Volume 80 (2025), 4
Original Articles: Socrates in the 20th Century
(Original title: Gadamer’s Socratic Plato)
Filozofia, 80 (2025), 4, 515 - 529.Abstract
Socrates provides the model for philosophy for Gadamer, who follows Plato and the example of Socrates with the claim that philosophy is dialectic and that dialectic is carried out through dialogue. The Socratic dialogues are exemplary in their open-endedness and their embrace of finitude. Gadamer is influenced by Heidegger’s thought, yet he resists Heidegger’s… Read more
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(Original title: Truth, Plurality, and Political Phenomenology: Hannah Arendt’s Socrates)
Filozofia, 80 (2025), 4, 530 - 544.Abstract
This paper examines Hannah Arendt’s Socrates. I argue that Arendt construes Socrates as a model of the compatibility of philosophy and politics. This model uniquely articulates this compatibility through a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, where truth is conceived as a perspectival disclosure of meaning in the plural and discursive world of politics. I further… Read more
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(Original title: Patočka’s Socrates and His Socratic Politics)
Filozofia, 80 (2025), 4, 545 - 558.Abstract
This paper gives an account of Jan Patočka’s reception of the figure of Socrates. Patočka sees as Socrates’ most important insight his knowledge of ignorance – the fact that we lack knowledge of the most important things in life, but we merely have opinions of them. Socrates then questions and examines such opinions, his own as well as those of others, and this… Read more
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(Original title: The Other of the Other: Seth Benardete’s View of Socrates)
Filozofia, 80 (2025), 4, 559 - 573.Abstract
Following in the footsteps of his teacher Leo Strauss, Seth Benardete devoted his life to understanding “the problem of Socrates”: Plato’s complex and enigmatic portrayal of the ironic Socrates’ embodiment of the philosophic life. This paper introduces Benardete’s rich and dense interpretive work by focusing on his understanding of two of Socrates’ most distinctive… Read more
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(Original title: A Precursor to Dialogical Philosophy? Buber’s Ambiguous View of Socrates)
Filozofia, 80 (2025), 4, 574 - 587.Abstract
Martin Buber’s reception of Socrates is complex and its emphases shifted over time. In the present article I first demonstrate how Buber included Socrates in his project of dialogical philosophy and depicted him as an ally in his confrontation with monological philosophical paradigms. Subsequently, I highlight those aspects of Socrates’ doctrine which Buber… Read more
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