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This volume brings together Seth Benardete’s studies of Hesiod,
Homer, and Greek tragedy, eleven Platonic dialogues, and
Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The Argument of the Action spans four
decades of Seth Benardete’s work, documenting its impressive
range. Benardete’s philosophic reading of the poets and his
poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground, guided by
the key he found in the Platonic dialogue: probing the meaning of
speeches embedded in deeds, he uncovers the unifying intention of
the work by tracing the way it unfolds through a movement of its
own. Benardete’s original interpretations of the classics are the
fruit of this discovery of the “argument of the action.”
An insightful commentary on Plato’s Laws, his complex final work.
The Laws was Plato’s last work, his longest, and one
of his most difficult. In contrast to
the Republic, which presents an abstract ideal,
the Laws appears to provide practical guidelines for
the establishment and maintenance of political order in the real
world. Classicist Seth Benardete offers a rich analysis of each of
the twelve books of the Laws, which illuminates Plato’s
major themes and arguments concerning theology, the soul, justice,
and education. Most importantly, Benardete shows how music in a
broad sense, including drama, epic poetry, and even puppetry,
mediates between reason and the city in Plato’s philosophy of
law. Benardete also uncovers the work’s concealed ontological
dimension, explaining why it is hidden and how it can be
brought to light. In establishing the coherence and underlying
organization of Plato’s last dialogue, Benardete makes a
significant contribution to Platonic studies.
When the winds fall, the sailor picks up his oars, no longer
relying on help outside his own power. This 'second sailing, '
according to the distinguished classicist Seth Benardete, is the
essence of Socratic philosophizing. In this section-by-section
commentary, Benardete argues that Plato's Republic is itself a
self-powered analysis of the beautiful, the good, and the just.
Socrates' Second Sailing provides at once a fresh interpretation of
the Republic and a new understanding of philosophy as practiced by
Plato and Socrates.
Plato, Allan Bloom wrote, is "the most erotic of philosophers," and
his Symposium is one of the greatest works on the nature of love
ever written. This new edition brings together the English
translation of the renowned Plato scholar and translator, Seth
Benardete, with two illuminating commentaries on it: Benardete's
"On Plato's "Symposium"" and Allan Bloom's provocative essay, "The
Ladder of Love." In the "Symposium, " Plato recounts a drinking
party following an evening meal, where the guests include the poet
Aristophanes, the drunken Alcibiades, and, of course, the wise
Socrates. The revelers give their views on the timeless topics of
love and desire, all the while addressing many of the major themes
of Platonic philosophy: the relationship of philosophy and poetry,
the good, and the beautiful.
"The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy," one of the most
groundbreaking works of twentieth-century Platonic studies, is now
back in print for a new generation of students and scholars to
discover. In this volume, distinguished classicist Seth Benardete
interprets and pairs two important Platonic dialogues, the
"Gorgias" and the "Phaedrus," illuminating Socrates' notion of
rhetoric and Plato's conception of morality and eros in the human
soul. Following his discussion of the "Gorgias" as a dialogue about
the rhetoric of morality, Benardete turns to the "Phaedrus" as a
discourse about genuine rhetoric, namely the science of eros, or
true philosophy. This novel interpretation addresses numerous
issues in Plato studies: the relation between the structure of the
"Gorgias "and the image of soul/city in the "Republic," the
relation between the structure of "Phaedrus" and the concept of
eros, and Socrates' notion of ignorance, among others.
Aristotle's much-translated On Poetics is the earliest and arguably
the best treatment that we possess of tragedy as a literary form.
Seth Benardete and Michael Davis have translated it anew with a
view to rendering Aristotle's text into English as precisely as
possible. A literal translation has long been needed, for in order
to excavate the argument of On Poetics one has to attend not simply
to what is said on the surface but also to the various puzzles,
questions, and peculiarities that emerge only on the level of how
Aristotle says what he says and thereby leads one to revise and
deepen one's initial understanding of the intent of the argument.
