3
ANONYMITY
Gerald A. Press
Paradoxically, Plato is silent and almost completely absent in the dialogues. This Platonic anonymity constitutes a problem for those who read the dialogues expecting to learn Plato’s philosophical doctrines. The most common solution is the assumption that Socrates and other characters are Plato’s mouthpieces, that the views and arguments they put forward are Plato’s own. But the assumption contradicts the evident character of the dialogues and Plato’s many strategies of self-concealment. Although anonymity is often ignored, in recent decades scholars have proposed various alternatives that involve rethinking Plato’s approach to philosophy (q.v.) and philosophic writing (cf. Press 2000).
Plato ‘never speaks in his own name’ (Edelstein 1962:1). There is no character called Plato who speaks in any dialogue. Plato is named only twice: as present, offering money for Socrates’ penalty, in the Apology (38b) and as absent, ‘sick’, the day Socrates died (Phaedo 59b). Although we assume that Plato wrote all of the authentic dialogues (q.v. Corpus; Dubia and Spuria), in some dialogues he takes pains to render the narrative less reliable (Symposium, Parmenides) or to conceal himself as their author (Prm.; Phd.; Theaetetus). The Letters purport to be Plato speaking in his own name. However, all but the seventh are widely considered inauthentic and the seventh, whatever authority it may have, includes the puzzling statement ‘There is no writing of mine about these matters [viz., “with which I am concerned”], nor will there ever be one. For this knowledge is not something that can be put into words like other sciences’ (Ep. 7 341c).
We expect philosophers to tell us what they think and we want to know what Plato thinks. He is one of the most influential philosophers, inspiration of various ‘Platonisms’ (q.v. Academy) and Neoplatonism (q.v.). It seems natural to suppose that Plato had doctrines or definite views that he propounded in his writings. But this reflects a modern historical interest (Tigerstedt 1977). Ancient readers were often more interested in the truth and wisdom to be found in the dialogues than in what exactly Plato’s views were (Tarrant 2000). Plato’s authorial absence and silence, his denial that he ever did or will write his views down and Socrates’ recurrent devaluation of writing (especially Phaedrus 275d–8b; cp. Protagoras 347c–8a) suggest it may be futile to read the dialogues seeking explicit statement of Plato’s philosophical doctrines in any strong sense of that term.
The most common response to this, already recognized by Diogenes Laertius (3.52), has been to assume that Socrates and other characters are Platonic mouthpieces (Kraut 1992a:25–6). Thus, in most dialogues what Socrates says represents Plato’s own views, whereas elsewhere the Eleatic visitor (Sophist, Politicus), Timaeus (Timaeus) and the Athenian visitor (Laws) have this role. The assumption seems natural, since most major philosophic texts try to prove theories directly. It is convenient, since it provides an easy way to get what readers want: an authoritative statement of Plato’s views. And, after 2,000 years it has become traditional.
But it is incompatible with the dialogues’ obvious character as literary fiction, rather than didactic treatises or discursive history (q.v.). It also requires explanation why Plato would switch mouthpieces from a dominant one, Socrates, to an unnamed Eleatic, a character named Parmenides, and an Athenian Stranger, whose views and practises do not seem consistent with those of the Socrates of the Socratic dialogues. Moreover, indications in the dialogues and other ancient testimonies suggest that Plato was tireless in his writing and editing habits (q.v. Compositional chronology). He took care to conceal his own views and to avoid presenting himself as an authority, as his character Socrates (q.v.) usually avoids it in the dialogues.
Instead of taking Platonic anonymity and the literary character of the dialogues as problems to be solved, many recent interpreters have taken them as guidance to different ways of understanding what Plato is trying to do and how the dialogues work. Anonymity along with Plato’s use of myth (q.v.), irony (q.v.), characters (q.v.), play (q.v.) and the writing (q.v.) of dramas rather than treatises indicates that his model of the practise of philosophy is unlike the doctrinal model of philosophic writing.
Several twentieth-century pragmatists saw the dialogues as dramatizations of the life of reason rather than assertions of philosophic doctrine (Woodbridge 1929:54 followed by Randall 1970 and Tejera 1984). This approach troubles some interpreters because it seems to reduce philosophy to ‘mere’ literature. Slightly more dogmatically, the dialogues have been seen as ‘presentations of a possible philosophical standpoint . . . which [Plato] acknowledges conditionally’ (Merlan 1947:415) and their purpose as to induce in us a ‘sense of being at a loss’ (ibid 430). Plato’s refusal to dogmatize may look like scepticism, as it did to the ‘New Academy’ of Arcesilaus (q.v., Academy, history of), but this seems inconsistent with the fervour of Plato’s Socrates about learning the truth. On more mitigated approaches, Plato is not a sceptic, but merely withholds the certitude desired by dogmatists, as for Philo of Larisa. Thus Stefanini (1949, v.1:xxxii–xxxiv) suggested that Plato’s view is a ‘constructive skepsis’. A quite different response to Platonic anonymity is taking the dialogues to withhold Plato’s true doctrines, because those were made available only orally and esoterically (q.v., Esoterism, Tübingen approach).
These proposals assume that propounding doctrine is somehow the essence of the philosopher’s task. But Plato may have had a quite different, non-dogmatic view of philosophy. It has been argued that Plato saw himself as a moral guide, in the manner of the pre-Platonic poets (cf. Edelstein 1962:9). More specifically, the dialogues can be viewed as working in a way essentially different from that of a treatise, as something ‘pedagogical’ rather than doctrinal (Gordon 1999; Sayre 1995a; Thesleff 1999), providing the reader guided acquisition of the habit of philosophic thought rather than specific doctrines. The dialogues’ ‘double open-endedness’ – both conclusions reached and their premises remain tentative – has been taken to show that for Plato as for Socrates, philosophy consists in oral dialectic (Nails 1995:218–31), which shifts intellectual responsibility to the audience or reader. The dialogues can also be viewed as generating enactments of Plato’s principles, orientations and vision of reality within the reader’s mind rather than seeking to gain rational adherence to propositional truths (Press 2007).
ARGUMENT (see Logos (Ch. 4))
CHARACTER (FEATURE)
Ruby Blondell
Plato’s dialogues present us with dozens of characters, most of them (loosely) based on historical figures (for a full prosopography, see Nails 2002). They range in social status from the nameless slave who learns geometry in the Meno to members of the gilded aristocracy; but most are drawn from the educated male elite of Athens and other Greek cities. Their social class is often reinforced by the dramatic settings, which typically represent such cultural institutions as gymnasia, festivals, the court and prison system, sophistic education and the symposium. On the margins of the dialogues, as of Athenian public life, can be found female entertainers, craftsmen, children, slaves and non-Greek-speakers, all of whom are mentioned frequently in passing. Married women and citizen girls are not represented, with the notable exception of Xanthippe, Socrates’ wife, who laments his imminent death in Phaedo and is thereupon escorted away at her husband’s request (Phd. 60a). The only female characters who speak at length are a courtesan (Aspasia) and a foreign priestess (Diotima), both of whom are licensed to associate with men by their special status and neither of whom is directly dramatized.
Characters other than Socrates (q.v.) fall loosely into three types, marked by conventional wisdom, youthful enthusiasm and professional expertise respectively. Members of each type are individuated along a number of axes, whether social, characterological or intellectual. They vary, for example, in age (from adolescents to very old men), the size of their speaking role (from the minimally scripted slave of Meno to the voluble Athenian Stranger), their activity or passivity (from silent bystanders to the aggressive Thrasymachus), the specificity with which they are characterized (from nameless ciphers to the colourful Alcibiades), their philosophical acumen (from the talented Theaetetus to the manipulable Hippias) and the degree of sympathy with which they are presented (from the endearing Lysis to the obnoxious Callicles). Employment of such variables serves to locate each character somewhere on a scale between the generic and the uniquely particularized. Yet, some of Plato’s most memorable characters embody generic and individual identities simultaneously. Hippias, for example, is a ‘representative’ sophist, but at the same time retains a distinctive identity easily distinguishable from Thrasymachus, Gorgias or Protagoras. This paradox is most fully embodied in Socrates, who is simultaneously the ideal type of the philosopher and a detailed, concretely imagined and richly embodied idiosyncratic personality.
In the vast majority of the dialogues Socrates plays a privileged role. The function of other characters tends to vary along with his persona and methods. When he employs the elenchus (q.v.), Socrates examines not just arguments but individual people in ways that cast doubt not merely on their beliefs but also on the personality, way of life and social roles that condition those beliefs and are in turn conditioned by them. This method is thus intrinsically ad hominem in a peculiarly personal way. If its force is to be fully appreciated, the interlocutor’s particular character – those aspects of his life and personality that make him respond as he does – must be made present to the reader. Most of these respondents are either more or less promising young men – usually Athenians of good family – or mature claimants to wisdom, especially professionals, patriarchs and representatives of traditional education. Sophists are prominent for various reasons, including their role as educators, their public availability, their agonism (which both invites and legitimates verbal confrontation), their role as professional intellectuals and the importance of their cultural influence. In each case Plato uses ‘literary’ characterization in conjunction with Socratic questioning to bring out the limitations of the interlocutor’s point of view, often showing how this is rooted in his particular social status and personality. The respondents’ various reactions bring out the strengths and weaknesses of Socrates’ elenctic method as an educational tool. Some seem inspired to embrace philosophy but others grow angry, give up or fall silent, without any sign of changing the way they live.
In other dialogues Socrates plays a more constructive role, airing substantive and challenging ideas, often at considerable length. This Socrates uses his interlocutors largely as a sounding board for his own ideas. Their primary (though not exclusive) responsibility is to understand what they are told and help to develop it constructively. This Socrates needs interlocutors who are at once more sympathetic and more open-minded than his elenctic victims tend to be. This can be seen clearly in the transition from bk 1 of the Republic (which is elenctic in style) to bks 2–10. In the latter books the respondents are Glaucon and Adeimantus (Plato’s brothers), who exemplify the kind of respondent Socrates needs if he is to move towards a more positive kind of dialectic: they are intelligent, cooperative, good-humoured, encouraging, committed to Socratic values and open to new ideas. Their sympathetic support enables him to run the risk of exposure entailed by positive discourse.
