The Argument of the Action

This volume brings together Seth Benardete's studies of Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Iliad, and Greek tragedy, of eleven Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle's Metaphysics. These essays, some never before published, others difficult to find, span four decades of his work and document its impressive range. Benardete's philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground that makes this collection a whole. The key, suggested by his reflections on Leo Strauss in the last piece, lies in the question of how to read Plato. Benardete's way is characterized not just by careful attention to the literary form that separates doctrine from dialogue, and speeches from deed; rather, by following the dynamic of these differences, he uncovers the argument that belongs to the dialogue as a whole. The "turnaround" such an argument undergoes bears consequences for understanding the dialogue as radical as the conversion of the philosopher in Plato's image of the cave. Benardete's original interpretations are the fruits of this discovery of the "argument of the action." TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Introduction 1. The First Crisis in First Philosophy 2. Achilles and the Iliad 3. The Aristeia of Diomedes and the Plot of the Iliad 4. The Furies of Aeschylus 5. Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus 6. Euripides' Hippolytus 7. On Greek Tragedy 8. Physics and Tragedy: On Plato's Cratylus 9. On Plato's Symposium 10. Protagoras's Myth and Logos 11. On Plato's Lysis 12. On Interpreting Plato's Charmides 13. Plato's Laches: A Question of Definition 14. On Plato's Phaedo 15. Plato's Theaetetus: On the Way of the Logos 16. On Plato's Sophist 17. The Plan of Plato's Statesman 18. On the Timaeus 19. On Wisdom and Philosophy: The First Two Chapters of Aristotle's Metaphysics A 20. Strauss on Plato Selected Works by Seth Benardete Index