Chapter 2 examines three problems in Heidegger’s interpretations of Plato: the impasse of dialogue and dialectic, Heidegger’s disastrous and putatively Platonic politics, and the reductive approach to Plato’s metaphysics. First, I question his critique of Platonic dialectic by showing that it is already built into the matter as well as the way of writing in Plato’s texts. Second, I show that Heidegger’s ontologizing of political themes in Plato’s writings leads him to a catastrophic “ontological politics” wherein ethics and politics in their concrete sense are completely eclipsed by or absorbed into ontology. Third, I show that the interpretations that Heidegger offers to show that Plato allegedly occluded the original sense of truth and distorted the question of Being. A closer look at the relevant passages as well as other passages that Heidegger overlooked reveals a much more dynamic ontology than what Heidegger sees in Platonism understood as metaphysics. The concluding remarks of the chapter sketch the post-Heideggerian directions leading from these three problems to the Platonism of Gadamer, Strauss, and Krüger.

Chapter 4 deals with the philosophical meaning of dialogue as a form of writing and thinking. I take as my starting point the apparent paradox of Plato’s written critique of writing in the Phaedrus and explain how Gadamer, Strauss, and Krüger resolve this question. For all three of them (inspired by Friedländer on this point), dialogical writing overcomes the deficiencies inherent to writing. I argue that for all three of them, dialogical writing and dialogical thinking reflect the practical embeddedness of philosophical inquiry: for Strauss, it is the political situatedness of the philosopher that has priority; for Gadamer, it is our ethical facticity; for Krüger, it is the fundamental attunements (Stimmungen) of philosophy. The chapter also explains how these three trajectories propose three different interpretations of the meaning of Socratic and Platonic irony, which is a key feature of Plato’s dialogical compositions.

Chapter 7 is a critical analysis of Platonic ontology as interpreted by Strauss, Gadamer, and Krüger. In light of philosophy’s finitude revealed through the philosopher’s philosophical journey, how can we think of Platonic Forms after Heidegger? I argue that Gadamer, Strauss, and Krüger articulate interpretations of Platonic metaphysics that concludes that, for Plato, Being remains fundamentally elusive. Strauss does so via a zetetic interpretation of Forms as questions coeval with the human mind: Being remains a mystery, a riddle. Gadamer achieves this through a somewhat technical account of Forms in light of an arithmetic interpretation of our linguistic access to them. Krüger originally puts at the center of his account the erotic tension between discursive thinking and non-discursive insight. I contend that Krüger’s Platonic argument for the elusiveness of Being is superior to those of Strauss and Gadamer in two respects: (1) it is more faithful to Plato’s own writings on the difference between dianoia and noêsis, and (2) it proves a better response to Heidegger’s critique of Platonic metaphysics.

In addition to presenting the overarching argument and laying out the structure of the book, the introduction offers an interpretation of the Socratic reorientation of philosophy through a brief reading of both autobiographic passages in the Phaedo and the Apology. This intertextual interpretation reveals two things. First, Socrates thinks philosophers should turn to logoi, that is, broadly to human speeches and human language in order to inquire into Being. Second, this turn to human speeches is at once a turn to what humans usually discuss when they disagree, namely, human affairs and in particular questions related to the “most important things” such as justice and other virtues, the kalon, and, ultimately, the good. This agathological or ethical-political crux of the Socratic reorientation provides a roadmap along which I structure my interpretation of the post-Heideggerian Platonism of Strauss, Gadamer, and Krüger. The milestones of the second sailing thus understood are: dialogical writing and thinking, the confrontation between poetry and philosophy, the tension between philosophy and politics, and, finally, the ascent to Forms.

Chapter 5 thus turns to the “old quarrel between philosophy and poetry”. Whereas my starting point in Chapter 4 was the paradox of the written critique of writing, here I begin with the apparent contradiction of Plato’s mimetic critique of mimesis in the Republic. For Gadamer, Strauss, and Krüger, this is key to understanding Plato’s critique of poetry: Plato does not condemn mimesis entirely. Instead, he subordinates the imaginative and persuasive powers of imitative poetry to philosophical goals and thus weaves poetry and imitation into his own masterful compositions. All three readings point differently but decisively to the limits of autonomous or unaided philosophical discourse, and therewith anticipate some of Heidegger’s insights on the necessity of something like poetic thinking.

