Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue
The Return to the Philosophy of Nature

These six diverse and difficult dialogues are seen together as aspects of Plato's project of reformulating his theory of Forms.

Charles H. Kahn (Author)

9781107576421, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 April 2016

266 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.41 kg

Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. Kahn shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science.

Preface
1. The Parmenides
2. The Theaetetus in the context of later dialogues
3. Being and not-being in the Sophist
4. The new dialectic: from the Phaedrus to the Philebus
5. Philebus and the movement to cosmology
6. Timaeus and the completion of the project: the recovery of the natural world
Epilogue: Plato as a political philosopher.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]