After graduating from the Literae Humaniores course, which after the mid-nineteenth century came to revolve around Plato’s Republic, Walter Pater’s (1839-1894) professional duties spanning thirty years at Oxford were those of a philosophy teacher and lecturer of Plato. This thesis examines Pater’s deep engagement with Platonism in his work, from his earliest known piece, “Diaphaneitè” (1864), to his final book, Plato and Platonism (1893), treating both his criticism and fiction, including his studies on myth. Plato is an ideal philosopher, critic, and artist to Pater, exemplifying a literary craftsman who blends genres with the highest authority. Platonism is a point of contact with several of Pater’s contemporaries, such as Arnold and Wilde, from which we can take new measure of their critical relationships regarding aestheticism and Decadence. Pater’s idea of aesthetic education takes Platonism for its model, which heightens one’s awareness of reality in the recognition of form and matter. Platonism also provides a framework for critical encounters with figures across history, such as Wordsworth, Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola in The Renaissance (1873), Marcus Aurelius and Apuleius in Marius the Epicurean (1885), and Montaigne and Giordano Bruno in Gaston de Latour (1896). In the manner Platonism holds that soul or mind is the essence of a person, Pater’s criticism, evident even in his fiction, seeks the mind of the author, so that his writing enacts Platonic love. Through close reading, we highlight his many references to Plato, identify Platonic subjects and themes, and explore etymological nuances in the very selection of his words, which often reveals a Platonic tendency of refinement towards immateriality, from seen to unseen beauty. As a teacher and an author Pater helped shape Oxonian Platonism, and through his writing we examine how Platonism informs his philosophy of aesthetics, history, myth, epistemology, ethics, language, and style.

This thesis uses the evidence for a wide range of phenomena relating to the exile of citizens, by judicial decision or through stasis, to investigate the political cultures of Greek poleis in the period c. 404-146 BC: the fundamental ideas about citizenship which were in circulation in poleis in that period. Political communication in the context of exile phenomena forced citizens to make explicit their fundamental assumptions about the criteria for civic inclusion and exclusion and about the extent and basis of civic obligation. Analysis of surviving evidence for that communication thus offers unique insights into prominent Greek ideas about citizenship. This method is applied, in chapters 1 and 2, to laws and discussions relating to, first, lawful expulsion and exclusion and, second, civic reconciliation and the reintegration of exiles; and, in chapters 3 and 4, to the political rhetoric, organisation and ideas of participants in exclusionary stasis and of exiled citizens. Wherever possible, ancient Greek philosophers’ arguments, rhetoric and assumptions are compared with those of non-philosophers. Study of the four different bodies of evidence suggests that most poleis’ political cultures were distinguished by their extremes, paradoxes, indeterminacies and contradictions. In particular, many poleis’ political cultures included very significant, radical norms of civic voluntarism, encouraging citizens to exercise extensive voluntary initiative in political contexts. Moreover, most poleis political cultures were dominated by two coexisting, radically opposed basic paradigms of the good polis and of good citizenship: these are defined in the introduction and chapter 1 as a ‘unitarian teleological communitarian’ paradigm and a ‘libertarian contractarian’ paradigm. In addition to revealing fundamental ideas of citizenship, some of the exile evidence enables study of the effects of those ideas in practice in this period: citizens’ political choices, claims and behaviour in relevant periods of stress, such as a bout of exclusionary stasis or a spell of political agitation while in exile, represent a well-defined and revealing case-study of the multiple, competing effects of those ideas on political interaction. It is argued that the exile evidence suggests that the same fundamental ideas of citizenship were conducive both to civic stability and flourishing and to destructive civic unrest.

Much modern moral philosophy has conceived of its interpretative and critical aims in relation to an entity it sometimes terms 'common-sense morality'. The term was influentially used in something like its canonical sense by Henry Sidgwick in his classic work The Methods of Ethics (1874). Sidgwick conceived of common-sense morality as a more-or-less determinate body of current moral opinion, and traced his ('doxastic') conception through Kant back to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and the practice of Plato's Socrates before him. The Introduction to this thesis traces the influence of Sidgwick's conception both on subsequent (mis)understandings of Socratic practice as well as on the practice of moral philosophy in the twentieth century. The first essay offers a challenge to Sidgwick's understanding of Socratic practice. I argue that Socrates' questioning of his interlocutors, far from revealing some determinate body of pre-existing beliefs, is in fact a demonstration of the dynamic and partially indeterminate quality of common-sense morality. The value for the interlocutor of engaging in such conversation with Socrates consisted primarily in its forcing him to adopt what I term a deliberative stance with respect to his own practice and dispositions, asking himself not 'what is it that I believe?' but rather, 'what am I to believe?' This understanding of Socratic practice gives us a way of reconciling the often puzzling combination of conservative and radical elements in Plato's dialogues. The second essay is a discussion of the reception of Sidgwick's conception of ethics in twentieth-century Oxford, a hegemonic centre of Anglophone philosophy. This recent tradition consists both of figures who accepted Sidgwick's picture of moral philosophy's aims and those who rejected it. Of the critics, I am centrally concerned with Bernard Williams, whose life's work, I argue, can be fruitfully understood as the elaboration of a heterodox understanding of Socratic practice, opposed to Sidgwick's. Ethics, on this conception, is a project directed at the emancipation of our moral experience from the many distortions to which it is vulnerable. Williams's writings in moral philosophy, disparate and not entirely systematic, are unified by these emancipatory aims, aims they share with strains of psychoanalysis except in that they do not scorn philosophical argument as a tool of emancipation: in this respect among others, I claim, they are fundamentally Socratic.

