A central claim in Foucault’s 1982-1983 lectures, published as The Government of Self and Others (2008), is that Plato, in wanting to escape the possibility that his philosophical discourse would be “mere logos,” ultimately conceived of philosophy’s “reality” or “veridication” in terms of its capacity to facilitate the “work of the self.” This thesis argues that Foucault’s analysis positions us to read Plato’s dialogues as philosophical “deeds” that aim to advise the reader with respect to his or her “mode of being.” I corroborate the analysis that leads to Foucault’s highly suggestive conclusion that a text like the Republic or the Laws must in some respect not be “serious” works and are, therefore, discursive “games” whose aims lie elsewhere than in the formulation of political prescriptions. In so doing I link Foucault’s characterization of Platonic philosophy as being informed by a “weakness” in logos to the claim, put forth by scholars attentive to the dialogic form, that Plato’s dialogues are written in deference to the obstacles that the written and even spoken word presents for the transmission of his philosophy. I claim that some of the key concepts of the later Foucault’s “ethical turn,” namely askēsis, the arts of life, and ethics construed as the work and formation of a relationship of self to self, are helpful when trying to discern not only the content of Platonic writings, but also the purpose behind their form. To the extent that the elaboration of theoretical knowledge in discourse inhibits the awareness that the subject must form a practical relationship with his or her own self, and to the extent that such a work is the fundamental task of philosophy to which the acquisition of theoretical knowledge plays a secondary role, the logos of philosophical discourse must be modified in order to facilitate this ergon “of the self.” I claim that, when we consider Foucault’s understanding of what philosophy ought to do we are equipped with a basic set of criteria for evaluating the aims and benefits of the dramatic and dialogic form of Plato’s writings and I show that an extant body of scholarship verifies such criteria are met. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This thesis is a careful examination of one small Platonic dialogue, the Euthydemus. In broad terms, it argues that the Euthydemus is concerned with what might be described as 'word games', with teaching both the need to know how to speak well and the worth of being able to do so. In more specific terms, it argues that the Euthydemus is comprised of three distinct levels, Socrates' conversation (primarily) with the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, his conversation with Crito, and Plato's conversation with the reader; levels, it is suggested, which cannot be fully understood unless Crito's role in each of them is first recognized. The first level, Socrates' conversation (primarily) with the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, is seemingly composed of three separate discussions, between Socrates and the brothers, between Socrates and Clinias, and between Socrates and Ctesippus. The first discussion is a general demonstration of knowing how to use words (or 'word games') and, further, of knowing how to use them well. The second discussion, in contradistinction to the first, centres on a coherent application of words to a specific goal; that being, to begin to demonstrate both that knowledge is the greatest good for individuals and, as well, that philosophy is nothing more than a 'perpetual ruthless questioning' . The third discussion reveals something about Ctesippus' nature. More importantly, it illustrates how words can be used to communicate with certain individuals and not others. The second level of the Buthydemus, Socrates' conversation with Crito, might accurately be described as an application of words to a specific goal writ large. The reason is that, here, Socrates tells Crito a 'story' (this being what was described above as the first level of the E:uthydemus) in order to discourage him from giving his sons a philosophic education. The third level, Plato's conversation with the reader (or Plato as distinguished from Socrates), raises the broader issue of the relation between the philosopher and the city. More precisely, it begins to reveal the effects that different methods of speaking have on an individual, on the opinions that others form as a result of his or her choice in this regard, and thus on the need for an individual to choose wisely. