Charles H Kahn
Biographic Data
| ID | 490305 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charles H Kahn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charles H |
| FAMILY NAME | Kahn |
| SIGNATURE | KAHN C H |
| AFFILIATIONS | California University of Pennsylvania |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1960 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Foreword (1993)
Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue
Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has genera…
Art and Thought of Heraclitus
Parmenides and Plato Once More
This seems a happy occasion to return to Parmenides, in order both to clarify my own interpretation of Parmenidean Being and also to emphasize the affinity between what I have called the veridical reading and the account in terms of predication that Alex Mourelatos gave in his monumental The Route of Parmenides. It is good to have this opportunity to acknowledge how much our views have in common, even if they do not coincide.
Essays on Being
This volume presents a series of essays published by Charles Kahn over a period of forty years, in which he seeks to explicate the ancient Greek concept of Being. He addresses two distinct but intimately related problems, one linguistic and one historical and philosophical. The linguistic problem concerns the theory of the Greek verb einai, ‘to be’: how to replace the conventional but misleading distinction between copula and existential verb wit…
Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy
In the extended discussion of the concept (or concepts) of Being in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle, the theme of existence does not figure as a distinct topic for philosophical reflection. My aim here is to defend and illustrate this claim, and at the same time to suggest some of the reasons why it is that the concept of existence does not get singled out as a topic in its own right. Finally, I shall raise in a tentative way the qu…
The Greek Verb ‘To Be’ and the Concept of Being
I am concerned in this paper with the philological basis for Greek ontology; that is to say, with the raw material which was provided for philosophical analysis by the ordinary use and meaning of the verb einai, ‘to be’. Roughly stated, my question is: How were the Greek philosophers guided, or influenced, in their formulation of doctrines of Being, by the prephilosophical use of this verb which (together with its nominal derivatives on and ousia…
The Thesis of Parmenides
If we except Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, Parmenides is perhaps the most important and influential of all the Greek philosophers. And considered as a metaphysician he is perhaps the most original figure in the western tradition. At any rate, if ontology is the study of Being, or what there is, and metaphysics the study of ultimate Reality, or what there is in the most fundamental way, then Parmenides may reasonably be regarded as the founder o…
Why Is the Sophist a Sequel to the Theaetetus
The Theaetetus and the Sophist both stand in the shadow of the Parmenides, to which they refer. I propose to interpret these two dialogues as Plato's first move in the project of reshaping his metaphysics with the double aim of avoiding problems raised in the Parmenides and applying his general theory to the philosophy of nature. The classical doctrine of Forms is subject to revision, but Plato's fundamental metaphysics is preserved in the Phileb…
The Philosophical Importance of the Dialogue Form for Plato
Plato on What Is Good
Este artigo analisa o conceito de bem na filosofia de Platão. Este é, claramente, um tema fundamental da filosofia política
Writing Philosophy
Philosophy is a talkative subject, and it must have begun in conversation. Unfortunately, all we have from the early period is texts, and these are not abundant. But if evidence for the use of writing in philosophy before Plato is fragmentary, evidence for oral performance in this period is almost nonexistent. What little we know is generally derived from Plato, like the picture of Zeno reading his arguments before a small audience in the Parmeni…
Pre-Platonic ethics
Although 'ethics' is a term that comes to us from the Greeks, Greek moral philosophy is notably different from typical modern discussions that fall under the same rubric. Some of our key moral concepts are absent or inconspicuous in Greek ethical debate. For example, much of modern ethics gravitates around the concepts of duty or moral obligation and rights, but neither of these concepts has any equivalent or close analogue in Greek speculation a…
Ethics
This fourth Companion to Ancient Thought is devoted to ancient ethics. The chapters range over the ethical theories of all the major philosophers and schools from the earliest times to the work of the Hellenistic philosophers. There is a substantial introduction which considers the question of what is distinctive about ancient ethics, and an extensive bibliography. This collection provides a sophisticated and accessible introduction to the moral …
Was Euthyphro the Author of the Derveni Papyrus?
