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“... stimulate contemporary philosophising. To be sure, not many philosophers these days write about Plato, Aristotle and the rest unless they are specialists, any more than they publish books on ethics if their main interest is philosophy of science or 18th-century British philosophy. But they still tend to regard Plato or ...”

“... or permanently progressive way’. Never mind that, in order to be able to attribute this view to Plato, Bloom needs to give a stunningly revisionary reading of the Republic. Plato’s advocacy of the rule of the philosopher-kings, who alone can, through their knowledge, guarantee a good life for the city as a whole, is not ...”

“... respect, an illuminating comparison is provided by Daniel (the first canonical apocalypse) and Plato (whose vision of a state founded on a timeless heavenly pattern is, in Kermode’s sense, imperial) for both make use of the same myth. No one knows exactly where the myth of the ages came from, but it is of ancient origin and is found in Zoroastrian ...”

“... the best example of Derrida’s own practice of the deconstructive criticism he fathered is ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’.* Here he pursues his question why the metaphysical tradition from Plato to the present subordinates writing to speech. Derrida is not claiming to reverse Plato and to ...”

“... art. In philosophy the most important feature of the Greek revival was the renewed influence of Plato, which in Germany received a powerful impetus from the work of Schleiermacher. The first English thinker to reflect the Continental trend was Coleridge (although the isolated figure of Thomas Taylor had pointed the way in the 18th century). The early ...”

“... ever after, we need first to understand human nature. To do that we open the fourth book of Plato’s Republic, where we learn that the human soul consists of three parts. The appetitive part houses the desires for food, drink and sex which must be satisfied if life is to continue. The middle part, called thymos, is centred on the desire for recognition ...”

“... 1960s.Pater reportedly told his students that ‘the great thing is to read authors whole; read Plato whole; read Kant whole; read Mill whole.’ Yet it has scarcely been possible to read Pater himself whole. The ten-volume Library Edition, first published in 1910 by Pater’s original publisher, Macmillan, had no critical apparatus. Oxford, where Pater ...”

“... preferences. Poetry is better treated than prose – thus Callimachus is allotted more space than Plato, Aristotle gets fewer pages than ‘minor Hellenistic poets’. Unfamiliar prose-writers are largely shunned: Epictetus is briefly discussed, Galen extends to a page, Archimedes, Ptolemy and Hippocrates earn each an aside, Euclid (unless I have missed ...”

“... and exegetical nature – they were mostly concerned to elucidate aspects of the thought of Plato and Aristotle. And Gadamer’s own conception of practical philosophy derives from Aristotle, while of Plato he says that ‘insofar as they are my constant companions, I have been formed more by the Platonic dialogues ...”

“... its promise of human helpfulness. This, too, is an old complaint, which goes back at least to Plato’s time, and in that fact there is a considerable irony. Plato is a hero of those who claim the human importance of philosophy, and rightly so; indeed, if he does not speak (rightly or wrongly) to our most basic ...”

“... study are those of the Homeric period and of fifth-century Athens: that is, the Greeks before Plato and before the beginning of systematic philosophy. His main sources are Homer and the tragedians, especially Sophocles. No one doubts that these authors can inform us about the ethical ideas of their contemporaries; but since, at least for the fifth ...”

“... Pisistratus, who established the text of Homer and prescribed it for study in the schools, from Plato, whose ideal curriculum banished mythological study. Plato argues in the Republic that, since only good can come from the gods, the traditional tales of the Greek gods and heroes cannot be true; and even if they were true ...”

“... self-interpretation he more or less adopted. Yet he always retained an unsurpassed admiration for Plato, whose ‘discontent with the finite’ and hope that philosophy could lift us to a pure and timeless reality represents the polar opposite view. Williams loved Plato both for his powerful expression of the transcendent ...”

“... Lawrence’s conclusion that only the novel can now do for us what philosophy once aspired to do: Plato’s Dialogues were queer little novels. It seems to me that it was the greatest pity in the world when philosophy and fiction got split. They used to be one, right from the days of myth. Then they parted, like a nagging married couple, with Aristotle and ...”

“... In Phaedrus, Plato quotes a story in which the god of writing appears to an early Pharaoh holding his new invention, the hieroglyphic script. The king tells the god to take it away, because it would ruin his subjects’ powers of memory and concentration, and fill them with the delusion that they knew things when they did not ...”