The Science of Philosophy: Discourse and Deception in Plato’s Sophist

At 252e1 to 253c9 in Plato’s Sophist, the Eleatic Visitor explains why philosophy is a science. Like the art of grammar, philosophical knowledge corresponds to a generic structure of discrete kinds and is acquired by systematic analysis of how these kinds intermingle. In the literature, the Visitor’s science is either understood as an expression of a mature and authentic platonic metaphysics, or as a sophisticated illusion staged to illustrate the seductive lure of sophistic deception. By showing how the Visitor’s account of the science of philosophy is just as comprehensive, phantasmatic and self-concealing as the art of sophistry identified at the dialogue’s outset, this paper argues in favor of the latter view

Introduction

Guided by the bold ambition to reexamine the nature of philosophy, questions about the foundations and origins of Plato’s dialogues have in recent years gained a new and important momentum. In the wake of the seminal work of Andrea Nightingale and especially her book Genres in Dialogue from 1995, Plato’s texts have come to be reconsidered in terms of their compositional and intergeneric fabric. Supplementing important research on the argumentative structures of the dialogues, it has been argued that Plato’s philosophizing cannot be properly assessed without considering its intellectual debts. By detailed examinations of the practical, generic and textual origins of the dialogues, it has been shown how Plato’s chosen form of philosophical inquiry is deeply influenced by traditional forms of poetry, rhetoric, sophistry, and even medicine..

Dangerous Voices: On Written and Spoken Discourse in Plato’s Protagoras

Plato’s Protagoras contains, among other things, three short but puzzling remarks on the media of philosophy. First, at 328e5–329b1, Plato makes Socrates worry that long speeches, just like books, are deceptive, because they operate in a discursive mode void of questions and answers. Second, at 347c3–348a2, Socrates argues that discussion of poetry is a presumptuous affair, because, the poems’ message, just like the message of any written text, cannot be properly examined if the author is not present. Third, at 360e6–361d6, it becomes clear that even if the conversation between Socrates and Protagoras was conducted by means of short questions and answers, this spoken mode of discourse is problematic too, because it ended up distracting the inquiry from its proper course. As this paper 2 sets out to argue, Plato does not only make Socrates articulate these worries to exhibit the hazards of discursive commodifi cation. In line with Socrates’ warning to the young Hippocrates of the dangers of sophistic rhetoric, and the sophists’ practice of trading in teachings, they are also meant to problematize the thin line between philosophical and sophistical practice. By examining these worries in the light of how the three relevant modes of discourse are exemplifi ed in the dialogue, this paper aims to isolate and clarify the reasons behind them in terms of deceit, presumptuousness and distraction; and to argue that these reasons cast doubts on the common assumption that the dialogue’s primary aim is to show how sophistical rhetoric must succumb to Socratic dialectic

The Legacy of Hermes: Deception and Dialectic in Plato’s Cratylus

Against the background of a conventionalist theory, and staged as a defense of a naturalistic notion of names and naming, the critique of language developed in Plato’s Cratylus does not only propose that human language, in contrast to the language of the gods, is bound to the realm of myth and lie. The dialogue also concludes by offering a set of reasons to think that knowledge of reality is not within the reach of our words. Interpretations of the dialogue’s long etymological sections often neglect this critique and tend to end up with an overly optimistic assessment of the theory of language on offer. In the light of one of the dialogue’s central etymological accounts, Socrates’ etymology of the name Hermes, this paper discusses two recent and influential versions of such a view: David Sedley’s theory of onomatopoetic encapsulation and Franco Trivigno’s qualified referentialism. It argues that the complex relation between language and reality expressed in the Cratylus cannot be exhaustively captured by either of these theories because Plato considers all names to be semantically underdetermined until they are put to use. It suggests that Plato rather works with a functionalistic notion of names and naming, and that the dialogue’s account of natural and correct naming is to be understood in these terms

