Plato's Progress

This is, as from the author of The Concept of Mind it could scarcely fail to be, a bold and rollicking book. It is also one of the most important works about Plato to have appeared since the first volume of Sir Karl Popper's The Open Society. Whereas The Concept of Mind was a general offensive against Cartesian views of man, eschewing any precise references to particular sources, Plato's Progress deals with scholarly questions of datings and developments, showing and demanding familiarity with a wide literature. Yet Professor Ryle is still incapable as ever of the dry-as-dust.

Part I. The Disorders: 1. Aristotle and Plato; 2. Plato; 3. Conclusion; Part II. The Publication of Dialogues: 4. Book-reading; 5. The recitation of dialogues; 6. games-audiences; 7. The mammoth dialogues; Part III. Plato and Sicily: 8. Who invited Plato to come to Syracuse in 367?; What were Isocrates, Plato, etc., invited for?; 10. The real Dion; 11. The forger; 12. Plato's third visit to Sicily; 13. Aristotle and Sicily; Part IV. Dialectic: 14. Foreword; 15. Aristotle's Art of Dialectic; 16. The earlier history of dialectic; 17. Plato's dialectic vis-à-vis eristic; 18. The minor values of dialectic; 19. The philosophical value of dialectic; 20. Conclusion; Part V. The Crisis: 21. The charges against Socrates; 22. The charges against 'Socrates'; 23. Evidence; 24. Plato's co-defendants; 25. Epilogue; Part VI. The Disappearance of the Eristic Dialogue: 26. The abandonment of the elenchus; 27. The organisation of the eristic Moot; 28. The minuting of debates; 29. Dialogues and the minutes of debates; 30. Why the eristic dialogue vanished; 31. From eristic to philosophy; 32. Eristic and the Theory of Forms; Part VII. The Timetable: 33. Foreword; 34. The eristic dialogues; 35. The Apology and the Crito; 36. The foundation of the Academy; 37. The Phaedo and the Symposium; 38. The Critias; 39. The Timaeus; 40. The Republic; 41. The Philebus; 42. The Laws; 43. The Phaedrus; 44. The Cratylus; 45. The Theaetetus; 46. The Sophist; 47. The Politicus; 48. The Parmenides; 49. A stylometric difficulty; Acknowledgements; Indices.

Plato's Progress deals with scholarly questions of datings and developments, showing and demanding familiarity with a wide literature.