Marina McCoy explores Plato's treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, ...Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of philosophy. However, the philosopher and the sophist are distinguished by the philosopher's love of the forms as the ultimate objects of desire. It is this love of the forms that informs the philosopher's rhetoric, which he uses to lead his partner to better understand his deepest desires. McCoy's work is of interest to philosophers, classicists, and communications specialists alike in its careful yet comprehensive treatment of philosophy, sophistry, and rhetoric as portrayed through the drama of the dialogues.
Plato's Cratylus is a brilliant but enigmatic dialogue. It bears on a topic, the relation of language to knowledge, which has never ceased to be of central philosophical importance, but tackles it in ...ways which at times look alien to us. In this reappraisal of the dialogue, Professor Sedley argues that the etymologies which take up well over half of it are not an embarrassing lapse or semi-private joke on Plato's part. On the contrary, if taken seriously as they should be, they are the key to understanding both the dialogue itself and Plato's linguistic philosophy more broadly. The book's main argument is so formulated as to be intelligible to readers with no knowledge of Greek, and will have a significant impact both on the study of Plato and on the history of linguistic thought.
This valuable study explores the Russian Enlightenment with reference to the religious Enlightenment of the mid to late eighteenth century. Grounded in close reading of the sermons and devotional ...writings of Platon (Levshin), Court preacher and Metropolitan of Moscow, the book examines the blending of European ideas into the teachings of Russian Orthodoxy. Highlighting the interplay between Enlightenment thought and Orthodox enlightenment, Elise Wirtschafter addresses key questions of concern to religious Enlighteners across Europe: humanity's relationship to God and creation, the distinction between learning and enlightenment, the role of Christian love in authority relationships, the meaning of free will in a universe governed by Divine Providence, and the unity of church, monarchy, and civil society. Countering scholarship that depicts an Orthodox religious culture under assault from European modernity and Petrine absolutism, Wirtschafter emphasizes the ability of Russia's educated churchmen to assimilate and transform Enlightenment ideas. The intellectual and spiritual vitality of eighteenth-century Orthodoxy helps to explain how Russian policymakers and intellectuals met the challenge of European power while simultaneously coming to terms with the broad cultural appeal of the Enlightenment's universalistic human rights agenda. Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia defines the Russian Enlightenment as a response to the allure of European modernity, as an instrument of social control, and as the moral voice of an emergent independent society. Because Russia's enlightened intellectuals focused on the moral perfectibility of the individual human being, rather than social and political change, the originality of the Russian Enlightenment has gone unrecognized. This study corrects images of a superficial Enlightenment and crisis-ridden religious culture, arguing that in order to understand the humanistic sensibility and emphasis on individual dignity that permeate Russian intellectual history, and the history of the educated classes more broadly, it is necessary to bring Orthodox teachings into the discussion of Enlightenment thought. The result is a book that explains the distinctive origins of modern Russian culture while also allowing scholars to situate the Russian Enlightenment in European and global history.
Authors of a paper that includes a new crystal-structure determination are expected to not only report the structural results of inter-est and their inter-pretation, but are also expected to archive ...in computer-readable CIF format the experimental data on which the crystal-structure analysis is based. Additionally, an IUCr/
validation report will be required for the review of a submitted paper. Such a validation report, automatically created from the deposited CIF file, lists as ALERTS not only potential errors or unusual findings, but also suggestions for improvement along with inter-esting information on the structure at hand. Major ALERTS for issues are expected to have been acted on already before the submission for publication or discussed in the associated paper and/or commented on in the CIF file. In addition, referees, readers and users of the data should be able to make their own judgment and inter-pretation of the underlying experimental data or perform their own calculations with the archived data. All the above is consistent with the FAIR (findable, accessible, inter-operable, and reusable) initiative Helliwell (2019 ▸).
, 05430. Validation can also be helpful for less experienced authors in pointing to and avoiding of crystal-structure determination and inter-pretation pitfalls. The IUCr web-based
server provides such a validation report, based on data uploaded in CIF format. Alternatively, a locally installable
version is available to be used iteratively during the structure-determination process. ALERTS come mostly as short single-line messages. There is also a short explanation of the ALERTS available through the IUCr web server or with the locally installed
/
version. This paper provides additional background information on the
procedure and additional details for a number of ALERTS along with options for how to act on them.