To many readers these interlocutors seem bland and generic compared to the vivid characters of bk 1. This makes them less entertaining, but gives them a more universal mimêtic function (q.v. Character as a Topic). Moreover the traits in Plato’s brothers that are linked to their dialectical promise overlap substantially with the qualifications for guardianship, and ultimately for rulership, in Callipolis. This exemplifies Plato’s tendency to explore issues of character on dramatic and discursive levels simultaneously: ideas about character aired within the dialogues are explored obliquely through the portrayal and interactions of the very characters who are engaged in the discussion (see further, Blondell 2002).
In several late dialogues Socrates’ role is much smaller or even non-existent: he is replaced by dominant speakers with few individual character traits beyond an ability to hold forth authoritatively at considerable length. The interlocutors are also minimally characterized, and have little to do besides agree with the dominant speaker. As a result, the characterization in many of these dialogues often seems dull and lifeless compared to the Socratic works. This shift is often seen in terms of a Platonic literary decline; but it represents, rather, a different set of ‘literary’ choices, including a move towards the generic that reflects ancient ideals about both literary and ethical character (q.v. Character as a Topic).
DRAMA
Andrea Nightingale
Plato drew on the genres of tragedy and comedy in creating his dialogues. At times, Plato offers pure ‘dramatic representation’ (mimêsis, q.v.) in his dialogues; in other cases, he has a narrator describe the speech and action in the dialogue, thus using the combination of ‘simple narration’ (haplê diêgêsis) and ‘dramatic representation’ (mimêsis), categories that are outlined in Republic bk 3. In both cases, however, we find dramatic exchanges over issues central to human life. Of course, Plato attacks comedy and tragedy in R. bk 10 for fostering emotions at the expense of reason; he certainly did not want his own dialogues to evoke the audience responses that the Greek dramatists did. Even in the seemingly tragic case of Socrates’ execution in the Phaedo, Plato portrays Socrates as someone to be admired rather than pitied. Socrates is not a tragic figure but a heroic martyr.
Plato uses both comic and tragic discourses in his dialogues in part as a philosophic attack on Greek drama (q.v. Poetry in Chapter 4). But Plato did not simply overturn comedy and tragedy: his own dramatic dialogues reveal Plato’s debt to these genres. In the Symposium, for example, the comic poet Aristophanes delivers a very humorous speech on love. And, in the same dialogue, Alcibiades’ claim that he chose ‘the crowd’ over Socrates – political power over philosophy – has a tragic resonance. Alcibiades had convinced the Athenians to send the disastrous expedition to Sicily and he himself turned traitor to Athens after being recalled to stand trial for profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries. Indeed, the very presence of Alcibiades in the Smp. reminds us that the Athenians suspected Socrates of teaching Alcibiades and other Athenian aristocrats the wrong political views – a suspicion that led, in part, to Socrates’ trial and execution. In the Smp., then, we find a blend of comedy and tragedy. As Socrates says at the end of the dialogue, the ‘skilled’ playwright should be able to write both tragedies and comedies (in ancient Greece, tragedians only wrote tragedies and satyr plays and comedians only wrote comedies). Plato implicitly identifies himself as the one man who can write in both genres. In short, Plato created an entirely new kind of genre – a dialogue that was at once philosophical and dramatic. He thus creates urgent situations in which characters’ hopes rise and fall and which convince readers that the issues need to be resolved.
In the Laws, Plato distinguishes between genres concerned with the ‘ridiculous’ (geloios) and the ‘serious’ (spoudaios; q.v., Play and seriousness). He places Homer, Hesiod and the tragedians in the latter category (indeed, Plato often conflates epic with tragedy) and iambic poetry and comedy in the latter. But what is truly ‘ridiculous’ and ‘serious’? In R. bk 10, Plato banishes the seemingly ‘serious’ tragedy from the ideal city: tragedy wrongly portrays ‘good’ men becoming worse men (ethically and emotionally) when they confront pain or loss. The philosophic individual, in contrast, remains good and virtuous even when he is harmed or in pain. Yet, Plato did not simply dismiss the genre of tragedy. In Lg. bk 7, the Athenian contrasts the ‘so-called serious’ creations of the tragedians with the ‘most beautiful and finest tragedy’ that he and his interlocutors have produced in their construction of the city of Magnesia with its unique law code. In the Lg., then, Plato denies that tragedy is truly ‘serious’ and confers upon his own creation the title of ‘serious tragedy’. Clearly, this new mode of ‘tragedy’ is ‘serious’ and deals with ‘noble’ characters, but does not feature unhappy individuals. Indeed, the educational system in Magnesia is designed to train the citizens to be ‘truly virtuous’ and to resist emotions such as fear and lamentation. Plato’s new ‘drama’ borrows from tragedy its presentation of serious, noble and ethical characters while abandoning the tragic plot line.
In R. bk 10, Plato also lashes out against low or ‘ridiculous’ poetry; here, he clearly targets the genre of comedy. Yet, Plato himself chose to defend a number of ideas that find direct parallels in Aristophanes. For example, Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae set forth an upside down world in which women have the capacity to rule and the citizens jointly share property and even their children. In R. bk 5, Plato adopts these very ideas for his own ideal city: women can serve as ‘philosophic’ rulers, and the ruling class will raise their children in common and own no private property. While borrowing these ideas from Aristophanes, Plato nonetheless attacks the comedian for presenting these ideas as ‘ridiculous:’ in fact, he says, we should take these ideas seriously. Here and elsewhere, Plato makes it quite clear that he considers comedy a force to be reckoned with in the Athenian democracy. Indeed, in the Apology, Socrates suggests that a comedian turned the people against him and thus prepared the ground for his eventual trial (he refers here to Aristophanes’ Clouds, which offered a very negative portrayal of Socrates).
Plato also uses powerful and ‘dramatic’ myths that take the form of mini narratives within the dialogues. These myths reflect scenes from the genres of epic, tragedy and comedy. In the allegory of the cave (q.v.), for example, we find a scene from the ‘underworld’: Plato in fact compares the world we live in here on earth to Hades. Clearly, Homer’s depiction of Hades in the Odyssey was used by many tragic and comic playwrights. But Plato transforms the traditional literary notions of the underworld by comparing the ‘shades’ in Hades to people on earth. In the Statesman, moreover, Plato creates a myth where people live in a world which moves backwards in time: in the ‘Age of Cronos’, people are born old and get younger and younger until they die as infants. This myth borrows from Hesiod’s myth of the Golden Age, yet it suggests that this age was not at all ‘golden’. The people living in the ‘Age of Cronos’ cannot practise philosophy or become virtuous because they are getting younger all the time. Of course, Plato’s myths are embedded in a larger dialogue that deals with philosophic issues. These ‘literary’ creations take on philosophic meaning when interpreted in the context of the dialogue as a whole.
In sum, Plato borrowed from literary genres even as he attacked their traditional use. In order to place his mode of philosophy on the map, Plato had to reckon with the public and authoritative voices in democratic Athens: epic, tragedy and comedy. In using (and abusing) these genres, Plato offered a new ‘philosophic voice’ in fourth-century Greek culture.
HISTORY
Gerald A. Press
First-time readers often take the dialogues to be historical; but Plato is not a history writer and the dialogues are not history. With caution they may sometimes provide evidence about historical persons or events, but, for understanding Plato, the important point is that he uses historical material for philosophic purposes.
Some older scholars (e.g. Burnet 1920) took the dialogues as historical accounts. Gregory Vlastos influentially argued that the historical Socrates’ philosophy could be extracted from a group of dialogues he considered ‘early’ and ‘Socratic’ (q.v. Vlastosian approaches). However, scholars now generally agree that the dialogues are not historical records of actual Socratic conversations. Many take place before Plato was born or was old enough to have heard them, and for the rest, no plausible account explains how Plato could have learned such detailed conversations (Sayre 1995a:1–4). In context, they are part of an ancient literary-philosophic genre called ‘Socratic accounts’ (Sokratikoi logoi) that was also practised, less famously and influentially, by Antisthenes, Aeschines, Xenophon and others (q.v. Socratics).
Although Plato’s characters sometimes refer to events that have happened in the recent or more distant past (e.g. a specific battle is mentioned Charmides 153a), he does not write about that event, attempting to ascertain exactly what happened or why. Instead, he uses it to construct a plausible but fictional representation of the aristocratic intellectual world of the last half of the fifth century BCE and, in this case, to give a political context to the discussion of a politically charged excellence.
The ‘illusion of historicity’ (Sayre 1995a:2) derives from the dialogues’ independently known (often important or influential) characters (q.v.), real world settings and references to specific known events. They contain so many such characters and details and are so internally consistent that generations of students and scholars have conflated Plato’s Socrates (q.v. Socrates character) with the historical Socrates (q.v.). Even though Plato’s Socrates is a literary construct (however much he may have been based on the Socrates Plato knew), he has dominated our understanding of the historical Socrates until recently, a richly ironic measure of Plato’s success as a writer.
When a reference in a Platonic dialogue coheres with external evidence, it may be used for historical purposes (e.g. Taylor 1976:78–9), but this requires caution for Plato is not an historian and he regularly redeploys historical material for philosophic purposes. On the other hand, the mention of established historical events is used to give dialogues what modern scholars call ‘dramatic dates’ which enable us to read the dialogues in relation to Athens’ political and cultural history as well as in relation to the philosophic biography of the character Socrates (Zuckert 2009).
Nearly all Plato’s characters – their names, families, interests and deeds – are modelled on historical figures (Nails 2002:xxxvii). Fluidity in the representation of historical characters was common among ancient writers and Plato exploits the resulting ‘tension between abstraction and embodiment’ (Blondell 2002:34–6). By being precisely who they are, they more powerfully symbolize Platonic character assessments and philosophic points. Socrates discusses piety (q.v.) with a religious zealot in the Euthyphro, temperance with notoriously intemperate oligarchs in the Chrm., and rhetoric with sophists and orators in the Gorgias. Settings also add vividness, depth and complexity. The Apology is in the courtroom where Socrates gives his defence speech. The Phaedo is in his prison cell, culminating in his death. The Republic’s discussion of justice is set in the home of Polemarchus, who was later put to death and his family property unjustly confiscated by the oligarchs.
