JBSP Online: Yusuk on the Thrasymachus-Socrates Debate in Plato’s Republic

journal update

Available now, Yusuk’s essay for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, online in advance of the print edition.

Yusuk – ‘The Wrath of Thrasymachus: A Thought on the Politics of Philosophical Praxis based on a Counter-Phenomenological Reinvestigation of the Thrasymachus-Socrates Debate in Plato’s Republic’: JBSP (Originally published online: 30 July 2020).

Abstract: The phenomenological vision, particularly, Husserl’s idea of critique as an infinite vocational theoria and Patočka’s as an enduring programme, view Platonic logic and Socratic act as the paradigms for a normative justification of the idea of universal science and philosophy. In light of that, the Thrasymachus-Socrates debate is interpreted as a case to testify the critical power of philosophy successfully exercised over sophistic tyrannical non-philosophy. This paper criticizes the phenomenological idealization of the Socratic victory as an ethico-teleologically anticipated success of philosophy and rewrites the defeat of Thrasymachus as a political failure in warring with philosophy during which Thrasymachus questions the legitimacy of the act of philosophizing to decide its legitimacy and thereby exposes the politics played out in that act.

Full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2020.1799544

Yusuk, Institute of Philosophy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

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