Gabriele Cornelli

The significance of Plato’s literary style to the content of his ideas is perhaps one of the central problems in the study of Plato and Ancient Philosophy as a whole. As Samuel Scolnicov points out in this collection, many other philosophers have employed literary techniques to express their ideas, just as many literary authors have exemplified philosophical ideas in their narratives, but for no other philosopher does the mode of expression play such a vital role in their thought as it does for Plato. And yet, even after two thousand years there is still no consensus about why Plato expresses his ideas in this distinctive style. Selected from the first Latin American Area meeting of the International Plato Society (www.platosociety.org) in Brazil in 2012, the following collection of essays presents some of the most recent scholarship from around the world on the wide range of issues related to Plato’s dialogue form. The essays can be divided into three categories. The first addresses general questions concerning Plato’s literary style. The second concerns the relation of his style to other genres and traditions in Ancient Greece. And the third examines Plato’s characters and his purpose in using them.

Between Literature and Philosophy

Plato’s Styles and Characters

Platou Journal n.º 17

Plato Journal 17

The history of Pythagoreanism is littered with different and incompatible interpretations, to the point that Kahn (1974) suggested that, instead of another thesis on Pythagoreanism, it would be preferable to assess traditions with the aim of producing a good historiographical presentation. This almost fourty-year-old observation by Kahn, directs the author of this book towards a fundamentally historiographical rather than philological brand of work, that is, one neither exclusively devoted to the exegesis of sources such as Philolaus, Archytas or even of one of the Hellenistic Lives nor even to the theoretical approach of one of the themes that received specific contributions from Pythagoreanism, such as mathematics, cosmology, politics or theories of the soul. Instead, this monograph sets out to reconstruct the way in which the tradition established Pythagoreanism’s image, facing one of the central problems that characterizes Pythagoreanism more than other ancient philosophical movements: the drastically shifting terrain of the criticism of the sources. The goal of this historiographical approach is to embrace Pythagoreanism in its entirety, through - and not in spite of - itscomplex articulation across more than a millennium.

Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category

In Search of Pythagoreanism

Archai: Revista de Estudos sobre as Origens do Pensamento Ocidental nº 23

Thomas M. Robinson

Francisco Bravo

Der Tagungsband enthält eine Auswahl von 41 Vorträgen, welche von den Wissenschaftlern der IPS am 11. Symposium Platonicum in Brasilien unter der Schirmherrschaft der University of Brasília gehalten wurden. Der Band behandelt alle wichtigen Fragen im Zusammenhang mit der Interpretation von Platons Phaidon und der Rezeption dieses zentralen Dialogs in der gesamten Antike.

Selected Papers from the Eleventh Symposium Platonicum

Plato's Phaedo

The history of Pythagoreanism is littered with different and incompatible interpretations. This observation directs this book towards a fundamentally historiographical rather than philological approach, setting out to reconstruct the way in which the tradition established Pythagoreanism s image."

Richard McKirahan

Constantinos Macris

The purpose of the conference “On Pythagoreanism”, held in Brasilia in 2011, was to bring together leading scholars from all over the world to define the status quaestionis for the ever-increasing interest and research on Pythagoreanism in the 21st century. The papers included in this volume exemplify the variety of topics and approaches now being used to understand the polyhedral image of one of the most fascinating and long-lasting intellectual phenomena in Western history. Cornelli’s paper opens the volume by charting the course of Pythagorean studies over the past two centuries. The remaining contributions range chronologically from Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans of the archaic period (6th-5th centuries BCE) through the classical, hellenistic and late antique periods, to the eighteenth century. Thematically they treat the connections of Pythagoreanism with Orphism and religion, with mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology and with politics and the Pythagorean way of life.

Gabriele Cornelli

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