Catherine Rowett - Philosophical Quotes

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Plato not only permitted live philosophical enquiry to take place in the course of every reader's every reading of the dialogue, by putting tempting and plausible views on trial, in a situation as near as possible to the open-minded exploratory give and take of dialectical debate with a real interlocutor. He also created a most fitting memorial to the real Socrates – the man himself, who lived and died for the idea that philosophy is best done in open-ended dialogue, and with your whole way of life at stake should you be refuted.

Catherine Rowett
Philosophers tend to recast the dominant religious doctrines to form a rational deductive system defensible from within the philosophical schools. But Pythagoras's spiritual adventures seem markedly different.

Catherine Rowett
If we are to understand what is going on in Empedocles's writings, we need to think about the philosophical motives that drive him, and we need to make use of the bits of text we already had before the papyrus turned up.

Catherine Rowett
Many aspects of Parmenides's thought remain puzzling even when we have collected all the scraps of evidence from his own writings and those of later thinkers who discussed his views. But his immense significance in philosophical terms has never been obscured by the difficulties in the nitty-gritty of interpretation. For one thing, it is obvious that Parmenides throws at us the challenge of whether we should trust our reason or our senses, in circumstances when they seem to conflict.

Catherine Rowett
As the Presocratic philosophers bow out and Plato arrives to direct the next drama in the series, the Sophists make an astounding final act. All singing, all dancing, they ask society to question its raison d'être, its political beliefs, its moral values, its religious beliefs, its educational system, its legal codes, and its codes of etiquette. They draw attention to the power of the media and ask us to consider whether, without the media, there would be any truth at all. The antagonism that they generate, as portrayed by the Socrates imagined in Plato's dialogues, starts the ball rolling for some of the most exacting philosophical endeavours the world has ever seen.

Catherine Rowett