Plato’s frequent and complex use of historical characters, settings, dates and events heightens the reader’s intellectual interest, intensifies the thematic focus and elicits the close attention to arguments and ideas in which all philosophic teaching and learning consist. It also subtly evokes the reader’s emotional and imaginative involvement, generating a commitment to orientations and ideas expressed that transcends the intellectual persuasiveness of the arguments alone. As in great fiction, paradoxically, the specificity and plausibility of Plato’s dramas enhances the universality of their meaning and the effect on readers of their philosophic message.
HUMOUR
David Roochnik
Despite their profound seriousness, the Platonic dialogues are often quite funny. To illustrate, consider the following scenes: (a) A group of older men are sitting on a bench, when a half naked, gorgeous young thing approaches. In their eagerness to make room for the young beauty the men start pushing each other, and the two on the end fall off the bench. (b) A philosopher is arguing against a position held by a distinguished rival, one who is now dead. In order to represent his opponent’s views fairly, the philosopher summons him from the earth. The dead man emerges, but only up to his neck. The conversation continues in the presence of his protruding head. (c) A philosopher proposes a theory that so shocks his interlocutor that he responds as follows: imagine, he says, that the men hearing your theory become so enraged that they rip off their clothes, grab whatever weapon is available and attack you. Unperturbed, the philosopher begins explaining his ideas to the naked men attacking him. (d) Two dim-witted lawyers are practicing their skill in cross-examination on a younger man. Like tag team wrestlers they take turns jumping into the ring to pelt their hapless opponent with arguments like this: since you have a dog, the dog is yours. Your dog is the mother of some puppies. Since the dog is both yours and a mother, you must be a son-of-a-bitch.
These scenes were all conjured by Plato. The first paraphrases the opening of the Charmides (153c), when young Charmides enters the room. The second comes from the Theaetetus (171d), when Socrates summons the dead Protagoras. The third is Glaucon’s response to Socrates’ announcement in the Republic (473e–4a) of the philosopher-kings. The fourth depicts, with some liberties, the sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus in the Euthydemus (298d–e). What is striking is that all four are situated in a serious philosophical context. (a) The Chrm. scene triggers Socrates’ remarkable discussion of ‘moderation’ (sôphrosunê). (b) In the Tht. Socrates is refuting Protagorean relativism. (c) The naked men imagined by Glaucon force Socrates to discuss the nature of philosophy in the central books of R. Note that Socrates says, ‘we must distinguish for them [the naked attackers] whom we mean when we venture to say that philosophers must rule’ (R. 474b4–6). (d) With their absurdly fallacious arguments the sophistic brothers unwittingly raise the issue of the nature of predication. In sum, Plato both takes these issues seriously – most important, he provides a great deal of suggestive material for the serious reader to pursue and develop on their own – and leavens their treatment with stunning humour.
Plato’s humour is not designed simply to provide a respite from the toil of conceptual labour. Instead, it is itself serious. For Platonic humour suggests that every human pursuit, even philosophy, is partial, precarious, of limited value and therefore deserving of criticism. As the Athenian Stranger puts it in the Laws, ‘human affairs are not worthy of great seriousness’. We are neither wise nor divine and so none of our ‘affairs’ can ever be entirely flawless. Nonetheless, he continues, ‘we must be serious about them’ (Lg. 803b). We are constrained by our own humanity to take seriously what is not truly serious, namely, ourselves. As a result, we are often ridiculous.
From the above one might infer that Platonic philosophy is itself comedic. But this would be a mistake. Plato explains why in the Symposium, when he has Aristophanes tell the following story. Briefly put: we were once spherical double beings with eight limbs, two faces, two sets of genitals and so on. We were terribly arrogant and attacked the gods. Zeus punished us by cutting us in half. As a result we spend the rest of our lives seeking our lost other half. This seeking is known as love. As Aristophanes puts it, ‘love (erôs) is the name of the desire and pursuit of wholeness’ (192a10–11).
The image of the spherical beings is funny. But what makes the story truly comedic is that, given the logic of Aristophanes’ myth, love or human striving itself is doomed to fail. For him, the human impulse towards wholeness is paradigmatically expressed in sexual intercourse, an activity we take with ‘great seriousness’ (megalês spoudês:192c7). The problem is that the original wholeness to which this activity aspires was neither sexual – in the earliest stages of human history we procreated like cicadas by depositing egg and sperm on the earth (see 191c) – nor was it truly satisfying. Even when we were whole we felt the need to attack the gods. On this account, our love lives, our very selves, are largely ridiculous. As Aristophanes puts it, the soul of every lover wants something more than sex, but ‘cannot say what it is’ (192d1). Underneath its hilarious veneer, then, Aristophanes’ story is grim. For it offers no prospect of human transcendence. The best we can do (through sex) is attempt to recover a wholeness that in fact is inaccessible. But Plato himself, despite being almost as funny as Aristophanes, does not share this view. For the Smp. moves beyond comedy, first to Agathon’s praise of beauty (see 197b), and then to Diotima’s description of the erotic ascent towards philosophy (see 210a–12b). In other words, comedy expresses only one side of the human condition. Despite their limitations and, perhaps, the ultimate impossibility of fully attaining wisdom, philosophers should nonetheless be serious in their quest to articulate the beautiful, the good and the true. But they should always consider the possibility that they might be making fools of themselves. The Smp. urges the reader to pursue this form of self-criticism by ending not with Socrates, but with Alcibiades, who condemns the philosopher for being too serious about ideas and thereby oblivious to the flesh and blood human beings who are standing before him (or lying beside him; see 216e and 219c.)
Plato’s humour is expressed in a variety of guises. He is an inveterate punster. (Note his play on tokos, both ‘interest’ and ‘offspring’ at R. 507a1.) He can conjure up wild images. (Consider Phaedrus 247e where the disembodied soul is said to munch on the eternal forms.) He can poke fun, sometimes painfully, at Socrates’ opponents. (Note that he has Critias, famous as an excessively cruel tyrant, defend the definition of moderation as ‘self-knowledge’ at Chrm. 165d.) His Socrates is often wonderfully ironic (q.v. Irony) and he can be immensely playful in his writing (q.v. Play). Indeed, there are a vast number of examples of Platonic humour. All are serious and perhaps are finally designed to give voice to what Socrates in the Philebus calls ‘the tragedy and comedy of life’ (Phlb. 50b). (For more on Plato’s use of humour, see Press 2007 and Rankin 1967.)
IRONY
Samuel Scolnicov
In Attic comedy, the eirôn is the character who gets the upper hand by subterfuge, feigning weakness. Eironeia, in this context, before Cicero gave it the milder, urbane tone it has today, had always had a negative connotation, which it still carries in Plato’s use of the term. Socrates’ most bitter opponents accuse him of eironeia (Callicles, Gorgias; Thrasymachus, Republic 1); or else the term refers to such accusations (Apology 38a1). Alcibiades, with a touch of bitterness, describes Socrates as speaking ironically (Symposuim 219a). At Euthydemus 302b3, in a nice ironical inversion, Socrates imputes irony to Dionysodorus. Cratylus 384a1 is a special case of Cratylus being accused by Hermogenes of being ironical, with a possible oblique reference to Socrates.
Irony is not deceit. Deceit depends on the speaker being believed. Irony always involves an element of double talk: the speaker says what he says and hopes, without saying as much, that his interlocutor (or a third party, present or presumed) will see the disparity between what is said and the context in which it is said.
Three types of irony should be distinguished. The first is simple irony, when the ‘opposite of what is said is to be understood’ (Cicero, de or. 2.67; Quintilian, Inst. or. 6.2.5, 9.2.44; cf. Rhetoric Alex., 134a17). When Strepsiades describes his son as ‘this excellent boy’, he wants the audience to understand that the son is a good-for-nothing (Aristophanes, Clouds 8). In the second, ‘complex’ type of irony (attributed by Vlastos (1987) to Socrates), the hearer is left undecided between the two opposing poles. When Socrates says that he is aware of knowing nothing, great or small (Ap. 21b), it is unclear whether we are intended to believe him or not. Cf. Hippias Minor 376b–c: Can we trust the argument that the good man is he who does wrong of his own accord?
Typically, however, Socrates’ irony is ‘open’ irony. We are made aware of what is not the case; but we are never told what the alternative is. Socrates uses the same words as his interlocutors, but with a different meaning. But the Platonic dialogue is not an exercise in disambiguation, as if there were two meanings of the term under consideration and Plato’s task was to tell them apart. Before Plato’s Socrates, ‘learning’ did not mean ‘recollecting’ (Meno 81d ff.) and courage was not equated with knowledge (Laches; Protagoras 360d).
For Plato, following Gorgias (‘DK’ f. 3), language is basically incommunicative, at least insofar as critical terms, such as ‘justice’ or ‘good’ are concerned. It is always context dependent (e.g. Euthd. 277e ff.). Thus, all speech is potentially ironical between speaker and hearer, and only the pragmatic context can tell irony from serious talk – or so one should hope. In advocating an ethics in which the good is identified with knowledge arising from one’s own soul and in which ethical concepts can only be expressed by existing terms, with peculiar, at least arguably idiosyncratic meanings, Plato’s Socrates can only use irony to try to arouse in his interlocutors the intuition of what is, for him, the real meaning of those terms. There is no manner in which that meaning can be straightforwardly conveyed by words. One has to see for oneself the truth, to be reminded of it, without actually being told (Men. 85b–e). Socrates hopes the disparity between the accepted meaning of the terms used and their epistemic or pragmatic context will disabuse his interlocutors of their unreflective opinions. He can make one aware of the contradictions aroused by the usual meanings of these terms, but he cannot go any further.
Plato’s Socrates is bound to proceed dialectically. All his arguments proceed from premises accepted by his interlocutors, on pain of not being understood and by Socrates himself arguably only for the sake of the argument. The irony of the Platonic dialogues is double. On the one hand, Socrates is ironical towards his interlocutors; on the other hand, Plato is ironical towards his readers. What he writes cannot be taken unquestionably at face value as representing his own views, or one will often find oneself being led astray, as notoriously happens in the aporetic dialogues, and not only in these. Even in the nonaporetic dialogues, in which Plato is supposed to propose positive doctrines, one has to be careful in ascribing such doctrines to Plato. There is in his writings hardly a passage that has not been hotly disputed as to whether or not it is ironical. Plato’s use of myths is similar (cf. Men. 86b; Phaedo 114d; q.v. Myths).
