{"word_count": 486, "character_count": 3417}
The Painter of Constitutions.Selected Essays on Plato's Republic.Edited by Mario Vegetti, Franco Ferrari and Tosca Lynch.348 S. 54,00 Euro. 15,5 x 23 cm. Hardcover. 978-3-89665-511-0.International Plato Studies Bd. 32Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin 2013http://www.academia-verlag.de/titel/69511.htmThis volume presents the English translation of a selection of 15 essays outof the 82 comprised in the seven-volume commentary on Plato's Republic,edited by Mario Vegetti and published by Bibliopolis (Naples).1. Thrasymachus (M. Vegetti, Univ. di Pavia)2. Poetry: paideia and mimesis (S. Gastaldi, Univ. di Pavia)3. The noble lie (F. Calabi, Univ. di Pavia)4. The unhappiness of the Guardians and the happiness of the polis (F. DeLuise-G. Farinetti, Univ. di Trento)5. Beltista eiper dynata. The status of utopia in the Republic (M. Vegetti,Univ. di Pavia)6. Philosophical Knowledge and political beliefs in Plato's Republic V (F.Ferrari, Univ. di Salerno)7. Megiston mathema. The Idea of the Good and its functions (M. Vegetti,Univ. di Pavia)8. The Idea of the Good as Cause (F. Ferrari, Univ. di Salerno)9. The Line and the Cave (F. Franco Repellini, Univ. di Milano)10. Dialectics: Configurations and Functions (M. Vegetti, Univ. di Pavia)11. Mathematics and its reform in Plato's time (E. Cattanei, Univ. diCagliari)12. Daimonion pragma. An anti-empirical approach to harmonics (Plat. Resp.7.530b-531d) (A. Meriani, Univ. di Salerno)13. Plato's criticism of democracy and oligarchy (L. Bertelli, Univ. diTorino)14. The image of the soul and the happiness of the just man (S. Gastaldi,Univ. di Pavia)15. Who does what in Resp. 10.596a-597e? (F. Fronterotta, Univ. di Lecce)It must be noted that the necessarily limited selection of essays includedin this volume is not based on any kind of qualitative judgment: in otherwords, these essays are not the ones that we regard as 'the best' amongthose contained in the volumes of the commentary. Instead our aim was thatof presenting, within the bounds of possibility, a number of criticalassessments of the most relevant aspects of the dialogue (politics, ethics,epistemology, ontology), in order to provide the readers with some samplesof the interpretative style of the commentary together with some of theresults that we think we have obtained in the interpretation of theRepublic. This inevitable selection unfortunately led to the exclusion ofthose essays that were mainly concerned with the literary and psychologicalaspects of the dialogues, or with its Wirkungsgeschichte. Of course, we hopethat the limited specimens presented in this volume will stimulate thereaders to examine more extensively the collective work from which theseessays derive.Mario Vegetti is emeritus professor at the University of Pavia. He haspublished several works on Plato (including Quindici lezioni su Platone,Einaudi, Torino 2003), ancient ethics, Aristotle and Galen.Franco Ferrari is professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University ofSalerno. He has worked on Plato and the ancient Platonic tradition. Amonghis works are annotated translations of Plato'sParmenides (Milano, 2004) andTheaetetus (Milano, 2011). He is the author of I miti di Platone (Milano,2006).Tosca Lynch is a postdoc researcher at the Institut für Kulturgeschichte derAntike, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests include ancientGreek music and Plato's ethico-political thought and aesthetics.