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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Plato and Demosthenes: Recovering the Old Academy

Plato and Demosthenes: Recovering the Old Academy

Altman, William H. F.

Paperback

PhilosophyAncient GreeceGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 166692007X
ISBN13: 9781666920079
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: Apr 5 2024
Pages: 306
Weight: 0.92
Height: 0.64 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Universally regarded as Plato's student in antiquity, it is the eloquent and patriotic orator Demosthenes--not the pro-Macedonian Aristotle who tutored Alexander the Great--who returned to the dangerous Cave of political life, and thus makes it possible to recover the Old Academy. In Plato and Demosthenes: Recovering the Old Academy, William H. F. Altman explores how Demosthenes--along with Phocion, Lycurgus, and Hyperides--add external and historical evidence for the hypothesis that Plato's brilliant and challenging dialogues constituted the Academy's original curriculum. Altman rejects the facile view that the eloquent Plato, a master speech-writer as well as the proponent of the transcendent and post-eudaemonist Idea of the Good, was rhetoric's enemy. He shows how Demosthenes acquired the discipline necessary to become a great orator, first by shouting at the sea and then by summoning the Athenians to self-sacrifice in defense of their waning freedom. Demosthenes thus proved Socrates' criticism of democracy and the democratic man wrong, just as Plato the Teacher had intended that his best students would, and as he continues to challenge us to do today.

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