On the Inauthenticity of the Critias Rashed, Marwan; Auffret, Thomas
Phronesis (Leiden, Netherlands),
06/2017, Volume:
62, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In this paper, we highlight a number of difficulties concerning the relationship between the Critias and the Timaeus, notably a contradiction between Timaeus 27a-b and Critias 108a-c. On this basis ...we argue that the Critias must be considered spurious.
According to Plutarch, the young Alcibiades would have refused to play the aulos on the pretext that this practice distorted the appearance and the features of a man and was unworthy of an Athenian ...citizen; his example was followed and therefore the aulos was expelled from liberal education in Athens. Other textual and iconographic sources, testify instead of the presence of auloi everywhere in Athenian public and private life, throughout the fifth and fourth centuries. Analysing the ambiguous status of the aulos in Athens, we must certainly distinguish what refers to hearing and what refers to practice. From available sources, we can actually trace successive breaks in the evolution of acceptation or rejection of this instrument, but it is necessary to examine what were the causes and origins of these breaks. The analysis of the the young Alcibiades’ arguments autorizes hypothesis about the symbolic value of the aulos in political discourses of elites during the Peloponnesian War, whether they were favorable or not to democracy.
There has been much scholarly disagreement concerning Plato's participation in the mid-fourth century debates over Athens's ancestral constitution (patrios politeia). This disunity stems from ...contrasting views about the relationship between philosophy and Athenian politics in Plato's writings. Recently, several political theorists have reoriented our general understanding about Plato's complex involvement with Athenian politics. However, these discussions do not discuss Plato's specific relationship with patrios politeia. In order to bridge this gap, I turn to two dialogues within the later Platonic corpus: Timaeus and Critias. By examining the Atlantis myth that spans both dialogues, I discuss how Plato uses the story both to comment on and critique the democratic Athenian constitution. At the same time, however, Plato also advances a unique veneration of democracy by asserting that it is the politela of the gods. In this way, I argue that Timaeus-Critias contributes a valuable new perspective in the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between Plato's philosophy and democracy.
This article takes its point of departure from a tradition found in the Homeric scholia and fourth-century Athenian political invective: apparently, when Solon went to the agora to recite his ...politically illicit poem exhorting the Athenians to renew their war on Salamis (fr. 1-3 W), he reenacted a gesture attributed to Odysseus at Iliad 2.183; like the epic hero in an equivalent moment of military defeatism among the troops, Solon cast off his cloak or chlaina. The discussion I present here offers a new reading of fr. 1-3 which aims to demonstrate not only that Solon’s engagement with the Homeric precedent is much more sustained than earlier commentators have recognized, but that the Athenian poet draws equally on a very different poetic tradition, that of iambos. Modeling his quasi-epic address and conduct simultaneously on that of both mythical and historical practitioners of mockery and abuse, chiefly the Iliadic Thersites and Archilochus – from whom he borrows the persona of herald adopted by the Parian poet on two occasions so as to perform an abusive or obscene poem – Solon assumes the role of authorized deliverer of invective. The article concludes by tracing the tradition concerning Solon’s gesture in the work of Critias, the Athenian poet-politician who, even as he connects himself to Solon, takes as his target the persona constructed by Archilochus; the suggestion I make here concerns the parallelism already visible in Homer and focused on the figure of Odysseus between throwing away a shield and a cloak.
Abstract At Charmides 163, Critias attempts to extricate himself from refutation by proposing a Prodicean distinction between praxis and poiēsis. I argue that this distinction leads him further into ...contradictions.
Plato’s Timaeus was his only cosmological dialogue and for almost thirteen hundred years it provided the basis in the West for educated people’s general view of the natural world. The author provides ...a translation of this important work, together with the Critias – the source of the legendary tale of Atlantis. He has taken particular care to provide an accurate rendering of Plato’s words and to avoid putting his own or any other interpretation on the works.
Preface. Introduction to the Timaeus . Synopsis of the Timaeus . Timaeus . Introduction to the Critias . Critias . Appendix 1: Additional Note on Timaeus. Appendix 2: The Story of Atlantis. Index
Se justifican tres tesis. Primera, el sentido mítico-religioso tradicional de la justicia como castigo de la ΰβρις quedó desacreditado durante la Guerra del Peloponeso, como bien lo muestra ...Tucídides. Segunda, en tiempos de Aristóteles, tal sentido ya habría desaparecido en favor de un nuevo paradigma basado en el concepto de τΰχη. Tercera, la obra de Platón constituye uno de los últimos intentos de recuperar ese sentido mítico-religioso tradicional tratando de interpretar la Guerra del Peloponeso a través del mecanismo del castigo de la ΰβρις.
The motive for addressing Plato’s work is not simply because of his subsequent philosophical and ideological influence. Even Western philosophy is far from being, as Whitehead (1978, 39) famously ...suggested, just “a series of footnotes to Plato.” Still less is it to paint him as ultimately responsible for our current ecological crisis. It is not even to argue that metaphysics and myth should (or could) be entirely abandoned because of the political dangers they pose in conjunction with sovereign power. Rather, tracing the ways in which ethics, politics, and ecology are transformed, defined, and made subservient to such an overarching
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