The completion of a crystal structure determination is often hampered by the presence of embedded solvent molecules or ions that are seriously disordered. Their contribution to the calculated ...structure factors in the least‐squares refinement of a crystal structure has to be included in some way. Traditionally, an atomistic solvent disorder model is attempted. Such an approach is generally to be preferred, but it does not always lead to a satisfactory result and may even be impossible in cases where channels in the structure are filled with continuous electron density. This paper documents the SQUEEZE method as an alternative means of addressing the solvent disorder issue. It conveniently interfaces with the 2014 version of the least‐squares refinement program SHELXL Sheldrick (2015). Acta Cryst. C71. In the press and other refinement programs that accept externally provided fixed contributions to the calculated structure factors. The PLATON SQUEEZE tool calculates the solvent contribution to the structure factors by back‐Fourier transformation of the electron density found in the solvent‐accessible region of a phase‐optimized difference electron‐density map. The actual least‐squares structure refinement is delegated to, for example, SHELXL. The current versions of PLATON SQUEEZE and SHELXL now address several of the unnecessary complications with the earlier implementation of the SQUEEZE procedure that were a necessity because least‐squares refinement with the now superseded SHELXL97 program did not allow for the input of fixed externally provided contributions to the structure‐factor calculation. It is no longer necessary to subtract the solvent contribution temporarily from the observed intensities to be able to use SHELXL for the least‐squares refinement, since that program now accepts the solvent contribution from an external file (.fab file) if the ABIN instruction is used. In addition, many twinned structures containing disordered solvents are now also treatable by SQUEEZE. The details of a SQUEEZE calculation are now automatically included in the CIF archive file, along with the unmerged reflection data. The current implementation of the SQUEEZE procedure is described, and discussed and illustrated with three examples. Two of them are based on the reflection data of published structures and one on synthetic reflection data generated for a published structure.
At the beginning of his Metaphysics, Aristotle attributed several strange-sounding theses to Plato. Generations of Plato scholars have assumed that these could not be found in the dialogues. In ...heated arguments, they have debated the significance of these claims, some arguing that they constituted an 'unwritten teaching' and others maintaining that Aristotle was mistaken in attributing them to Plato. In a prior book-length study on Plato's late ontology, Kenneth M. Sayre demonstrated that, despite differences in terminology, these claims correspond to themes developed by Plato in the Parmenides and the Philebus. In this book, which was originally published in 2006, he shows how this correspondence can be extended to key, but previously obscure, passages in the Statesman. He also examines the interpretative consequences for other sections of that dialogue, particularly those concerned with the practice of dialectical inquiry.
Étymologiquement, le législateur (νομοθέτης) édicte des lois (νομοθετεῖ). Pourtant, dans les Lois, Platon s’inscrit en faux contre cette pseudo-évidence : la loi n’est pas le seul discours du ...législateur, qui doit, « de toute nécessité », dire certaines choses auxquelles « il ne convient pas d’être énoncées sous la forme d’une loi » (718b4-c2). On apprend peu après qu’elles doivent être dites sous forme de préludes (722e-723b). Le législateur est donc au moins autant un « diseur de préludes...
Automated structure validation was introduced in chemical crystallography about 12 years ago as a tool to assist practitioners with the exponential growth in crystal structure analyses. Validation ...has since evolved into an easy‐to‐use checkCIF/PLATON web‐based IUCr service. The result of a crystal structure determination has to be supplied as a CIF‐formatted computer‐readable file. The checking software tests the data in the CIF for completeness, quality and consistency. In addition, the reported structure is checked for incomplete analysis, errors in the analysis and relevant issues to be verified. A validation report is generated in the form of a list of ALERTS on the issues to be corrected, checked or commented on. Structure validation has largely eliminated obvious problems with structure reports published in IUCr journals, such as refinement in a space group of too low symmetry. This paper reports on the current status of structure validation and possible future extensions.