This thesis deals with the topic of the Socratic question as a basis of the care for one's soul in Patocka's texts within the period from 30th to 50th years of the 20th century. This topic is here divided into three larger coherent units. The first part deals with the Patocka's understanding of Socratic care for one's soul as a historical moral self-creation of man having a character of negatively oriented transcension, which is not determined by ideas, but associated in its way of distance from objectivity with motive of knowing unknowing about the last good. The second part of this thesis deals with Patocka's comprehending of Plato as a creator of metaphysical thinking, in which core stands this negatively oriented experience of Socratic moral reversal. Plato, however, this experience of originally unobjectivated horizon according to Patocka's interpretation objectivates as the world of eternal ideas. Patocka as a central interpretative motive of this experience inserts in his own interpretation of Plato the term of Being inspired by Heidegger, which is very close to Plato's Idea of Good laying beyond all divides of essence (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας). The last part of this thesis concerns with Patocka's own attempt to understand Plato's Idea by unobjective means. Although thus interpreted Idea is relieved of...

A comparison of the writings of Plato and C.S. Lewis reveals a common idea that human love is not sufficient for man. An examination of Plato’s Symposium and Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves, in particular, shows that both writers illustrate that man must ascend the ladder of love in order to meet the source of all love: Divine Love. Concerned with man’s innate needs and ethics, both Plato and Lewis argue that there is a universal principle of goodness known to all men of all cultures. Lewis argues, especially in The Abolition of Man, that man must cling to the traditional notion that a sense of right and wrong is inherent in all men. Illustrated in the measurably modified version of the Cupid and Psyche myth retold in Till We Have Faces, Lewis reveals that man’s natural relationships cannot satisfy his yearning for the union with beauty and truth found only in a supernatural relationship with Divine Love: God. Similar to Plato’s thought recorded in his dialogues, Lewis projects in most of his writings the argument that man cannot find the good life until he seeks the virtuous life that leads to harmony with men and joy found in the presence of God.

This work deals with education for virtues in Ancient Greece and Rome and is looking for common elements that can be traced in current educational practice as a reference to this education. It focuses on several important philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Quintilianus. It examines the virtues which were considered to be the most important, how one can reach them and if they can be learned. The final chapter describes how the antique education for virtue influenced the contemporary Czech education, particularly in the General educational programme for basic education and General educational programme for high schools.

Philosophy and Exegesis in the Enneads. The Wings of the Plotinean Soul in his reading of Plato’s Phaedrus”. In the present paper, we examine the role exegesis plays in the philosophy of the Enneads and, in particular, the way in which Plotinus interprets Plato. With this purpose we analyze, in the first place, some revealing passages of Porphyrius’ Life of Plotinus in order to understand, on the one hand, how late Greek thinkers conceived the exegetic endeavour and, on the other hand, the way in which plotinian philosophy was considered by his contemporaries. In the second section of this work, we examine the treatise IV 8 of the Enneads and try to show some peculiar aspects of Plotinus’ exegetic procedure as well as of his reading of Plato’s Phaedrus. / En el presente artículo, examinamos el papel de la exégesis en la constitución de la filosofía eneádica y, en particular, el carácter de la interpretación plotiniana de Platón. Para ello, en primer lugar, recurrimos al análisis de algunos pasajes reveladores de la Vida de Plotino porfiriana que nos permiten comprender, por una parte, la manera en que los tardoantiguos concebían la tarea exegética y, por otra, el modo en que la filosofía de Plotino era valorada por sus contemporáneos. A su vez, en la segunda sección del trabajo, nos abocamos al examen del tratado IV 8 de las Enéadas e intentamos poner de manifiesto algunos aspectos puntuales del proceder exegético plotiniano y del modo en que el neoplatónico lee el Fedro de Platón.

