The only available volume of essays from scholars of every interpretative viewpoint on self-knowledge and self-ignorance in Plato's thought.

"If any evidence were needed of a revived interest in Plato's treatment of self-knowledge and self-ignorance, the bibliography at the back of this volume should be evidence enough. Papers, monographs, and symposia on the topic are increasingly thick on the ground"--

The first systematic study of Socrates' interest in selfhood, examining ancient philosophical ideas of what constitutes the self.

Argues that Socrates’ fundamental role in the dialogues is to guide us toward self-inquiry and self-knowledge. In this highly original and provocative book, Sara Ahbel-Rappe argues that the Platonic dialogues contain an esoteric Socrates who signifies a profound commitment to self-knowledge and whose appearances in the dialogues are meant to foster the practice of self-inquiry. According to Ahbel-Rappe, the elenchus, or inner examination, and the thesis that virtue is knowledge, are tools for a contemplative practice that teaches us how to investigate the mind and its objects directly. In other words, the Socratic persona of the dialogues represents wisdom, which is distinct from and serves as the larger space in which Platonic knowledge—ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics—is constructed. Ahbel-Rappe offers complete readings of the Apology, Charmides, Alcibiades I, Euthyphro, Lysis, Phaedrus, Theaetetus, and Parmenides, as well as parts of the Republic. Her interpretation challenges two common approaches to the figure of Socrates: the thesis that the dialogues represent an “early” Plato who later disavows his reliance on Socratic wisdom, and the thesis that Socratic ethics can best be expressed by the construct of eudaimonism or egoism. Sara Ahbel-Rappe is Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Socrates: A Guide for the Perplexed and Reading Neoplatonism: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius; translator of Damascius’s Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles; and coeditor (with Rachana Kamtekar) of A Companion to Socrates.

Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Plato's Theaetetus examines the dialogue in conversation with others, arriving at the conclusion that it is the absence of self-knowledge in the Theaetetus which leads to its closing impasse regarding knowledge. What Socrates accomplishes in the dialogue is to lead the mathematician Theaetetus to the recognition of his ignorance--the first step toward self-knowledge.

This book is intended to offer an interpretation of an important aspect of Plato's philosophy. The matter to be interpreted will be the Platonic myths and doctrines which bear upon self-knowledge and self-ignorance. It is difficult to say in a word just what sort of thing an interpretation is. Rather than attempting to provide a set of rules or meta-rules supposed to define the ideally perfect interpretation, several distinctions will be suggested. I should like to distinguish the philological scholar from the inter preter by saying that the latter uses what the former produces. The function of the scholarly examination of a text is to make an ancient (or foreign) writing available to the contemporary reader. The scholar solves grammatical, lexical, and historical problems and renders his author readable by the person who lacks this scholarly learning and technique. The function of the interpreter is to make use of such available writings in order to render their content more intelligible and useful to a given audience. Thus, he thinks through this content, explains, and re-expresses it in a form which can be easily related to problems, persons, doctrines, or events of another epoch or of another class of readers. At the minimum, the interpretation of a philosophic writing may be thought to prepare its teaching for application to matters which belong in another time or context. Detailed application of a doctrine is, of course, still another thing.

Acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provides a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today's debates on religion, morality, politics, and science.