The Summoner Approach: A New Method of Plato Interpretation

Byrd, Miriam.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 45, Number 3, July 2007, pp. 365-381 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/hph.2007.0054

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The Summoner Approach: A New Method of Plato Interpretation

M i R iam B Y R D *

in recent literature concerning methods of reading Plato, the traditional doctrinal approach to interpreting Platos dialogues has been heavily criticized. According to this literature, the doctrinal approach treats dialogues as if they were analogous to philosophical treatises and seeks to nd Platos doctrine explicitly stated through his mouthpiece, Socrates. Because the doctrinal approach cannot account for the structural complexity of the dialogues, and because it cannot account for contradictions in and between the dialogues, a new approach based upon an analogy between the dialogues and dramatic works has been offered in its stead. In this paper, I argue that though the doctrinal approach is awed, the non-doctrinal approach does not provide a viable alternative. Instead, I will introduce a new method of reading Plato, which though doctrinal, rejects the analogy of a dialogue with a treatise and its corollary assumption that Plato explicitly states doctrine through a mouthpiece. I argue that this methodbased upon Socrates description of summoners (parakalo unta) in Republic 522e25aavoids the problems to which the traditional doctrinal interpretation led, provides a plausible way to read the dialogues, and, when incorporated with other doctrinal and literary readings of the dialogues, provides valuable new insights.

1. the doctrinal approach

Any attempt at a philosophical interpretation of Platos dialogues will rest on the basic assumption that Plato intended the dialogues somehow to help the reader acquire knowledge. Traditionally, modern interpreters have made this general assumption more specic, positing that Plato used his dialogues as a tool to teach readers. Philosophical treatises teach by imparting general principles held by the author, otherwise known as doctrine. If Plato teaches us through the dialogues, then they must contain doctrine. As well as being doctrinal, pedagogical treatises
* Miriam Byrd is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Texas at Arlington.
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also ideally have the quality of being systematic. The individual doctrines which they contain t into a consistent whole. The Platonic dialogues, too, should be systematic. The interpreter following this path of reasoning concludes that the philosophical dialogues should be approached as if they were doctrinal, systematic treatises.1 As E. N. Tigerstedt points out in Interpreting Plato, modern interpreters have come to this conclusion on the basis of analogical reasoning.2 In trying to understand how to read Plato, they have looked at the characteristics of modern philosophical writing and have then reasoned that, because Plato is a philosopher too, these characteristics likewise apply to him. If we read the dialogues as treatises, we must be concerned with Platos doctrine. But what is Platos doctrine? Since the dialogues provide no obvious solution to this question, interpreters have made what appears to them to be the most obvious inference. Socrates leads discussion in most Platonic dialogues, and he appears more knowledgeable than his interlocutors. Therefore, we can assume that Socrates (or the dominant speaker in dialogues, such as the Timaeus and the Sophist, in which Socrates does not play a signicant role in conversation) must be Platos mouthpiece.3 Since either Socrates or one of the surrogate discussion leaders is delivering Platos views, we can piece together Platos doctrine by collecting the mouthpieces sayings from the various dialogues and compiling them under certain subject headings, and this procedure will provide us with his system.4 This compilation of Platos doctrine from a cut-and-paste approach to the words of his mouthpiece coincides with another corollary assumption which is required if we are to treat Platonic dialogues as if they were treatises: the assumption that literary and contextual elements are accidental rather than essential to the works meaning. Since the interpreter aims to read a dialogue as if it were a treatise, the interpreter may ignore the literary dimension of the text. The doctrinal hypothesis leads to two general categories of contradictions, the rst following from collecting and systematizing Platos doctrine from the words of his mouthpiece, and the second from treating the form of the dialogues
1 For general descriptions of the doctrinal approach by scholars who reject it, see the following: Frederick J. Gonzalez, Self-knowledge, Practical Knowledge, and Insight: Platos Dialectic and the Dialogue Form [Knowledge and Insight], in The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies [The Third Way], ed. Francisco J. Gonzalez (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 1995), 15657; Frederick J. Gonzalez, Introduction: A Short History of Platonic Interpretation and the Third Way [Introduction], in The Third Way, 25; Frederick J. Gonzalez, Preface, in The Third Way, viix; Gerald A. Press, Introduction: The Dialogical Mode in Modern Plato Studies, in Platos Dialogues: The Dialogical Approach, ed. Richard Hart and Victorino Tejera (Lewiston, UK: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 15; Gerald A. Press, Preface, in Platos Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations, ed. Gerald A. Press (Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littleeld, 1993), viiviii; Gerald A. Press, The State of the Question in the Study of Plato, in Plato: Critical Assessments [Critical Assessments], ed. Nicholas D. Smith (London: Routledge, 1998), vol. 1, 30912; Stanley Rosen, Platos Symposium [Symposium] (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, 2nd ed.), xxxixxl; and E. N. Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato [Interpreting Plato] (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiskell, 1977), 1417. These criticisms of the doctrinal approach are aimed at gures such as Vlastos, Owen, and Ackrill. 2 Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato, 17. 3 See also Richard Kraut, Introduction, in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 29. 4 For examples of this approach, see I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Platos Doctrines, 2 vols. (New York: Humanities Press, 196263); and Paul Shorey, The Unity of Platos Thought [Unity] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

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as being completely separate from their content. The rst category involves inconsistencies between views expressed by the mouthpiece within a single work or among different dialogues. The second category arises when the dialogues form is inconsistent with their content. The most popular attempt to address the rst category of contradictions, developmentalism, has failed.5