In an article published more than twenty years ago I raised this question in a rather light-hearted way. Of course we cannot answer such a question with a categorical ‘Yes ‘ or ‘No ‘. The papyrus text is unsigned; and we know nothing about Euthyphro beyond what Plato tells us in two dialogues, the Euthyphro and the Cratylus. If the connection seems nevertheless worth pursuing, that is for two reasons. On the one hand, the philosophical allegories…
Philosophy Before Socrates
Plato and the Socratic Dialogue
This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the p…
Greek Religion and Philosophy in the Sisyphus Fragment
Lecture du fragment de Sisyphe (DK 88B.25), cite par Sextus Empiricus comme l'expression de l'atheisme du tyran Critias, en tant que document sur l'interaction de la raison et de la religion au V e siecle. Recherchant des elements de la philosophie ionienne de la nature dans le texte de Sisyphe, l'A. etudie les conditions theâtrales de l'emergence de l'atheisme theorique dans le contexte du cynisme moral propre a la tragedie d'Euripide, mais auss…
Plato and the Socratic Dialogue
Religion and Natural Philosophy in Empedocles' Doctrine of the Soul
Pythagorean Philosophy Before Plato
Proleptic Composition in the Republic , or Why Book 1 was Never a Separate Dialogue
Old scholarly myths die hard. It was K. F. Hermann, the discoverer of the ‘Socratic period’ in Plato's development, who first proposed (in 1839) that Book 1 of the Republic must originally have been an earlier, independent dialogue on justice, parallel to the Laches on courage, the Euthyphro on piety, and the Charmides on temperance. Hermann also introduced the separatist enterprise of analysing the rest of the Republic into three or four distinc…
Vlastos's Socrates
This is a long-awaited book, and our expectations are not disappointed*. It is also, as it turns out, the author's last work. Gregory Vlastos died in October, 1991, only a few months after the book appeared. So here we meet Vlastos for the last time, and in splendid form: the writing was never more vigorous, the reasoning never more carefully worked out. It is a dazzling performance for an author in his eighties. In this work the most influential…
Problems in the Argument of Plato's Crito
The art and thought of Heraclitus
Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues
My title is deliberately provocative, since I want to challenge both the chronology and the philosophical interpretation generally accepted for the dialogues called Socratic. I am not primarily interested in questions of chronology, or even in Plato's intellectual ‘development’. But the chronological issues are clear-cut, and it will be convenient to deal with them first. My aim in doing so will be to get at more interesting questions concerning …
Greek Religion and Philosophy in the Sisyphus Fragment
Lecture du fragment de Sisyphe (DK 88B.25), cite par Sextus Empiricus comme l'expression de l'atheisme du tyran Critias, en tant que document sur l'interaction de la raison et de la religion au V e siecle. Recherchant des elements de la philosophie ionienne de la nature dans le texte de Sisyphe, l'A. etudie les conditions theâtrales de l'emergence de l'atheisme theorique dans le contexte du cynisme moral propre a la tragedie d'Euripide, mais auss…
Proleptic Composition in the Republic , or Why Book 1 was Never a Separate Dialogue
Old scholarly myths die hard. It was K. F. Hermann, the discoverer of the ‘Socratic period’ in Plato's development, who first proposed (in 1839) that Book 1 of the Republic must originally have been an earlier, independent dialogue on justice, parallel to the Laches on courage, the Euthyphro on piety, and the Charmides on temperance. Hermann also introduced the separatist enterprise of analysing the rest of the Republic into three or four distinc…
Some Philosophical Uses of "to be" in Plato
I here discuss two sets of passages where Plato uses the verb rIvcu (and its nominal forms ov and ovcaia) in a philosophically loaded way, in connection with the notion of truth. I suggest that the systematic nature of this connection has not been recognized and hence its philosophical significance has not been properly understood. Syntactically, the passages in question are a mixed bag. In a few cases we have what I call the veridical constructi…
Vlastos's Socrates
This is a long-awaited book, and our expectations are not disappointed*. It is also, as it turns out, the author's last work. Gregory Vlastos died in October, 1991, only a few months after the book appeared. So here we meet Vlastos for the last time, and in splendid form: the writing was never more vigorous, the reasoning never more carefully worked out. It is a dazzling performance for an author in his eighties. In this work the most influential…
Foreword (1993)
Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology
Reconstructs the pattern of Anaximander's thought, through a criticism and analysis of ancient traditions. Discusses the evidence for Anaximander's views and how this contributed to his observations of the universe.
Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology
Empedocles' Mixture, Eudoxan Astronomy and Aristotle's Connate Pneuma
Plato's Cretan City
Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology
Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology
Remontée aux sources de la pensée occidentale
Plato's Funeral Oration
The Apeiron of Anaximander
Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotle’s Psychology
Business and Professional Income under the Personal Income Tax
Employee Compensation under the Income Tax
Employee Compensations under the Income Tax
An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy.
Questions and Categories
The Art and Thought of Heraclitus
Behind the superficial obscurity of what fragments we have of Heraclitus' thought, Professor Kahn claims that it is possible to detect a systematic view of human existence, a theory of language which sees ambiguity as a device for the expression of multiple meaning, and a vision of human life and death within the larger order of nature. The fragments are presented here in a readable order; translation and commentary aim to make accessible the pow…
Some Philosophical Uses of "to be" in Plato
I here discuss two sets of passages where Plato uses the verb rIvcu (and its nominal forms ov and ovcaia) in a philosophically loaded way, in connection with the notion of truth. I suggest that the systematic nature of this connection has not been recognized and hence its philosophical significance has not been properly understood. Syntactically, the passages in question are a mixed bag. In a few cases we have what I call the veridical constructi…
Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues
My title is deliberately provocative, since I want to challenge both the chronology and the philosophical interpretation generally accepted for the dialogues called Socratic. I am not primarily interested in questions of chronology, or even in Plato's intellectual ‘development’. But the chronological issues are clear-cut, and it will be convenient to deal with them first. My aim in doing so will be to get at more interesting questions concerning …
Democritus and the Origins of Moral Psychology
Plato's Charmides and the Proleptic Reading of Socratic Dialogues
Problems in the Argument of Plato's Crito
The art and thought of Heraclitus
Vlastos's Socrates
This is a long-awaited book, and our expectations are not disappointed*. It is also, as it turns out, the author's last work. Gregory Vlastos died in October, 1991, only a few months after the book appeared. So here we meet Vlastos for the last time, and in splendid form: the writing was never more vigorous, the reasoning never more carefully worked out. It is a dazzling performance for an author in his eighties. In this work the most influential…
Proleptic Composition in the Republic , or Why Book 1 was Never a Separate Dialogue
Old scholarly myths die hard. It was K. F. Hermann, the discoverer of the ‘Socratic period’ in Plato's development, who first proposed (in 1839) that Book 1 of the Republic must originally have been an earlier, independent dialogue on justice, parallel to the Laches on courage, the Euthyphro on piety, and the Charmides on temperance. Hermann also introduced the separatist enterprise of analysing the rest of the Republic into three or four distinc…
Philosophy (36 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (31 works) · Epistemology (29 works) · Art (16 works) · Literature (14 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (13 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (10 works) · History (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Linguistics (9 works)