THE READING ORDER OF PLATO'S DIALOGUES

THE READING ORDER OF PLATO'S DIALOGUES
Author(s): William H. F. Altman

Source: Phoenix, Vol. 64, No. 1/2 (Spring-Summer/printemps-t 2010), pp. 18-51
Published by: Classical Association of Canada
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William H. F. Altman
J. WEi.VF. years ago in this
journal,
Carol Poster
(1998: 282-283),
as
part
of
"a
methodological prolegomenon
to Platonic
hermeneutics,"
classified four
ways
of
ordering
the Platonic
dialogues,
one of them
designated
"(3)
pedagogical
order"
and defined as "the order in which we should read or teach the
dialogues."
It is
my purpose
to offer a
twenty-first century reconstructionagnostic
with
respect
to her
"(1)
chronology
of
composition,"
the dominant
paradigm
of nineteenth
and
twentieth-century
Platonic
scholarship
(Howland 1991)of
"the
reading
order of Plato's
dialogues"
(hereafter "ROPD")
in which the
indispensable
role
of Poster's
"(2)
dramatic
chronology"
and
"(4)
theoretical or
metaphysical
order"
will be viewed
through
the lens of
pedagogical
considerations. After
reviewing
the intellectual
history
of the
ROPD,
seven
principles
of this reconstruction
project
will be introduced
(section i);
four of
thesebeginning
with Charles H.
Kahn's notion of
"proleptic" composition
(Kahn 1981a, 1988,
and
1996)will
be elucidated in connection with "the
City
of Good Men
Only"
in
Republic
1
(section ii).
Modifying
Kahn's
conception
of the
relationship
between
Lysis
and
Symposium.
(Kahn
1996:
258-291),
section hi will make the case that Plato
intended
Lysis
to follow
Symposium
in the ROPD in order to test whether the
student/reader has assimilated Diotima's
conception
of what is one's own
(to
oiksov).
Given that
grasping
the
tragic aspect
of
Symposium, by
contrast,
requires
a detailed
knowledge
of Athenian
political history,
section iv will show that
Aspasia's intentionally
anachronistic oration in Menexenus
precedes Symposium
in
the ROPD. Once the
pedagogical principles
on which the reconstruction is based
have been
applied
to
Menexenus,
Symposium,
and
Lysis,
section v will
present
a
synopsis
of the ROPD as a whole.
I. RECONSTRUCTING THE ROPD
Our edition of Plato is
inseparable
from the
search,
once of considerable
interest to his
students,
for the
ROPD;
Charles Dunn's studies of
Thrasyllus
(1974: 1976;
see also Tarrant
1993)
show that the nine
"tetralogies" (thirty-five
dialogues
and the Letters
arranged
in sets of
four)
constituted his version of the
To
my
wonderful teachers at the
University
of
Toronto,
George
Edison
(in memoriam)
and Graeme
Nicholson
(Trinity College),
Wallace McLeod and
Denys
de Montmollin
(Victoria
College),
I
respectfully
dedicate this
study.
Victoria
Wohl,
Carol
Poster,
and an
anonymous
reader for Phoenix
have
provided
invaluable criticism and
support;
thanks are also due to
Roslyn Weiss, James Wood,
Luc
Brisson,
and Melissa Lane from whose comments this
paper
has benefited.
Naturally
all
remaining
errors and infelicities are
entirely my
own
responsibility.
As revised for
publication,
this
paper
was
submitted to Phoenix in its
present
form on
June 6,
2008.
Phoenix,
Vol. 64
(2010)
1-2.
THE READING ORDER OF PLATO'S DIALOGUES 19
ROPD. It is instructive that the Neo-Platonist Albinus takes
Thrasyllus
to task for
the
opening Euthyphro, Apology,
Crito,
and Phaedo
quartet (Snyder
2000:
98-99);
a
long
tradition of ancient
attempts
to determine the ROPD
(Festugire
1969;
Mansfeld 1994:
64,
n.
Ill)
was
guided by
what Poster calls "theoretical and
metaphysical
order" in
sharp
distinction to the "dramatic
chronology"
that
guides
Thrasyllus,
albeit to a limited extent
(Mansfeld
1994:
67-68).