As On Poetics is about how tragedy ought to be composed, it should
not be surprising that it turns out to be a rather artful piece of
literature in its own right. Benardete and Davis supplement their
edition of On Poetics with extensive notes and appendices. They
explain nuances of the original that elude translation, and they
provide translations of passages found elsewhere in Aristotle's
works as well as in those of other ancient authors that prove
useful in thinking through the argument of On Poetics both in terms
of its treatment of tragedy and in terms of its broader concerns.
By following the connections Aristotle plots between On Poetics and
his other works, readers will be in a position to appreciate the
centrality of this little book for his thought on the whole. In an
introduction that sketches the overall interpretation of On Poetics
presented in his The Poetry of Philosophy (St. Augustine's Press,
1999), Davis argues that, while On Poetics is certainly about
tragedy, it has a further concern extending beyond poetry to the
very structure of the human soul in its relation to what is, and
that Aristotle reveals in the form of his argument the true
character of human action.
Benardete's 1955 doctoral dissertation in social thought for the
University of Chicago was published in two parts in the St. John's
Review in the spring and summer of 1985. The parts do not take the
opposing hero's of Homer's Iliad in turn, as might be expected, but
discuss first the style and then the plot. There is no index.
Annotation 2005 Book
Aristotle's much-translated On Poetics is the earliest and arguably
the best treatment that we possess of tragedy as a literary form.
Seth Benardete and Michael Davis have translated it anew with a
view to rendering Aristotle's text into English as precisely as
possible. A literal translation has long been needed, for in order
to excavate the argument of On Poetics one has to attend not simply
to what is said on the surface but also to the various puzzles,
questions, and peculiarities that emerge only on the level of how
Aristotle says what he says and thereby leads one to revise and
deepen one's initial understanding of the intent of the argument.
As On Poetics is about how tragedy ought to be composed, it should
not be surprising that it turns out to be a rather artful piece of
literature in its own right. Benardete and Davis supplement their
edition of On Poetics with extensive notes and appendices. They
explain nuances of the original that elude translation, and they
provide translations of passages found elsewhere in Aristotle's
works as well as in those of other ancient authors that prove
useful in thinking through the argument of On Poetics both in terms
of its treatment of tragedy and in terms of its broader concerns.
By following the connections Aristotle plots between On Poetics and
his other works, readers will be in a position to appreciate the
centrality of this little book for his thought on the whole. In an
introduction that sketches the overall interpretation of On Poetics
presented in his The Poetry of Philosophy (St. Augustine's Press,
1999), Davis argues that, while On Poetics is certainly about
tragedy, it has a further concern extending beyond poetry to the
very structure of the human soul in its relation to what is, and
that Aristotle reveals in the form of his argument the true
character of human action.
In this exciting interpretation of the Odyssey, the late renowned
scholar Seth Benardete suggests that Homer may have been the first
to philosophize in a Platonic sense. He argues that the Odyssey
concerns precisely the relation between philosophy and poetry and,
more broadly, the rational and the irrational in human beings. In
light of this possibility, Bernardete works back and forth from
Homer to Plato to examine the relation between wisdom and justice
and tries to recover an original understanding of philosophy that
Plato, too, recovered by reflecting on the wisdom of the poet. At
stake in his argument is no less than the history of philosophy and
the ancient understanding of poetry. The Bow and the Lyre is a book
that every classicist and historian of philosophy should have.
By turns wickedly funny and profoundly illuminating, "Encounters
and Reflections" presents a captivating and unconventional portrait
of the life and works of Seth Benardete. One of the leading
scholars of ancient thought, Benardete here reflects on both the
people he knew and the topics that fascinated him throughout his
career in a series of candid, freewheeling conversations with
Robert Berman, Ronna Burger, and Michael Davis.
The first part of the book discloses vignettes about fellow
students, colleagues, and acquaintances of Bernadete who were to
become major figures in the academic and intellectual life of
twentieth-century America. We glimpse the student days of Allan
Bloom, Stanely Rosen, and George Steiner, and we discover the life
of the mind as lived by such well-known scholars as Daivd Grene,
Jacob Klien, and Benardete's mentor, Leo Strauss. We also encounter
a number of other learned and sometimes eccentric luminaries,
including T.S. Eliot, James Baldwin, Werner Jaeger, John Davidson
Beazley, and Willard Quine. In the book's second part, Benardete
reflects on his own intellectual growth and on his ever-evolving
understanding of the texts and ideas he spent a lifetime studying.
