Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Plato is often seen as the quintessential champion of reason, but many of his dialogues dramatize the insufficiency of certain conceptions of reason for ethical and political life. In this article, I trace out the multiple forms and purposes of reason and inspiration in Plato’s Phaedrus, and show that each can be discerning or misleading. No method of reason or experience of inspiration can automatically provide secure moral knowledge. Instead of certainty, the Phaedrus recommends a kind of self-motion that requires an ongoing choice of self via an ongoing practice of logos with others. In this practice, reason intertwines with other forces to ask and answer the questions generated by the multiple values of the soul.
Source: Plato Journal
Author: Susan Bickford
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4402392165