But neither of
these two schools of
thought privileged "pedagogical
order" in the sense I
propose.
This can be illustrated with reference to Alcibiades
Major,
both
camps accept
it as
genuine (Snyder
2000:
97)
but those who
place
it first in the ROPDthe
camp
hostile to the First
Tetralogy
of
Thrasyllusdid
so for
theoretical/metaphysical
reasons,
not
pedagogical
ones. Proclus
(O'Neill
1965:
1-4),
for
example* says
nothing
about the fact that its childlike and natural
simplicityif
the teacher
reads
"Socrates,"
the student
scarcely
needs a
scriptmakes
Alcibiades
Major
the
ideal
place
to
begin guiding
the
neophyte.1
The first
principle
of the ROPD
proposed
here is that it is
guided by pedagogical
considerations: to
speak very
roughly,
the more difficult
dialogues
are to be read
only
after the
preparation
provided by
easier and earlier ones
(i.e.,
earlier with
respect
to the
ROPD).
This ROPD reconstruction
project
is therefore both old and new: it accom
plishes
an ancient
objective
with means not
ably employed
in
antiquity. Precisely
because most of those who
sought
the ROPD in the
past
were
guided by
a
Neo-Platonic
contempt
for the
merely
historical,
they ignored
the
pedagogical
advantages
of "dramatic
chronology,"
whereas a
cycle
of
dialogues culminating
in
Phaedo tells a
compelling stoiy
with a
happy ending
about a remarkable hero. As
for
Thrasyllus,
the limits of his
loyalty
to "dramatic
chronology"
can be illustrated
by
the fact that he failed to
interpolate Sophist
and Statesman between
Euthyphro
and
Apology
in his First
Tetralogy.
Had he done
so,
he would have had, no sound
pedagogical
reason for
confronting neophytes
with the difficult
Sophist
as their
second
dialogue.
In
short,
placing
the Phaedo last in the ROPD not
only provides
a
good ending
for the
story
of Socrates but also ensures that
complex dialogues
like
Theaetetus,
Sophist,
and Statesman are read near the end of it. And it is
certainly
Plato's concern for effective
pedagogy
that
explains
the
priority
of the
elementary
Alcibiades
Major.
It is
probably
no accident that a concern for
reconstructing
the ROPD would
disappear
as soon as the Alcibiades
Majorwas dropped
from the canon.2 Freed at last
1
Heidel 1896: 62:
"Furthermore,
in its character as a
primer
of Platonism in
regards
to ethics and
politics,
Alcibiades I contains a
greater
number of
distinctively
Platonic
thoughts
than can be found in
any
number of even the
greater single
works of Plato. In this
respect
the
dialogue may
be
pronounced
too Platonic."
Compare
Guthrie 1969: 470: "a
dialogue which,
whether or not Plato wrote
it,
was
apdy
described
by
Burnet as
'designed
as a sort of introduction to Socratic
philosophy
for
beginners'."
2
Conversely,
it is renewed interest in the Alcibiades
Major (Scott 2000;
Denyer
2001)
and the
other anathetized
dialogues (Pangle
1987)
that has
finally
made it
possible
to renew the ROPD
question. Cooper
and Hutchinson
(1997)
not
only
makes all
thirtyrfive dialogues widely
available in
English
but also contains the
following
observation
(x): "Thrasyllus'
order
appears
to be determined
by
20 PHOENIX
from the
metaphysical baggage
ofNeo-Platonism,
any pedagogical justification
for
regarding
Alcibiades
Major
as a wonderful
way
to introduce the student/reader to a
Platonic
dialogue immediately
confronts the modern
obj
ection that
it,
along
with a
considerable
(but
now
apparently shrinking)
number of
dialogues,
is not
by
Plato.
The
growing
interest in
Cleitophon
is a case in
point,3 especially
because it affords
an instance where
my
ROPD coincides with that of
Thrasyllus.
Considered
alone,
Cleitophon appears
to be
incomplete
and inauthentic. Considered as authentic but
viewed in
isolation,
it can be used to
promote
a radical alternative to Platonism
(Kremer 2004).
