The eminent philosopher and classical scholar Alexander Nehamas presents here a collection of his most important essays on Plato and Socrates. The papers are unified in theme by the idea that Plato's central philosophical concern in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics was to distinguish the authentic from the fake, the original from its imitations. In approach, the collection displays Nehamas's characteristic combination of analytical rigor and sensitivity to the literary form and dramatic effect of Plato's work. Together, the papers represent Nehamas's distinct and original contributions to scholarship on Plato and Socrates and serve as a comprehensive introduction to the thought of these two philosophers.

In the book's opening section, Nehamas discusses Plato's representation of Socrates as a model of authentic human goodness, showing that Plato's Socrates is a more skeptical, troubling, and individualistic thinker than is usually supposed. The papers in the second section form a sustained defense of a new and important understanding of Plato's theory of the forms and the evolution of that theory in Plato's later writings. The third section examines Plato's contention that popular entertainment--by which he meant Greek epic and tragic poetry--misleads its audience into a debased life, an argument Nehamas relates to modern anxieties about television and other forms of popular culture. The collection also includes a discussion of Plato's use of the dialogue form in his representation of Socrates and carefully examines the combination of literary and philosophical elements in his work.

Nehamas argues in the book that Plato's specific judgments of what is authentic are often flawed, but that his idea of authenticity as the mark of truth, beauty, and goodness is stronger than many modern scholars have assumed. In drawing together Nehamas's many influential ideas about Plato and Socrates, Virtues of Authenticity is a major contribution to the study of ancient Greek philosophy.

I cannot imagine that any scholar of Plato is unfamiliar with the work of Alexander Nehamas, but few will know all of these essays. It is a great boon to have them all collected and published under one cover. With the passing of his teacher, Gregory Vlastos, there is no one who combines philosophical acumen with literary sensitivity quite so well.

	Acknowledgments
	List of Abbreviations
	Introduction
I	Socrates: Questions of Goodness and Method
1	Meno's Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher	3
2	Socratic Intellectualism	27
3	What Did Socrates Teach and to Whom Did He Teach It?	59
4	Voices of Silence: On Gregory Vlastos's Socrates	83
5	Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato's Demarcation of Philosophy from Sophistry	108
II	Plato: Questions of Metaphysics and Epistemology
6	On Parmenides' Three Ways of Inquiry	125
7	Plato on the Imperfection of the Sensible World	138
8	Confusing Universals and Particulars in Plato's Early Dialogues	159
9	Self-Predication and Plato's Theory of Forms	176
10	Participation and Predication in Plato's Later Thought	196
11	Episteme and Logos in Plato's Later Thought	224
III	Plato: Questions of Beauty and the Arts
12	Plato on Imitation and Poetry in Republic X	251
13	Plato and the Mass Media	279
IV	Plato: Individual Works
14	The Symposium	303
15	The Republic	316
16	The Phaedrus	329
	Index of Passages Cited	359
	General Index	365