Old Nordic and Christian elements in Saami ideas about the realm of the dead

The fact that a word or concept has been borrowed from outside does not mean that the original content, the original ideas which the loan word in question expresses, have also been adopted. This is by no means the case when it is a question of abstract words and notions, such as the afterlife. A word, an idea, a custom is taken over but filled with new content; in its new context it acquires a genuinely Saami conceptual load, which has its original domiciliary rights in Saami, north Eurasian culture. The present brief notes on the Nordic and Christian influence on Saami ideas about the realm of the dead proceed from the Saami religion as a whole, examining and explaining it from an external perspective: what connecting-points are there in the "original" mother tradition for the new ideas which have been adopted over the course of time and which have been grafted on to the old? The first and fundamental starting-point for the study of the meeting of the Saami religion with the old Nordic and Christian ones will be the Saami religion itself in its Finno-Ugric and North Euroasiancontext and not the old Norse or Christian beliefs. The question is what has inspired ideas: Are they ideas which have emerged from the Saamis' own religion, or are these ideas the result of old Norse/Christian influence? As far as old Norse influence is concerned, its relevance seems to be limited to the saivo concept. The sources for Saami religion which we possess are not primary sources, which go back to the Lapps themselves; they have been assembled by outsiders. Those who compiled these records were "children of their time" and bound by the conceptual models of the day and by the frames of reference of their religion—Christianity. The Saami realm of death, Jabmeaimo, is Saami in character, with certain Christian elements (purgatory, heaven–hell, heavenly god–devil)

Foreign influences on the idea of God in African religion: some remarks on a great problem

The study of primitive peoples has often neglected influences from the environments. The sociologists and the anthropologists regard the influence as a concrete fact that is taken in account with regard to the behaviour. They have—as a rule—no interest in studying the historical development. They take facts as they meet them in life. Studying African religions we must bear in mind that the influences of missions, for example Christian and Muslim, are clear among many of the African peoples. Therefore a study of foreign influences upon African religions is necessary in order to provide an analysis and an understanding of the contemporary religious situation. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of foreign religions on the God-idea in order to see if the Christian or Muslim ideas of God are reflected in the indigenous religions of Africa

Divinity and destiny in the religion of Ruanda-Urundi

Ruanda and Urundi belong to the Ruanda cluster of the interlactustrine Bantu in the regions surrounded by a great ring of lakes—Tanganyika, Kivu, Edward Albert, Kioga and Victoria. Pygmoid hunters and gatherers still survive among some tribes of the Ruanda cluster, and in both Ruanda and Urundi, people of "Hamitic" (Nilotic) origin live side by side with the original tribes. Most of the societies today reveal a sharp stratification into endogamous castes with a ruling aristocracy of herders called Tutsi, a subject agricultural peasanty called Hutu, and often also a depressed caste of Pygmy hunters, called Twa. Even if the beliefs in Ruanda and in Urundi differ in detail, the general religious system is the same among the both peoples. The influences—good or evil—on the life of mankind, on the social orders etc. come from what can be determined as the ultrahuman or superhuman' part of the world

Hydrodynamic modelling of the microbial water quality in a drinking water source as input for risk reduction management

To mitigate the faecal contamination of drinking water sources and, consequently, to prevent waterborne disease outbreaks, an estimation of the contribution from different sources to the total faecal contamination at the raw water intake of a drinking water treatment plant is needed. The aim of this article was to estimate how much different sources contributed to the faecal contamination at the water intake in a drinking water source, Lake Rådasjön in Sweden. For this purpose, the fate and transport of faecal indicator Escherichia coli within Lake Rådasjön were simulated by a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model. The calibrated hydrodynamic model described the measured data on vertical temperature distribution in the lake well (the Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.99). The data on the E. coli load from the identified contamination sources were gathered and the fate and transport of E. coli released from these sources within the lake were simulated using the developed hydrodynamic model, taking the decay of the E. coli into account. The obtained modelling results were compared to the observed E. coli concentrations at the water intake. The results illustrated that the sources that contributed the most to the faecal contamination at the water intake in Lake Rådasjön were the discharges from the on-site sewers and the main inflow to the lake – the river Mölndalsån. Based on the modelling results recommendations for water producers were formulated. The study demonstrated that this modelling approach is a useful tool for estimating the contribution from different sources to the faecal contamination at the water intake of a drinking water treatment plant and provided decision-support information for the reduction of risks posed to the drinking water source

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