Plato’s use of myths is intrinsically ironical. In an obvious sense, they are not to be taken as literally true. Yet, in another sense, not specified, they do express some ethical truth. Even if this truth is given at the end of the myth, it is clear that its formulation in mythical terms is not unproblematic, and Plato says so expressly (cf. Men. 86b; Phd. 114d). But for open irony to be at all effective, it must have a definite anchoring point from which the intended meaning can be derived. Nothing within the dialogues can serve as such a point, free of every context. Socrates’ death, however, is an absolute point of reference, an event outside the dialogues. Socrates did not die in jest. From this event one can learn that his saying that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living for human beings’ (Ap. 38a) was not ironical. Against this sentence, establishing the absolute, unconditional value of logos (q.v.), all other doctrines proposed in the dialogues should be measured. Plato cannot prove the value of living an examined life; such a proof would presuppose the very value of examining one’s opinions. Those present at the death of Socrates were convinced of it with no need for argument. For those who were not there, Plato tries to reconstruct that occasion in the hope that its emotional impact will lead us beyond his inevitable ironical dissimulation.
LANGUAGE
Holger Thesleff
Plato’s fourth-century BCE Attic Greek is unproblematic, as such, to today’s specialists; and the text tradition is on the whole reliable. His linguistic choices, however, are often remarkable and highly relevant to a more subtle interpretation. The stylistic nuances (Thesleff 1967) and allusions offer considerable difficulties for us.
Translations are in various ways defective; the reader is recommended to compare different modern translations (preferably in different languages).
It is important always to keep in mind that Plato wrote ‘literature’ even in philosophically argumentative parts of his dialogues. His writings are imitations or enactments (Press 2007:137–40) of oral discussions with a wide range of allusions and emotional and imaginative appeal (cf. McCabe 2008:96–8 ‘philosophical fiction’). The artistic components of his dialogues are sometimes very significantly interwoven with their explicitly cognitive content. Plato’s often deplored lack of esteem of arts and poetry (q.v.) and other emotional aspects of human life, is somewhat compensated by his indulgence in linguistic expression.
Ancient literary critics were well aware of Plato’s quite unique artistry (cf. Rutherford 1995), though they do not seem to have studied it systematically. The rhetorical breadth and force of his language in some sections of his works was noted more often than his play with colloquialisms or poeticisms. Aristotle compared his prose to poetry.
Except for some late works, Plato uses linguistic means to characterize persons and moods. Since the persons are often seen as types, rather than as historical individuals (q.v. Character), we very seldom find strict imitations of idioms or dialects (as in Phaedo 62a); but the tenor of the text very often reflects the personality of the speaker (Thesleff 1967:160–4). Plato is a good imitator of conventional rhetoric and other public manners of speech, as can be seen in Menexenus, Protagoras, Symposium and Phaedrus. Plato’s Socrates stands in a category of his own, also linguistically. He may imitate others, but he is most at home with a vivid, fluent colloquial Attic with playful ingredients, avoiding vulgarisms. It is impossible to distinguish linguistically the historical Socrates from Plato’s character Socrates, but in passages with pathos or otherwise strong emotionality we may hear Plato’s own voice (notably in the latter part of Gorgias, and in Republic bks 5, 6 and 9).
A rough categorization of the different styles used in different dialogues and different passages may be of considerable help for our interpretation (Thesleff 1967). Changes in the structure and technique of the dialogue bring with them shifts of style (q.v. Pedimentality). In fact, linguistic criteria can to some extent be used for determining shifts between ambivalent play, irony or serious emphasis (q.v. Play).
The all-pervading importance of dialogue for Plato is reflected in his notorious denunciation of written texts (except for memoranda) which are ‘unable to answer’ when questioned (Phdr. 277de; q.v. Orality, Writing).
The proper meaning of words was a question of profound interest to some sophists (notably Prodicus, in Prt. 337a–c; Cratylus 384b) and, apparently, to Socrates as well. This issue affected Plato’s use of language in various ways. The play with etymologies in Crat. (q.v.) has, besides its philosophical aim, to find a way through the debate about the conventional versus natural meaning of words (q.v. Language (topic)). Plato takes a delight in the semantics and connotations of words and neologisms. Such etymological or ambiguously allusive wordplay (q.v. Play) is more common in most dialogues than is normally realized. To take just one example, in Meno (85c–6c) there is some suggestive play with alêthês ‘true’ in the sense of ‘not forgotten’. Ambivalent wordplay is also applied to the old search for the ‘true’ meaning of poetry (Prt. 338c–47a; R. 1.332b).
The Socratic/Platonic search for definitions grew from the commitment to the ‘proper meaning’ question (q.v. Forms). The fact that the answers are often or even normally left open aporetically is a sign of Plato’s deeply felt sense of the ambiguity of spoken or written words.
In Plato’s view, language does not carry truth in itself, but a spoken or written ‘argument’ or ‘discussion’ conveys more of rationality (logos, q.v. Dialectic; cf. Desjardins 1988:110–25) than various other suggestive ways of expression such as poetry or oratory or myths.
Typically, Plato avoids the coining of philosophical terms, though his language appears to be at times quite sophisticated. The most notorious example is his flowing terminology for the so-called theory of forms (q.v., also Thesleff 1999:50–90). Translations are easily misleading here.
One aspect of Plato’s semantics is his method of ‘division and collection’ (q.v. Dialectic), which has to follow the ‘natural joints’ of concepts and things (cf. Phdr. 265de; Politicus 287c). One of its aims is a classification of things into genus and species, though the playful analyses in Sophist and Plt. only approximate to consistency. Its ultimate end is, rather, to reach the upmost ideas and forms of the universe (see R. bk 6; Phdr.). The linguistic expressions of the parts and wholes discussed tend to be abstract denominations; concrete objects do not seem to have been systematically analysed in Plato’s circle (though the examining of a pumpkin is ridiculed in a comedy fragment, Epicrates f. 11). For his large use of abstractions, Plato was aided by the Greek tendency to formulate abstract nouns by means of suffixes and the article.
Since the 1860s, Plato’s linguistic practise has been studied more consistently in order to determine the chronology and authenticity of his writings (Thesleff 1982). It was noticed that a group of dialogues, called ‘late dialogues’ because of their stylistic affinity with the posthumously published Laws, displayed characteristic mannerisms such as heavy and rare words, archaisms and a twisted word order. Possibly, the most typical characteristics of Plato’s ‘late style’ reflect a mannerism, not of Plato himself, but of younger assistants who contributed to the formulation of the written texts.
LITERARY COMPOSITION
Jill Gordon
Greek literature left a distinctive mark on Plato’s works, as he employed a variety of literary forms and devices. The literary forms Plato used included letters, dramas in which characters speak directly in their own voices, and dramas in which a narrator recounts for the reader what each character said (q.v. Letters, Drama). To great effect Plato used the literary devices of character development, irony, puns and plays on words, metaphor, mythmaking, detailed dramatic settings and powerful imagery (q.v. Characters, Irony, Myth, Myths and Stories, and Image). He was extremely talented in crafting various speaking and writing styles among his characters. And he evoked both laughter and pathos, sometimes together in a single dialogue.
A small but illustrative set of examples of Plato’s literary achievements would include the following. The Republic presents arguably the best known philosophical image in all of Western thought: the analogy of the cave (q.v.), which continues to have power and relevance. It is a detailed metaphor for the emergence from ignorance to enlightenment. Socratic irony (q.v.) pervades Plato’s dialogues, most notably, though not exclusively, in Socrates’ praise of the intelligence of interlocutors who, the reader is able to see, remain unaware of their own ignorance. Though Plato uses this device in many dialogues, it is particularly accessible in Euthyphro and Meno. Aristophanes’ speech in Symposium (q.v.) contains a myth, which is Plato’s original creation, but which is nevertheless traditional in feel. The myth contains imaginative and vivid descriptions of human erôs, and it has distinct comic and tragic elements. Several dialogues also include myths depicting the fate of the soul (q.v.) in the afterlife (e.g. Gorgias, Phaedo and R.). Socrates’ final hours before he drank the hemlock, depicted in Phd., are quite moving, despite Socrates’ admonitions to his friends not to cry about his imminent death. Phaedrus contains a critique of writing, a paradoxical and provocative critique since it appears in a written work. Phdr. also provides a speech that mimics the style of fifth-century Attic speechwriter and orator, Lysias. The Smp., in which several characters give extensive speeches, is perhaps the best single example of Plato’s ability to mimic and create in the style of various other writers and speakers. And finally, the profound effect of Plato’s ideas on Western philosophy emerges in part from his detailed and powerful literary characterization of Socrates across the dialogues (q.v. Characters and Socrates as Character).
Despite Plato’s extensive use of these and other literary devices, there is a common belief that he was an enemy of the poets and poetry (q.v.). This belief is based primarily on passages in R. in which Socrates raises concerns about the effects of poetry on the soul and the role of poets in the ideal city (377a–83c, 386a–95b, 598d–608b); Socrates even refers to an ‘ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’ (607b). Ancient philosophy and what we would now call ‘literature’, however, cannot easily be separated – by form or content – into distinct categories. Several figures who are considered philosophers wrote in metered verse (e.g. Xenophanes and Parmenides): Heraclitus wrote in cryptic oracular aphorisms, many tragic and comic poets addressed philosophical issues, the sophists (q.v.) engaged important epistemic and metaphysical issues in their books and public speeches, and Plato wrote philosophical dialogues that are among the best works of literature to emerge from the classical period. Plato’s dialogues leave us therefore in a quandary: how to understand his broad use of literary techniques and devices, a trait he shares with other philosophers of the time, against the backdrop of Socrates’ criticisms of various aspects of poetry and writing in the dialogues. Plato appears to be crafting literary works that at the same time interrogate the literary project deeply and critically.
