- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Cornell University Press (30 May 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 080143551X
- ISBN-13: 978-0801435515
- Product Dimensions: 2.4 x 1.6 x 0.3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,939,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Synopsis
Socrates is an elusive figure, Sarah Kofman asserts, and he is necessarily so since he did not write or directly state his beliefs. "With Socrates", she writes in her introduction, "we will never leave fiction behind". Kofman suggests that Socrates's avowal of ignorance was meant to be ironic. Later philosophers who interpreted his text invariably resisted the profoundly ironic character of his way of life and diverged widely in their interpretations of him. Kofman focuses especially on the views of Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. The information that is available about Socrates's life is paradoxical. He was famously ugly, but he was also a notorious seducer of youth. His sexuality is ambiguous, according to Kofman, for his allure is stereotypically feminine. His death is also subject to varied interpretation. Some commentators regard him as a redemptive, proto-Christ figure, more Jewish that Greek, and others see him as an archetypal Stoic hero. Despite radically different interpretations, Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche all found Socrates to be a dominant figure of immense importance in the history of philosophy.Kierkegaard and Nietzsche try to retain the idea of irony as essential to the Socratic way of life. Hegel, in contrast, insists that Socrates be assigned one particular place in the historical development of Absolute Spirit. While Kirkegaard considered Socratic irony as an intellectual position, Nietzsche recognized and resisted Socrates's irony as a predisposition. In examining each philosopher's response to Socratic irony, Kofman draws specifically on the history of philosophy and psychoanalytic theory.
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taking the interpretations that mattered
16 Dec 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
The interpretation of Xenophon is compared with Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. In one instance, Xenophon is described as admiring Socrates so much that he misses the point: Kierkegaard was looking for irony, and if the account given by Xenophon does not reveal any, Kierkegaard was sure to think that Xenophon missed a basic part of the antagonism that a search for good produces in people who are so utterly clueless about drifting helplessly on rivers of drivel. The index could help me find an example. Among the topics listed under Xenophon:
condemnation of Socrates,
Kierkegaard and,
Socrates as saviour of,
condemnation of Socrates,
Kierkegaard and,
Socrates as saviour of,
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