Since the appearance of Plato's Dialogues, philosophers have been                  preoccupied with the identity of Socrates and have maintained that successful                  interpretation of the work hinges upon a clear understanding of what thoughts and                  ideas can be attributed to him. In Descent of Socrates, Peter Warnek offers a new                  interpretation of Plato by considering the appearance of Socrates within Plato's                  work as a philosophical question. Warnek reads the Dialogues as an inquiry into the                  nature of Socrates and in doing so opens up the relationship between humankind and                  the natural world. Here, Socrates appears as a demonic and tragic figure whose                  obsession with the task of self-knowledge transforms the history of philosophy. In                  this uncompromising work, Warnek reveals the importance of the concept of nature in                  the Platonic Dialogues in light of Socratic practice and the Ancient ideas that                  inspire contemporary philosophy.

Descent of Socrates: Self-knowledge and Cryptic Nature in the Platonic Dialogues (Studies in Continental Thought) PDF

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