Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge in the Dialogues of Plato

✍ Scribed by Sara Ahbel-Rappe

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 298
• Series: SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Argues that Socrates’ fundamental role in the dialogues is to guide us toward self-inquiry and self-knowledge.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Preface •
Socrates as an Esoteric Figure
Acknowledgments
Introduction •
Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge
The Apology and Parmenides as Bookends of Socratic Wisdom
On Not Being Deceived by Appearances
Socrates and Initiatory Traditions
Chapter 1 •
Socratic Philosophy
Appendix: Socrates and Dogmatism from a Comparative Philosophical Viewpoint
Chapter 2 •
Socratic Receptions
Chapter 3 •
Socrates and Self-Knowledge
Conclusion: Now I Know You!
Appendix
Self-Knowledge and Divine Knowledge: A Preliminary Excursion
Chapter 4 •
Euthydemus: Native and Foreign
Against Instrumentalism
The Roman Inheritance of Socrates
Chapter 5 •
Alcibiades I: The Mirror of Socrates
Appendix: Suhurawardi on Knowledge by Presence
Chapter 6 •
Lysis: The Aporetic Identity of the First Friend
A First Skirmish over the First Friend
The Aporetic Nature of the First Friend
Friends Share All Things Alike
Conclusion: Lysis 215a9 and Unitarian Readings of the Socratic Dialogues
Appendix
The Impersonal Self: A Contradiction?
Chapter 7 •
From Virtues to Forms in the Phaedrus
Self-Knowledge and Forms in the Phaedrus
The Phaedrus in Late Antique Platonism and Christianity
Conclusion: Mania
Chapter 8 •
Theaetetus: Socrates’s Interrogation of Platonic Knowledge
Plato, Midwifery, and Natural Philosophy: The Theaetetus in Recent Scholarship
The Theaetetus: Plato’s Abhidharma
Socratic Barrenness in the Neoplatonic Tradition
Chapter 9 •
“He Who Is Wisest among You”: Socratic Ignorance between the Parmenides and the Apology
Conclusion •
The Socratic Paradigm
Assimilation to God: Socrates and the Divine
Sama Dukha Sukhaa Sarveheh: The Equality of All Beings with Respect to Well-Being and Suffering in Plato and in Shantideva
The Transmigration of Happiness
Notes
Works Cited
Index