Philebus
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Philebus
The ''Philebus'' (; occasionally given as ''Philebos''; Greek: ) is a Socratic dialogue written in the 4th century BC by Plato. Besides Socrates (the main speaker) the other interlocutors are Philebus and Protarchus. Philebus, who advocates the life of physical pleasure (hedonism), hardly participates, and his position is instead defended by Protarchus, who learnt argumentation from Sophists. Socrates proposes there are ''higher pleasures'' (such as those of the mind) as well as lower ones, and asks if the best life isn't one that optimally mixes both. Manuscripts of the work give it the subtitle "''peri hēdonēs, ēthikos''" ("ethics/moral concerning pleasure") implying that its topic is "concerning pleasure" and it is a work on ethics — that is, the question of what way of life is best. However "there are large parts in the dialogue that deal with dialectics and ontology but have nothing to do with pleasure and ethics, or if so, only indirectly". Date of composition It has ...
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Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tra ...
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Nous
''Nous'', or Greek νοῦς (, ), sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a concept from classical philosophy for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real. Alternative English terms used in philosophy include "understanding" and "mind"; or sometimes "thought" or "reason" (in the sense of that which reasons, not the activity of reasoning). It is also often described as something equivalent to perception except that it works within the mind ("the mind's eye"). It has been suggested that the basic meaning is something like "awareness". In colloquial British English, ''nous'' also denotes "good sense", which is close to one everyday meaning it had in Ancient Greece. The nous performed a role comparable to the modern concept of intuition. In Aristotle's influential works, which are the main source of later philosophical meanings, nous was carefully distinguished from sense perception, imagination, and reason, although these terms ...
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Seth Benardete
Seth Benardete (April 4, 1930 – November 14, 2001) was an American classicist and philosopher, long a member of the faculties of New York University and The New School. In addition to teaching positions at Harvard, Brandeis, St. John's College, Annapolis and NYU, Benardete was a fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich. Life and family Benardete was born in Brooklyn into an academic family. His father, Maír José Benardete, was a professor of Spanish at Brooklyn College and expert on Sephardic culture. His older brother José Benardete was a noted philosopher. His younger brother Diego Benardete is a professor of mathematics at the University of Hartford. Seth was married to Jane, a professor of English at Hunter College in Manhattan; and they had two children, Ethan and Alexandra. Career At the University of Chicago in the 1950s he was a student of Leo Strauss, along with Allan Bloom, Stanley Rosen and several o ...
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Socratic Dialogue
Socratic dialogue ( grc, Σωκρατικὸς λόγος) is a genre of literary prose developed in Greece at the turn of the fourth century BC. The earliest ones are preserved in the works of Plato and Xenophon and all involve Socrates as the protagonist. These dialogues and subsequent ones in the genre present a discussion of moral and philosophical problems between two or more individuals illustrating the application of the Socratic method. The dialogues may be either dramatic or narrative. While Socrates is often the main participant, his presence in the dialogue is not essential to the genre. Platonic dialogues Most of the Socratic dialogues referred to today are those of Plato. Platonic dialogues defined the literary genre subsequent philosophers used. Plato wrote approximately 35 dialogues, in most of which Socrates is the main character. Strictly speaking, the term refers to works in which Socrates is a character. As a genre, however, other texts are included; Plato's ' ...
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Greek Language
Greek ( el, label=Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy (Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting impo ...
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Soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being". Etymology The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attestations reported in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' are from the 8th century. In King Alfred's translation of ''De Consolatione Philosophiae'', it is used to refer to the immaterial, spiritual, or thinking aspect of a person, as contrasted with the person's physical body; in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50, it means "life" or "animate existence". The Old English word is cognate with other historical Germanic terms for the same idea, including Old Frisian ''sēle, sēl'' (which could also mean "salvation", or "solemn oath"), Gothic ''saiwala'', Old High German ''sēula, sēla'', Old Saxon ''sēola'', and Old Norse ''sāla''. Present-day cognates include Dutch ''ziel'' and German ''Seele''. Religious views In Judaism and in some Christian d ...
