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In the first half of the twentieth century, the rationalist tide
had reached its high mark in the arts, politics, and work. But the
Holocaust, the Gulag, and other failures have dimmed the popularity
of rationalism. However, the evidence of those practical failures
would not have been as convincing as it was if not for the
existence of a theoretical diagnosis of the malady. This book
compares and contrasts the ideas of some of the leading
twentieth-century critics of rationalism: Hans-Georg Gadamer, F.A.
Hayek, Aurel Kolnai, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Oakeshott, Michael
Polanyi, Gilbert Ryle, Eric Voegelin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
While each can be seen as a critic of rationalism, were they each
attacking the same thing? In what senses did their analyses
overlap, and in what senses did they differ? Clarifying these
issues, this book will provide important insights into this major
intellectual trend of the past century. By including these major
thinkers, Tradition v. Rationalism, we see that that these thinkers
believed that tradition should still have a place in the world as a
repository of wisdom. As our lives becomes increasingly dominated
by various forms of rationalisms-whether political, technological,
economic, or cultural-we need to ask ourselves whether this is the
type of world in which we want to live; and if not, how can we
critique and propose an alternative to it? The thinkers in this
book provide us a starting point on our journey towards thinking
about how we can have a more hopeful, humane, and brighter future.
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.
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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