But it is of
great pedagogical importance
when considered as
an authentic introduction to
Republic
(cf.
Bowe
2004;
Souilh 1949:
179),
as
Thrasyllus
too must have
recognized.
The second
principle
of the ROPD
proposed
here is that none of the
thirty-five dialogues
transmitted
by Thrasyllus
are to
be considered inauthentic a
priori;
indeed,
a new criterion for
authenticity
is
being employed:
a
dialogue
is authentic when it is
snugly joinedby
dramatic,
pedagogical,
and/or
theoretical/metaphysical
considerationsbetween two other
dialogues,
the one that
precedes
and the one that follows it in the ROPD.
The third
principle
is that dramatic
considerationshaving
been detached
from various
preconceptions
about their
philosophical significance
(Griswold
2008:
205-207)are
. our best
guide
to the ROPD and therefore
trump
more
speculative principles
in cases of conflict: the difficult
Protagoras
thus
precedes
the
introductory
Alcibiades
Major.
It will be observed that
although
both are
present
in the house of
Callias,
Socrates never
speaks
to Alcibiades in
Protagoras
while the Alcibiades
Major represents
their first actual conversation (Ale.
1.103a4).4
In that
conversation,
the otherwise befuddled Alcibiades evades
(to
his
cost)
a
Socratic
trap by
means of a
sophisticated
trick
(Ale. l.lllal-3)
used
by Protagoras
(.Prot. 327e3-328al;
see
Denyer
2001:
122).
But dramatic connections between
dialogues
need not
always
be
chronological;
a much broader
conception
of
dramatic detail will be
employed
here. For
example,
the Menexenus takes
place
after the
Lysis
with
respect
to "dramatic
chronology";
Menexenus has
grown up
since his
schooldays
with
Lysis
(Nails
2002:
319).
But as section m will make
clear,
there are
pedagogical,
theoretical,
and dramatic considerations that
place
Lysis
after
Symposium, just
as there are
pedagogical,
theoretical, dramatic,
and
indeed
chronological
considerations that
place
Menexenus before it
(section iv).
In neither case is the "dramatic" connection
crudely chronological:
the
fact,
for
example,
that Socrates leaves
Agathon's
house for the
Lyceum (Symp.
223dl0)
and that the
Lysis
finds him en route thither
(Ly.
203al)
is
paradigmatic
of the
kind of dramatic clue that
guides my
reconstruction of the ROPD.
no
single
criterion but
by
several sometimes
conflicting ones,
though
his
arrangement may represent
some more or less unified idea about the order in which the
dialogues
should be read and
taught."
3Grote
1865;
Grube
1931;
Souilh
1949;
Orwin
1982;
Pangle
1987;
Slings
1999;
Rowe
2000;
Bailly 2003;
and Kremer 2004.
4
All references are to the text of Burnet
(1900-1907).
With a title
suggesting
a
beginning
and a dramatic
setting
that wakes the dawn
{Prot. 310a8;
cf. Phd.
118e7-8),
the
Protagoras
is both a
very
difficult
dialogue
and a
very
vivid one: it
brings
to life the historical context for even the dullest
student but would confuse even the
brightest
about a wide
variety
of
important
subjects
(Guthrie
1975:
235).
A fourth
principle
of the ROPD
proposed
here is
that Plato
employs "proleptic" composition:
he
begins by confusing
the student
in an
ultimately salutary
manner, i.e.,
about
things
that it is
pedagogically
useful
for the student to be confused about. To
give
the most
important example:
the
student who comes to
Republic
with
Protagoras
in mindwhere
piety may
be the
fifth virtue and virtue
may
have no
parts
(Prot. 349bl-3)will
be as
justly
critical
of the
justice
discovered in Book 4 as her search for an answer to
Cleitophon's
burning question
(Clit. 408d7-e2)
will make her
receptive
to the subterranean
justice only
discovered
by returning
to the Cave.
The fifth
principle
is the absolute
centrality
of
Republic
in the ROPD.5
-Although
less accessible to those who have not
recently completed
the series of
dialogues beginning
with
Protagoras
and
ending
with
Cleitophon (Rep.