1.1 Developmentalism
According to the developmentalists, inconsistencies exist because Plato changed his mind over the course of his career.6 Typically, developmentalists assume that we can establish a chronology of Platos worksearly, transitional, middle, and late periodsand that the works falling into each of these periods depict a particular stage in his development.7 Though there is much variety within this school of thought, there is general agreement that Plato changed his mind as his thought developed, and that he is a consistent thinker if one takes into account his rejection of his own earlier stages of thought. The inconsistencies between dialogues are really just differences between stages of development. Support for the developmental hypothesis depends on establishing a chronology of Platos works, for discrepancies in content cannot be explained as stages in his development unless we have knowledge of the chronology of the dialogues and can check this against their content to guarantee that the dialogues do indeed support this theory.8 With some notable exceptions, most criticisms of developmentalism focus on the claim that we can know the order of Platos works.9
5 For a discussion of other attempts to address the problem of inconsistencies within the dialogues, such as athetizing and evolutionism, see Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato, 1925. In this paper, I restrict my discussion to developmentalism, as it is the only one of the options currently used. 6 Philosophers who take this approach include John Burnet, Platonism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1928); W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vols. 4 and 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Terrence Irwin, Platos Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (New York: World, 1956); Henry Teloh, The Development of Platos Metaphysics (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981); and Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 7 For example, though unitarians argue that transcendent Forms play a role throughout Platos dialogues, developmentalists often argue that transcendent Forms are only a feature of the middle dialogues. For the view that Forms are not transcendent in the early dialogues, see G. M. A. Grube, Platos Theory of Beauty, Monist 37 (1927): 26988; and Sir David Ross, Platos Theory of Ideas [Theory of Ideas] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 1121, 22831. Scholars who argue that the theory of transcendent Forms has been rejected in the late dialogues include G. E. L. Owen, The Place of the Timaeus in Platos Dialogues [Place of the Timaeus], Classical Quarterly 2 (1953): 7995; Gilbert Ryle, Platos Parmenides, in Studies in Platos Metaphysics, ed. R. E. Allen (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), 97147; Gilbert Ryle, Platos Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); and Kenneth Sayre, Platos Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved [Platos Late Ontology] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 8 Attempts to establish chronology have been based on philosophical content, philology, and stylometrics. For a general survey and criticism of these attempts, see Holger Thesleff, Studies in Platonic Chronology [Studies in Chronology] (Helsinki: Societas Scientarum Fennica, 1982). For a survey of stylometric approaches, see Leonard Brandwood, The Chronology of Platos Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 9 In Unity, Paul Shorey argues against developmentalism by interpreting the dialogues such that there are no real inconsistencies between them, thus eliminating the need for the developmentalist hypothesis. Charles Kahn, in Plato and the Socratic Dialogue [Socratic Dialogue] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), argues against developmentalism on the grounds that Platos development is literary in a planned-out unfolding of his thought, rather than a development in the thought itself.

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Even setting aside other criticisms of this approach,10 the developmental hypothesis would be unsuccessful in solving the general problem of inconsistency because some inconsistencies occur within a single text or between works which have been placed in a similar time period by chronologists. Platos Timaeus is an example of an apparent inconsistency in the late-period dialogues. In the Parmenidesa dialogue written late in the middle periodPlato seems to be criticizing his theory of transcendent Forms, and in later dialogues such as the Sophist and the Philebus, he mentions the Forms but does not claim that they are transcendent. So Plato appears to have revised his theory, and inconsistency in his support of the doctrine of the Forms between middle and late dialogues is explained by the development of his thought. However, the Timaeus, a late dialogue, explicitly supports a theory of transcendent Forms.11 This presents an apparent contradiction in Platos doctrine which, though possibly explained by other hypotheses, cannot be solved on the basis of developmentalism because the inconsistent beliefs are held within the same developmental period. The second contradiction arising from the doctrinal hypothesis is an inconsistency between using Platonic dialogue form and conveying doctrinal, systematic content. This general contradiction may be specied in terms of three inconsistencies. First, in writing dialogues in which he does not appear as a speaking character, Plato never says anything in his own name. If the purpose of the dialogues were to convey Platos doctrine, it seems that he would have chosen to write in another format, one which would make it clear to the reader that the ideas put forth do, in fact, belong to him.12 Second, the dialogues are lled with ad hominem arguments, for Socrates often uses his arguments in order to show that his opponents positions are composed of inconsistent beliefs. If Platos purpose were to present arguments supporting his doctrines, why would he choose this method of argumentation? Why would he have Socrates create arguments which apply to the particular beliefs of particular interlocutors instead of presenting arguments which are universal and which clearly support his doctrines in any context?13 Third, Plato has included intricate literary and dramatic detail in his dialogues. Doctrine, which is propositional in nature, is separate from dramatic and literary touches and may be extracted from the particular context in which it is presented. If the dramatic form of the dialogues is separate from the content they are meant to convey, Platos use of literary detail is superuous and distracting, and his choosing this style makes no sense.14
10 For discussions of alternative criticisms, see Jacob Howland, Rereading Plato, Phoenix 45 (1991), 205; Deborah Nails, Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 54, 70, 100; Thesleff, Studies in Chronology, 40, 73; and Charles M. Young, Plato and Computer Dating, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1994), 24243. 11 Owen (Place of the Timaeus, 7995) tried to solve the problem and show that Platos doctrine was consistent by arguing that the Timaeus was written before, rather than after, the Parmenides. However, Owens position has not been accepted. For debate over the chronological position of the Timaeus, see also Harold A. Cherniss, The Relation of the Timaeus to Platos Late Dialogues, American Journal of Philology 78 (1957): 225266; and Sayre, Platos Late Ontology, 25667. 12 Gonzalez, Introduction, 11; Victorino Tejera, Platos Dialogues One by One [One by One] (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1984), 5. 13 Gonzalez, Introduction, 11; Tejera, One by One, 5. 14 Gonzalez, Knowledge, and Insight, 157. In response to this objection, Charles Young (in correspondence) has suggested that the doctrinal interpreter may explain Platos use of dialogue form on

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1.2 The Esoteric Hypothesis

One reaction to these problems is to reject the analogy to modern philosophical treatises and hence the two corollary assumptionsviz., (1) Socrates is the mouthpiece of Plato, and (2) literary elements are accidentaland to instead hold that, although Plato is a doctrinal thinker and is trying to teach us, his true thought is not explicitly stated in dialogues through the mouthpiece of Socrates. This alternative is taken by the esotericists. Esotericists rely heavily on passages in the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter in which reservations against writing are expressed, and although they believe that Plato has doctrine, they base their interpretations on the hypothesis that Plato does not explicitly reveal his doctrine in the dialogues. The esotericists may be divided into two inuential camps: the Tbingen school, which claims that Plato expressed his true thought orally and that remnants of that thought preserved through the doxographic tradition should be used to interpret the dialogues, and the Straussians, who maintain that Plato hid his true thought within the dialogues so that it would not be revealed to unworthy readers, and that one discovers what Plato meant by looking at what he did not, rather than what he did, say in the dialogues.