With this enigma in mind, modern scholars approach the dialogues with a variety of interpretive strategies. In the twentieth century in some Anglo-American philosophical circles, the literary aspects of the dialogues were mostly ignored in order to focus on the arguments, which could be formalized and whose validity and soundness evaluated (e.g. Vlastos 1978a, 1978b). The implicit assumption in this scholarship was that the arguments were philosophical, but the literary aspects of the dialogues were not. By contrast, Leo Strauss and his students (q.v., Straussian approaches), paid careful attention to dramatic details, looking there for signs of esoteric meaning (q.v., Esotericism), although some scholars say that the Straussians imputed disproportionate importance to them. Yet others focus on Plato’s literary composition in the historical context of the Greek transition from oral to literate culture. They aim to explore facets of both Plato’s inheritance from and tensions with the older, oral poetic traditions from which his dialogues emerge (e.g. Havelock 1965; Hershbell 1995; Waugh 1995, opposed by Harris 1989 and Knox 1968). Still others turned to stylometric analyses of Plato’s dialogues to determine the order in which they were composed. The belief was that by exploring the compositional style of each dialogue and differences between dialogues, one could determine whether they were written earlier or later in Plato’s career, or at the very least, determine which dialogues were written in close proximity to one another. These studies, however, have been somewhat discredited as relying on faulty assumptions and as delivering inconsistent results (Nails 1993, 1994). Gradually and more extensively, English speaking scholars have studied the arguments and the dramatic and literary aspects in more synthetic, holistic ways (e.g. Gonzalez 1995b; Press 1993; Scott 2007). There is now an extensive body of secondary literature exploring the relationship between Plato’s dialogues and ancient tragedy (e.g. Nussbaum 1986), comedy and mime (e.g. Clay 2005; Howland 2007; Miller 2008) and other ancient literary genres (e.g. Nightingale 1995). Scholars also investigate how Plato uses various literary techniques to accomplish philosophical ends (e.g. Blondell 2002; Gordon 1999).
While Plato’s dialogues are deeply embedded in, and indebted to, Greek poetic traditions, they also make innovative literary contributions of their own and they provide a critical perspective on the cultural, ethical and philosophical function of literature.
MUSICAL STRUCTURE OF THE DIALOGUES
J. B. Kennedy
Recent research suggests that Plato may have inserted symbolic passages in his dialogues at regular intervals to give them a musical structure. Struck (2004), Ford (2002), Sedley (2003) and others have shown that ancient Greek symbolism and allegory were common themes of discussion in the late fifth century and especially in the circles around Socrates. Plato’s musical structures are another kind of symbolism and fit within this context.
The musical structures shed new light on some well known puzzles about the structure of Plato’s narratives. Plato mocked his contemporaries for failing to organize their compositions (e.g. Phaedrus 264a4–e4), but his own dialogues can seem disjointed and meandering. The structure of the Republic is thought by some to be a hodgepodge of tracts written at different times (Annas 1981; Lear 1992; Rutherford 1995). The conclusions of many of the dialogues have also puzzled Plato’s readers. Some end without propounding a definite doctrine, which has led a minority in ancient and modern times to suppose that Plato had no positive, philosophical programme. Musical structures give the dialogues an underlying unity and coherence and provide an explanation for Plato’s aporetic conclusions.
Plato had strong motivations for using such symbolic structures. The dialogues often discuss the idea that ‘forms’ lie beneath appearances and give the objects we observe their properties and structures. Students of philosophy are urged to compare, count and measure objects to find the general forms they instantiate. The Philebus suggests that identifying musical scales, for example, is a paradigm of this search for the forms (Phlb. 17c11–e1). The philosophy ascribed to Pythagoras provides another motivation. Pythagoras taught that every object, and even the whole cosmos, has an underlying musical and mathematical structure (Burkert 1972; Kahn 2001). Although the dialogues hardly mention Pythagoras, many believe that Plato was influenced by him (q.v. Pythagoreans). Giving the dialogues an underlying musical structure thus conforms to the core doctrines of both Platonism and Pythagoreanism.
Introducing a few ideas from Greek music (q.v.) theory will clarify Plato’s musical structures. Notes harmonize when their frequencies form simple ratios such as 1 : 2, 2 : 3 and 3 : 4. In fact, these ratios are the most important musical intervals. The 1 : 2 ratio, for example, is called an ‘octave’ (Barker 2007; West 1992). Since the number 12 has many factors, it was common even before Plato to illustrate these musical intervals with the numbers 6, 8, 9 and 12. Thus the octave was said to be a 6 : 12 ratio. Music theorists would demonstrate these intervals on monochords or instruments with many strings. Some theorists ‘divided’ their string or a ruler alongside it into 12 equal parts, which made it easy to sound the major musical intervals (Creese 2010). The lowest note on a monochord is sounded by the whole string. If the other notes are compared with this ground note (say by playing them successively), some will harmonize with it and some will not. The Greeks therefore distinguished the more harmonious notes (3, 4, 6, 8 and 9), which formed low whole number ratios with 12, from the more dissonant notes (5, 7, 10 and 11). Music theorists also held that the smallest useful musical interval was a ‘quarter-interval’ (from say eight to eight and a quarter). These musical ideas lead to a natural interpretation of the structure embedded in the dialogues (Kennedy 2010, 2011). Plato divided each of his dialogues into 12 parts. At each twelfth he inserted a passage which was a symbol for a musical note.
In a given dialogue, the 12 passages each describe a species of some given genus. In the Symposium, for example, they describe a species of ‘harmony’, which in Greek meant ‘attunement’, ‘blending’, ‘fitting together’ or, more narrowly, ‘mode’ or ‘musical harmony’. Plato also divided each twelfth into four parts and inserted similar passages to mark the quarter intervals. The conversations in Plato’s dialogues were organized around the underlying musical structure. Episodes or arguments tend to fill out one or more quarter intervals. Major concepts or major turns in the narrative tend to be lodged at the locations of musical notes. Generally, passages about virtue, truth, goodness and other Platonic ideals mark the harmonious notes; dissonant notes are marked by vice, lying, evil, Hades, etc.
To insert these musical symbols at the proper places Plato or his scribe probably counted the number of lines in his dialogues. Classical Greeks counted lines in book scrolls just as we count pages in a book or words in a file. Scribes were paid by the line and this determined the costs of book scrolls. The standard line, even for prose, contained the same number of syllables as a line in Homer’s poems (Ohly 1928). That Plato is aware of line counting is indicated by Laws 958e9–9a1. (The lengths of the Stephanus pages in modern editions of Plato are irregular and cannot be used as an accurate measure of location.) Moreover, classical Greek had little or no punctuation and no spaces between words or sentences. A word processor can strip out the punctuation and spaces from modern, scholarly texts and return them to a format with accurate line counts.
Plato’s musical structure can be seen in the Smp. The locations of its twelfths are listed below and Kennedy (2011) includes a close reading and commentary on all its symbolic passages. The philosophical climax of the dialogue is the vision of the form of beauty (q.v.) at the top of Diotima’s ladder. The description of beauty’s unity occurs nine-twelfths of the way through the dialogue and so coincides with the very harmonic ninth note. The extreme unity of the form of beauty is a kind of extreme ‘harmony’ in the Greek sense, and so appropriately marks this harmonic note. The eighth note, which is also very harmonic, is marked by a vivid passage describing copulation with beauty (another species of blending or mixing). The dissonant notes, however, are marked with failures to ‘harmonise’. The eleventh note is marked by the extreme sense of shame felt by Alcibiades when Socrates rejected his romantic overtures. The tenth note is marked by the comparison of Socrates to an ugly satyr. Thus, these dissonant notes are marked by strikingly negative passages which describe conflict and emotional dissonance in a relationship.
The lengths of the speeches show that Plato used the musical structure as a kind of outline. Pausanias finishes speaking a few lines after the third note. Eryximachus finishes before the fourth note. Aristophanes finishes at the fifth note. Agathon’s noisy peroration precedes the sixth note. Socrates begins his speech at the quarter note just after note six (Smp. 199b4) and finishes at the quarter note just after note nine (212c2) and so speaks for a fourth of the entire dialogue. Many species of ‘harmony’ are used to mark the locations of the musical notes: the envisaged fusion of true lovers (third quarter note after four-twelfths), Eryximachus’ discussion of musical harmony (second quarter note after three-twelfths) and so on. The quarter intervals in the opening frame provide a particularly clear introduction to the nature of Plato’s symbolism. The Lg. says that music has two components: ‘rhythm’ is a motion through time and ‘harmony’ is a blending of high and low frequencies to produce some intermediate pitch (Lg. 664e8–a2; cf. Smp. 187a8 ff.).
The Smp.’s first four musical notes are marked by passages describing motions like walking. Moreover, in each passage, a wiser character like Socrates agrees with an ignorant character, which is a kind of harmony between high and low. These descriptions of motion and harmony are symbols marking musical notes. The frame’s narrative is also shaped by the musical notes. The opening episode, in which the narrator recollects an earlier request to recite the speeches, lasts for one quarter interval. Socrates’ famous ‘fit of abstraction’, in which he remains stationary in a neighbour’s porch, also fills out one quarter interval. (Locations of the 12 musical notes in the Smp. using the OCT edition: 1/12 = 176c5, 2/12 = 181e3, 3/12 = 185b6, 4/12 = 189d5, 5/12 = 193d8, 6/12 = 198a8, 7/12 = 202c7, 8/12 = 206e1, 9/12 = 211b4, 10/12 = 215c2, 11/12 = 219d6, 12/12 = 223d12. The quarter intervals in the frame end at 1q: 173c3, 2q: 174c8, 3q: 175c7.)
In sum, these musical structures can resolve many puzzles, if other dialogues are composed by the same principles. They could show that each dialogue is given a coherent organization by a musical form which is embedded in the surface narrative and, like other forms, is accessible only to those who count and make comparisons. They also explain why the dialogues end negatively. The final tenth and eleventh notes are dissonant. The philosophical climaxes of the dialogues are at the ninth, more harmonic note.