Orientador: Francisco Benjamin de Souza Netto / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T04:42:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gonzaga_SolangeMariaNorjosa_D.pdf: 1654797 bytes, checksum: 8d8393033146423ad9a9e3522135c6b6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: A pesquisa demonstra que Platão, no diálogo Leis, possibilita a efetivação da arte política por meio do cuidado da alma em sua natureza e disposição (I, 650b). A reflexão sobre a disposição da alma dar-se via mito da marionete, em que Platão descreve a guerra no interior do homem; mostra como lidar com a tensão entre o vício e a virtude provocada pelo prazer e dor; e postula axiomas determinando a natureza das relações amorosas e o cuidado que se deve ter com as afecções da alma. Platão elabora nas Leis uma Constituição a partir da problematização de três questões: o simpósio, a sissítia para as mulheres e a procriação, que propicia instituir um novo éthos que fará do cidadão da pólis onde será fundada em Creta, uma marionete a serviço das divindades (I, 645b). Assim, realizamos em nossa tese uma reflexão no âmbito da filosofia platônica sobre a tripla relação entre o homem, a divindade e a lei, enquanto possibilidade de realização da arte política / Abstract: This research shows that Plato, in the Laws dialogue, enables the operation of political art through the care for the soul in its nature and disposition (I, 650b). A reflection on the disposition of the soul occurs by means of the puppet myth, in which Plato describes the war inside man, showing how to deal with the tension between vice and virtue caused by pleasure and pain; and postulates axioms determining the nature of love relations and the care we must have with the soul's affections. Plato elaborates in Laws a Constitution stemming from three questions: the symposium, the sissitia for women and procreation, which provides the institution of a new ethos which will turn the citizen of the Cretian polis into a puppet to the service of the divinities (I, 645b). Thus, in our thesis, we reflect, in the scope of platonic philosophy, on the triple relation of man, the divinity and the law, while there is the possibility of realizing the political art / Doutorado / Doutor em Filosofia

Jane Austen’s novels remain an essential component of the literary canon, but her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is frequently neglected. However, in Sense and Sensibility is the genesis of Austen’s technique through which her major characters cultivate and reveal a strong inner life, demonstrated through the character of Elinor Dashwood. This technique is a characteristic she incorporates in each of her succeeding novels. Her approach to literature centers on the interiority of her characters and their ability to change, but it her first novel Austen takes a unique approach. Following the structure of an eighteenth-century sermon, Austen creates a sermon for lay people that centers on the cultivation of a strong interior life.

Over the course of four sections this PhD examines the ways in which the Aristotelian, Stoic and Epicurean philosophers portray bodily activity. In particular, it argues that their claims regarding bodies' natural tendency to preserve themselves, and seek out the goods capable of promoting their well-being, came to influence Hobbes's and Spinoza's later accounts of natural, animal and social behaviour. The first section presents the ancient accounts of natural and animal bodily tendencies and explores the specific ways in which the Aristotelian, Stoic and Epicurean views on animal desires came to complement and diverge from each other. After investigating the perceived links between natural philosophy, psychology and ethics, the section proceeds to consider how the ancients used this 'unified' view of nature to guide their accounts of the soul's primary appetites and desires. Also examined is the extent to which civil society is portrayed as a means of securing the individual against others, and how Aristotelian philia, Theophrastian oikeiotês and Stoic oikeiōsis came to stand in opposition to the fear-driven and compact-based accounts of social formation favoured by the Epicureans. The second section considers how the ancient accounts of impulsive behaviour and social formation were received and diffused via new editions of ancient texts, eclectic readings of Aristotle, and the attempts of Neostoic and Neoepicurean authors to update and systematise those philosophies from the late sixteenth century onwards. The particular treatments of Hellenistic thought by authors such as Justus Lipsius, Hugo Grotius and Pierre Gassendi are considered in detail and are placed within the context of the growing trend to use Stoic and Epicurean thought to replace the authority of Aristotle in the areas of science, psychology, and politics. The final two sections are devoted respectively to considering the ways in which Hobbes and Spinoza encountered the Hellenistic accounts of bodies and demonstrating how these earlier accounts came to feature in each of their own discussions of bodily tendencies. Engaging with a wide range of their texts, each section develops the many nuances and contours that emerged as both writers developed and fine-tuned their accounts of bodily actions. This reveals the many ways in which the ancient accounts of self-preservation helped to unify large aspects of Hobbes's and Spinoza's own philosophical corpus, while equally showing how a well-developed account of bodily tendencies might challenge the scholastic worldview and expand further the boundaries of the so-called 'New Science'.