1.2.1 The Tbingen School

The Tbingen schools foremost representatives are Konrad Gaiser, Hans Joachim Krmer, and Giovanni Reale. According to their approach, Plato did not think that his true doctrine could be communicated through writing, and he imparted this doctrine solely through oral instruction within the Academy. So Platos philosophy is contained in the indirect tradition indicated by Aristotle and later doxographers. The dialogues failure to exhibit a systematic philosophy is no longer a threat to Platos status, for his philosophy stands independently of them.15 By rejecting the doctrinal hypothesis, the Tbingen school has been able to remove the contradictions which threatened Plato as a systematic thinker.16 The Tbingen interpreters claim that, if the unwritten doctrines are used to supplement the dialogues, problems within the dialogues are resolved. In other words, adding this missing information suddenly makes the puzzle complete. Reale puts forward this view, claiming that the shadowy areas of the dialogues are illuminated by the oral doctrine, and that the oral doctrine shows the dialogues to be clearer and richer in content than they appeared to be on their own.17 In addition, the Tbingen interpretation accounts for the opposition between dialogue form and doctrinal content by relinquishing the claim that the dialogues convey doctrine
the grounds that treatises produce only intellectual conviction, and dialogue form is needed in order to convince the other parts of the soul. However, Plato could have met that goal by writing dialogues more in the style of Berkeley or Humedialogues in which the doctrine is clear to the reader. Instead, the Platonic dialogues often obscure doctrine. 15 Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato, 64. 16 Hans Joachim Krmer, Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics: A Work on the Theory of the Principles and Unwritten Doctrines of Plato with a Collection of Fundamental Documents [Foundations of Metaphysics], ed. and trans. John R. Catan (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 68; Giovanni Reale, Toward a New Interpretation of Plato [A New Interpretation], ed. and trans. John R. Catan and Richard Davies (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 81. 17 Reale, A New Interpretation, 82.

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and by assigning the dialogues a different purpose which is compatible with their literary form. One purpose of the dialogues is protreptic: they are to create in the uninitiated an interest in philosophy and spur these people on to greater reection.18 This is consistent with Platos writing dialogues rather than treatises: dramatic dialogues are more entertaining, and thus more appealing, to the general public than are dry treatises. Also, as Reale points out, the aporetic nature of the dialogues encourages people to continue thinking about the issues, thus creating greater reection in the reader.19 Another function of the dialogue is to present a model of ideal oral discourse.20 If Plato wanted to use writing to show the public how to engage in oral dialectic, the dialogue form would be highly superior to that of a treatise. Finally, the dialogues are meant to remind the initiated reader of what he has already learned through the oral teachings.21 Again, the dialogue form ts the purpose much better, for the initiated reader originally encountered Platonic doctrine through spoken conversation. Though this alternative avoids the contradictions to which the doctrinal hypothesis led, it is based upon circular reasoning.22 The problem of circularity arises when the same scholars seek to recover the unwritten doctrines by using the dialogues. Both Krmer and Reale explain that, because Platos unwritten doctrine has come down to us in sketchy form as fragments in the ancient doxographers, we cannot reconstruct Platos true philosophy from these incomplete reports alone. Instead, we must use the dialogues in order to ll in Platos doctrine.23 However, this task appears to be impossible, since the Tbingen school simultaneously holds that the dialogues do not contain Platos doctrines and need to be interpreted in light of those doctrines given separately in the doxographic tradition. As mentioned above, Krmer and Reale believe that the dialogues serve three purposes: they interest the uninitiated in philosophy, they remind those who already know, and they provide a model for good oral dialectic. Could any of these three alternatives support the theory that the dialogues can help us reconstruct doctrine? If the dialogues are written for the uninitiated and only work to introduce philosophy to the masses, we might hope to attain inspiration, but not doctrine, from the dialogues. If the dialogues function to remind those who already know, we cannot recover Platos doctrines because the dialogues would only bring those teachings to mind if we had already learned them. The Tbingen scholars might argue that, since we know a little bit about the unwritten doctrines from the doxographical tradition, they could remind us of the knowledge we have attained from these other written sources. However, the purpose of turning to the dialogues is to verify and complete the information given by the doxographers. We do not know the
Krmer, Foundations of Metaphysics, 72; Reale, A New Interpretation, 76. Reale, A New Interpretation, 76. 20 Krmer, Foundations of Metaphysics, 72; Reale, A New Interpretation, 7677. 21 Krmer, Foundations of Metaphysics, 71; Reale, A New Interpretation, 77. 22 For other strong criticisms of the Tbingen schools hypothesis, see Harold Cherniss, The Riddle of the Early Academy (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962); Kenneth Sayre, Review: Hans Joachim Krmer, Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics: A Work on the Theory of the Principles and Unwritten Doctrines of Plato with a Collection of the Fundamental Documents, Ancient Philosophy 13 (1993): 7783; and Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato, 6465, 7172, 77. 23 Krmer, Foundations of Metaphysics, 69; Reale, A New Interpretation, 24.
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unwritten doctrine if we are reading the dialogues in order to nd support for our interpretative reconstructions of them, so the point remains that, not knowing, we cannot be reminded. The third alternative fares no better. If the dialogues provide a model for proper discourse, we might use this model in order to discover for ourselves what the doctrines are. If we engage in model discourse, perhaps, heading in the right direction, we will stumble on the doctrines on our own. But, if it is possible for ushaving been set on the right path and provided a methodology by the dialoguesto discover the doctrines on our own, then it would appear that Platos dialogues lead to his philosophy independently of our having esoteric oral teachings, and the project of discovering the unwritten doctrine in order to use it to interpret the dialogues is undermined.24

1.2.2 The Straussians

Leo Strauss presents a different version of the esoteric approach, but his thought is similar to the Tbingen school in certain ways. Like the Tbingen school, Strauss rejects the doctrinal hypothesis along with the corollary assumption that Socrates is Platos mouthpiece. Instead, Strauss contends that Socrates irony would make him an ineffectual mouthpiece, for one who always speaks ironically does not assert anything.25 Strauss argues that, by writing dialogues in which he is not a speaking character, Plato conceals his opinions behind the words of his speakers.26 By rejecting the mouthpiece theory, Strauss, like the Tbingen scholars, extricates his interpretation from the rst two contradictions which plagued the doctrinal hypothesis. Contradictions between texts and within texts presented a problem to the doctrinal hypothesis because, if Socrates is a mouthpiece for Platos systematic doctrine, Socrates assertions should be consistent. If Socrates is not taken to be a mouthpiece for Platos philosophy, then Socrates inconsistency does not reect Platos inconsistency as a philosopher. Strausss esotericism differs from that of the Tbingen School in two ways: (1) Strauss does not identify Platos doctrine with what is imputed to him in the indirect tradition of the doxographers, and (2) Strauss does not relegate Platos esoteric doctrine to oral discussion but maintains that it is concealed in the written dialogues. Strauss comes to these conclusions through his interpretation of the Phaedrus. Rather than taking Socrates point to be that, since writing is bad and speech is good, philosophical doctrine cannot be communicated in writing but must be spoken, Strauss maintains that Socrates criticism of writing is that it does not know to whom to speak and to whom to remain silent.27 If this objection can be overcome, then writing is as good as speaking. Thus philosophy can be communicated through writing, and there is no reason to consign Platos teachings to speech.
24 Rosen, Symposium, xlvxlvi. Of course, as Charles Young has pointed out to me in correspondence, a more damaging criticism of the Tbingen scholars approach is its failure to support the claim that there is extensive unwritten doctrine. 25 Leo Strauss, The City and the Man [City and Man] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 51. 26 Strauss, City and Man, 59. 27 Ibid., 52.

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Strausss argument that Platos dialogues do overcome the limitations of speech provides a solution to the second contradiction arising from the doctrinal hypothesis. Unlike the Tbingen school, which avoids the contradiction by assigning the dialogues functions other than teaching doctrine, Strauss allows the dialogues to contain doctrine. According to Strauss, the connection between the form and the content in the Platonic dialogues is that the form allows the dialogues to say different things to different people, and thus to escape the limitations of writing and to teach doctrine only to those who are t.28 Strauss claims that nothing is accidental in a Platonic dialogue: all the parts are necessary for the whole, and the details arouse thinking in those who are t for it.29 So, rather than being opposed to doctrinal content, dialogue form is essential if one wishes to speak in writing only to those for whom one would wish the capacity to hear. Or, in other words, only dialogue form is appropriate for teaching a certain kind of doctrine. In addition, Strausss view of irony could be used to supplement the resolution of the rst contradiction. If every detail is important in a dialogue, then contradictions in Socrates words in a dialogue, or among dialogues, might be a hint to the t reader not to stop at the exoteric level, but to continue thinking until he grasps the concealed esoteric lesson. Though I am sympathetic to this view, a problem with the Straussian interpretation is that it is difcult for the interpreter to know whether or not his or her interpretation is correct. Irony is the methodological tool of the Straussian, but the category of irony is so wide-open and subject to interpretation that almost anything could fall into it. Because the designation of a word or deed as ironic lends itself to subjective judgment, and because the Straussian interpreter is looking for esoteric doctrine which is concealed and cannot be justied by explicit statements in the text, irony provides an insufcient guideline for textual analysis. For this reason, the Straussian hypothesis runs into difculty in judging the correctness of its interpretations.30

2. the dramatic approach

In light of the failure of developmentalism and esoterism, some scholars have rejected the hypothesis that Plato is a doctrinal and systematic thinker. On their reasoning, if one abandons this hypothesis, then the contradictions in and between the dialogues are no longer signicant, for contradictions are a problem only if a philosopher is indeed trying to create a coherent system of thought. These scholars reject the hypothesis by rejecting the analogy on which it is based: the analogy between Platos teaching and the teaching of modern philosophers. Instead, some recent scholars replace the analogy to modern philosophy with an analogy to dramatic works. The dramatic hypothesis follows from the rejection of the assumption that Plato is a doctrinal thinker. If we no longer make presuppositions about Platonic
Ibid., 5253. Ibid., 54. 30 For a different criticism of Strauss, this time on grounds of inconsistency regarding his rejection of the mouthpiece theory, see Harry Berger, Levels of Discourse in Platos Dialogues, in Critical Assessments, vol. 1, 296.
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doctrine and about how the value of the text is grounded in its relation to this doctrine, then we must nd a way of reading Platonic dialogues that is not analogous to reading treatises. On what will this new approach to interpretation be based? In Platos Dialogues as Enactments, Gerald Press makes a move which he compares to Kants Copernican Revolution.31 Instead of making the dialogues conform to our conception of philosophy, we should begin with dialogue form and make our conception of philosophy conform to that. Press reasons that the dialogues are enactments in the sense that they are plays and that they create effects in people. And so he recommends reading the dialogues dramatically. Similarly, in Interpreting Plato: The Dialogues as Drama, James Arieti argues that one may discover how to read the dialogues by nding which genre they most closely resemble and approaching them as one would other works in that genre. According to Arieti, the dialogues most resemble drama and should be approached dramatically.32 So, according to the dramatic hypothesis, rather than assuming that Plato is a doctrinal thinker and approaching the dialogues as if they were doctrinal, or doctrinally related, one should view Plato more as a dramatist and read his dialogues as one would plays. The dramatic approach shares with its doctrinal counterpart the pedagogical hypothesis that Plato is trying to teach us something, and that what he is teaching us is philosophical in nature. However, rather than assuming that Plato is trying to teach us doctrine through philosophical treatises, the proponents of the dramatic approach assume that Plato is trying to teach us broad, dramatic lessons. Though Plato is seen as a teacher in both general lines of approach, the content of the teaching signicantly differs.33 Whereas the hypothesis that Plato is a doctrinal thinker leads the interpreter to try to discover Platos views on such topics as the Forms, recollection, and the soul, the dramatic reader focuses instead on the lesson presented by the dialogues story line. For example, Arieti, in his reading of the Phaedo, skips such details as the arguments for the immortality of the soul and simply says that the point of the dialogue is to show Socrates exhibiting courage. He notes that the arguments for immortality fail, though he does not show why, and he argues that the reason they fail is that, had they succeeded, Socrates would not have been brave in facing death. According to Arieti, the lesson Plato is trying to teach in the Phaedo is how to be courageous, and he teaches this lesson dramatically by showing Socrates acting courageously by facing death when he is uncertain of an afterlife.34
Gerald A. Press, Platos Dialogues as Enactments [Enactments], in The Third Way, 141. James A. Arieti, Interpreting Plato: The Dialogues as Drama [Interpreting Plato] (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 1991), 23. 33 The dramatic, non-doctrinal approach is not synonymous with a literary reading of Plato. One can make literary readings without being non-doctrinal, as long as one drops the corollary assumption that literary considerations do not matter. 34 Arieti, Interpreting Plato, 45. Ironically, Arietis reading is contrary to Phaedo 69b, a passage in which Socrates equates virtue with knowledge rather than with ignorance. Similar examples of the application of the nondoctrinal approach can by found in Tejera, One by One, 1825. Like Arieti, Tejera declares that Plato is not concerned with such issues as the Forms, immortality, or recollection in the Phaedo. Tejera, however, sees the point of the dialogue as being Socrates compassion towards his friends. Socrates is presenting arguments in order to help his friends deal with their emotions and in order to generate a cheerful mood. This interpretation, too, seems to be in conict with the content
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The dramatic hypothesis leads to inconsistencies. The hypothesis is inconsistent, rst, in that it holds that the dialogues teach non-doctrinal lessons; yet the dramatic lessons which it claims that they teach are not independent of doctrine. For example, Arieti claims that the lesson of the Phaedo is Socrates display of courage in facing his impending death though he is uncertain of the afterlife. But in order to understand the value of Socrates action, the reader needs to question the nature of courage, and the reader cannot answer this question without reverting to an applied doctrine. Second, the dramatic hypothesis leads to an inconsistency between form and content. If the purpose of the dialogues is to teach us simple dramatic lessons, as interpreters such as Arieti assume, then why do the dialogues contain such lengthy and complicated philosophical argumentation? Socrates expressing courage because he cheerfully faces death when he lacks knowledge of the afterlife could be depicted equally well without the arguments for the immortality of the soul. In addition, the discussions of epistemology within the dialogues and the way Plato is purported to teach according to his dramatic readers appear to be in tension. Are we to believe that Plato, after lengthy explorations of dialectic, recollection, and even mathematics, is content to teach only by example, showing us actions we are to imitate?

3. the revised doctrinal approach

The failings of the dramatic approach suggest that perhaps we should not be so hasty to dismiss the doctrinal hypothesis. As we have seen, however, when combined with the standard corollary assumptions, the doctrinal approach is immersed in contradiction. Esotericists attempt to rescue the doctrinal hypothesis by denying these corollary assumptions, thereby removing the main sources of criticism. We have found, however, that the esoteric approach, as it has been developed, is itself untenable insofar as it relies on subjective readings of the dialogues which cannot be supported by the text. In order to remedy this deciency and successfully defend an esoteric approach to the dialogues, I will present a method of interpreting the dialogues which not only rejects these corollary assumptions, but which is strongly rooted in the text. Instead of dismissing Platos arguments and conclusions as irrelevant or ironic, I propose that the contradictions within the dialogues be used as touchstones on which to base any plausible interpretation.

3.1 Rejecting the Pedagogical Hypothesis

We run into difculty regardless of whether we accept or reject the doctrinal hypothesis. How can this be, when logically it would seem that Plato either is, or is
of the dialogue. In the Phaedo Socrates aligns the body with emotions (see, for example, 66bd), and throughout the dialogue Socrates encourages his interlocutors to separate soul from body. A third example of this type of interpretation is Gerald Presss claim (Enactments, 148, 15051) that the general purpose of the dialogues is to present the reader with an enactment of a two-level realitya distinction created by the difference between Socrates and his interlocutors in respect to characterthat enables us to experience essence in existence or Forms in things. The more particular task of the Phaedo, on this reading, is to enact Socrates immortality: since the narrator of the dialogue speaks in the present, Socrates remains alive for the reader.

