Browsing by Subject "Socrates"
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Item A Pragmatic Standard of Legal Validity(2012-07-16) Tyler, JohnAmerican jurisprudence currently applies two incompatible validity standards to determine which laws are enforceable. The natural law tradition evaluates validity by an uncertain standard of divine law, and its methodology relies on contradictory views of human reason. Legal positivism, on the other hand, relies on a methodology that commits the analytic fallacy, separates law from its application, and produces an incomplete model of law. These incompatible standards have created a schism in American jurisprudence that impairs the delivery of justice. This dissertation therefore formulates a new standard for legal validity. This new standard rejects the uncertainties and inconsistencies inherent in natural law theory. It also rejects the narrow linguistic methodology of legal positivism. In their stead, this dissertation adopts a pragmatic methodology that develops a standard for legal validity based on actual legal experience. This approach focuses on the operations of law and its effects upon ongoing human activities, and it evaluates legal principles by applying the experimental method to the social consequences they produce. Because legal history provides a long record of past experimentation with legal principles, legal history is an essential feature of this method. This new validity standard contains three principles. The principle of reason requires legal systems to respect every subject as a rational creature with a free will. The principle of reason also requires procedural due process to protect against the punishment of the innocent and the tyranny of the majority. Legal systems that respect their subjects' status as rational creatures with free wills permit their subjects to orient their own behavior. The principle of reason therefore requires substantive due process to ensure that laws provide dependable guideposts to individuals in orienting their behavior. The principle of consent recognizes that the legitimacy of law derives from the consent of those subject to its power. Common law custom, the doctrine of stare decisis, and legislation sanctioned by the subjects' legitimate representatives all evidence consent. The principle of autonomy establishes the authority of law. Laws must wield supremacy over political rulers, and political rulers must be subject to the same laws as other citizens. Political rulers may not arbitrarily alter the law to accord to their will. Legal history demonstrates that, in the absence of a validity standard based on these principles, legal systems will not treat their subjects as ends in themselves. They will inevitably treat their subjects as mere means to other ends. Once laws do this, men have no rest from evil.Item The aim of dialectics In Plato's Euthyphro(2015-12) Fallis, Lewis Bartlett; Pangle, Thomas L.; Stauffer, Devin; Pangle, Lorraine; Tulis, Jeffrey; Muirhead, RussellThis dissertation presents an analysis of Plato’s dialogue on piety, the Euthyphro. The aim of the dissertation is to understand the nature of piety and its connection with morality. Chapter One introduces the topic of the dissertation, discusses two aspects of its political relevance, and justifies the decision to turn to Plato, and specifically Plato’s Euthyphro, for guidance on the question. Two weaknesses of contemporary approaches to the investigation of piety are discussed here, in order to highlight by contrast the strengths of Plato’s approach. Chapters Two and Three present an analysis of Plato’s Euthyphro, with special attention to what the dialogue can reveal about the connection between piety and morality. Chapter Four is a conclusion discussing the limitations of the study, the understanding of piety conveyed by Plato’s Euthyphro, and the aim of Socratic dialectics, understood as a means of testing whether moral opinions might be a condition of pious experiences.Item Examining ambition : an interpretation of Plato's Alcibiades(2013-12) Helfer, Ariel Oscar; Pangle, Thomas L.The relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades was infamous in antiquity. Alcibiades’ notorious betrayal of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war helped to bring about Athens’ downfall, and the charges of corrupting the young and impiety for which Socrates was ultimately executed point unambiguously to the misdeeds of his most renowned and treasonous pupil. In Plato’s Alcibiades, Socrates approaches Alcibiades for the first time, claiming to have the power to bring the youth’s grandest and most tyrannical political hopes to a culmination. What does the ensuing conversation tell us about the nature of Alcibiades’ ambition and about Socrates’ intentions in associating with him? In this essay, careful attention is paid to the structure and unity of this underappreciated dialogue in order to uncover Plato’s teaching about the roots of political ambition and the approach of Socratic philosophy. The resulting analysis reveals that Socrates is interested in recruiting politically ambitious students