[PDF] Plato And Platonism eBook

Author : Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 47,35 MB
Release : 2013-11-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0801469171

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Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients are correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism." Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."

Author : Drew A. Hyland
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 41,90 MB
Release : 2012-02-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0791484556

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Given the conception of philosophy held by continental thinkers, and in particular their greater sensitivity to the kinship of philosophy and literature, Drew A. Hyland argues that they should be much more attentive to the literary dimension of Plato's thinking than they have been. He believes they would find in the dialogues not the various forms of "Platonism" that they wish to reject, but instead a thinking much more congenial and challenging to their own predilections. By carefully examining the works of Heidegger, Derrida, Irigaray, and Cavarero, Hyland points to the tendency of continental thinkers to view Plato's dialogues through the lens of Platonism, thus finding Platonic metaphysics, Platonic ethics, and Platonic epistemology, while overlooking the literary dimension of the dialogues, and failing to recognize the extent to which the form undercuts anything like the Platonism they find. The striking exception, Hyland claims, is Hans-Georg Gadamer who also demonstrates the compatibility of the Platonic dialogues with the directions of continental thinking.

Author : Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 24,75 MB
Release : 2017-12-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1501716964

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"Aristotle versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus."—from the Introduction In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the "harmony" of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. He aims to show that the twentieth-century view that Aristotle started out as a Platonist and ended up as an anti-Platonist is seriously flawed. Gerson examines the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle based on their principle of harmony. In considering ancient studies of Aristotle's Categories, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, the author shows how the principle of harmony allows us to understand numerous texts that otherwise appear intractable. Gerson also explains how these "esoteric" treatises can be seen not to conflict with the early "exoteric" and admittedly Platonic dialogues of Aristotle. Aristotle and Other Platonists concludes with an assessment of some of the philosophical results of acknowledging harmony.

Author : Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 35,43 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199257639

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Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery. For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between mind or soul and body.

Author : James Kern Feibleman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 50,16 MB
Release : 2013-07-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 113411270X

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In Plato’s Laws is the earliest surviving fully developed cosmological argument. His influence on the philosophy of religion is wide ranging and this book examines both that and the influence of religion on Plato. Central to Plato’s thought is the theory of forms, which holds that there exists a realm of forms, perfect ideals of which things in this world are but imperfect copies. In this book, originally published in 1959, Feibleman finds two diverse strands in Plato’s philosophy: an idealism centered upon the Forms denying full ontological status to the realm of becoming, and a moderate realism granting actuality equal reality with Forms. For each strand Plato developed a conception of religion: a supernatural one derived from Orphism, and a naturalistic religion revering the traditional Olympian deities.

Author : Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 17,57 MB
Release : 2020-03-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1501747274

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In his third and concluding volume, Lloyd P. Gerson presents an innovative account of Platonism, the central tradition in the history of philosophy, in conjunction with Naturalism, the "anti-Platonism" in antiquity and contemporary philosophy. Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Thus, the possibility of philosophy depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek a rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible.

Author : David Lay Williams
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 17,56 MB
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780271045511

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"In this sterling, deeply researched study, Williams explores how thinkers ranging from Hobbes to d'Holbach highlight various sets of ideas that Rousseau combated in developing his philosophical teaching. The account of Rousseau's predecessors who might be called Platonists is especially interesting, as is the account of those who qualify as materialists. Moreover, Williams provides a good overview of Rousseau's teaching, demonstrates a commendable grasp of the relevant secondary literature, and argues ably for the superiority of his own interpretations ... Clearly written and superbly organized, this book contributes much to Rousseau studies. An indispensable book for Rousseau scholars, this volume also will appeal to general readers and students at all levels."--C.E. Butterworth, CHOICE.

Author : Douglas Hedley
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 45,66 MB
Release : 2007-12-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1402064071

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This collection of essays offers an overview of the range and breadth of Platonic philosophy in the early modern period. It examines philosophers of Platonic tradition, such as Cusanus, Ficino, and Cudworth. The book also addresses the impact of Platonism on major philosophers of the period, especially Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Shaftesbury and Berkeley.