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not, a doctrinal thinker? The problems with the doctrinal approach emerge when it is combined with the assumption that Plato is trying to teach. This, in turn, naturally leads us to corollary assumptions that Socrates is Platos mouthpiece and that the dialogues literary details do not matter. The dramatic hypothesis was set up as an alternative when the above approach failed. Since the hypothesis that Plato is trying to teach doctrine was challenged by inconsistencies in his writings, the dramatic readers rejected it and the analogy on which it was based, offering instead the alternative analogy between the Platonic dialogues and other dramatic works. Neither of these approaches has proved successful. My proposal is simple. Since the alternatives following from this pedagogical hypothesis are unacceptable, it should be rejected. The esotericists also reject the pedagogical hypothesis. Under this hypothesis, interpreters approached teaching along the lines of the passive model of a teacher conveying opinions to a student through lecture or example. These interpreters approached the text through analogies with works using conventional types of teaching or with works teaching along the lines of the model of the passive student. In order to understand how to read the dialogues, they looked to works which were not dialogues but appeared to be analogous to them, and proposed that we read the dialogues in the same manner that we would read these similar works. The esotericists, by contrast, denied that Plato was using the dialogues consistently with a passive model of learning. The Tbingen School rejected the treatise analogy and proposed that the dialogues both served protreptic and aporetic purposes and provided a model of ideal discourse. Strauss too rejects the treatise analogy and argues that the details of the dialogues arouse thinking in those who are t for it, thus leading some to discover Platos doctrine while others remain at the exoteric level of understanding the text. I have rejected both of these types of esoteric interpretation: the Tbingen interpretation on account of problems of internal consistency, and the Straussian due to its failure to provide an objective model of interpretation. I will follow the esoteric interpreters in that my approach will be doctrinal and will reject the treatise analogy and its corollaries, the mouthpiece and non-literary assumptions. I will draw from passages concerning learning in the Meno and the Republic in my revision of the hypothesis, and attempt to present an approach to reading Plato that avoids the above-mentioned problems in both the doctrinal and esoteric approaches. In the Meno, Plato sets up a contrast between a passive and an active model of what we call learning. Menos knowledge gained from Gorgias is an example of the passive model. Gorgias, Socrates says, teaches by providing a bold answer to any question posed to him (70c). So Gorgias conveys his own opinions to his students by lecturing. A product of this education, Meno believes that he knows what virtue is, for Gorgias knows and Gorgias is his teacher (71cd). In fact, Meno is so condent of his knowledge that he has made many speeches about virtue to large audiences (80b). However, Meno clearly does not know what virtue is because his views on the subject prove to be inconsistent each time Socrates questions him about it (71e79e). This passive model is clearly awed because Meno cannot defend or even explain what he claims to know. Regardless of the truth of an opinion, its mere conveyance does not lead to knowledge, for

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the opinion may be transferred to the student without his or her understanding it. In the case of Meno, though an opinion has been transferred from teacher to student, the student has not understood the opinion well enough to reect upon its obvious inconsistencies. Socrates rejects the passive model of learning in favor of an active one by introducing recollection and claiming that there is no teaching, but that all learning is recollection (82a). He provides a demonstration of what he means by presenting an uneducated slave boy with questions until he comes to the correct solution to a geometrical problem (82b85b). According to Socrates, this demonstration shows that the boy has true opinions within him about things he does not yet know (85c). If he is questioned enough, he will nd the knowledge within himself and know without having been taught, and this nding of knowledge within oneself is recollection (85d).35 I reject the hypothesis that Plato is trying to teach along a passive model of learning and am instead working from the assumption that Plato has constructed the dialogues in such a manner that they will raise questions, and thus encourage us to recollect or to nd the knowledge within ourselves. Plato has constructed his dialogues in a manner similar to the slave boy sequence in order to lead us to ever more profound questions. Rather than looking to examples of the passive model of learningsuch as teaching through treatises or dramain order to understand how Plato is trying to help us learn, I will instead turn to the central books of the Republic in which Socrates gives further description of the active model of learning.

3.2 The New Hypothesis: Contradictions in the Dialogues Help Us to Recollect

I propose that Plato questions us and prompts us to recollect by including contradictions within his dialogues, and I argue that this thesis is supported by Socrates discussion of the souls epistemological progression in respect to the Divided Line in books 6 and 7 of the Republic. In arguing for this point, I will rst present evidence that the discussion of the summoner in book 7 indicates that contradictions in perception help us progress from the sensible to the intelligible section of the Divided Line. Second, I argue that the text implies a higher level summoner by which contradictions in thought help us move to higher levels within the intelligible section. It is my contention that this summoner method has wider applicability, beyond the Republic, for it is Platos paradigmatic model of inquiry.

3.2.1 The Lower Level Summoner: Contradictions in Perception

Socrates introduces the summoner at Republic VII (522e25b) and uses the example of three ngers in order to illustrate how it works. He says that some perceptions are summoners because they reveal opposite characteristics at the
35 Though the process of recollection is passive in the sense that one is reminded (and in being reminded, acted upon), it is also active. In the above example, the slave boy recollects the correct answer only after struggling through many attempts to answer Socrates questions. In addition, in Socrates example of recollection at Phaedo 74bc, one recollects the Equal itself in the process of trying to solve the contradiction of so-called equal things appearing both equal and unequal.

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same time. When I look at a single nger, for example, I am not summoned, for nothing about my perception of the nger suggests that it is, at the same time, not a nger. My soul is content with its visual perception, and its intellect is not awakened in an attempt to make sense of this perception. However, if I hold out three ngers and look at them, I am presented with a summoner. For example, when I look at one of the ngers, I notice that it is taller than one and shorter than the other. I perceive the same nger as being both taller and shorter, but this is impossible, for tall and short are opposites, and a thing cannot possess opposite qualities at the same time and in the same respect. The soul realizes that it perceives one nger, but it understands that it also perceives a contradiction between the tallness and shortness of the nger. So it understands that its single perceptionthe one in which tallness and shortness are mixed upis made of two characteristics, and that each of the two characteristics is a single one. In tackling this puzzle, the soul is provoked into asking what largeness is and what smallness is. When the soul asks these questions, it reveals awareness that largeness and smallness have an existence apart from the sensible things which are large and small. The soul, now turning its attention to intelligible objects rather than sense perceptions, has been summoned to think.36 Socrates introduces the summoner in order to explain how the soul makes the transition from trusting its senses to using thought, or, from the second level of the Divided Line, pistis (belief) to the third level, dianoia (thought). At the level of pistis, the soul trustingly accepts that its sense impressions present it with reality. By offering the soul contradictory impressions, however, the summoner challenges it to think. Because the soul can no longer simply trust its sense impressions and accept them as they appear, it must use thought in order to make sense of things and provide an explanation. The summoner has caused sensation to become problematic and has thus made the soul aware of the inadequacy of simple perception for providing knowledge of reality.

