Plato

Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines

John Niemeyer Findlay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415693554
• eBook ISBN: 9781136521430
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

J.N. Findlay, distinguished scholar and acknowledged expert on Plato, argues persuasively for a new interpretation of the Platonic writings. He believes that Plato's Unwritten Doctrines were present in the background of all the great philosopher's mature written work. With the use of Aristotelian and other writings on these reported doctrines he demonstrates that they admit of an intelligible elucidation and they direct indispensable light upon the full meaning of the written Dialogues.

The author emphasizes the valuable use of Platonic notions and methods by the Neoplatonists and the Schoolmen as well as by such modern thinkers as Husserl and Russell. He also censures, as a great misinterpretation, the widespread Aristotelian view of Platonism as a two-world theory, and argues that, for Plato, the Ideas and their Principles alone have full reality, everything else being logically parasitic upon them.

The work also includes two important Appendices, the first providing translations of the Aristotelian and other ancient material regarding Plato's oral teaching, the second criticizing and refuting the views of Harold F. Cherniss on the same material.

Index

Absurd (paradoxical) Eide 356–357

Academy 22–25, 211–213, 229, 256, 260, 262, 350, 358–359, 366, 378

Accuracy (ἀκρίβεια) 162, 293, 36

Active Intelligence 7, 25, 186, 207, 265, 363–364, 390

Adam, J. 197–198

Addition 68, 447

Adeimantus (Plato’s brother) 166

Advantage (συμϕέρον) 162–163, 166

Affinities of Eide 2, 143

Affinity of Soul with Eide 135–136

Agathon 145, 147

Albert the Great 378, 385

Alcibiades 145, 150–151

Alcmaeon of Croton 10, 138, 146

Alexander of Aphrodisias (Aristotelian commentator) 60, 64, 67, 73, 416–419, 431, 438, 454, 458

Allen, R. E. xiii, 457

Ammonius Saccas x, 184, 366–368, 457

Analogy of Being 34–36, 235–236, 321–322, 462–464

Analytic Philosophy 407, 410, 473

Anamnesis, see Remembrance

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae 10, 138–139, 215, 416, 434

Anaximander 247

Anselm of Canterbury 387–388, 391, 393

Anti-absolutism 409–410

Anytus 128

Apart(ness) (χωρίς, χωρισμός) 24–29, 36–37, 233–234, 236, 249, 435, 457–459

Apology 9, 16, 82, 120–121

Appearances 203–206, 259–260, 271

Aquinas, Thomas 378, 385, 388–395

Archelaus of Athens 138

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• I: Introductory and Biographical
• II: General Sketch of the Eidetic Theory and of its Arithmetized Version
• III: The Socratic Dialogues
• IV: The Ideological Dialogues: The Meno, Phaedo, Symposium and Phaedrus
• V: The Ideological Dialogues: The Republic
• VI: The Stoicheiological Dialogues: The Cratylus, Theaetetus and Parmenides
• VII: The Stoicheiological Dialogues: The Sophist, Statesman, Philebus and Epistles
• VIII: Plato’s Philosophy of the Concrete: The Timaeus, Critias, Laws and Epinomis
• IX: Appraisal of Platonism and its Influence
• Appendix I: Translated Passages Illustrating Plato’s Unwritten Doctrines
• Appendix II: Critical Note on the Views of Harold F. Cherniss
• Index