| "This
book is by far the most comprehensive and searching study of Socrates's
religious commitments and their impact on his philosophy. McPherran
painstakingly sorts through the testimonies of the relevant ancient
sources and provides important and often controversial new interpretations
of them."-Nicholas D. Smith, Michigan State University
"McPherran's book is the best full-length study of Socratic religion
currently available in English. It is well written and well argued.
It should be read by any serious student of Socratic philosophy
or the religion of fifth-century Athens."-Hugh H. Benson, University
of Oklahoma
This study argues that to understand Socrates we must uncover and
analyze his religious views, since his philosophical and religious
views are part of one seamless whole. Mark McPherran provides a
close analysis of the relevant Socratic texts, an analysis that
yields a comprehensive and original account of Socrates' commitments
to religion (e.g., the nature of the gods, the immortality of the
soul).
McPherran finds that Socrates was not only a rational philosopher
of the first rank, but a figure with a profoundly religious nature
as well, believing in the existence of gods vastly superior to ourselves
in power and wisdom and sharing other traditional religious commitments
with his contemporaries. However, Socrates was just as much a sensitive
critic and rational reformer of both the religious tradition he
inherited and the new cultic incursions he encountered. McPherran
contends that Socrates saw his religious commitments as integral
to his philosophical mission of moral examination and, in turn,
used the rationally derived convictions underlying that mission
to reshape the religious conventions of his time. As a result, Socrates
made important contributions to the rational reformation of Greek
religion, contributions that incited and informed the theology of
his brilliant pupil, Plato. |
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