The overall aim of the volume is to explore the relation of
Socratic philosophizing, as Plato represents it, to those
activities to which it is typically opposed. The essays address a
range of figures who appear in the dialogues as distinct "others"
against whom Socrates is contrasted-most obviously, the figure of
the sophist, but also the tragic hero, the rhetorician, the tyrant,
and the poet. Each of the individual essays shows, in a different
way, that the harder one tries to disentangle Socrates' own
activity from that of its apparent opposite, the more entangled
they become. Yet, it is only by taking this entanglement seriously,
and exploring it fully, that the distinctive character of Socratic
philosophy emerges. As a whole, the collection sheds new light on
the artful ways in which Plato not only represents philosophy in
relation to what it is not, but also makes it "strange" to itself.
It shows how concerns that seem to be raised about the activity of
philosophical questioning (from the point of view of the political
community, for example) can be seen, upon closer examination, to
emerge from within that very enterprise. Each of the essays then
goes on to consider how Socratic philosophizing can be defined, and
its virtues defended, against an attack that comes as much from
within as from without. The volume includes chapters by
distinguished contributors such as Catherine Zuckert, Ronna Burger,
Michael Davis, Jacob Howland, and others, the majority of which
were written especially for this volume. Together, they address an
important theme in Plato's dialogues that is touched upon in the
literature but has never been the subject of a book-length study
that traces its development across a wide range of dialogues. One
virtue of the collection is that it brings together a number of
prominent scholars from both political science and philosophy whose
work intersects in important and revealing ways. A related virtue
is that it treats more familiar dialogues (Republic, Sophist,
Apology, Phaedrus) alongside some works that are less well known
(Theages, Major Hippias, Minor Hippias, Charmides, and Lovers).
While the volume is specialized in its topic and approach, the
overarching question-about the potentially troubling implications
of Socratic philosophy, and the Platonic response-should be of
interest to a broad range of scholars in philosophy, political
science, and classics.
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