3.2.2 The Higher Level Summoner: Contradictions in Thought

Though Socrates is here speaking about a summoner that draws one from pistis to dianoia, I propose that there are different levels of summoners helping the soul ascend the Divided Line: for example, a higher level summoner that aids the soul in making the transition from dianoia to nous and is responsible for the souls shift from downward to upward use of hypotheses. The higher level summoner is dictated by the logic of the lower level, for, since the rst level summoner leads the soul to form hypotheses, and since dialectic involves the forming of higher hypotheses, the summoner must work on a higher level, also, to form these new

36 Recollection of the equal itself in Phaedo 74ae provides a clear example of a summoner. Socrates reasons that equal sticks and stones appear both equal and unequal. However, the equals themselves never appear unequal. Therefore, the equal sticks and stones fall short of the equal itself and are not the same. He draws the further inference that we must know the equal itself in order to recognize that equal sticks and stones fall short of it. In this example, one has sense perception of equal sticks and stones. However, these equal sensible things appear both equal and unequal. This provokes the soul to ask what the equal itself is, thus recognizing that equality has a transcendent existence. The soul has progressed from pistis to dianoia.

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hypotheses. Because the higher level summoner is suggested by an argument by analogy, I will look at the mechanism of the lower level summoner in order to understand the mechanism of the higher.37 The lower level summoner makes apparent to the soul a contradiction existing in the sensible world. In Republic 479ab, Socrates and Glaucon agree that all things which appear to be beautiful also appear to be ugly, all things which appear to be just also appear to be unjust, etc. Lines 287e 89b of the Greater Hippias offer an explanation of this notion. Hippias describes both a woman and a pot as beautiful. However, in comparison with the woman, the pot appears to be ugly. Likewise the woman, when compared to a goddess, appears ugly. Because they receive their qualitative attributes in relation to other things, sensible things appear to have both a quality and the opposite of that quality. Thus, all sensible things are involved in apparent contradiction in some respects. Normally, one is not aware of this feature of sensible things. For example, X appears to me to be beautiful, and I am fully condent in declaring it beautiful. The condition of my soul in approaching X is pistis: I trust that X is as it appears to me in my perception. However, X may also appear to me as a summoner if it strikes me as being beautiful and ugly at the same time. In other words, X, as a sensible thing, is always apparently contradictory, but I am unaware of this contradiction unless I encounter a summoner which awakens my intellect in my attempt to resolve the contradiction. How has the summoner redirected my attention to higher objects and generated a higher level epistemological condition in my soul? Though I rst encounter the summoner X as a perception, the intelligible objects that I will grasp are latently present within my perception. It is because my intellect recognizes competing intelligible objects, or opposite qualities, in the same perception, that my soul attempts to grasp intelligible objects by separating them and treating as two what was earlier perceived as one. My intellect recognizes that the qualities are prior to perception, for I could not have recognized them and separated them out had I not already known them: my separation of the qualities is dependent upon my prior knowledge of them. Since these entities make my perception of their mixture possible, they are transcendent and maintain a separate ontological status. The very act of noticing a summoner places me into a higher epistemological levela level at which I become more rmly entrenched as I actively work to resolve the contradiction with which I have been presented. The mechanism of the second level summoner, just like that of the rst, works as the activity of combination and separation. The rst level summoner drew the souls attention to the combination, in pistis, of intelligible objects which should be treated separately. Likewise, the second level summoner, in dianoia, draws the souls attention to the combination of intelligible objects which should have been treated separately. For example, the soul holds a hypothesis and trusts that it is true. Whether it is a theory or an atomic statement held in conjunction with

37 Pistis appears to play a role in dianoia. In his description of the Divided Line, Socrates argues that, at the level of dianoia, geometers hypothesize intelligible objects, andbeing condent in these objectsdo not try to give accounts for them but treat them as rst principles from which they reason to conclusions (511c).

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standing beliefs, the hypothesis appears to the soul as a unity. 38 However, if the hypothesis appears to the soul to generate contradictory consequences, then the soul is alerted to its treating a plurality as a unity, for a unity would not have led to contradictory results. Since the hypothesis has led to contradictory results, the soul knows that intelligible objects which it treated as a unityunder the guise of a rst principlemust be a plurality. Ideas which have formerly appeared to the soul as being the same thing now appear to it as being different, and in recognizing the difference, the soul separates each of these ideas, treating them separately and placing them into a new relation to one another: a relation that is different from that of identity. The new hypothesis is the relationship the soul places the intelligible objects into in its attempt to resolve the contradiction.39 The new hypothesis is latent in the second level summoner just as the intelligible objects were latent within the object of perception in the case of the rst level summoner. The soul recognizes the contradiction in the results of the hypothesis because it recognizes the tension between intelligible objects: though the soul is, in passive acceptance of the hypothesis, combining separate intelligible objects, it simultaneously recognizes the tension between the objects and is thus summoned. The very act of being summoned is an act of separating and relating, and the act of separating and relating provides the new hypothesis. Simply put, the new hypothesis states that what was formerly seen as one is two, and the new hypothesis presents the two in a new relation. This new hypothesis is higher because it expresses a higher level of epistemological clarity and reality. Just as dianoia is clearer than pistis because it has separated what pistis confusedly lumped together, the new hypothesis presents a condition of greater clarity in the soul because, whereas the soul earlier unreectively confused two as one, the soul now sees each of the two as clearly separate. I think that, under the assumption that one reason Plato wrote dialogues was to summon the reader, the extrapolation of a higher level summoner which I have provided serves as a strong basis for incorporating a new method of interpreting
38 For the view that the hypothesis is an atomic statement, see Richard Robinson, Platos Earlier Dialectic [Earlier Dialectic] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953, 2nd ed.), 168. For the alternative view that a hypothesis resembles a theory, see Kenneth Dorter, Platos Phaedo (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 131; and Kahn, Socratic Dialogue, 31617. 39 My description of the second-level summoner is similar to Platos discussion of the hypothetical method in the Phaedo. Socrates describes this method at 100a and 101d. He says that he chooses the hypothesis which seems best, makes sure that his other beliefs are consistent with this hypothesis, and nally tests the hypothesis by looking at its consequences or results. If the hypothesis leads to contradiction, its results have shown that it should be discarded. Since Socrates (Republic 511ac) distinguishes reasoning from hypotheses as rst principles from dialectic, in which one uses hypotheses truly as hypotheses, my claiming that the upper-level summoner bears a close similarity to the method of hypothesis might seem to be problematic. However, though the method begins by treating the hypotheses as rst principles, its evaluative component meets the criteria of treating hypotheses as hypotheses. The most prominent criticism against the claim that dialectic involves the method of hypothesis is that the acceptable hypothesis in the Phaedo is only adequate to the interlocutor. (Robinson, Earlier Dialectic, 138, 146, and 157; Ross, Theory of Ideas, 58; Burnet, Platonism, 164; Samuel Scolnicov, Hypothetical Method and Rationality in Plato, Kant-Studien 66 [1975], 15961). However, I agree with Dorters argument (Platos Phaedo, 13234) that the text gives us reason to conclude that Socrates is speaking of epistemological adequacy rather than acceptability in terms of the opinion of the interlocutor. For further discussion of the role of the summoner in the method of hypothesis, see Miriam Byrd, Dialectic and Platos Method of Hypothesis, Apeiron (forthcoming).

