Introduction

Title: Introduction
Creator: Layne, Danielle A.; Tarrant, Harold
Relation: The Neoplatonic Socrates p. 1-19
Relation: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15276.html
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Resource Type: book chapter
Date: 2014
Description: In one of th emose romantic dialogues of his corpus, Plato depicts Socrates walking barefoot in the waters of the Ilissus, coyly tormented by a seemingly benign conundrum: "Who am I, and what are my intentions?" Turning to the handsome Phaedrus and admitting his real difficulty with his lack of self-knowledge, Socrates famously wonders whether he resembles "a monster more complicated and more furious than Typhon or a gentler and simpler creature, to whom a divine and quiet lot is given by nature." Unable to solve the problem immediately, Socrates spends the afternoon conversing with the boy on the nature of love, the soul, and the life of the philosopher and, in so doing, sets the question "Who is Socrates?" on the back burner. Yet, as we all know, years later, in a setting dramatically different from this meandering stroll on a hot summer day, this very same difficulty was readdressed before his peers and countrymen, the Athenians, and they replied rather forcefully, sentencing the philosopher to death for corrupting the youth.
Subject: Socrates; Neoplatonism
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1066317
Identifier: uon:18078
Identifier: ISBN:9780812246292
Language: eng