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eBooks di Titolo M di Plato editi da Ionlineshopping Com
Menexenus. E-book. Formato PDF Plato - Ionlineshopping.Com, 2019 -
The Menexenus is a Socratic dialogue of Plato, traditionally included in the seventh tetralogy along with the Greater and Lesser Hippias and the Ion. The speakers are Socrates and Menexenus, who is not to be confused with Socrates' son Menexenus. The Menexenus of Plato's dialogue appears also in the Lysis, where he is identified as the "son of Demophon", as well as the Phaedo. The Menexenus consists mainly of a lengthy funeral oration, referencing the one given by Pericles in Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War. Socrates here delivers to Menexenus a speech that he claims to have learned from Aspasia, a consort of Pericles and prominent female Athenian intellectual. Socrates encounters Menexenus, who was coming from Athen's Council Chamber, and asks him what had transpired there. Menexenus replies that the Council was arranging for the burial of those fallen in battle and was about to select someone to make the funeral oration, but he is afraid that the orators are not well prepared (235c). Socrates asserts that a speech like this one should not be difficult to compose, and that even he could have done it, having been instructed in these matters by Aspasia herself, who according to Socrates, and probably with a sense of irony, has taught the best orator of them all, Pericles (235e). In fact, Socrates claims that Aspasia had prepared a whole speech which she had entrusted him with. In all probability, Socrates' claim is a literary device that Plato uses, as some of the events that will be mentioned in the speech happened after Aspasia’s death. Menexenus is eager to listen but Socrates is reluctant at first, as he believes that Apasia might become angry at him for publishing her speech. He finally consents and begins the delivery. Like Pericle's Funeral Oration that her speech is supposed to be mimicking, Aspasia's oration is composed of a eulogy to the city of Athens. It begins by affirming the noble birth of the fallen together with their purity of blood. The speech also affirms the peculiar concept of autochthony (237b), by which Athenians never came from elsewhere but had “sprung from the very ground” of their city. The speech continues by recounting Athen's defence of Europe against the Persian Empire, first at Marathon and then at Salamis, proving to the rest of the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten. After displaying such bravery however, Athens became an object of envy, and so the city had to fight against her former allies (242a-b). As the Peloponnesian War broke out, Athens proved her character yet again at Sphacteria when it refused to kill the Spartan captives (242c).
Meno. E-book. Formato PDF Plato - Ionlineshopping.Com, 2019 -
Meno is a Socratic dialogue scripted by Plato. It appears to attempt to determine the definition of virtue, or arete, meaning virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. The first part of the work is written in the Socratic dialectical style and Meno is reduced to confusion or aporia. In response to Meno's paradox (or the learner's paradox), however, Socrates introduces positive ideas: the immortality of the soul, the theory of knowledge as recollection (anamnesis), which Socrates demonstrates by posing a mathematical puzzle to one of Meno's slaves, the method of hypothesis, and, in the final lines, the distinction between knowledge and true belief. Plato's Meno is a Socratic dialogue in which the two main speakers, Socrates and Meno (also transliterated as Menon), discuss human virtue: whether or not it can be taught, and what it is. Additional participants in the dialogue include one of Meno's slaves and the Athenian politician Anytus, a prosecutor of Socrates with whom Meno is friendly. Meno is visiting Athens from Thessaly with a large entourage of slaves attending him. Young, good-looking and well-born, Meno is a student of Gorgias, a prominent sophist whose views on virtue clearly influence Meno's. He claims early in the dialogue that he has held forth many times on the subject of virtue, and in front of large audiences. One feature of the dialogue is Socrates' use of one of Meno's slaves to demonstrate his idea of anamnesis, that certain knowledge is innate and "recollected" by the soul through proper inquiry. Meno's theme is also dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion, that virtue can be taught. And, whereas in Protagoras knowledge is uncompromisingly this-worldly, in Meno the theory of recollection points to a link between knowledge and eternal truths.