One of very few monographs devoted to Plato's Meno, this study emphasizes the interplay between its protagonists, Socrates and Meno. It interprets the Meno as Socrates' attempt to persuade his interlocutor, by every device at his disposal, of the value of moral inquiry—even though it fails to yield full-blown knowledge—and to encourage him to engage in such inquiry, insofar as it alone makes human life worth living.

In Socrates Dissatisfied, Weiss argues against the prevailing view that the personified Laws in the latter part of the Crito are Socrates' spokesmen. She reveals and explores many indications that Socrates and the Laws are, both in style and in substance, adversaries. Deft, provocative, and compelling, with new translations providing groundbreaking interpretations of key passages, Socrates Dissatisfied challenges the standard conception of the history of political thought.

In The Socratic Paradox and Its Enemies, Roslyn Weiss argues that the Socratic paradoxes—no one does wrong willingly, virtue is knowledge, and all the virtues are one—are best understood as Socrates’ way of combating sophistic views: ...

Roslyn Weiss offers a new interpretation of Platonic moral philosophy based on an unconventional reading of the Republic. Her basic argument begins with the point that Plato means for us to react badly to the philosopher-rulers of Book 7. She then makes the case that there are two distinct kinds of philosopher in the Republic--one that is ideal and one that is farcical--and that each represents a separate type of justice. Finally, she argues that Plato recognizes this dualism and points (...) the way toward a resolution"--Publisher's Web site. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt so to construe the arguments of the Hippias Minor as to remove the justification for regarding it as unworthy of Plato either because of its alleged fallaciousness and Sophistic mode of argument or because of its alleged immorality. It focuses, therefore, only on the arguments and their conclusions, steering clear of the dialogue's dramatic and literary aspects. Whereas I do not wish to deny the importance of these aspects to a proper understanding of the dialogue (...) – on the contrary, in a dialogue so heavily laden with irony and caricature, these aspects are necessarily more significant than they are in other dialogues – I do think there is something to be gained from concentrating on the arguments themselves. Although there can be little doubt that Socrates is up to something in the Hippias Minor, the task of determining just what he is up to can only be simplified by clarifying the arguments first.The Hippias Minor has traditionally been thought to contain two independent arguments, each having its own paradoxical conclusion. The first argument begins, it is said, when Hippias characterizes the two Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus as the true man and the false man respectively. Through its discovery that both the false man and the true man have δύναμις, it results in the paradox that the false man and the true are identical. The second argument, on this view, leaves the subject of ⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς and ⋯ ψευδ⋯ς and compares instead all sorts of agents in intentional and unintentional action. Finding that the intentional agent is in every case better than the unintentional, the argument concludes that the intentional evil-doer is also better than the unintentional. Viewing the dialogue as thus containing two distinct topics treated in two self-sufficient arguments is perhaps not the best way to understand it. (shrink)

This volume addresses the issues of the Third Age--that time after retirement when financial stability and reduced obligations to others, together, allow for freedom--and good health makes it possible to enjoy that freedom. How, in this special time of life, is meaning and purpose to be found? And what alternatives are available? These difficult questions are responded to by scholars in the field of aging, some themselves in the Third Age.

This is the first complete English translation of Hasdai Crescas's Light of the Lord, a seminal work of medieval Jewish philosophy. Crescas challenges the Aristotelian underpinnings of medieval thought, introduces alternative physical and metaphysical theories, and presents service to the God of love and benefaction as the goal for humankind.

This chapter contains sections titled: Exhortation, Refutation, and Examination Inquiry – Not Teaching The “What is x?” Question.