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:59:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cilene Trindade Rohr.pdf: 1344775 bytes, checksum: fa9ab60656ec3c71a7d14320cf26f7b4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-06-30 / Our study focused on the short story Theory of Medallion (1881), of Machado de Assis, with the aim of studying how the author articulates the use of parody understood in its double sense of parallelism and reversal in light of the theoretical foundations of Hutcheon (1995) for whom the parody is ironic "trans-contextualizing", that is, repetition with critical difference and Bakhtin (1993), which highlights the dialogical structure of parody speech: a "premeditated hybrid" between the parodied speech and the one which parodies it, without, however, destroying it. Although there are some studies in the critical fortune of this short story that go in that direction, such as: Almeida (2006) and Rego (1989), we would deal with parody under another perspective, that is, in the context of the serious-comic tradition, especially the Menippean satire, whose dialogical root is closely examined by Bakhtin as the original cell of Romanesque speech. It is under such strain which Machado was explicitly influenced by, as he has obliquely registered in a metafictional passage on Theory of Medallion: "you must not only use the irony, this movement at the corner of the mouth, full of mysteries, invented by a Greek of the decadence, contracted by Lucian, transmitted to Swift and Voltaire, common feature of the skeptical and insolent " that the subtitle "Dialogue" is materialized as a parody of a gender included in the tradition of the classical Platonic dialogues. By means of discourse analysis of the ambivalent Machadian short story, we point out the moments in which he was under a different discourse - that of The Republic of Plato - which now approached, now pushed away, in an alternate game of hiding-revealing in the manner of Machado, a reader of Lucian of Samosata. Our goal, however, was not only to unveil the parody construction within the narrative structure. We also intended, through this exemplary short story inside the short stories of the author, to reflect on the formative aspect that engenders, either at the level of gender as a hybrid of, at least, three matrices: the serious-comic of Menippean, the Platonic dialogue and the essay or "story-theory" (Bosi, 1999) or at the level of Machadian project of national literature whose cornerstone is the formation of a skillful reader capable of understanding, through an inside out reading, the critical hidden under the supposed praise of the picture of the medallion, typical successful citizen of the Brazilian society of the nineteenth century, which is nourished only of appearances / Nosso estudo centrou-se sobre o conto Teoria do Medalhão (1881), de Machado de Assis, tendo por objeto de investigação o modo como o autor articula o recurso da paródia entendida no seu duplo sentido de paralelismo e inversão à luz dos fundamentos teóricos de Hutcheon (1995), para quem a paródia é transcontextualização irônica, isto é, repetição com diferença crítica e Bakhtin (1993), que destaca a estrutura dialógica do discurso paródico: um híbrido premeditado entre o discurso parodiado e aquele que o parodia, sem, contudo, destruí-lo. Embora haja na fortuna crítica desse conto alguns estudos que caminham nessa direção, como os de: Almeida (2006) e Rego, (1989), aqui trataremos da paródia sob uma outra perspectiva, isto é, no contexto da tradição do sério-cômico, especialmente da sátira menipéia, cuja raiz dialógica é analisada rigorosamente por Bakhtin como célula originária do discurso romanesco. É no âmbito dessa linhagem - à qual Machado explicitamente se filia, conforme deixa registrado obliquamente num lance metaficcional em Teoria do Medalhão: somente não deves empregar a ironia, esse movimento ao canto da boca, cheio de mistérios, inventado por algum grego da decadência, contraído por Luciano, transmitido a Swift e Voltaire, feição própria dos céticos e desabusados. que o subtítulo Diálogo se materializa enquanto paródia de um gênero inscrito na tradição clássica dos diálogos platônicos. Por meio da análise do discurso ambivalente do conto machadiano, pudemos apontar os momentos nos quais havia sob ele um outro discurso o de A República de Platão do qual ora se aproximava, ora se distanciava, num jogo alternado de ocultar-revelar, bem ao gosto de um Machado leitor de Luciano de Samósata. Nosso objetivo, porém, não se limitou apenas ao desvelamento da construção paródica no âmbito da estrutura narrativa. Pretendemos, outrossim, por meio desse conto exemplar dentro da obra contística do autor, refletir sobre o aspecto formativo que engendra, seja em nível de gênero enquanto híbrido de, ao menos, três matrizes: o sério-cômico da menipéia, o diálogo platônico e o ensaio ou conto-teoria (Bosi, 1999) , seja em nível do projeto machadiano de literatura nacional cuja pedra de toque está na formação de um leitor capaz de perceber, por meio de uma leitura dos avessos, a crítica oculta sob o pretenso elogio da figura do medalhão, típico cidadão bem sucedido da sociedade brasileira do século XIX, que se nutria, apenas, das aparências