Socrates and Aesop

A Comparative Study of the Introduction of Plato's Phaedo
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-3-89665-657-5
Verlag: Academia

Buch, Englisch, Band 34, 290 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 618 g

Reihe: International Plato Studies

This book is a study of Plato's portraiture of Socrates and of his ß??? f???s?f???? and of the cultural semantics that underlie it. It focuses on the introductory part of this particular dialogue (57a-61c), with particular emphasis on the repeated references to Aesop and on Socrates' reported versification of fables.

The intended parallelism between Socrates and Aesop in the Phaedo, both of them charter figures for philosophical and fable discourse respectively, alongside the accentuation throughout the dialogue of Socrates' exceptional attitude in the face of death, served Plato's strategy to inscribe his model philosophos in the traditions of the unjustly murdered and posthumously exonerated and vindicated pharmakos and of heroized eminent men. It is hoped that this view of Plato's heroic portrait of Socrates as the result of a fusion of well-established, preceding cultural notions and traditions shall provide another interpretative viewpoint of Plato's work, with respect both to its literary aspect (our reading of the dialogues) and to its institutional aspect (the sociopolitics involved in the establishment of the Academy).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zafiropoulos, Christos A.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Antike Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Griechische & Byzantinische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Christos Zafiropoulos is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Patras, Greece. His research interests cover a variety of aspects that include Plato's dialogues (with emphasis on the sociopolitics of the philosophos), the Aesopic corpus, Greek myths and the reception of the classical world.