In this book Raymond L. Weiss examines how a seminal Jewish thinker negotiates the philosophical conflict between Athens and Jerusalem in the crucial area of ethics. Maimonides, a master of both the classical and the biblical-rabbinic traditions, reconciled their differing views of morality primarily in the context of Jewish jurisprudence. Taking into consideration the entire corpus of Maimonides' writings, Weiss focuses on the ethical sections of the Commentary on the Mishnah and the Mishneh Torah , but also discusses the Guide (...) of the Perplexed , the letters of Maimonides, and his medical works. The gulf between classical philosophy and the Torah made the task of Maimonides extraordinarily difficult. Weiss shows that Maimonides subtly preserves the tension between those traditions while producing a practical accommodation between them. To explain how Maimonides was able to accomplish this twofold goal, Weiss takes seriously the multilevel character of Maimonides' works. Weiss interrupts Maimonides as a heterodox thinker who, with utter integrity, faces the Law's encounter with philosophy and gives both the Torah and philosophy their due. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Emperor’s Daughter, the Wise Rabbi, and the Realtor’s FaceliftJohn Davidson and Ruhama WeissFour decades ago during the clinical years of medical school, my (JD) first patient–care efforts included serendipitous contacts with three non–physician mentors. Each a rabbi. Each a Texan. Each of a different generation. Each acting in a pastoral care role in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. By sharing with all–comers their command of the two–millennia–old rabbinic literary (...) corpus, especially its aggadic, or nonlegal texts, they changed me forever. Theological dogma was not their passion. Caregiving for their hospitalized congregants was. And in so doing, they opened gates of discovery to rabbinic stories (aggadot) as articles of faith to be put into action for patients, staff, students, and doctors alike. These unexpected gifts have catalyzed and sustained my medical career and personal life ever since.The most influential of those stories was the famous Talmudic tale of the eminent Rabbi Eliezer (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b) using every conceivable means to support his view in a dispute, including miracles and a voice of approval from Heaven. His colleagues refused to assent to the singularity of his methods or arrival. They insisted on reasoning their way through to a majority decision based on consideration of the evidence at hand with the tools available. The tale ends with a joyous, proud, yet defeated parental deity declaring, “My children have bested Me, my children have bested Me.”The legend empowered me as a student to speak my mind in seeking to value the methodical, collaborative process of clinical decision–making over the sometimes ferocious voices of “the experts.” It continues to resurface decades later in daily efforts at finding common ground with both patients and other clinicians as we try to figure out, “what to do.” For more on this topic see my article, “Empathy and Integrative Thinking: Talmudic Paradigms for the Essentials of a Medical Interview” found in Medical Humanities.Just as those rabbis in the 1970’s told their stories in order to make sense of worldly and spiritual matters, so have I come now to appreciate the value of similar narratives for my patients and myself. Sometimes stories are shared in a near prescriptive fashion. Sometimes they are recalled silently as a compass suggesting the next step in an interview or treatment process. These rabbinic tales come to mind during clinical encounters after years of personal reflection on favorite texts and even more often in the midst of weekly if not daily textual study as a central element of my Jewish religious life. This practice has led to a realization that recalling rabbinic texts in contemporary clinical contexts is neither far–fetched nor irrelevant. At times it is uncannily helpful. Two millennia are not so long ago.During the past year, an Israeli colleague (RW) and I have revisited various Talmudic passages on a regular basis. Unlike Texas four decades ago, now I have learned with a pastoral care clinician who is a “hevruta,” or study partner, from the same Hebrew root as “haver,” meaning “friend.” Ours is a centuries–old way of study consisting of a pair of learners conversing freely on equal footing as they wrestle with interpreting a chosen, often familiar, text in a new way. My hevruta and I parse verbs. We examine articles. We question redundancy and grammatical reversals. We search for allusions. We read closely. We do all of this for its sake alone. It is part of our spiritual journey. It is one way we search for God. We engage the words on the page or screen and talk to each other.It is also a dyadic effort whose process and content bear a likeness to that of a doctor and a patient as they try to dialogue together regarding a patient’s concerns and the doctor’s capacity to help. Here, too, there is give and take, an attention to details, a reinterpretation of the past, and a reconsidering of the present. It is not surprising that the fruits of an ongoing dialogue on one stage with a hevruta, related to rabbinic stories and grammatical puzzlements, is of use on another... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 137-139 [Access article in PDF] Gareth B. Matthews. Socratic Perplexity and the Nature of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 137. Cloth, $29.95 Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith. The Philosophy of Socrates. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. Pp. x + 290. Paper $22.00. Matthews' little book tracks the course of Socrates' perplexity, which, Matthews contends, starts out (...) as an obstacle to successful inquiry, but becomes, eventually, itself the target of inquiry. Matthews regards as quite genuine the perplexity that Socrates professes in certain of the early dialogues—Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro—largely, however, because Matthews himself finds Socrates' questions so stubbornly persistent. Yet, couldn't Socrates, at least with respect to some of his questions, experience no state of confusion, no perplexity, but, nevertheless, profess perplexity? Perhaps Socrates' confessions of perplexity signal only his awareness that he lacks knowledge of virtue; perhaps they are but rhetorical devices for encouraging Socrates' interlocutors to admit to their own ignorance.As the book continues, Matthews, following a line fairly standard by now, thinks that, in the "transitional" Meno, Socrates discovers two ways out of the perplexity: recollection, and the method of hypothesis; and that, in the "middle" dialogues—the Republic and Phaedo—the Theory of Forms comes to his rescue. In the Parmenides and, perhaps later, Matthews maintains, the Theory of Forms becomes itself the object of inquiry, as Socrates recognizes the perplexities with which it is fraught. Matthews mentions, but takes no stand on, the controversies surrounding the late dialogues, moving on at last to Aristotle and the different kind of perplexity one encounters there.For the briefest moment it looks as if Matthews might resist the standard line, when, in discussing the Meno, he notices not only that the geometrical problem of the Meno's slave-boy passage causes no perplexity comparable to that caused by Socrates' philosophical problems, but that Socrates is fully in charge in the geometrical demonstration, stinging another without simultaneously stinging himself. Yet, not only does Matthews fail to pursue his insight that moral or philosophical questions are, for Socrates, not like mathematical ones; on the contrary, he suggests that, in the Phaedo, philosophical problems are viewed by Socrates as mathematical ones.In The Philosophy of Socrates, Brickhouse and Smith undertake the ambitious task of expounding and defending a coherent and cohesive Socratic philosophy, one that encompasses Socrates' method, his wisdom and ignorance, his understanding of the nature of knowledge, his moral philosophy, psychology, politics, and religion. For a book meant to be a popular introduction, it is remarkably comprehensive—even [End Page 137] exhaustive—and serves to acquaint the reader with the current scholarly controversies surrounding Socratic philosophy as it is debated in the analytic tradition associated most frequently with the late and great Gregory Vlastos.In many respects, The Philosophy of Socrates is but an updated version of Brickhouse and Smith's earlier book, Plato's Socrates (Oxford University Press, 1994)—though without the rich and copious notes. The earlier book is the better one. The new book, although it purports to discuss the philosophy of the historical Socrates, is, from Chapter 2 on, a book about the Socrates of Plato's "early" dialogues. Yet, it is precisely this Socrates who is largely absent from its pages. The Socrates of the early dialogues is a character: both in the sense that he is a protagonist in the dramas that are Plato's dialogues, and in the sense that he is sarcastic, funny, makes bad puns, strikes at his interlocutors where they are most vulnerable, teases, baits, and annoys. But, most importantly, this Socrates is no solitary thinker. He talks to people; and what he says and how he says it is influenced both by his interlocutor and by the context of their conversation. Brickhouse and Smith, however, take such factors into account but rarely—and then only to save their own take on a particular Socratic doctrine.The two interpretive principles that Brickhouse and Smith invoke most often... (shrink)