because of how powerfully youthful political ambition seeks the good by means of just, noble, and honorable activity, and that Socrates’ hope is to awaken Alcibiades to the ambiguous and unquestioned character of his belief that the greatest human good can be obtained in the world of politics. Having recognized this as central to the Socratic project, we can consider how and to what extent political ambition relies on some misapprehension about the relationship of the good and the advantageous to the just and the noble.Item Plato's Theaetetus and the problem of knowledge(2010-12) Rabinowitz, Laura; Stauffer, Devin, 1970-; Pangle, Thomas L.In keeping with Socrates’ advice that it is “a better thing to accomplish a little well than a lot inadequately” (Theaetetus, 187d), this master’s report provides a detailed study of a few relatively short sections of Plato’s Theaetetus. After an analysis of the beginning of the work and its opening themes, I examine the Protagorean thesis as it is first revealed in Theaetetus’ second endeavor to say what knowledge is. Rather than follow the entire course of Socrates’ account of Protagoras’ position, I bring out a few of the essential features of this initial presentation and attempt to gain some clarity as to the possible meaning and purpose behind Protagoras’ enigmatic declaration that man is the measure of all things. The final section of my paper entails a close analysis of the dialogue’s last definition of knowledge: true opinion with speech. Although this account does not answer all of the questions posed by the Protagorean thesis, we find within it the most promising approach to answering the question of the dialogue: “What is knowledge?” While the Theaetetus comes to a close with this final attempt and ultimate failure to answer the question with which it began, I show that Socrates’ spurious arguments often serve more as pointers toward the truth than as refutations of the “truths” proposed.Item Plato’s Euthyphro : an examination of the Socratic method in the definitional dialogues(2011-05) Combs, Blinn Ellis; White, Stephen A. (Stephen Augustus); Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., 1936-; Woodruff, Paul B.; Hochberg, Herbert I.; Sosa, DavidThis dissertation examines Socrates' method of examining interlocutors, referred to as the elenchus, in Plato's definitional dialogues. It contains three parts. The first part lays out various theories of the elenchus. The first chapter examines the seminal view of Richard Robinson. The second sketches the development and aftermath of Vlastos' constructivist view. The third focuses on Socrates' own testimony about the elenchus in the Apology. These pictures of the elenchus form a selection of views against which various definitional dialogues may be compared. The second part, containing six chapters, provides a detailed commentary on the Euthyphro. Various features of that dialogue suggest that neither the prominent forms of constructivism, nor their non-constructivist alternatives presented in the first part adequately capture Socrates' procedure. The third part, consisting of one chapter, presents my view of the Socratic elenchus, which I term “technical destructivism.” I argue that this view provides a straight-forward solution to a number of problems which the alternative treatments leave unsolved. It also helps to explain some otherwise puzzling features of Socrates' procedure in the shorter definitional dialogues, including his use of the technē analogy, and his appeal to the priority of definitional knowledge.Item Political ambition and piety in Xenophon's Memorabilia(2013-05) Fallis, Lewis Bartlett; Pangle, Thomas L.; Pangle, Thomas L.This thesis analyzes Books III and IV of Xenophon’s Memorabilia. The Memorabilia is Xenophon’s defense of Socrates or the philosophic life against Athens or the political community as such. In Book III, Xenophon presents six portraits of ambitious young men. These portraits, read closely, unveil the psychological nature of ambition and convey important lessons about the Socratic understanding of healthy politics, as a realm that is necessarily pious. Book IV’s four Socratic conversations with a dim-witted youth named Euthydemus both underscore the lessons of Book III and explore piety itself, as a phenomenon that is necessarily political. These sections of the Memorabilia may be read as an argument for the necessity of a fissure between healthy politics and philosophy – and as a bridge from the one to the other.Item Political ambition and Socratic philosophy : Plato's presentation of Socrates and Alcibiades(2015-05) Helfer, Ariel Oscar; Pangle, Thomas L.; Pangle, Lorraine S; Stauffer, Devin; Saxonhouse, Arlene; Ahrensdorf, PeterThis dissertation examines and interprets Plato’s three major presentations of the infamous Athenian general and Socratic pupil Alcibiades as a paragon of political ambition: the Alcibiades, the Second Alcibiades, and Plato’s Symposium. These texts are, for the first time, treated as authentic Platonic works and presumed to present a coherent though incomplete narrative of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades. The