Kraut Richard - The Cambridge Companion to Plato

This is another volume in the new Cambridge series of companions to major philosophers. Each volume will contain specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker.

Plato stands at the head of our philosophical tradition, being the first Western thinker to produce a body of writing that touches upon a wide range of topics still discussed by philosophers today. In a sense he invented philosophy as a distinct subject, for although many of these topics were discussed by his intellectual predecessors and contemporaries, he was the first to bring them together by giving them a unitary treatment. He conceives of philosophy as a discipline with a distinctive intellectual method, and he makes radical claims for its position in human life and the political community. This volume contains fifteen new essays discussing Platos views about knowledge, reality, mathematics, politics, ethics, love, poetry, and religion. There are also analyses of the intellectual and social background of his thought, the development of his philosophy throughout his career, the range of alternative approaches to his work, and the stylometry of his writing.

New readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient, accessible guide to Plato currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Plato.

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO
PLATO

OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES OF CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS:

AQUINAS Edited by NORMAN KRETZMAN and ELEONORE STUMP

ARISTOTLE Edited by JONATHAN BARNES

DESCARTES Edited by JOHN COTTINGHAM

FOUCAULT Edited by GARY GUTTING

FREUD Edited by JEROME NEU

HEGEL Edited by FREDERICK BEISER

HEIDEGGER Edited by CHARLES GUIGNON

HOBBES Edited by TOM SORRELL

HUME Edited by DAVID FATE NORTON

HUSSERL Edited by BARRY SMITH and DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH

KANT Edited by PAUL GUYER

LEIBNIZ Edited by NICHOLAS JOLLEY

LOCKE Edited by VERE CHAPPELL

MARX Edited by TERRELL CARVER

MILL Edited by JOHN SKORUPSKI

NIETZSCHE Edited by BERND MAGNUS

SARTRE Edited by CHRISTINA HOWELLS

SPINOZA Edited by DON GARRETT

Edited by Richard Kraut

University of Illinois at Chicago

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Cambridge University Press 1992

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1992
22nd printing 2010

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-521-43018-0 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-43610-6 Paperback

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FOR GREGORY VLASTOS
19071991

ELIZABETH ASMIS is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. The author of Epicurus Scientific Method (Cornell University Press, 1984) and numerous articles on Hellenistic philosophy, she is currently working on Greek views of poetry from Plato to the Neoplatonists.

LEONARD BRANDWOOD is Lecturer in the Department of Greek and Latin at Manchester University. He is the author of A Word Index to Plato (W. S. Maney & Son, 1976) and The Chronology of Platos Dialogues (Cambridge University Press, 1990).

G. R. F. FERRARI is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Platos Phaedrus (Cambridge University Press, 1987) and of articles on Plato, the pre-Socratics, and archaic Greek culture.

GAIL FINE is Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. She is the author of numerous articles on the metaphysics and epistemology of Plato and Aristotle. Her book On Ideas: Aristotles Criticism of Platos Theory of Forms is to be published by Oxford University Press.

DOROTHEA FREDE is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg. She is the author of Aristoteles und die Seeschlacht (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970) and has written numerous articles on Plato, Aristotle, later Greek philosophy, and the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Her translation of Platos Philebus is forthcoming (Hackett Publishing Company).

MICHAEL FREDE is Professor of the History of Philosophy at Oxford University and Fellow of Keble College. He is the author of Prdikation und Existenzaussage (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), Die stoische Logik (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), and (with Gnther Patzig) a translation of and commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics Z (C.H. Beck, 1988). Some of his many papers on Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Skepticism, ancient medicine, and ancient grammatical theories have been collected in Essays in Ancient Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press and Oxford University Press, 1987).

T. H. IRWIN is Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. He is the author of Platos Moral Theory (Clarendon Press, 1977), Aristotles First Principles (Clarendon Press, 1988), Classical Thought (Oxford University Press, 1989), and translations of and commentaries on Platos Gorgias (Clarendon Press, 1979) and Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics (Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), as well as numerous articles on Greek philosophy.

RICHARD KRAUT is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Socrates and the State (Princeton University Press, 1984) and Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton University Press, 1989) and is currently writing a translation of and commentary on Aristotles Politics: Books VII and VIII.

CONSTANCE C. MEINWALD is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The author of Platos Parmenides (Oxford University Press, 1991), she is currently working on Platos late metaphysics.

MICHAEL L. MORGAN is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Platonic Piety: Philosophy and Ritual in Fourth-Century Athens (Yale University Press, 1990) and has written numerous articles on Plato as well as on Jewish thought.

IAN MUELLER is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Philosophy of Mathematics and Deductive Structure in Euclids Elements (MIT Press, 1981), as well as numerous articles on ancient Greek philosophy, science, and mathematics. He is currently preparing a translation of Alexander of Aphrodisiass commentary on Aristotles