520b6-7),
Republic
7 contains the essence of Platonism: Plato's
teaching
is his answer
to
Cleitophon's question (Rep.
520cl).
In accordance with the
principle
of
pedagogical priority,
Plato is understood here as first and foremost a
teacher,
a
teacher with a schoolthe
Academyas
well as a
teaching.
The
dialogues
are
intended to transmit that
teaching through
(1)
the dialectic
represented
in the
dialogues,
(2)
dialectic between students about the
dialogues,
and
(3)this
point
is crucial to
reconstructing
the ROPDthe
inter-dialogue
dialectic between the
dialogues
when read in the
proper
order. Most
importantly,
"(3)"
reveals the
centrality
of
(4)
the decisive
dialogue
between Plato and the reader in
Republic
7.
Understanding
Plato's
pedagogy
therefore
depends
on the
recognition
that there
are three distinct classes of Platonic
dialogue:
the
Republic,
the
dialogues
that
prepare
the
way
for the
Republic,
and the
dialogues
that follow it in the ROPD.
The basic
principle underlying
this classification will be illustrated here in
the context of
Symposium,
a
dialogue
that comes closer to
Republic
than
any
of
the other
dialogues
that
precede Republic
in
my
reconstruction of the ROPD. In
accordance with the
importance
of the visual revelation that is the
Idea,
these
dialogues
(Kahn [1996:
42 and
274]
justly
adds the later
Phaedo)
will here be
called
"visionary."
It will likewise be seen that the Plato who
emerges
from
the reconstructed ROPD will resemble what used to be called "a Platonist." He
is in
any
case a
philosopher,
an
idealist,
and a teacher: a teacher
who,
while
alive,
taught
others to
philosophize
and
whoespecially
when the
unity
of his
5
Cf. Annas 1999: 95: "If we
try
to
jettison
the
assumptions
that the
Republic
is a contribution to
political theory,
and that it is
obviously
the most
important
and central of the
dialogues,
the natural
culmination of a
development
from the Socratic
dialogues,
and if we
try
to restore it to its ancient
placeone dialogue among many
in which Plato
develops
an
argument
about the
sufficiency
of virtue
for
happinesswe
shall have done a
great
deal to restore balance and
proportion
to "our
study
of Plato's
thought."
22 PHOENIX
richly
diverse and dialectical curriculum6 is
recognizedcontinues
to do
just
that
through
his
writings.
At the heart of his
thought
is "the Idea of the Good"
and,
in its
light,
the true
philosopher's just
(and
therefore
voluntary;
see Cic.
Off.
1.28)
return to the Cave. He is not a
"post-Modern
Plato"
(Zuckert
1996:
48-56;
cf. Strauss 1946:
361),
his Socrates does not know
(Ap.
21d7)
that he
knows
nothing
(Strauss
1953: 32 and 1983:
42),
and his use of the
dialogue
form
does not
preclude
the fact that he has a
teaching
(Strauss
1987: 33 followed
by
Frede
1992).
Although
each
dialogue
is a beautiful work of
art,
the
principle
that
each
dialogue
must be understood without reference to
any
otherthe
principle
of hermeneutic isolationism
(e.g.,
Press 1993:
109-111)is
antithetical to the
project
undertaken here
(see
Ferrari 2003:
244).
It
may
be useful to
explicitly
identify
the view that Plato has a
visionary teaching
and that he
expressed
it in
his
dialogues
as a sixth
principle.
The seventh
(and final)
principle
is somewhat more difficult to elucidate.
To
begin
with,
it identifies
"testing"
as a crucial element of Platonic
pedagogy.
For reasons to be
explained
in section
ii,
I will use the
neologism
"basanistic,"
based on the Greek word for
"touchstone,"
as a technical term. There are three
points
that need to be made
right away
about "the basanistic element in Plato's
dialogues":
(1)
Along withproleptic
and
visionary
(with
which it forms a
triad),
the
basanistic element is best understood as one of three theoretical and
hypothetical
springboards (Rep.