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Plato. I maintain that Plato wrote dialogues in order to help us learn. Socrates description of learning in the Meno says that learning takes place when one is questioned, and in the Republic he further describes how being puzzled and questioned by summoners leads one to engage in dialectic. Since summoners function by presenting the soul with contradictions, and since the dialogues contain many passages which present readers with contradictions, it is reasonable to conclude that Plato, trying to help us learn and unavailable to question us in person, included summoners in the dialogues in order to question us and help us recollect.40 The application of this method involves the reader of Platonic dialogues being sensitive toward contradictions within the text. Before dismissing them as errors or explaining them away as being merely apparent, the reader should consider the possibility that the contradiction is included for the purpose of leading him or her to formulate higher hypotheses in an attempt to resolve it, and the reader should then consider what assumptions lead to the contradiction and how modication of those assumptions might solve the problem. In the process of doing this, the reader will have the opportunity to engage in dialectic.41

4. conclusion
I have argued that the doctrinal and non-doctrinal dramatic approaches to reading the dialogues have failed because they were based on a passive model of learning and on the hypothesis that Plato is using the dialogues in order to teach. In the case of the doctrinal approach, interpreters, using the analogy of treatiseswhich also teachadopted two corollary assumptions: the assumption that Socrates is Platos mouthpiece and the assumption that literary and contextual elements are superuous to a works meaning. These corollary assumptions led to the problems of explaining inconsistencies in doctrine expressed in different passages and of separating the form of the dialogues from their content rather than showing how form expresses content. Based on the analogy of Platos teaching through the dialogues with a dramatists teaching through plays, the non-doctrinal approach avoided the rst problem by denying that Plato had doctrine; if Plato had no doctrine, his doctrine could not be inconsistent. However, this rejection of doctrine entangled the dramatic readers in the second problem faced by doctrinal read-

40 It has been brought to my attention that Nicholas D. Smith (Images, Education, and Paradox in Platos Republic, in Recognition, Remembrance, and Reality: New Essays on Platos Epistemology and Metaphysics, ed. M. L. McPherran, Apeiron 33 suppl. [2000]: 12640) has argued in a similar vein that Plato is using the summoner throughout the Republic in order to engage the soul in dianoetic reasoning and develop the souls intellectual potential. 41 The fruitfulness of the summoner method of interpretation can be seen in the following example of its application to the images of just cities and souls in the Republic. Though at 435b12 Socrates implies that the just city will be isomorphic with the just soul, he provides alternatives to the tripartite city and soul on which he focuses in the dialogue. The rst, or simple city, discarded by 372e, appears to be just (Socrates refers to it as healthy and true), yet it is not divided into three classes. Also, Socrates mentions the possibility of the existence of a just soul with more than three parts in 443de, and one that is simple at 611bd. In a paper in progress, I argue that the disparity in structure among these images of just cities and soulscoupled with the assumption of isomorphismacts as a summoner. In grappling with the problem of how these entities that differ from one another are all just, the reader shifts his or her attention from mere images of Justice to the Form itself.

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ers; by denying that Plato held doctrine, the dramatic readers made the detailed argumentative passages superuous and thus failed to show how the form of the dialogues expressed their content. The summoner approach, by contrast, avoids these problems. The summoner approach is based on an active model of learning and on the hypothesis that Plato is using the dialogues in order to help us to learn by presenting us with contradictions. The summoner approach is doctrinal, but it avoids the problems of the traditional doctrinal approach because it is not based upon the pedagogical hypothesis and thus accepts neither the treatise analogy nor the two corollary assumptions following from it. Since the summoner approach does not hold the corollary assumptions, it does not lead to the problems of explaining inconsistencies between passages (indeed, it has a good explanation of these) or how the dialogues form expresses their content. Also, by rejecting the corollary assumption that the literary elements are not essential to the meaning of the dialogues, the summoner approach accepts that consideration of literary aspects of the dialogues should contribute to interpretation. The summoner approach also avoids the problem of the dramatic approach. Since the summoner approach rejects the passive model of learning, and thus the need for the dramatic analogy to explain how Plato is teaching us, it has no reason to accept the assumption that Plato is a non-doctrinal thinker, and thus it is not faced with the particular problem of separation of form and content endemic to the dramatic approach. I think that there is strong support for this method. I am aware that Plato uses techniques other than the summoner, and that the summoner interpretation will not be appropriate for all passages. However, I believe that he uses the summoner often enough that incorporating the summoner method of interpretation into a general approach based on an active model of learning which looks at both doctrinal and literary elements will yield interesting results that help us better to understand the dialogues.42

42 A doctrinal approach based upon an active model of learning will require a more sophisticated way of reading Plato. In some passages, Plato uses summoners, but in others, he expresses points dramatically or doctrinally through a mouthpiece. The interpreter will have to be sensitive to what Plato is doing in particular passages and read them accordingly.