rachel. Review of G. R. F. Ferrari, ed. CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC. NDPR (July 2009).

Ferrari, G. R. F., ed. Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. This anthology contains sixteen new essays on Plato's Republic as well as a fine editor's introduction and an excellent bibliography. There is no shortage of philosophical anthologies on the Republic, but this collection is distinctive in that a number of its contributors pay special attention to the literary features of the dialogue. The anthology includes, for example, essays that address questions about Plato's use of literary techniques: Why does Plato make such heavy use of similes, images, and myths in the Republic (Yunis)? How does Plato use literary motifs from Homer and Hesiod for his own philosophical and rhetorical purposes (Halliwell, O'Connor)? In what sense is Plato aiming to supplant Homer by writing a philosophical epic of his own (Ferrari's Introduction, Yunis)? In addition, the anthology includes essays by authors who emphasize the dramatic features of the dialogue to guide their interpretation of Plato's philosophy (e.g., Blössner, Weiss). These authors hold, more or less explicitly, that we cannot understand Plato's position by focusing on Socrates' arguments alone, since Socrates makes certain arguments simply because they will be convincing to an interlocutor with a particular set of values and not necessarily because he endorses them himself. According to this view, appreciating the philosophical import of a dialogue involves attending to the complex interplay between the aim of the dialogue and the way in which the character of Socrates uses rhetoric to move his interlocutors towards a certain point of view. The essays cover as many topics as the Republic itself and display an admirable range of interpretive approaches. One theme, however, recurs throughout the collection: the question of why the philosopher returns to 'the cave' of politics, despite the fact that he has no interest in ruling. This question is crucial for understanding Plato's views on moral motivation and the relationship between justice and happiness; in spite of this, Plato leaves the answer somewhat open. Several authors in the anthology attempt to reconstruct Plato's position, each drawing on different aspects of the Republic. Some find the answer in Socrates' conversation with Thrasymachus in Republic I (Sedley, Weiss), others in his conception of education and politics (Morrison, Schofield), and others still in his account of the relationship between the philosopher and the forms (Miller). The order of the essays follows the sequence in which topics are presented in Plato's text. Nonetheless, I do not think this anthology as a whole is suitable for those new to the Republic. Many of the essays assume more than a passing acquaintance with both the Republic and the secondary literature, and some of them offer idiosyncratic interpretations without canvassing more standard views. For those familiar with the Republic, however, this anthology provides a rich source of novel ideas and approaches. Further, for those especially interested in literary themes and approaches to Plato, or in the problem of the philosopher-king's motivation to rule, this collection is indispensable. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16525.

Notomi, Noburu. Review of Gail Fine's OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PLATO. NDPR (May 2009).

Fine, Gail, ed. Oxford Handbook of Plato. Oxford: OUP, 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Plato (OHP) contains twenty-two articles of substantial length (from 20 to 30 pages). Short footnotes and a bibliography accompany each chapter, and another concise bibliography and indices (locorum, nominum, subject) are added at the end of the volume. Readers may perhaps be overwhelmed by this huge volume of over 600 pages. The book is not to be used as an encyclopedia or dictionary. But it evokes new ideas and challenges to readers of Plato who, like its contributors, work in the analytic style. Each chapter guides readers to a particular topic or phase of Plato's philosophy, but each is, more or less, an independent contribution. Cross-references between the chapters are rare. Apart from the Introduction (ch.1), by the editor, the twenty-one contributions can be grouped into four categories: general background (chs.2-4), philosophical topics (chs.5-14), specific dialogues (chs.15-20), and legacies or receptions (chs.21-22). The combination of these different categories is one of the salient features of OHP that differentiate it from other similar volumes. For example, A Companion to Plato, edited by H. Benson (Blackwell 2006), is clearly intended as a topic-oriented guide (with 29 chapters); a similar arrangement is adopted in the Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by R. Kraut (CUP 1992), which, however, has chapters that mix specific topics and some individual dialogues (Men., Rep., Soph., Phlb.). The editor indicates in her Introduction to this volume a clear policy of multiple approaches to particular dialogues or topics (pp.4-5). This policy certainly succeeds in enriching our understanding of Plato's philosophy. If readers find it difficult to move across the chapters, they are advised to consult the editor's Introduction first, which nicely summarizes the main points of each chapter. The Introduction is, however, not a mere summary of the following chapters, but also connects them together, in a way that presents the editor's own view of Plato's philosophy. Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16086.

Melamed, Yitzhak Y. Review of Michael Ayers' ed. RATIONALISM, PLATONISM AND GOD. NDPR (February 2009).

Ayers, Michael, ed. Rationalism, Platonism and God. Oxford: OUP, 2008. 'Platonism' and 'rationalism,' two of the terms in the title of this book, are pretty ambiguous. In the context of modern philosophy, rationalism, as opposed to 'empiricism,' is used to denote a certain historical school which allowed for the possibility of knowledge that is not derived from the senses. In the past few years, a significantly different notion of rationalism has been suggested by Michael Della Rocca, according to whom rationalism amounts to an unrestricted acceptance of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the rejection of any brute facts. This definition of rationalism may redraw traditional dichotomies in the historiography of modern philosophy. Michael Ayers, a prominent scholar of early modern philosophy and the editor of the current volume, employs, and to an extent defends, the traditional rationalism/empiricism dichotomy: "The historiographical and critical employment of the rationalist-empiricist distinction has, no doubt, often been crude, but its denigration has often been based on flimsy and specious interpretative argument" (2). If I understand Ayers correctly, the main idea behind this collection was that perhaps the common distinction between rationalists and empiricists could be clarified and illuminated through their opposite attitudes toward a certain "broadly defined" (Christianized) Platonism.

The so-called 'rationalists' do have something in common, as do the 'empiricists'. The great seventeenth-century rationalists worked (if heretically, and each in his own way and for his own reasons) within a heavily theologized Platonic tradition. Each found room and work for a set, or significant subset, of characteristically Platonic or Neoplatonic concepts and models. . . . The 'empiricists', Bacon, Gassendi, Hobbes, Locke and others, ignored or rejected these Platonic notions and looked back to a different, more naturalistic, also ancient tradition -- above all Epicurus and Lucretius" (3).

Ayers also suggests the existence of a rather tight connection between early modern immaterialism and Platonism (4). Berkeley, according to Ayers, should be considered as a special case: one who "drew on both traditions" (4, n. 2). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15305.

Cfp: Colloquium on Plato’s PHAEDRUS, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, April 16-18, 2009.

The Phaedrus is one of Plato’s most explicitly ‘literary’ dialogues, both in the sense that it is crafted in a particularly ingenious fashion and in so far as it explicitly discusses the worth of literature, especially as a medium for philosophy. Of course, the Phaedrus also has much to say about the key Platonic issues of moral psychology, metaphysics, love and rhetoric. The aim of this colloquium is to encourage collaborative discussion of both the literary and philosophical significance of the dialogue. To this end, our programme combines formal papers with sessions of collaborative close reading of selected passages. Participants include: Douglas Cairns (Edinburgh), John Henderson (Cambridge), Matthew Hiscock (Cambridge), Richard Hunter (Cambridge), AlexLong (St Andrews), Jessica Moss (Oxford), Liz Pender (Leeds), Christopher Rowe (Durham), Dominic Scott (Virginia), Frisbee Sheffield (Cambridge), Robert Wardy (Cambridge) and Harvey Yunis (Rice). For more details please contact Jenny Bryan (jb304@cam.ac.uk) or Helen VanNoorden (hav21@cam.ac.uk).