MYTH
Luc Brisson
For Plato, myth has two defects. It is an unverifiable discourse, which must often be considered false when it departs from a doctrinal point defended by Plato. And it is a story whose elements are linked together in a contingent way, unlike argumentative discourse, whose inner organization features a necessary character. Yet, this does not mean that Plato renounces traditional myths, which he uses abundantly in his work. What is more, he adapts some of them, and he sometimes even creates new ones, as a function of circumstances. Why? There are two reasons, one theoretical in nature, and the other practical. Plato recognizes the indispensable efficacy of myth in the fields of ethics and politics for the large number of people who are not philosophers and in whose soul the desiring part (epithumia) predominates. Plato knows, moreover, that he can only speak in mythical terms of the soul, and hence of certain subjects of a metaphysical and epistemological nature (see further, Brisson 2004; Havelock 1963).
The characters who appear in myths, as enumerated in bks 2 and 3 of the Republic – that is, gods, demons, heroes, the inhabitants of Hades and the men of the past – cannot be the subject of a discourse that could be declared to be ‘true’ or ‘false’ in a Platonic context. Myths recount the exploits accomplished in a very distant past by men living in the sensible world, of whom tradition has retained the memory. Gods, demons, heroes and inhabitants of Hades are situated between the world of intelligible forms and the world of sensible things, at the level of the soul and all that is immortal about it.
The gods, demons, heroes and immortals are either living beings in the full sense of the term, or the offspring of immortalized mortals. Man is endowed with a soul (q.v.) of which one part is immortal, and is thereby akin to the gods, who must use it as a puppet (Laws 1.644d–5c), and hence it is also akin to the demons and the heroes. The destiny of this immortal part must be described before it falls into a body (Phaedrus 259b–d), and especially after it has left this body, that is, according to popular belief in ancient Greece, when it is in Hades. Such myths as those found at the end of the Gorgias, Phaedo (107d–14d) or R. (10.614a–21d, the Myth of Er) have precisely the destiny of the immortal part of the soul as their subject.
Moreover, the domain of myth that evokes men of the past covers roughly the same territory that was later to be claimed by the historians, as can be observed in the myth of Atlantis (Timaeus 21e–6d; Critias), and in bk 3 of the Lg., which evokes the beginnings of human life. Quite naturally, it is with the help of a myth that Plato evokes the various origins: of writing (Phdr. 274c–5b, the myth of Theuth), of human nature (Symposium 189d–93d, Aristophanes’ myth of double beings), of the cicadas (Phdr. 259b–d) and even of the universe (Ti.). The idea that the soul has an existence separated from all bodies, in the course of which it has acquired a particular knowledge that it must recall in its subsequent existences, is explicitly tied to religious traditions in the Meno, the Phd., the Phdr. and the Smp. The idea that its previous behaviour is subject to retribution is affirmed in several eschatological myths, particularly at the end of the Grg., the Phd. and the R. Finally, the idea that it is incarnated in various bodies, human or animal, is formulated in the Phdr. and the Ti. In addition, everything concerning the intelligible is associated with myth through the intermediary of these beliefs about the soul: the myth of the cave (R. 7.514a–17; q.v.), prolonged by the ‘allegory’ of the sun (R. 6.506d–9b; q.v.) and that of the line (R. 6.506d–9b; q.v.). It follows that myths constitute a terrain on which fundamental philosophical speculations take root: those concerning the soul and the intelligible forms. Myths thus constitute a reservoir of axioms or premises for the philosopher in the fields of metaphysics and epistemology.
Myth also plays an essential role in ethics and politics. In the R., the myth of autochthony (R. 3.414d–e), also evoked in the Lg., along with that of the metals, serves to convince the inhabitants that the city is one and indivisible, although it is made up of diverse groups. The myth of Gyges (R. 2.359d–60b) provides a marvellous illustration of the thesis rejected by Socrates, according to which injustice is something naturally good. In the Lg., myth plays a considerable role in legislation. In bk 4 (Lg. 719c–24a), Plato enquires into the practise of the legislator, comparing him to the poet and the doctor. Unlike the poet, who does not hesitate to develop contradictory discourses on the same subject, the legislator must maintain a coherent discourse. Although he maintains one discourse on one and the same subject, however, the legislator need not necessarily limit himself to a simplistic discourse. He must have the prescription of a law preceded by a declaration that tries to substitute persuasion for the fear of punishment. It is thus persuasion that must obtain, right from the outset, an obedience to the law that is, as it were, automatic. For Plato, therefore, myth has a twofold function, practical and theoretical.
On the level of ethics and politics, myth leads the individual to obey the moral rules and the laws established by persuasion, without the necessity of involving coercion. On a properly speculative level, myths constitute the starting point for a reflection on the soul and the intelligible forms, the two themes that were to impose themselves upon tradition as the characteristics of Platonic philosophy.
PEDAGOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THE DIALOGUES
Kenneth Sayre
Plato could have written in the form of verse, like Parmenides, in that of orations, like Isocrates, or even that of philosophic essays. Instead he chose the form of dramatic conversations (dialogues). Reasons for this choice are not immediately apparent.
One possible explanation is that the dialogues are records of actual Socratic conversations which themselves occurred in dialogue form. Commentators generally consider this unlikely, however, since (among other reasons) many dialogues depict conversations which Plato could not have attended (compare Kahn 1981).
Another possibility is that Plato wrote primarily to present his own philosophic views and chose this form to make his presentation more engaging. But this too seems unlikely. Among reasons are (a) that conflicting views are expressed in different dialogues (e.g. the soul is incomposite in the Phaedo and tripartite in the Republic), (b) that protagonists in the dialogues often speak disingenuously (consider Socratic irony) and (c) that several dialogues contain arguments that appear deliberately faulty (see Sprague 1962).
A further argument against this second possibility is found in the Epistle 7, which most Plato scholars today accept as genuine (q.v. Letters). In this document the author states that philosophic understanding cannot be conveyed in language and that he has never undertaken to commit his knowledge of the subject to writing. Taken at face value, this statement precludes reading the dialogues as repositories of Platonic teaching. But if the dialogues are neither records of actual conversations nor engaging expressions of Plato’s own philosophy, what then?
Hints towards a more plausible explanation come with further reading of the Ep. 7. After stating that philosophic understanding cannot be conveyed by words, the author observes that it comes with hard work, persistence and discipline, along with repeated conversations with a master that employ ‘friendly elenchus’ and ‘well intentioned question and answer’. For the successful learner, the outcome is a ‘sudden (exaiphnês) flash of insight’ bearing knowledge of the subject concerned. Subjects mentioned include ‘the good, the beautiful, and the just’ (Ep. 342D).
Similar accounts of philosophic training appear in several dialogues. In developing the midwife analogy in the Theaetetus, Socrates speaks of the ‘many beautiful discoveries’ (Tht. 150c) engendered in the minds of students who maintain conversation with him and benefit from his inquisitive art (elenchus). In the Phaedrus, he talks about ‘lessons on what is just, beautiful, and good’ (Phdr. 276c) that result in knowledge impressed as discourse ‘in the soul of the learner’. And in the Symposium, he extols the ‘wondrous beauty’ that appears suddenly (exaiphnês; Smp. 210e) in the mental vision of someone well trained in love.
In these dialogues, as in Ep. 7, the path to philosophic understanding is portrayed as laborious, involving sustained conversation with a master of elenchus and culminating in a spontaneous flash of insight within the mind of the learner. The metaphor of illumination ‘at the end of the path’ is also prominent in R. (508d), Phdr. (250b) and Philebus (16c). One thing this imagery signifies is that philosophic enlightenment is induced in the mind of the learner, rather than being conveyed from without by demonstrative argument.
This portrayal of philosophic fulfilment probably was based on Plato’s own experience in conversation with the historical Socrates (q.v.). Such fulfilment also must have been a major factor underlying Plato’s adoption of the conversational format for his writings. What Plato got from Socrates, first and foremost, was not a set of doctrines subsequently recorded in written form, but rather an ingenious method of guiding students along a path to philosophic enlightenment. Plato’s dialogues, in effect, are teaching instruments structured to provide his readers the kind of learning experience that he himself received in conversations with Socrates.
To drive the point home, we may look at various features of the dialogues that help them play this pedagogic role. Primary among such is that the Socrates of the dialogues (q.v. Socrates as a character), like his historical counterpart, is a master of enticement (flattery, irony and innuendo) as well as probative refutation. The actual Socrates engaged listeners by sheer power of personality. Countless readers have been inspired subsequently to a life of philosophy by the charismatic character in Plato’s dialogues.
Another factor is the way Plato uses dramatic markers to highlight crucial moments in a pedagogical conversation. In the Meno, for example, the theory of recollection is introduced in conversation with a new respondent (the slave replaces Meno), and the method of hypothesis is dramatized by the arrival of Anytus. And both the nadir (Phd. 89a) and the zenith (Phd. 102a) of the philosophic drama in Phd. are punctuated by the re-entry of Phaedo and Echecrates from the outer dialogue. The purpose of signposts like these, presumably, is to focus attention on key developments as the conversation progresses.
Other pedagogical devices involve the use of distinctive characters (q.v.) to set the stage for the conversations ensuing. Thus, the story of Smp. is recounted by Aristodemus (a participant in the party who fell asleep before it ended) and Apollodorus (self-described as crazy), which imbues the main conversation with a dreamlike atmosphere. Similar contrivances are used in other dialogues (Euthydemus, Protagoras, Parmenides), with the effect of establishing a unique context in which the conversation can be read most fruitfully.
Also worth mentioning is Plato’s knack for imparting momentum to his dialogues, which carry the reader forward once the conversation has ‘officially’ ended. At the end of Tht., for example, alert readers will realize that several senses of logos especially relevant to knowledge have not yet been examined and will be motivated to test these senses on their own. Similar effects are found in Men., R. and Phlb. By pointing to things never explicitly stated, these dialogues invite readers to continue the investigation by themselves (for further discussion, see Sayre 1992).
Most noteworthy pedagogically, however, is the way Plato’s more successful dialogues are structured in layers ready to be unpacked in successive readings. An example is the Sophist, which invites being read progressively as (a) a mundane attempt to define sophistry, (b) an exploration of the semantics of falsehood, (c) an examination of the nature of not-being and finally, (d) an explication of truth and falsehood themselves. This accounts for the experience many readers have of learning more from a dialogue each time they read it (see Sayre 1995a for more detail).
