Plato: Clitophon

A text with translation, introduction and commentary of a dialogue ascribed to Plato, first published in 1999.

Plato (Author), S. R. Slings (Edited by)

9780521623681, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 November 1999

380 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

"This book is an important and original work of scholarship, well and thoroughly done." Bryn Mawr Classical Review

The Clitophon, a dialogue generally ascribed to Plato, is significant for focusing on Socrates' role as an exhorter of other people to engage in philosophy. It was almost certainly intended to bear closely on Plato's Republic and is a fascinating specimen of the philosophical protreptic, an important genre very fashionable at the time. This 1999 volume is a critical edition of this dialogue, in which Professor Slings provides a text based on an examination of all relevant manuscripts and accompanies it with a translation. His extensive introduction studies philosophical exhortation in the classical era, and tries to account for Plato's dialogues in general as a special type of exhortation. The Clitophon is seen as a defence of the Platonic dialogue. The commentary elucidates the Greek and discusses many passages where the meaning is not entirely clear.

Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Prolegomena to the Dialogue: 1. Introduction
2. Summary and analysis of composition
3. Is the Clitophon unfinished?
4. The Clitophon as a Short Dialogue
5. The characters of the dialogue
Part II. Meaning and Authenticity: 6. Philosophical protreptic in the fourth century BCE
7. Protreptic in the Clitophon
8. Protreptic in Plato
9. Elenchos in the Clitophon
10. Justice in the Clitophon
11. The meaning of the Clitophon
12. Date and authenticity
Text and translation
Commentary
Appendices: I. The ending of Aristotle's Protrepticus
II. Note on the text
Bibliography
Indexes.

Subject Areas: Educational: Languages other than English [YQF], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA]