The Republic: Protagoras, Gorgias, and Meno :: Philosophy Morals Neo Aristotelianism Papers

The Republic Protagoras, Gorgias, and MenoOne alert line of thought in contemporary moral philosophy, which I shall annunciate Neo-Aristotelianism, centers on three things (1) a rejection of traditional enlightenment moral theories give care Kantianism and utilitarianism (2) a lease that another look at the ethical concerns and projects of antique Greek thought might help us past the dead-end street into which enlightenment moral theories have left us (3) more particularly, an campaign to reinterpret Aristotles ethical work for the late twentieth-century so as to transcend this impasse. The Neo-Aristotelian Rejection of PlatoNeo-Aristotelians like Martha Nussbaum(1) and Alasdair MacIntyre,(2) in spite of their many differences,(3) are accordingly united not only in their positive turn to Aristotle more everywhere also in their rejection of Plato and Platos Socrates.(4) And yet some features of these rejections invite pull ahead reflection. Nussbaum, for example, consistentl y recognizes that the Socratic-Platonic project requires us to remake ourselves In short, I claim that in the Protagoras Socrates offers us, in the guise of empirical description, a radical proposal for the interlingual rendition of our lives. (FG 117, LK 112) But to what design has she done justice to the particular kind of refashion Plato has Socrates offer us? More pointedly, does she ack directledge the extent to which Socrates aims at nidus his interlocutors on a process of questioning, rather than simply handing doctrine over to them?(5) Or has her Socrates been flattened out, his dialogical style rendered monological, so as to support her boilersuit thesis more easily?(6) As for MacIntyre, does he see clearly enough the parallel between his own work and Platos when he says that in his earlier dialogues Plato is pointing to a general state of incoherence in the use of evaluative language in Athenian culture (AV 131)? Mutatis mutandis, isnt this precisely what the opening chapters of After Virtue attempt to show? And to what extent must MacIntyres quest for the in force(p) in his crucial chapter The Virtues, the bingle of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition be committed to a Platonic, rather than Aristotelian, notion of the good? When he says now it is important to emphasize that it is the systematic asking of these two questions What is the good for me? and What is the good for man? and the attempt to answer them in deed as strong as in word which provide the moral life with its superstar (AV 219, emphasis added), isnt it Platos Socrates who serves as the ultimate source of uptake here?