I am currently working on a book length project, tentatively entitled: Plato’s Maieutic Method: Inquiry in the Theaetetus. I maintain that, among other things, the Theaetetus displays an unsuccessful attempt at acquiring robust knowledge of the nature of episteme by means of the method inquiry endorsed in the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic. In Clitophon’s Challenge I argued that this method is the method of hypothesis introduced and briefly displayed in portions of those three dialogues. In providing an unsuccessful dialogue-length display of that method in the Theaetetus Plato reveals the intricacies of his recommended method of inquiry.
Hugh Benson
Summary and Contact Information
George Lynn Cross Research Professor emeritus
Samuel Roberts Noble Presidential Professor emeritus
Ph.D., Michigan
Research areas: Ancient Philosophy
Email: hbenson@ou.edu
Recent Research
Clitophon’s Challenge: Dialectic in Plato’s Meno, Phaedo, and Republic (Oxford University Press: 2015).
“Plato’s Later Epistemology” in Knowledge in Ancient Philosophy, ed. N. Smith (2019), pp. 107-124.
“Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro: The Examined and Virtuous Life” Oxford Handbook of Plato, 2nd ed., ed. G. Fine (2019), pp. 119-140.
“Plato on Having a Logos (Theaetetus 201c-210a)” What the Ancients Offer to Contemporary Epistemology, edd. N. Smith and S. Hetherington (2019), pp. 106-123.
“Philosophy and the Just Life in Plato’s Gorgias” Cambridge Critical Guide to Plato’s Gorgias, ed. C. Shaw (forthcoming).
“Dialectic in the Cave” Rereading Plato’s Republic, M.M. McCabe and Simon Trépanier (edd.) (forthcoming).
“Power in the Hippias Minor” for Platonic Power Workshop (2021).
“Socrates’ Two Technai” for the International Plato Society and International Society for Socratic Studies (2021).