Chapter 3 is a short interlude. It deals with the novelty of Paul Friedländer’s philological approach to Plato’s dialogues and shows how his insights were decisive in the subsequent philosophical attempts to move beyond Heidegger’s attack against Platonism. Friedländer’s originality consists of a brilliant attempt to bridge the philosophical and literary dimensions of Plato’s writings and thus to propose an interpretation of the philosophical meaning of the dialogical form of philosophy. I show that the three key features found by Friedländer – anti-dogmatism, irony, and ineffability – all have a significant role to play in post-Heideggerian Platonism, but that these had to be further developed philosophically by Gadamer, Strauss, and Krüger.

Chapter 1 surveys the Platonism of Marburg neo-Kantian philosophers to set out the context out of and against which Heidegger’s Destruktion of Plato emerged. I do not argue that Heidegger’s Plato is a direct response to the Plato of Cohen, Natorp, and Cassirer. I contend instead that what Heidegger identifies as unprecedented and extremely influential mistakes in Plato’s philosophy are sometimes found in slightly different and sometimes strikingly similar forms in their laudatory interpretations of Plato. The clearest and most evident case in this regard is their interpretation of Forms as laws governing thinking, particularly logical and propositional thinking. I argue that if Strauss, Gadamer, and Krüger propose new reactivations of Platonism to respond to Heidegger, these reactivations cannot follow the Platonism of Marburg Neo-Kantianism to their ultimate conclusions. At the same time, it is also clear that there are important traces of a neo-Kantian heritage in the ways Strauss, Gadamer, and Krüger understood Plato, most notably the Marburg Neo-Kantian refusal to understand Platonic Forms as beings, things, or substances.

Chapter 6 turns to the relation between philosophy and politics in Plato’s Republic. The question here is how to understand Socrates’ proposal of philosophical rulership in Kallipolis. For all three post-Heideggerian Platonists, this is not to be read literally (pace Heidegger’s 1933 disastrous appropriation of the proposal), but ironically. For Strauss, Socrates’ argument ironically points to the opposite claim: philosophical rulership is impossible, and this is a symptom of the irreconcilable tension between philosophy and the city. For Krüger and Gadamer, the irony points to an “in-between” position: while philosophers cannot rule directly as kings and queens, they can rule indirectly. For Gadamer, this indirect rulership takes the form of the philosophically educated citizen’s participation in the political life of the community, and, most importantly, the task of civic education. For Krüger, it takes the form of a philosophical critique of existing political institutions. Despite their differences, all three ironic readings of the tension between philosophy and politics in the Republic converge toward what I call the “political finitude” of philosophy.

This chapter sets the conceptual and methodological stage for the book by challenging conventional disciplinary boundaries in the history of philosophy. It argues for a broad understanding of philosophical inquiry that includes religion, literature, and lived practice. The chapter critiques the dominance of argument-based historiography, stemming from Descartes, Brucker, and the nineteenth-century research university model, which privileged metaphysics and epistemology over ethics and the art of living. It outlines a corrective vision that foregrounds genre, orality, and the performative dimensions of philosophy. Christianity is shown to be not only compatible with philosophy but also a key medium through which ancient philosophical ideas were preserved, transformed, and popularized. The chapter highlights neglected periods, especially late antiquity, and insists on the importance of reading ancient thinkers – Plato, Augustine, Paul – on their own terms and in their own genres. It advocates for a generous, contextually informed reading practice that sees philosophical ideas as part of a long conversation across centuries. Ultimately, this chapter positions the book as a work of retrieval that seeks to restore the breadth and spiritual seriousness of ancient and late ancient philosophical traditions.

Explores various Jewish conceptions of an afterlife: immortality of the soul; resurrection; reincarnation; and the legacy concept—that immortality consists in one’s impact on the future. Working through a wide range of reasons for and against each position, the chapter notes the variety that exists in the kinds of reasons advanced. It then discusses whether an afterlife has value and why there is death.

This chapter deepens the exploration of Plato’s philosophical project by emphasizing his use of examples – mythic, biographical, and narrative – as central to the acquisition of wisdom. It focuses on Plato’s imaginative range and didactic strategies, especially in his dialogue Phaedo. Socrates emerges as both character and exemplar, a living instance of philosophical integrity whose personal choices – particularly his death – embody the ethical convictions Plato sought to convey. The chapter shows that for Plato, philosophy is less a set of conclusions than a transformative activity, oriented toward the soul’s alignment with truth and the good. Through both argument and myth, Plato guides his readers toward a deeper moral vision, one that integrates eros, memory, and judgment. The importance of imitation, role models, and interior cultivation is highlighted, with particular attention to how genre shapes philosophical meaning. Plato’s educational vision, centered on the whole person, contrasts with modern fragmentary views of reason, challenging us to think of learning as a moral and spiritual enterprise. Wisdom, in this account, is not only a matter of knowledge, but of living in accordance with higher realities glimpsed through story, character, and example

