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Plato and Demosthenes
Recovering the Old Academy
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2022
Summary
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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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2022
ISBN-Print
978-1-6669-2005-5
ISBN-Online
978-1-6669-2006-2
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
246
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Preface No access
Abbreviations for Writings of Plato and Demosthenes No access
Chronology No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 20
1. The End of the Old Academy No access Pages 21 - 42
2. Five Other Students of Plato No access Pages 43 - 64
