The Philosophy of Socrates

FAIN: FS-10698-77

Gregory Vlastos
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)

To analyze those aspects of the thought of Socrates and Plato which bear most directly on their ethical and political theory. The dialogues will be probed with a two-fold aim: (i) to capture the exact sense of their teaching; (ii) 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 his doctrine that all knowledge is innate, his moral psychology, his theory of love.