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As traditionally interpreted, Socrates in Plato's early dialogues believes virtue is practical wisdom, valuable primarily as a means to happiness, but he has little or nothing to say about what constitutes happiness. I defend a novel interpretation on which Socrates believes happiness consists in being virtuous and virtue is philosophical knowledge. My interpretation makes better sense of all of Socrates' claims. Chapter I introduces the exegetic problem and summarizes my solution. Chapter II shows that virtue in Plato's Euthydemus is knowledge of good and bad. It also shows that the value Socrates attributes to it there is instrumental. However, though Socrates does argue that virtue is necessary for happiness, he does not consider it instrumentally sufficient for happiness. In the Apology and Crito, however, Socrates claims that virtue is sufficient for happiness and that it cannot be taken away, as Chapter III shows. I argue that the sufficiency-claim comes from Socrates' belief that virtue's intrinsic value makes its possessor happy, supporting this with other evidence from the Apology and Crito. Based on this evidence, I conclude that virtue is for Socrates the sole intrinsic good. Chapter IV shows that Socrates thinks he possesses knowledge of good and bad. Socrates expresses a paramount desire to philosophize, even after death if possible; he must therefore expect that philosophizing will yield further results. Given that virtue is Socrates' sole ultimate end, I conclude that virtue in Plato's early dialogues consists in philosophical knowledge, including but not limited to knowledge of good and bad. Chapter V shows that Socrates' belief in the invulnerability of the virtuous cannot be fully explained unless he believes that death cannot take away one's knowledge. I show that Socrates' claims about death in the Apology and Crito uphold this interpretation. I also show how my interpretation of Socrates' views about death can be used to corroborate Chapter III's main conclusion. Tying together Socrates' views on virtue, death, and philosophy, Chapter VI explains Socrates' belief that injuring others injures the agent: By diminishing one's pool of potential interlocutors, injuring others fails to maximize one's philosophical knowledge.

This dissertation is guided by two central questions. The first question is "Is the War on Terror inevitable?" By comparing the language used by President Bush in a speech given on September 20, 2001 to the language used by Homer in the Iliad, particularly his depiction of the shield of Achilles in Book 18, the War on Terror can be recast against a backdrop of mythology rather than fact. It is a tale we tell ourselves about the world, and its status as inevitable is far less convincing. The second guiding question is "How is the appearance of inevitability to be mitigated or resisted?" The second stage of the dissertation addresses the concept of mimesis (representation) as it appears in Plato's Republic and in the work of Baudrillard, as means by which to resist the power of the shield. As critical tools, mimesis and simulacra extend the promise of critical distance, thereby allowing the "thus it is" claim to be understood as an illusion. However, mimesis and simulacra tend to maintain an underlying "thus it is" of their own. The thirds stage of the argument will challenge the "thus it is" through a discussion of Odysseus and Nietzsche, both of whom teach that life is poiesis. The final stage will turn to the concept of ekphrasis, the verbal representation of a non-verbal representation, in order to develop it as a tool useful for critical theorists. Ekphrasis has the advantage of both recognizing the power of mimetic representation and disrupting it. The dissertation will conclude with an ekphrastic reading of the September 20, 2001 speech.

The argument in Plato's Philebus presents three successive formulations of the hedonist principle. Commentators often take Socrates' argument in the dialogue to be dealing solely with the third formulation, which states that pleasure, rather than intelligence, is closer in nature to the good. I argue that, nonetheless, in the dialogue Socrates remained concerned to provide a direct refutation of the first formulation, that is, of the straightforward claim that pleasure is the good for all living beings. Chapter One ascribes to the Philebus a conception of intrinsic good, which is then shown to underlie the dialogue's notion of true pleasures. Chapter Two examines in detail the problem of the “one and many” concerning pleasure, and argues that this is the problem of forms in relation to other forms, rather than that of forms in relation to particulars. This interpretation is the one that is consistent both with Protarchus' understanding of hedonism in the dialogue, and with the dialogue's methodological passages, i.e., the passages on the “god-given method” and on the four ontological kinds. In Chapter Three, it is shown how division into forms is required by Socrates' conception of the nature of pleasure. Some of the forms of pleasure are ways in which falsity is admitted into the nature of pleasure. Three accounts of false anticipatory pleasures—those of Kenny and Gosling, Mooradian, and Penner—are examined in some detail.

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This dissertation examines the Hellenistic concept of enargeia (self-evidence/vividness) in both its philosophical and literary dimensions and then applies this concept to a close reading of Lucretius' De rerum natura. I argue that the theory of enargeia provides an important model for understanding the epistemological themes of this epic poem. My study offers a history of the concept from its origins in Homeric poetry through its development as a philosophical term in Plato and Aristotle, before turning to examine the theory enargeia in epistemology, rhetoric, and literary theory in the Hellenistic period. Based on the foundation of these Hellenistic theories, I turn to a discussion of the stylistic effect of enargeia and the link between seeing and knowing in Lucretius. I illustrate how vivid imagery often serves to inspire knowledge in both the reader and the didactic addressee, Memmius. According to Epicurean (and Stoic philosophy), vision and sense-perception of self-evident facts ultimately provide the basis for knowledge. I maintain that we can see this same framework underpin Lucretius' rhetorical strategies, his descriptions, and the way that he guides us as readers to imagine the poetic subjects before our mind's eye. By noticing how enargeia plays a role in Lucretius' philosophy and poetics, we can better understand the way Hellenistic thought continued to influence Latin literature. Through the lens of rhetorical and philosophical theory, I draw important conclusions about the epistemological themes in the poem and how they influence the reader's response. This lens seems entirely appropriate, as Lucretius would have been thoroughly familiar with enargeia through his study of philosophy, rhetoric, and literature. An especially helpful result of my study is that it offers a way to integrate various dimensions of ancient thought--philosophical, rhetorical, literary, and historical--with one another. By considering the topic of enargeia, I show that these dimensions are not separate from each other, but rather they allow us to glimpse how various fields of thought interacted and continued to be appropriated and applied in the creation of poetry in the later Republic, into the imperial age, and throughout the Western tradition. This interdisciplinary approach helps us to draw conclusions about the intellectual background of Lucretius, however my findings and methodology can also be understood to apply for other Latin writers, most importantly Virgil, as I illustrate through a brief study of the end of the Aeneid in my closing chapter. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 16, 2015. / Enargeia, Epicureanism, Lucretius, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Virgil / Includes bibliographical references. / Timothy Stover, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; John Roberts, University Representative; Nathaniel Stein, Committee Member; Francis Cairns, Committee Member.

Summary in English.|Bibliography: leaves 390-404. / Henri Lopes, from Congo Brazzaville, is one of the most fully rounded writers in the field of modern African literature. This research is concerned with an analysis of the way in which the ideology, which he has embraced, has permeated all his work, with the result that he expresses an ongoing, unequivocal opposition to part of his own society, while it is in the midst of mutating from its traditional origins to a form of Western modernity.