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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. Kyriakos Demetriou of Cyprus University, the series editor, for his patient guidance. I have also received valuable advice, help and encouragement from various friends over the years: Stephen Menn of McGill; at Dartmouth, Amy Allen (now of Penn State); and at Stony Brook, Eduardo Mendieta (now also of Penn State), Allegra de Laurentiis, Jeff Edwards, and Lee Miller.

Plato criticized writing for leaving one’s thought vulnerable to misconstruction. An editor would therefore seem to have a special responsibility towards the defenseless writings placed in his care, namely to make them as fine as possible before sending them forth into the world. In trying to fulfill this duty, I discovered an unexpected and unique privilege: when failing to understand something, I was able simply to ask the writer where I had gone astray and reasonably expect an answer—ὥστε µοι σχεδόν τι πᾶς ὁ λόγος γέγραπται (Theaetetus 143a). Thus, the relationship between editor and writer, I have found, may elude Plato’s critique, and hold reading and writing within the bounds of philosophical χάρις. I thank my collaborators for their ideas and patient “defenses”.

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