Sarah Kofman
Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher.
Cornell University Press, 1998. Translation by Catherine Porter of "Socrate(s)" (Editions Galilee, 1989). First edition. 0801481384  vii/296 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.75" x 9.75", is bound in dark red cloth, with bright stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are in fine condition.
"Socrates is an elusive figure, Sarah Kofman asserts, and he is necessarily so since he did not write or directly state his beliefs. "With Socrates," she writes in her introduction, "we will never leave fiction behind." Kofman suggests that Socrates' avowal of ignorance was meant to be ironic. Later philosophers who interpreted his text invariably resisted the profoundly ironic character of his way of life and diverged widely in their interpretations of him. Kofman focuses especially on the views of Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche."