Plato did not create his philosophy ex nihilo, but
rather drew on four centuries of literary production in epic and lyric
poetry, on ethnography and historiography, tragedy and comedy, medical
and mathematical research, oratory and rhetorical theory, as well as on
Presocratic philosophy.
Words & Ideas offers a study of Plato’s philosophical language
against this cultural background, retracing to their origins the
history and development of the key terms of the Theory of Forms as
presented in the Phaedo. ‘Form’ or ‘idea’, ‘ousia’ or ‘being’,
‘participation’, ‘presence’ and ‘community’ are among the concepts
investigated. Te aim is to determine both the connotations of Plato’s
philosophical terms and the precise historical and philosophical
contexts on which Plato drew in the formulation of his thoughts. In
tracing the roots of Plato’s philosophy, Words & Ideas
demarcates afresh Plato’s position regarding the protagonists of
pre-Socratic philosophy: Parmenides and the Eleatics, Anaxagoras and
Diogenes of Apollonia, Leucippus and Democritus, Philolaus and the
Pythagoreans.
Tis identifcation of his sources allows us, in many cases for the frst
time, to judge what in the arguments of the dialogues is Plato’s own
contribution and what is there only as part of a philosophical or
pre-philosophical inheritance.
The author
Fritz-Gregor Herrmann is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient
History at Swansea University. He is the author of articles and
chapters on Plato’s language and thought, editor of New Essays on Plato
(Classical Press of Wales, 2006), and co-editor, with Terry Penner and
Douglas Cairns, of Pursuing the Good. Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s
Republic (Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
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