An alternative account of Plato’s pedagogical use of dialogic structure may be found in Miller (1986). Also instructive in this regard is Frede (1992b).
PEDIMENTAL STRUCTURE OF THE DIALOGUES
Holger Thesleff
Most of Plato’s dialogues, including many dubia (q.v.), are carefully composed (q.v. Literary composition). They have a ‘literary’ stamp. This is interesting, since they were not on the whole meant for presentation to general anonymous audiences used to public performances of poetry, drama or oratory, the main genres of ‘literature’ in Plato’s days. The refinements of the compositional patterns of the dialogues, like the philosophical contents, the language and style (q.v. Language) and the irony (q.v.) and allusive play (q.v.), are rather adapted to small groups of relatively well informed persons and their friends who appreciated such moves.
One can easily detect a certain rhythm or pulse in the composition and technique of the dialogue. There is normally an introduction, sometimes in two or more stages, gradually leading ‘into’ the place where the philosopher meets his interlocutors. Then there are variations between argumentative passages and interludes with different types of dialogue. At the end there comes a comparatively brief conclusion which, interestingly, tends to leave the discussion somehow open. Even explicitly ‘aporetic’ conclusions suggest that something is bound to follow. A study of the compositional rhythm of the texts may, like the study of shifts of style (Thesleff 1967), contribute to our understanding of where and how the author wants to place the emphasis.
It has sometimes been noticed that the majority of Platonic dialogues follow a general pattern which can be termed ‘pedimental’ (Thesleff 1993) or ‘ring composition’ (Douglas 2007), the archaic compositional principle of returning to the beginning at the end. Plato’s pedimentality, however, is a refinement of classical ring composition since the central section of dialogues often rises to a higher intellectual or conceptual level before returning to the mundane level where the conversation began. The central parts or sections of a dialogue often form a core where essential thoughts or new aspects or a crucial phase are introduced. As in the triangular ‘pediment’ or tympanum of a Greek temple, symbolically important ideas are placed in the centre. More peripheral or more ordinary facts and suggestions, and less significant circumstances, are pushed towards the beginning and the end. Reflections of similar principles can be found in other classical Greek genres of literature, notably in tragedy (the peripety) and old comedy (the parabasis). Plato was influenced by drama (q.v.), though a direct dependence is unlikely.
A closer consideration of the character of the central sections and their function within the pedimentality may give useful clues to the interpretation of the dialogues.
The most manifest example, easily understood by every reader, is the pyramidally central place of Diotima’s speech in Symposium (q.v.). There is a gradual rise to it, and then a slope beginning with Alcibiades’ joining the company. Other very obvious cases include Socrates’ musings on inspiration in Ion (q.v.), and the first part of his palinodic speech on the cosmic flight of the soul in Phaedrus (q.v.), an illustration of true ‘psychagogy’ (Phdr. 271c), so different from myths and oratory.
The relevance of pedimentality in the Republic (q.v.) is worth specific notice (Dorter 2006:3–8; cf. the challenge by Roochnik 2003:4–7). The beginning and the end concern rather concrete human realities or myths seen from a human perspective, but from the opening onwards, and backwards from the end, we find ever more abstract philosophical themes which culminate in the three, mutually interdependent analogies in the centre of the work (bks 6, 7), the sun, the line and the cave (qq.v.). These are actively illuminating symbols pointing to the fact that metaphysics and its application to the education of philosophers constitute the central nucleus of this work. The other themes are arranged around it in a kind of descending order.
Metaphysics is often more prominent in the central sections than in other parts of the dialogues. Pedimentality can make a push, as it were, towards the higher level of Plato’s two-level universe (Thesleff 1999). The discussion on the whole concerns human matters, but the central sections give glimpses of the (metaphorically) ‘divine’.
The pedimental composition is seldom as spectacularly evident as in the examples just mentioned, yet it may offer an important aid to the interpreter. In the Phaedo (q.v.), where innumerable generations of readers have sought towards the end for the ‘definite’ proof of the immortality of the soul, the resumption of the frame dialogue at the centre (Phd. 88c) in fact indicates a retardation and a concentration on an idea which is emphasized in various ways: whatever hopes or myths or arguments there are for the survival of the human soul, dialectic ought not to be rejected and Socrates’ logos with its metaphysical reach will live on even if he does not do so as a person. But at the beginning and the end of the dialogue, the perspectives of living human individuals are in the foreground.
A similar framing of the central section occurs in Euthydemus (q.v.) where Clinias unexpectedly hints that the Royal Art will give a lasting solution to the problems at hand. This probably refers to the schooling of philosophers, treated with banter at the beginning and the end. In Protagoras (q.v.), the two-level contrast of ‘becoming’ or ‘being’ good, an implicit clue to the entire dialogue, is playfully alluded to in Socrates’ sophistic answer to Protagoras’ speech in the centre. Meno (q.v.), again somewhat playfully, introduces the recollection doctrine in the pedimental central section. And Theaetetus (q.v.), to take a last rather obvious example, has a digression on the two paradigms of human life in its centre: one of the implications seems to be that an orientation towards the upper level is essential in epistemology, in spite of all the different perspectives opened by the discussion. Some scholars regard the provocative ‘philosophical digression’ in the Seventh Letter (342a–4d) as a sign of its authenticity; others, the sure sign of a practised imitator.
The aspect of pedimental composition ought to be observed in almost all Platonic dialogues. Occasionally, however, it is not very easily traceable. Notably in Gorgias and in Crito (less obviously in Philebus), the rhetorical principle of ‘climactic’ arrangement is dominant. In both dialogues Socrates is intent on persuading his interlocutor and his listeners by consistent argumentation, an approach not normally used so explicitly by Plato. The principle of pedimentality is better suited to the reflective mood of most dialogues.
PLAY
Holger Thesleff
Since a solemnly serious Plato has dominated the picture of Platonism since antiquity, it is particularly important to note his use of playful wit and humour (q.v.). Indeed, this general feature, taken in a very large sense, is essential not only as a literary device in the dialogues but basic for the interpretation of his philosophy.
Awareness of the aspect of play is a primary challenge for readers of Plato, even if they do not feel Platonic play is amusing. Though Plato often hints that he is jesting, his playfulness (paidia, derived from the word for child, like English ‘kidding’) involves various degrees of seriousness: it is always ambiguous to some extent, but normally with an earnest point. ‘ “Play” . . . combines interested detachment with cautious engagement and enables the philosopher to give both the rational and sensuous worlds their due’ (Plass 1967:359). Like most kinds of humour, Platonic play has two significant constituents, distancing or perspective, on one hand, and a simultaneous confrontation with two different paradigms, a double exposure, on the other. The latter corresponds to his non-dualistic two-level model of thought (Thesleff 1999). Play and earnestness belong together (e.g. Symposium 216e, 223d), but suggestive play may reach higher than mere statements of facts (see Press 2007:104–29).
The two-level approach is manifestly present in the Platonic irony (q.v.), which is normally a gently ambivalent reference from what appears to be the case to what is really true. Most of Socrates’ apparent aporiai are understatements of this type. Plato’s philosopher has nothing of the cynic’s laughing scorn from below, and his moral polemics are seldom explicitly bitter (as in Gorgias and parts of Republic; note the regret 7.536c). Occasional overstatements may involve some playful disdain, such as the profuse praise of the sophist in Hippias Major. Sometimes Socrates’ self-irony clearly includes the author (e.g. Theaetetus 174ab).
Ambivalent word play is an integral part of Plato’s reasoning. This is indirectly reflected in his notorious lack of consistent terminology: language can be played with. He plays semiseriously with the belief that words have a covert meaning (q.v. Language), and this belief somehow lies behind his two-level dihaeretic method (q.v. Dialectic), pedantically overplayed in the Sophist and Politicus. But other kinds of word play also abound in the dialogues, sometimes boisterously as in Euthydemus, very often with cognitive allusions, as the musings about what might be forms in Meno (72a–5c). Translations usually miss such points.
A humorous distance from everyday trivialities and duties is implied in the concept of ‘leisure’ (scholê, in Tht. 172cd), necessary for play and the pursuit of philosophy. Plato has a delicate sense of the bizarre in human behaviour. Though he perhaps lacks a humorously warm understanding of ordinary people, he makes his chosen dialogue characters (q.v.) subject to intellectual wit. It is reflected in much of his two-level play in mime-like or even farcical confrontations of his always odd Socrates (who has more truth inside him than others, see Smp., especially 215ab) with his interlocutors. Good humoured banter often creates an everyday background to more serious elements of thought. While others may laugh, Plato’s philosopher rather smiles (Rankin 1967). In the Phaedo such play is reduced to quiet gentleness, but reflections of oral banter occur in the late works (see Sph.; Philebus).
Oral communication can be deeply serious even if writing is play or pastime (q.v. Writing; Guthrie 1975:56–66). Plato’s famous censure of poetry (q.v.) has traits of active mockery motivated both morally and epistemologically; but his appreciation of artistic qualities notable in poetry is beyond doubt (e.g. see R. 10.607b–8b). His satirical handling of rhetoric (q.v.) indicates the same ambivalence. More one-sidedly extreme is the censure of ridicule in Lg. (e.g. 7.816de; cf. Phlb. 48a–50c). Playful seriousness can be recommended (Lg. 7.803d), and all learning ought to be accompanied by play (e.g. R. 7.536e; note the pun on paideia in Lg. 1.643bc).
The play inherent in parts of Plato’s powerful imagery also illuminates the ambivalence of his two-level thinking. His well known myths (q.v.), which can be regarded as constructive thought-play (below), often contain some bizarre ingredients (e.g. R. 10.607b–8b). The tentative, partly comical similes in Tht. (191a–200d) of how epistemic memory works perhaps reflect some frustration on Plato’s part. Numerous other similes are humorously suggestive, such as Socrates the gadfly (Apology 30e) or the torpedo fish (Men. 80a). Even in the naturally earnest Epistle 7 there is vivid imagery, and the notorious ‘digression’ has a touch of irony. Mathematical passages may be playfully complicated (as the Nuptial Number in R. 8.546c–7a). However, the three central allegories in the R. 6–7 (see Pedimentality) are primarily serious with very slight touches of humour (e.g. 509c). The modern reader has to listen very carefully to the tone of the wording, which was made clearer by the original oral delivery.