511b6)
towards hermeneutic
clarity
rather than as a
rigid
and
exclusive technical term.
(2)
Although
there is a
meaningful
sense in which a
given dialogue
can
crudely
be called
proleptic, visionary,
or
basanistic,
it is better
to think of this triad as inter-related elements that can also be
deployed
in a
single
dialogue,
or even in a
single passage
(as
will be demonstrated in section
n). (3)
The basanistic element is like a
springboard
in another
sense,
the same sense in
which a
good
student
actually
learns from
taking
a well-constructed test. Plato
deploys
the basanistic element for a
triple purpose:
(a)
to ensure that the student
has
grasped
his
visionary teaching,
(b)
to cause that
teaching
to
leap
from the
text into the mind of the student
(Rep.
435al-2),
and
(c)
to
point
the student to
something
even
greater
than what the teacher has
already taught.7
6Cic. Or. 12
(translation mine):
"Of course I'm also aware that I often seem to be
saying original
things
when I'm
saying very
ancient ones
(albeit
having
been unheard
by most)
and I confess
myself
to stand out as an oratorif that's what I
am,
or in
any case,
whatever else it is that I am
[au/
etiam
quicumque sim]not
from the ministrations of the rhetoricians but from the
open spaces
of the
Academy.
For such is the curricula of
many-leveled
and
conflicting dialogues [curricula
multiplicium
variorumque
sermonum\
in which the tracks of Plato have been
principally impressed."
For
translating
sermones as
"dialogues,"
see Fantham 2004:
SO,
n. 2.
7
A crucial instance of the basanistic is Socrates' insistence at Phdr. 275d4-e5 on the mute
incapacity
of a written text to create dialectic with the student/reader
(compare Sayre
1995:
xvi):
readers of
Republic
7 who
recognize
themselves as the
"you"
Plato has addressed at
Rep.
520b5 know
this to be untrue. The
Tubingen
schoolfrom Kramer 1959: 393 to Reale 1990takes the Phaedrus
passage literally.
A reductio ad absurdum on this
approach
is Szlezk 1999: 46 where the
dialogues
become "a
witty game
which
gave
him
[it. Plato] great pleasure." Although
it owes
nothing
to the
The
foregoing
seven
principles,
hereafter to be cited
by
numbers alone
(e.g.,
"1"),
may
be
usefully simplified
as follows:
1.
Pedagogical
Effectiveness:
elementary dialogues precede complex
ones.
2.
New Criterion of
Authenticity:
each
dialogue snug
between two others.
3.
Primacy
of Dramatic
Connections;
often but not
always chronological.
4.
Proleptic Composition: confusing
students first in a
pedagogically
useful
way.
5.
Centrality
of
Republic, having
been
prepared
(4)
for the Good and
justice.
6.
Visionary Teaching:
Plato revealed
(5)
as teacher and "Platonist."
7.
"Basanistic"
Testing:
students must
reject
falsehoods on the basis of
6.
The
interplay
of
4, 6,
and
7
will now be illustrated in the context of
Republic
1
(5).
II. THE CITY OF GOOD MEN ONLY
Socrates introduces the
City
of Good Men
Only
(hereafter "CGMO")
in
response
to Glaucon's first
interruption {Rep.
347a7):
Plato
represents
his elder
brother as
failing
to
grasp
what Socrates meant
by
the
penalty
that
impels good
men to take
up
the burden of
political
office, i.e.,
to
go
back down into the Cave
as Cicero and Cicero's Demosthenes did.8 That
penalty
is,
of
course,
to be ruled
by
worse men
(Rep.
347c3-5).
For we
may
venture to
say
that,
if there should be a
city
of
good
men
only, immunity
from
office-holding
would be as
eagerly
contended for as office is
now,
and there it would be
made
plain
that in
very
truth the true ruler does not
naturally
seek his own
advantage
but
that of the
ruled;
so that
every
man of
understanding [rc

yiyvccjKcov]
would rather
choose to be benefited
by
another than to be bothered with
benefiting
him.
(Rep.
