Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Plato’s Dialogues of Definition: Causal and Conceptual Investigations by Justin Clark, assistant professor of philosophy

December 5, 2022

Tags Faculty Book

(Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

Clark uses what he calls the “dual function” of Socrates’ “What is F-ness?” question to find positive philosophical content in Plato’s dialogues of definition. The publisher’s description of the book says that Clark uses the question as a springboard for two types of investigation — conceptual and causal — noting that the key to understanding any of the dialogues of definition, therefore, is to decipher between them. “Clark offers a way to do just that, at once resolving interpretive issues in Socratic philosophy, providing systematic interpretations of the negative endings, and generating important new readings of the Charmides and Lysis, whilst casting further doubt on the authenticity of the Hippias Major.”