Arendt and Dewey argue that action is only political when undertaken in a certain way and fear the abolition of a realm in which action can remain political in the strongest sense of the term. But unlike Dewey, Arendt seems to bar some activities from admittance to the public sphere on the grounds that they are insufficiently political. These purportedly nonpolitical activities include urgent measures undertaken to alleviate human want, the application of the sciences to human life, and endeavors to (...) free the populous from political life itself. Dewey however selectively allows these activities to be considered political if and when they prove they are not a threat to the plurality, the hallmark of the public realm. Science must accommodate rather than stifle plurality of opinion, political activity must strive toward an end other than freedom from political life, and action must be performed by actors exercising judgment, in accord with principles. In this way, Dewey's work show us in more concrete detail than Arendt's, but in the same spirit, how the private sphere can overlap with the political sphere without infiltrating it or robbing it of its distinctness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Rejoinder to Professors Gosling and Taylor Hedonism is for Socrates the radical view that pleasure is the standard according to which one ought to steer one's life, the view that pleasure represents the proper end of human existence. Hedonism is not for Socrates the weaker view that the good life is also the most pleasant. Were it not for the Protagoras, all would agree, I think, that Socrates (...) does not regard pleasure as the highest goal of human life. Perhaps even Gosling and Taylor would concede that but for the Protagoras no reader of Plato would assign to pleasure a pivotal role in Socratic ethics:/ffdon~ as a standard of rightness or goodness is absent from the Apologyand Crito, and is railed against in the Phaedoand the Gorgias.The Gosling-Taylor project of reading all these dialogues in light of the Protagoras's presumed Socratic endorsement of hedonism, and interpreting them so that they are not incompatible with the Protagoras, drains the hedonism in the Protagoras of its radicality and substitutes--without warrant--the weaker, non-Socratic understanding of hedonism. Gosling and Taylor's accusation that I commit an ignoratioelenchiis one example of this sort of softening of the issue. I argue that Socrates (in the Apology) decides what to fear by appealing to the standard of what is right rather than determining what is right by appealing to the standard of fearfulness, and that it is therefore inaccurate to describe him as courageous through fear. Were the question here the weak one of whether the courageous man in fact chooses what is truly least fearful I could agree with Gosling and Taylor that it is irrelevant to consider the standard to which Socrates appeals in making his choice. Yet both in the Protagorasand in the Phaedo--as well as, I believe, in the Apology---what is at stake ~ the standard, the motivation behind the choice. In the Apology Socrates is not, as Gosling and Taylor claim, "motivated by" fear, even though he specifies what he fears. In order to explain what motivates him to fear and then to avoid what he fears, Socrates turns to the notions of duty and honor. Socrates declares (Apology 29b) that it is not because of fear of death or any other danger that he remains steadfast at his post and refuses to relinquish his duty of examining himelf and others; rather, he will obey his superior, whether God or man, becauseto do otherwise is wrong, wicked, and dishonorable. Indeed, it is since disobedience is wrong, wicked, and dishonorable that Socrates fears it more than death. Socrates thus can hardly be said to "leave inexplicit" the criteria that determine for him what is kak0n, nor does he allow any room for pleasure and pain to emerge as those criteria. As I sought to demonstrate in my paper, the philosopher in the Phaedo is characteristically indifferent to pleasure, pain, and fear. Although no human life can be devoid of intercourse with these, the way in which a philosopher negotiates his dealing with pleasures, pains, and fears is by choosing among them through reference to a higher standard. Regarding Gosling and Taylor's claim that I misrepresent their view on the Phaedo I shall of course defer to them. I direct the reader to pp. 522-23 and n. 18 of my paper, however, to explain what aspects of Gosling and Taylor's discussion prompted my interpretation. [117] 118 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 98:1 JANUARY 199 o Professors Gosling and Taylor insist that the Phaedo, in denouncing pleasure, concentrates specifically on bodily pleasure. I maintain that at Phaedo 68-69 what is deplored as spurious aret~ is the very goal of maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain and fear. As in the Protagoras, the calculus in the Phaedo has its eye on the bottom line; the type or quality of the pleasure is not a factor. The hedonism in the Protagoras, I firmly contend, is of the very crudest sort. I do not concede that it is enlightened in any sense--not even in Gosling and Taylor's limited sense in which its criterion of goodness is not immediate pleasure... (shrink)