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Review Symposium of David Corey, The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues

SUNY Press, 2015

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Notes

  1. On a personal level, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I started reading Corey’s work over a decade ago. I was routinely impressed by and excited about the innovative ways he explored the intersection of political and educational philosophy. I began corresponding with him a few years ago and was delighted to learn about, and to discuss, the book project that became The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues. It has been a great pleasure to organize this symposium, inviting others to weigh in on this critical topic in the history of educational philosophy and Corey’s worthy book.

  2. Consider Socrates’ description of the effect that Protagoras’ great speech has on him. The Euthydemus has numerous examples as well.

  3. It is not only that the city and the citizens fail to see the difference but also the real issue is that they fail to engage the question about what is the difference between philosophy and sophistry. Crito is such a perfect example of this in the Euthydemus. Crito doesn’t even see Socrates as a possible teacher for his son. He does not even seem to recognize that there is such a thing as philosophy.

  4. Like Corey, I have argued that the stark separation between sophistical and philosophical approaches to rhetoric and politics is not as simple as is sometimes supposed. See McCoy (2007).

  5. Translations of Plato are my own.

  6. Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues also discuss matchmaking. Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates, 4.vii.1; Symposium, 3.10; cf. Symposium 4.56–64.

  7. Socrates, however, closes Laches by suggesting that his interlocutors should continue to search for worthy teachers (201a).

  8. On the scholarly debate about classifying Damon as a sophist, see Wallace (2015, pp. 19–21 and 19n27). Wallace provides a highly valuable collection and assessment of the relevant testimonia.

References

  • Gonzalez, Francesco. 2014. The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue as Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras. Philosophical Papers 43 (1): 33–66.

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  • Griswold, Charles. 1999. Relying on Your Own Voice: An Unsettled Rivalry of Moral Ideals in Plato’s Protagoras. Review of Metaphysics 53: 283–307.

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  • McCoy, Marina. 1998. Protagoras on Human Nature, Wisdom, and the Good: The Great Speech and the Hedonism of Plato’s Protagoras. Ancient Philosophy 18: 21–39.

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  • McCoy, Marina. 2007. Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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  • Plato. 1997. The Republic (trans: Grube, G.M.A., rev. Reeve, C.D.C.). In Collected Dialogues, ed. John Cooper, 972–1223. Indianapolis: Hackett.

  • Wallace, R. 2015. Reconstructing Damon: Music, Wisdom Teaching, and Politics in Perikles’ Athens. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Correspondence to Avi I. Mintz.

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Mintz, A.I., Schultz, AM., Deane, S. et al. Review Symposium of David Corey, The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues . Stud Philos Educ 37, 417–431 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-017-9590-3

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