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Dorothea Frede
Dorothea (also spelled Dorothée, Dorotea or other variants) is a female given name from Greek (Dōrothéa) meaning "God's Gift". It may refer to: People * Dorothea Binz (1920–1947), German concentration camp officer executed for war crimes * Dorothea Brooking (1916–1999), British children's television producer and director * Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), American social activist * Dorothea Douglass Lambert Chambers (1878–1960), English tennis player * Dorothea Dunckel (1799–1878), Swedish playwright * Dorothea Erxleben (1715–1762), first woman doctor in Germany * Dorothea Fairbridge (1860–1931), South African novelist * Dorothea Gerard (1855–1915), Scottish novelist * Dorothea Hoffman (d. 1710), Swedish hat maker * Dorothea Jordan (1761–1816), Irish actress and mistress of the future King William IV of the United Kingdom * Dorothea Kalpakidou (born 1983), Greek discus thrower * Dorothea Krag (1675–1754), Danish postmaster * Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), Ame ...
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Reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality. Reasoning is associated with the acts of thinking and cognition, and involves the use of one's intellect. The field of logic studies the ways in which humans can use formal reasoning to produce logically valid arguments. Reasoning may be subdivided into forms of logical reasoning, such as: deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning. Aristotle drew a distinction between logical discursive reasoning (reason proper), and intuitive reasoning, in which the reasoning process through intuition—however valid—may tend toward the personal and the subject ...
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Paul Friedländer (philologist)
Paul Friedländer (March 21, 1882, Berlin – December 10, 1968, Los Angeles) was a Germans, German philologist specializing in classical literature. He studied under Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff at the University of Berlin. In 1911 he became a Privatdozent and from 1914 Associate Professor in Berlin, becoming a Professor at Marburg University (1920), University of Halle (1932). In 1935, the Nazi regime forced him to resign and in 1938 he was detained in a concentration camp. After his release, he came to the United States, where he taught first at and Johns Hopkins University (1939), as a lecturer and at UCLA (1940–1945 as a lecturer, 1945– as a professor). Works * ''Herakles: Sagengeschichtliche Untersuchungen.'' Berlin: Weidmann 1907 * ''Johannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius: Kunstbeschreibungen justinianischer Zeit.'' Leipzig : Teubner 1912 (Nachdruck: Hildesheim 1969) * ''Der grosse Alcibiades Band 1/2 '' Bonn: Friedrich Cohen 1921/23 * ''Aufgaben der klassisc ...
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Friedrich Schleiermacher
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional Protestant Christianity. He also became influential in the evolution of higher criticism, and his work forms part of the foundation of the modern field of hermeneutics. Because of his profound effect on subsequent Christian thought, he is often called the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology" and is considered an early leader in liberal Christianity. The neo-orthodoxy movement of the twentieth century, typically (though not without challenge) seen to be spearheaded by Karl Barth, was in many ways an attempt to challenge his influence. As a philosopher he was a leader of German Romanticism. Biography Early life and development Born in Breslau in Prussian Silesia as the grandson of Daniel Schleiermacher, a pastor at one time associated ...
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Phronēsis
''Phronesis'' ( grc, φρόνησῐς, phrónēsis), translated into English by terms such as prudence, practical virtue and practical wisdom, or, colloquially, sense (as in "good sense", "horse sense") is an ancient Greek word for a type of wisdom or intelligence relevant to practical action. It implies both good judgment and excellence of character and habits, and was a common topic of discussion in ancient Greek philosophy, in ways that are still influential today. In Aristotelian ethics, for example in the ''Nicomachean Ethics'', the concept is distinguished from other words for wisdom and intellectual virtues – such as ''episteme'' and ''techne'' – because of its practical character. The traditional Latin translation was , the source of the English word "prudence". Among other proposals, Thomas McEvilley has proposed that the best translation is "mindfulness". Ancient Greek philosophy Plato In some of Plato's dialogues, Socrates proposes that ''phronēsis'' is a nec ...
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Memorabilia (Xenophon)
''Memorabilia'' (original title in grc, Ἀπομνημονεύματα, Apomnemoneumata) is a collection of Socratic dialogues by Xenophon, a student of Socrates. The lengthiest and most famous of Xenophon's Socratic writings, the ''Memorabilia'' is essentially an apologia (defense) of Socrates, differing from both Xenophon's Apology (Xenophon), ''Apology of Socrates to the Jury'' and Plato, Plato's Apology (Plato), ''Apology'' mainly in that the Apologies present Socrates as defending himself before the jury, whereas the former presents Xenophon's own defense of Socrates, offering edifying examples of Socrates' conversations and activities along with occasional commentary from Xenophon. Title Memorabilia is also known by its Latin title ''Commentarii'' and a variety of English translations (Recollections, Memoirs, Conversations of Socrates, etc.). Date of composition The ''Memorabilia'' was probably completed after 371 BC, as one passage (III.5) appears to assume the military s ...
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