dynamic Platonic portrait of Alcibiades’ changing disposition toward democracy, law, virtue, and piety offers insight into the corruptibility of political ambition. By studying it, we can recover a valuable classical point of view on the nature of political ambition, especially in its relation to civic-spiritedness on one hand, and to the self-serving pursuit of private or political goods on the other. This point of view can in turn be brought to bear upon our own political situation as citizens of liberal democracy, with its complex tradition of distrust of the political ambitious. Finally, the question of Socrates’ corruption of Alcibiades itself provides invaluable insight into the matter of Socrates’ own enigmatic philosophic project, which brought him into fatal conflict with the city of Athens.Item Socratic protreptic and moral education in Plato's early dialogues(2007-12) Rider, Benjamin Albert, 1978-; Woodruff, Paul, 1943-I examine how Plato, in his early dialogues, tries to make good on Socrates' claims, in the Apology, about the value of his philosophical life and the benefits it provides his fellow citizens. Beginning with the Apology, I analyze how Socrates tries to exhort people to take care for or tend to virtue and the state of their souls. I argue that Socrates is challenging his fellow-citizens, and Plato his readers, not only to recognize their ignorance, but also to engage in active philosophical inquiry into ethical questions. This aspect of Socrates' mission--his quest to get people to live examined, philosophical lives--is sometimes called philosophical protreptic. In subsequent chapters, I analyze the arguments that Socrates employs in engaging interlocutors in philosophy in three dialogues, the Euthydemus, Lysis, and Alcibiades I. In the Euthydemus, Socrates argues that wisdom is necessary for happiness, but he and his interlocutor discover that they neither have nor understand the wisdom they need. In the Lysis, Socrates discusses friendship and love with two youths, and though their inquiry fails, their cooperative philosophical investigation exemplifies philosophical love and friendship. Finally, in the Alcibiades I, Socrates tries to convince an ambitious young Alcibiades that true power and happiness arise from self-knowledge, and he challenges the young man to seek self-knowledge by taking up a philosophical life under Socrates' guidance. What emerges in these dialogues is a radical and compelling picture of the good life. Socrates does not believe that he or any human fully understands virtue or happiness. His investigations end inconclusively, and indeed he has little hope that he or anyone else will discover final and complete answers about virtue or happiness. Nevertheless, each dialogue demonstrates both the nature and value of philosophical enquiry. We humans are limited and ignorant, and we need to examine ethical questions together in order to live well. By drawing others into the philosophical discussion--full though it is with problems, inconclusive results, and difficulties--Socrates believes that he is both himself living the best available human life and offering the greatest benefit any human can provide to those with whom he talks.Item Theaetetus' first definition : logos ou phaulos(2010-12) Lasell, Leah Anne; Hankinson, R. J.; Koons, Robert C.; Pautz, Adam; White, Stephen A.Socrates and Theaetetus consider and reject three different definitions of knowledge in the Theaetetus. The first of these is the thesis that knowledge is perception. According to the received reading Plato's consideration of the thesis that knowledge is perception is limited to the consideration of the naive and implausible thesis that immediate sense-perception is knowledge and there is no knowledge apart from immediate sense-perception. This reading, which limits the philosophic interest of Platos consideration of the thesis that knowledge is perception, follows from a widespread misunderstanding of Socrates' reasons for introducing Protagoras and Heraclitus which circumscribes their role in the dialogue to supplying two theses, epistemological relativism and metaphysical flux, which are sufficient or perhaps necessary conditions for the thesis that knowledge is perception. I will show that Socrates introduces Protagoras and Heraclitus, not simply because they provide the epistemological or metaphysical framework within which Theaetetus' definition holds good, but because each man is committed to the thesis that knowledge is perception. Protagoras' sophistic expertise will be classed as a kind of empirical knowledge which bases itself on past and present perceptions and makes educated predictions of future perceptions. While Heraclitus' theory of flux will lead to a radical skepticism which rejects the possibility that there should be any knowledge of the world apart from perception. Socrates will give arguments against both of these ways of understanding the thesis that knowledge is perception. Plato thus articulates, develops, and ultimately rejects three different ways of understanding Theaetetus' initial definition of knowledge.