A particular challenge to all interpreters of Plato comes from an attitude that can be generally called ‘thought-play’. He rarely gives explicitly unambiguous ‘proofs’ for the position his philosopher takes (but cf. Grg. 509a; q.v. Account). The attentive reader will often find signs in the context to indicate a thought experiment (or ‘abduction’) or a provocative step without firm ground in the author’s convictions. Given Plato’s sense of wit and amusement, we have to be aware of the playful aspect of such instances. Sweepingly generalizing claims such as the remarks on recollection as the basis of true knowledge in Men. (81b, etc.) and Phd. (72e–6c, but not really followed up elsewhere), or the utopian vision of the ideal state (cf. R. 9.592ab; Lg. 5.739a–e), or the implications of the kingly art at the centre of Euthd. (291cd), or perhaps the so-called unwritten doctrines (see Thesleff 1999:104–7) are worth considering as thought-play. Sometimes there is less humour than human hope and belief in Plato’s thought experiments, notably in the main lines of his eschatological myths and in Socrates’ personal expectations in the Phd., too often interpreted as Platonic doctrines.
It has been occasionally suggested that perhaps there is more play than consistently serious thinking in Plato’s dialogues. It is better to describe his attitude, generally, as playful seriousness open to much ambivalence.
PROLEPTIC COMPOSITION
Hayden W. Ausland
Proleptic composition is a concept used in the modern literary criticism of ancient poetry that has been adapted for understanding the relation between what is held to have been composed earlier and later in Plato’s dialogues. The literary category has distant origins in ancient grammatical and rhetorical theory, where ‘prolepsis’ denotes a deliberately partial anticipation of something greater yet to come (Ausland 2008). The notion was first extensively brought to bear on the development of poetic imagery in the tragedies of Aeschylus, notably by A. Lebeck (1971), following whom Charles Kahn has, since the late 1960s, sought to use it in associating a number of apparently doctrinal passages in Plato’s dialogues that have for some time been held instead to reflect a less than deliberate development in their author’s thought (1968). In a subsequent series of articles and one book, Kahn argues (e.g. 1988 with 1996) that partial or otherwise inchoate allusions to acknowledged Platonistic views in aporetic dialogues normally held to be early compositions do not in themselves show that Plato was himself experiencing perplexity, while in the process of forming such theories, since they may be read as deliberately designed to point only partially to fuller expositions found in dialogues normally held to belong to a middle period in Plato’s literary activity.
The relation of Republic bk 1 to its remaining books constitutes a special case of the same general phenomenon. By allowing for such philosophical anticipation, Kahn would appear to revert to the approach to the dialogues characteristic of the early nineteenth century, inaugurated by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who held the dialogues constituted a series in which the earliest elements already aimed methodically at the expositions found in the dialogues Plato produced at the end of his literary efforts (cf. Kahn 1993:137–8f. with Schleiermacher 1828:11). His approach would thus appear to call into serious question the romanticizing and idealizing style of interpretation later inaugurated by K. F. Hermann, according to which a reconstructed chronology of the dialogues reflects their author’s specially representative spiritual and personal development (q.v. Nineteenth-Century Platonic Scholarship).
While revolutionary in principle, Kahn’s approach does not go far enough to cohere with readings positing an unstated, inner meaning to the dialogues (Griswold 1999, 2000; Kahn 2000). It has at the same time gained but limited credence with the mainstream (e.g. Gill 1998), and has at length approximated once more to the biographically developmental approach conventional for the twentieth century (e.g. Kahn 2007). The tension within the approach thus reflects alternative attitudes towards the possibility that Plato practised esotericism (q.v.), or, more generally, that his writings were written with a view to some end beyond merely documenting their author’s philosophical doctrines, for instance as flexibly philosophical dramas, or ‘enactments’, irreducible to a systematic exposition.
Desultory results of further application of a notion of proleptic composition to the interpretation of Plato’s theories, as these are understood within the conventional approach, have been disappointing (e.g. Wilson 1995), with otherwise parallel dramatic readings showing greater promise (e.g. Rudebusch 2002), raising a question regarding the validity, not of some category of proleptic composition per se, but of its service to received views about the content of Plato’s philosophy. A possibility comes into view that the units of Platonic expression to which it is best applied might better be conceived in the first instance along the same lines as the artistic anticipation found in Aeschylean tragedy, allowing the theoretical results of such a reading to emerge independently of any prior assumption of a personal Platonic development.
SOCRATES (THE CHARACTER)
Jill Gordon
Because the historical Socrates (q.v.) did not write anything, our impressions and knowledge of him come through depictions of him in other ancient authors’ texts, Plato’s dialogues being arguably the best-known among them. Other Socratic texts, written by authors who were directly acquainted with the historical Socrates, include the comic poet Aristophanes’ Clouds and three of Xenophon’s works, Apology, Symposium and Oeconomicus. Aristotle implies (Poetics 1447b8–9) that several ancient authors wrote Socratic dialogues, and some corroborating textual evidence survives (q.v. Socratics other than Plato). Some Platonic scholars believe they can separate the historical Socrates from his characterization in Plato’s dialogues, but this is disputed (e.g. cf. Kahn 1998; Vlastos 1991a). The various depictions of Socrates are consistent in many respects, although each is, at least to some degree, a literary characterization of the historical Socrates (q.v. Literary Composition). Socrates is not even characterized by Plato entirely consistently across the dialogues. Blondell (2002) discusses various avatars of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues, and Plato’s possible reasons for writing some dialogues that do not feature Socrates in a primary role.
The profound influence of Plato’s Socrates can be attributed in part to the character’s utterly compelling, and even strange (atopos), singularity (see Ap. 31c4; Gorgias 494d1; Smp. 221d2), and to the alluring vision of philosophical activity that he enacts. Plato’s character, Socrates, has become definitive of the ‘Socratic’, both popularly and philosophically. He is the paradigm of principled martyrdom in the face of illegitimate political power; he informs our understanding that philosophy consists in asking questions, what is popularly called the ‘Socratic method’, and he voices a unique and powerful type of irony that also bears his name (q.v. Irony). Intensifying his already profound array of extraordinary attributes, Socrates is characterized by paradoxes and extremes, both in body and in soul.
In his bodily persona, Socrates tries to live unconcerned with bodily matters, separating body from soul as far as is possible (Phaedo 64a–8b). And yet his body is physically strong and resistant to many exigencies that would affect a normal person’s body, including extreme cold, hunger and sleep deprivation (Smp. 219e–20b, 223d). Socrates typically wanders in his bare feet (Phdr. 229a3; Smp. 173b2, 220b6). He is characterized as impervious to the effects of wine (Smp. 176c, 220a) and more resistant than most humans to pain and discomfort, a contributing factor to his valour in battle (Smp. 219e ff.). Capable equally of physical vigour and corporeal stillness, he sometimes stands perfectly still for long periods of time, apparently lost in thought (Smp. 174d, 175a–b).
Socrates is ugly by Greek standards (Men. 76c; Smp. 218d–e; Theaetetus 143e–4a), with bulging eyes, a broad, flat nose and a corpulent body. He is compared to a satyr, the over-sexed, half human, half goat mythological figure (Smp. 221e1), a creature also depicted with bulging eyes and wide nose. Despite his ugliness, however, Socrates is erotically linked to Alcibiades (Alcibiades I; Grg.; Protagoras; and Smp.), the most beautiful young man in Athens, who declares a strange attraction to Socrates’ special kind of enchanting beauty (Smp. 218c ff.). Socrates describes himself as an expert in erotic matters (Smp. 177d–e) and others agree (Phdr. 227c). He always seeks out the most beautiful, in body and soul, among the Athenian youths (e.g. Alc. I; Charmides; Lysis; Smp. 216d; Tht.), and yet it is unclear whether he ever consummates his erotic relations physically with these young men (Smp. 216b–19d).
Socrates’ inner, psychic character is also the locus of contradiction and extreme. He is intellectually precocious (Parmenides), and characterized by great wisdom, if nothing else. And although the Oracle at Delphi declared that no one was wiser than he, Socrates comes to understand this pronouncement to mean that his wisdom resides in his ignorance, or rather, that whereas others think they are wise when they are not, Socrates does not think he knows what he does not know (Ap. 20d ff.).
Socrates exhibits human excellence (q.v. aretê) to a greater degree than most human beings, having a robust soul to complement his robust body. The Athenians convicted Socrates of corrupting the young, and yet the young Phaedo describes him as ‘the best, and also the wisest and the most upright’ of all the men he has known (Phd. 118a). And even with regard to Socrates’ excellences, Plato plays with paradox. In a dialogue focusing on the excellence of sôphrosunê, or self-control, for example, Socrates describes his sexual arousal at the moment when young Charmides’ cape falls open and Socrates gets a glimpse inside (Chrm. 155d). Socrates emphasizes the importance of self-knowledge in this dialogue, a theme that also appears in Alc. I and Phdr.
Socrates was also charged with impiety, or not believing in the gods that the city believed in (Ap. 24b), and yet Plato’s Socrates constantly and provocatively invokes the divine, and his entire life is devoted to fulfilling a divine mission (Ap. 29a–d). He even scolds the Athenian jury that convicts him, saying he is literally the god’s gift to Athens (Ap. 30d–e). He is also distinct for his unique communication with the daimon (q.v.), indicating his special connection to the divine. Plato’s Socrates is both playful and serious; he is an ironist and a gadfly. He devotes his entire life to improving souls, but claims not to be a teacher. He exhorts interlocutors to live well, but he eschews acolytes.
Socrates’ manner of death is most definitive of his character, especially as it is portrayed in the dialogues Ap., Crito and Phd., and Plato wraps even these events in paradox. By stridently opposing the Athenian democracy and refusing to live anything but the philosophical life to which he is committed, he puts an end to his philosophizing – at least in his embodied life. For both interlocutors and readers, he is an object of love, admiration, irritation, fear, esteem, hatred, wonder and misunderstanding. Plato’s characterization of Socrates’ life and death has ensured the Socratic legacy for 2,500 years.