The modern world began with a critique of ancient philosophy as unscientific and in a decisive attempt to progress beyond it. Over time, however, the promises of the early modern philosophers have become increasingly suspect, while the ancients have come to enjoy greater appeal. Defending Socrates articulates Plato's implicit response to the early modern attack through a holistic interpretation of Plato's trilogy of dialogues on the question of knowledge—Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman. In Theaetetus, Socrates attempts to define knowledge with two mathematicians, the young Theaetetus and his teacher Theodorus, but ultimately fails. This failure leads Theodorus, on the following day, to bring along a stranger from the city of Elea to correct Socrates's manner of philosophizing. The Eleatic stranger presents us with a scientific alternative to Socrates in Sophist and Statesman. By the end of these dialogues, however, it becomes clear that the obstacles and inconsistencies confronting the stranger's alternative are insurmountable. Socratic philosophy turns out to be the only tenable mode. Plato thus directs us back to Theaetetus, which took place the day before but was written afterwards, that is, in full awareness of the stranger's alternative. There we find a defense of the unscientific aspects of Socratic philosophy that might provide us guidance amid the broken promises of modernity.

A rigorous investigation of Socrates' early education, pinpointing the thought that led Socrates to turn from natural science to the study of morality, ethics, and politics Plato's Parmenides is regarded as a canonical work in ontology. Depicting a conversation between Parmenides of Elea and a young Socrates, the dialogue presents a rigorous examination of Socrates' theory of the forms, the most influential account of being in the philosophic tradition. In this commentary on the Parmenides, Alex Priou argues that the dialogue is, in actuality, a reflection on politics. Priou begins from the accepted view that the conversation consists of two discrete parts -- a critique of the forms, followed by Socrates' philosophical training -- but finds a unity to the dialogue yet to be acknowledged. By paying careful attention to what Parmenides calls the "greatest impasse" facing Socrates' ontology, Priou reveals a political context to the conversation. The need in society for order and good rule includes the need, at a more fundamental level, for an adequate andefficacious explanation of being. Recounting here how a young Socrates first learned of the primacy of political philosophy, which would become the hallmark of his life, Becoming Socrates shows that political philosophy, and not ontology, is "first philosophy." Alex Priou is an instructor in the Herbst Program in the Humanities in Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.