The Moral and Social Philosophy of Socrates and Plato

FAIN: FF-10310-74

Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)
Gregory Vlastos (Project Director: January 1974 to present)

To analyze those aspects of the thought of Socrates and Plato which bear more directly on their ethical and political theory. The dialogues will be probed with a two-fold aim; 1) to capture the exact sense of their teaching; 2) to assess its philosophical significance. Topics to be studied will include: Socrates, his radical revision of traditional moral conceptions, his position on political obedience and disobedience; Plato, the moral and political implications of his theory of Ideas and of his doctrine that all knowledge is innate, his moral psychology, his theory of love.