nÃo hà / A proposta deste trabalho à fazer uma anÃlise do personagem SÃcrates dos diÃlogos de PlatÃo. O que se pretende mostrar à que esse personagem funde elementos dos gÃneros Ãpico, trÃgico e cÃmico. Pressupomos que SÃcrates à representado como uma espÃcie de herÃi filosÃfico, no qual caracterÃsticas Ãpicas se fundem com uma mÃscara cÃmica, cujas nuanÃas tambÃm trazem uma dramatizaÃÃo trÃgica. Em vista disso, este estudo faz um recorte na relaÃÃo dos diÃlogos com a tradiÃÃo poÃtica, a partir da anÃlise de alguns diÃlogos, que permitiriam traÃar esse sentido do personagem. Em primeiro lugar, o Eutidemo como uma peÃa cÃmica. Em segundo, do carÃter Ãpico de SÃcrates no discurso de AlcibÃades do Banquete. Por fim, uma anÃlise do encontro entre os gÃneros no personagem da Apologia. / The proposal of this work is to provide an analysis of Socrates as a character of Platoâs dialogues. What is meant to show is that this character joins elements of the epic, tragic and comic genres. We assume that Socrates is represented as a kind of philosophical hero, in which epic features merge with a comic mask, whose nuances also bring a tragic dramatization. In view of this, this study identifies the relation of the dialogues with the poetic tradition, from the analysis of some dialogues, which would allow to draw that sense of the character. First, the "Euthydemus" as a comic piece. Second, the epic character of Socrates in the speech of Alcibiades from the Simposium. Finally, an analysis of the encounter between the genres on the character of Apology.

Socrates' search is for direction in life, for how one should live. For him, an unexamined life is not worth living. The suggestion in this thesis is that Plato follows Socrates in asking the extremely relevant and practical question that seeks to discover the sort of life worthy of the human individual. For Plato, the answer involves the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, it is, in short, to do philosophy. Socrates regards genuine philosophy as active and dialectical. Plato accepts the challenge of conveying this through the written word. Implicit in his dialogues is the idea that human wisdom is a fusion of the spiritual and the rational. The philosophic life is realised in practice by following the three interdependent ways of the philosopher, these are the ways of dialectics, death and love. These identify the philosophic life with a critically detached, yet passionate attitude to the world. However, this practical teaching is guided and informed by Plato's metaphysics, in particular his idea of the Good. A major task of this thesis is to show how the idea of the Good is relevant to ordinary human conduct.

This paper compares Xenophon's Apology of Socrates to the Jury to Plato's Apology with the goal of showing the similarities of the accounts despite their rhetorical differences.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001. / Bibliography: leaves 139-140.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Passau, Universiẗat, Diss., 2009.

The relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades was infamous in antiquity. Alcibiades’ notorious betrayal of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war helped to bring about Athens’ downfall, and the charges of corrupting the young and impiety for which Socrates was ultimately executed point unambiguously to the misdeeds of his most renowned and treasonous pupil. In Plato’s Alcibiades, Socrates approaches Alcibiades for the first time, claiming to have the power to bring the youth’s grandest and most tyrannical political hopes to a culmination. What does the ensuing conversation tell us about the nature of Alcibiades’ ambition and about Socrates’ intentions in associating with him? In this essay, careful attention is paid to the structure and unity of this underappreciated dialogue in order to uncover Plato’s teaching about the roots of political ambition and the approach of Socratic philosophy. The resulting analysis reveals that Socrates is interested in recruiting politically ambitious students because of how powerfully youthful political ambition seeks the good by means of just, noble, and honorable activity, and that Socrates’ hope is to awaken Alcibiades to the ambiguous and unquestioned character of his belief that the greatest human good can be obtained in the world of politics. Having recognized this as central to the Socratic project, we can consider how and to what extent political ambition relies on some misapprehension about the relationship of the good and the advantageous to the just and the noble. / text

The highest task of Philosophy, according to Socrates, is to teach man to die, to face death in the right way - the death in which the particular and the general are united, the death that concerns every one of us and at the same time does not concern anyone other than oneself . I agree completely with Socrates in his understanding of death - given that I have understood him correctly - and I believe that we should talk more about death and also dare to reflect upon the difficult issues that are related to it. This is not at all dangerous. But I take a very critical position in regard to his argument for immortality, the immortality of the soul, that is, the continued existence of the soul after the bodily, physical, death. Certainly, there may be a theoretical possibility that the soul somehow continues to exist after the physical death, but I do not think so. The only thing that remains of us, or rather after us, is the memory and the result of our actions in this life, that is, the result of the good or evil we have done against our fellow beings in this life. Death, in my opinion, understood as event or condition, is consequently one of the supernatural phenomena that makes us, we humans, human: a continuous inception and uncompleted wonder.

Socrates and Theaetetus consider and reject three different definitions of knowledge in the Theaetetus. The first of these is the thesis that knowledge is perception. According to the received reading Plato's consideration of the thesis that knowledge is perception is limited to the consideration of the naive and implausible thesis that immediate sense-perception is knowledge and there is no knowledge apart from immediate sense-perception. This reading, which limits the philosophic interest of Platos consideration of the thesis that knowledge is perception, follows from a widespread misunderstanding of Socrates' reasons for introducing Protagoras and Heraclitus which circumscribes their role in the dialogue to supplying two theses, epistemological relativism and metaphysical flux, which are sufficient or perhaps necessary conditions for the thesis that knowledge is perception. I will show that Socrates introduces Protagoras and Heraclitus, not simply because they provide the epistemological or metaphysical framework within which Theaetetus' definition holds good, but because each man is committed to the thesis that knowledge is perception. Protagoras' sophistic expertise will be classed as a kind of empirical knowledge which bases itself on past and present perceptions and makes educated predictions of future perceptions. While Heraclitus' theory of flux will lead to a radical skepticism which rejects the possibility that there should be any knowledge of the world apart from perception. Socrates will give arguments against both of these ways of understanding the thesis that knowledge is perception. Plato thus articulates, develops, and ultimately rejects three different ways of understanding Theaetetus' initial definition of knowledge. / text

In keeping with Socrates’ advice that it is “a better thing to accomplish a little well than a lot inadequately” (Theaetetus, 187d), this master’s report provides a detailed study of a few relatively short sections of Plato’s Theaetetus. After an analysis of the beginning of the work and its opening themes, I examine the Protagorean thesis as it is first revealed in Theaetetus’ second endeavor to say what knowledge is. Rather than follow the entire course of Socrates’ account of Protagoras’ position, I bring out a few of the essential features of this initial presentation and attempt to gain some clarity as to the possible meaning and purpose behind Protagoras’ enigmatic declaration that man is the measure of all things. The final section of my paper entails a close analysis of the dialogue’s last definition of knowledge: true opinion with speech. Although this account does not answer all of the questions posed by the Protagorean thesis, we find within it the most promising approach to answering the question of the dialogue: “What is knowledge?” While the Theaetetus comes to a close with this final attempt and ultimate failure to answer the question with which it began, I show that Socrates’ spurious arguments often serve more as pointers toward the truth than as refutations of the “truths” proposed. / text