Alexander Nehamas's Blog

In Dominic Scott, Maieusis: Essays in Ancient Philosophy in Honour of Myles Burnyeat. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 97-135. 2007This chapter focuses on the role of _kalon_ in the thought of Plato and Aristotle. Plato's conception of _kalon_ consists of many strands, all of them contestable and deeply controversial. One is an effort to transform the social fully into the psychological, and pre-eminence completely into virtue. Another is the view that beauty is a real feature of things to which, to the extent that it is genuine, love is the proper response — but beauty seems no less love's creature than its cause. In beauty, Plato saw not just a promise of happiness but a pledge of virtue as well. The pursuit of beauty brings both the philosopher and his companions closer to human perfection, a perfection determined purely in terms of the soul's inherent nature and not the accretions it has acquired as a result of its embodied state and its historical place. The ascent thus accomplishes something inherently good — an achievement and a distinction of which one can be rightly proud, whether or not anyone else knows of it or not.

In Victor Caston, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume 57. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 121-152. 2020Zeno’s argument against plurality in the _Parmenides_ does not support the view that there is only one object in the world—only the view that every object in the world is one. Socrates counters that every sensible object can be many by participating in Forms, but none of the Forms can be many. Parmenides retorts that participation is not consistent with the Forms’ unity. The dialectic Parmenides offers derives a series of contradictions from supposing either that each Form is one or that it is many (that is, qualified by any other feature). The implicit solution is that participation must allow the Forms to participate in one another without losing their essential unity. The net result, central to the Academy’s educational programme, is to articulate, for the first time, the concept of predication as we understand it today. Its results are summarized in the Sophist’s discussion of ‘Greatest Kinds’.

In Jacob Golomb & Robert S. Wistrich, Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?: On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 90-106. 2009

In Richard Schacht, Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 269-283. 1994

In Volker Gerhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. pp. 123-142. 2012

_Southern Journal of Philosophy_ 37 (S1):1-17. 2010

In The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections From Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 1-16. 1998

In The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections From Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 19-45. 1998

In The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections From Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 46-69. 1998