The concept of concept emerged in classical Greece once philosophers began to reflect on their disagreements about the nature of things. Plato made a critical advance by distinguishing the content and object of thought. It is only with Aristotle, who has more to say about content, that we find the beginnings of a theory of concepts. On his view perception enables animals to distinguish between different types of particular, but cannot consider these types on their own abstractly, as we do in thought. This latter ability, together with the operations of combination and division, allows us to consider a much wider range of types than we encounter directly in perception. Abstraction is the ability to focus on certain features rather than attending to all. But the ability to create new concepts, by adding positive and negative qualifications, underwrites the productivity of language and the possibility of scientific investigation.

Focusing on Plato’s literary craft and philosophical method, this chapter explores the Republic and especially the Allegory of the Cave to elucidate Plato’s vision of education, truth, and reality. Rather than isolating arguments in abstraction, it emphasizes the dialogical form of Plato’s works and the exemplary character of Socrates as a model of philosophical life. Set against the backdrop of Athenian democratic decline and the execution of Socrates, the chapter interprets the cave allegory as a meditation on the soul’s ascent from illusion to truth – a journey of intellectual habituation requiring ethical transformation. The analysis shows how Plato fused literary beauty with metaphysical depth, presenting philosophy as both a rational and existential undertaking. The chapter further demonstrates how Socratic inquiry – marked by aporia and dialectic – encourages readers to examine their assumptions, seek truth, and reflect on their moral formation. Plato’s theory of Forms is introduced not as a rigid metaphysical doctrine but as part of a broader vision in which education, justice, and contemplation all point toward transcendent reality. In this framing, philosophy becomes a way of life rooted in example, narrative, and spiritual aspiration.

More than any other of Emerson’s essays, “Experience” shows us a succession of states, moods, and “regions” of human life. It is not a “carpet” essay in Adorno’s sense, in which a set of themes is woven into a core idea, but a journey essay, which moves from region to region, and portrays life as a set of moods through which we pass. Like a piece of music, “Experience” is in motion. It provides an exemplary case of the essay as Montaigne describes the form: “something which cannot be said at once all in one piece.” Chapter 7 considers whether “Experience" is to be seen as what Cavell calls a “journey of ascent” – as in the journey up and out of the cave in Plato’s Republic; as a version of Plato’s myth of Er; or, with its praise of “the midworld,” as a return to the ordinary as Wittgenstein thinks of it.

While it is important to trace Emerson’s main positions, one misses the living nature of his philosophy unless one also takes account of the motions, moods, and patterns within his essays, and the ways he dramatizes instability, spontaneity, and inconsistency. This emphasis is found in Goodman’s discussions of “History” in Chapter 1, “Friendship” in Chapter 3, “Nominalist and Realist” in Chapter 4, “Manners” in Chapter 6, “Experience” in Chapter 7, “Nature” in Chapter 9, and “Illusions” in Chapter 10. Chapter 2 distinguishes the sheer variety of skepticisms in Emerson’s thought, about the world and other minds, but also about mystical experiences that refuse “to be named” or are “ineffable.” It also attends to the differences between the “modern” tradition of skepticism as doubt, and skepticism as a form of life, with Emerson’s essay on Montaigne a key source for his idea of a “wise skepticism.”

This chapter explores personal religion in some of Plato’s dialogues. First, focusing on the Apology and Euthyphro, it considers Socrates’ daimonic sign and how far Socrates expresses religious attitudes independent from, in line with, or opposed to those foregrounded or sanctioned in Athens. Second, it turns to Plato’s Laws and examines the Stranger’s vision for civic religion in the imagined city of Magnesia and his prohibitions of private worship. Finally, it considers how philosophical inquiry can itself constitute personal religion. Overall, it argues that Plato does not evince a single attitude towards all the phenomena we might classify as personal religion. That the Stranger outlaws some central aspects of personal religion does not mean that he proscribes all others; we should resist the old idea that Socrates would have fallen afoul of Magnesia’s laws. While the Stranger excludes a culture of free speech of which the Socrates of the early dialogues avails himself, Magnesia is not Athens. For Plato, how far expressions of personal religion should be countenanced, regulated, or proscribed by the city turns on the nature of the city in which that question is raised.