Ancient Readings of Plato’s Phaedo

Plato’s Phaedo has never failed to attract the attention of philosophers and scholars. Yet the history of its reception in Antiquity has been little studied. The present volume therefore proposes to examine not only the Platonic exegetical tradition surrounding this dialogue, which culminates in the commentaries of Damascius and Olympiodorus, but also its place in the reflections of the rival Peripatetic, Stoic, and Sceptical schools.
This volume thus aims to shed light on the surviving commentaries and their sources, as well as on less familiar aspects of the history of the Phaedo’s ancient reception. By doing so, it may help to clarify what ancient interpreters of Plato can and cannot offer their contemporary counterparts.

Sylvain Delcomminette, PhD, is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He has written monographs on Plato’s Statesman (Brussels, 2000) and Philebus (Leiden, 2006) and is currently working on the topic of necessity in Aristotle.

Pieter d’Hoine, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Intellectual History at the De Wulf – Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy (KU Leuven). His main area of research is later Neoplatonic metaphysics.

Marc-Antoine Gavray, PhD, is Research Associate of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium). He teaches Ancient Philosophy at the Université de Liège. He works on the Sophists, on Plato and on late Neoplatonism (mainly Damascius and Simplicius).

Contributors are: Francesca Alesse, Han Baltussen, Riccardo Chiaradonna, Lorenzo Corti, Sylvain Delcomminette, Bram Demulder, Marc-Antoine Gavray, Sebastian Gertz, Pieter d’Hoine, Alain Lernould, Geert Roskam, Harold Tarrant, Franco Trabattoni, and Gerd Van Riel.

"Just as it is impossible to do justice to every aspect of Phaedo’s influence in antiquity, it is also impossible to do justice to the rich array of insights on offer in this volume … a must have for any serious student of the dialogue." — Donka D. Markus, University of Michigan, in: The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 11 (2017)
"The ground covered is immense … the variety of approaches of the contributing authors, some writing in close focus others with a broader palette, has succeeded in producing important general conclusions that are always based on sound and detailed evidence. The volume’s usefulness is also enhanced by an extensive bibliography and three comprehensive indices: locorum, rerum and nominum." — Andrew Smith, University College Dublin, in: Journal of Hellenic Studies 137 (2017)