Revisiting some of his recurrent themes--among them eros and the
beautiful, the city and the law, and the gods and the human
soul--Benardete shares his views on Plato, Homer, and Heidegger, as
well as on the relations between philosophy and science and between
Christianity and ancient Roman thought.
The closet thing we will have to an autobiography of one of the
twentieth century's leading intellectuals, "Encounters and
Reflections" brings Benardete's thought to life to enlighten and
inspire anew generation of thinkers.
The Archaeology of the Soul is a testimony to the extraordinary
scope of Seth Benardete's thought. Some essays concern particular
authors or texts; others range more broadly and are thematic. Some
deal explicitly with philosophy; others deal with epic, lyric, and
tragic poetry. Some of these authors are Greek, some Roman, and
still others are contemporaries writing about antiquity. All of
these essays, however, are informed by an underlying vision, which
is a reflection of Benardete's life-long engagement with one
thinker in particular - Plato. The Platonic dialogue presented
Benardete with the most vivid case of that periagoge, or
turn-around, that he found to be the sign of all philosophic
thinking and that is the signature as well of his own
interpretations not only of Plato but also of other thinkers. The
core of The Archaeology of the Soul consists of a set of essays
Benardete produced in his last years; the collection provides at
the same time an entry into that world through some of Benardete's
earliest articles on Plato and on Greek poetry. Benardete's earlier
path of close textual analysis always reflected his intimate
philosophic dialogue with the thinker in whose work he was
immersed; later, he drew on resources of erudition acquired over a
lifetime to present a broader picture, on a theme like the
dialectics of eros or freedom and necessity. In his late work
Benardete was not only engaged in putting together in more general
form material he had worked out earlier; he was still on the trail
of new discoveries, above all, by extending his Platonic
understanding of philosophy to pre- and post-Platonic thinkers. He
had become increasingly aware that the discovery of philosophy
through the "Socratic turn" was really the rediscovery of an
understanding already present in some form in the Greek poets and
that awareness guided his last years of study of the pre-Socratic
philosophers. According to the standard view of the history of
Greek philosophy, the Socratic turn, with its focus on "the human
things," marks a point of radical change in philosophy's history.
Benardete's late studies led him to the conclusion that the kind of
pivotal reorientation thought to be Socratic is in fact the mark of
what it means to think philosophically, and Heraclitus or
Parmenides is a genuine philosophic thinker precisely to the extent
that a Socratic turn can be found in some form within his own
thought. At the same time that he was pursuing a track backward,
from Plato to the poets and pre-Socratic philosophers, Benardete
was also proceeding on a forward path, from Plato to the Latin
writers, who adopt the Platonic way of thinking with full
understanding of what it means to be "post-Platonic." As the essays
collected in this volume demonstrate, the Platonic notion of a
"second sailing" gave Benardete a key to the relation between Greek
and Latin thought - and with that to a comprehensive understanding
of antiquity - as it did to the relation between poetry and
philosophy as such.
This volume brings together Seth Benardete's studies of Hesiod's
"Theogony, " Homer's "Iliad, " and Greek tragedy, of eleven
Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle's "Metaphysics." These essays,
some never before published, others difficult to find, span four
decades of his work and document its impressive range. Benardete's
philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the
philosophers share a common ground that makes this collection a
whole. The key, suggested by his reflections on Leo Strauss in the
last piece, lies in the question of how to read Plato. Benardete's
way is characterized not just by careful attention to the literary
form that separates doctrine from dialogue, and speeches from deed;
rather, by following the dynamic of these differences, he uncovers
the argument that belongs to the dialogue as a whole. The
"turnaround" such an argument undergoes bears consequences for
understanding the dialogue as radical as the conversion of the
philosopher in Plato's image of the cave.
Benardete's original interpretations are the fruits of this
discovery of the "argument of the action."
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