347d2-8;
Shorey)
The
political message
of
Republic
is that unless those
ruling
our cities would rather
be
philosophizing,
those cities will be
badly
ruled
(Rep.
520e4521a2). Moreover,
the
iv(or)y
tower
philosophers (Rep.
473d3-5)
who refuse to
participate
in
politics
(Rep.
592a5)
even
though
better
qualified
than those who are
presently doing
so
(Rep.
557e2-3)
are not
living
in accordance with the Platonic
paradigm (Rep.
592b23),
particularly
when their own
earthly city
is a
democracy teetering
on
the
edge
of
tyranny
and
tragedy.
For true
philosophers,
"not to rule" is doubtless
prized
because it leaves the
philosopher
free to consider that
thing
alone which
testimony
of Aristotle
(see
Cherniss
1945),
the ROPD is nevertheless
analogous
to "the unwritten
doctrines" of the
Tubingen
school;
the former could
easily
take the
place
of the latter in the
diagram
at Gaiser 1963: 6. Both
approaches
restore Platonism to Plato while
denying
that the
dialogues
constitute "a
journey
of
thought
with no end"
(Szlezk
1999:
116).
But in the case of the
ROPD,
Plato's
teaching
is to be
sought by
the student/reader within the
dialogues, Republic
in
particular
(compare Ep.
7.341c4-d2 with
Rep.
434e4-435a2) although
the moment of unwritten illumination
takes
place only
within the student.
8
On Demosthenes as Plato's
student,
see
Douglas
1966: 100: "as
consistendy
denied
by
modern
scholars as it is asserted
by
ancient sources....
"
24 PHOENIX
is
truly good
(i.e.,
the Idea of the
Good):
good
rulers,
on the other
hand,
must
attend
precisely
to the indefinite
plurality
of
things
that are
badly managed
in
order to
govern
well
{Rep.
520c36).
Despite being by
nature suited for
something
entirely
different, then,
only
true
philosophers
could
yet
become the kind of rulers
whose
unitary goal
is to see
things
well
managed
for the benefit of those
they
rule.
In
short,
only
a
philosopher, having
no interest in
making money, being
honored,
or
exercising power
is,
"in
reality,
the true ruler."
Precisely
because the CGMO
consists
only
of the
good,
none of them covets
money
or honor. The crucial
point,
however,
is that the
penalty
of
being
ruled
by
worse men does not exist in such a
city
as it does in ours. It
follows,
therefore
(claims
Socrates
provocatively),
that
no one would rule in the CGMO: no one would be
willing
to do so.
When Socrates
says: "every
one in the know would choose rather to be
benefited
by
someone else than be bothered with
benefiting
another"
(cf.
Xen.
Mem.
2.10.3),
he is
describing
a moral universe where no
parent
would take
care of an
infant,
no child would nurse their
dying parent,
and
certainly
no
independently wealthy genius
would take the time to teach students
young
or
slow-witted
enough
to
require
the
crystal clarity
of Alcibiades
Major.
It also
flatly
contradicts what Socrates himself has
just
said: "the true ruler has not
the nature to watch out for his own
advantage."
Platonic
pedagogy originally
revolved around the
possibility
that a freeborn Greek could be
brought
round
{Rep.
518c89)
to
recognize
that the self-interested
position
of
7t

yiyvcoaKcov
is a slavish
point
of view.9 In
any
context,
ancient or
modern,
denying
the most
important
of all ethical
truthsi.e.,
that altruism is
good
and selfishness bad
forces students to discover it for themselves
(cf.
Cic. Fin.
2.118).
The alternative
to
reading
this
passage
as basanistic is a slavish literalism in defense of an even
more illiberal selfishness. This
is, moreover,
only
the first of three times that
this basanistic affirmation of selfishness occurs in
Republic.10
But the basanistic
portion
of the CGMOwhere the
willingness
of a
good
man to rule is
explicitly
deniedis the
paradigmatic
case. To
begin with,
the contradictionbased on
9Thrasymachus (Rep. 344c5-6; Shorey)
claims that
"injustice
on a
sufficiently large
scale is a
stronger,
freer
[eX-euGspicoxepov],
and more masterful
thing
than
justice."
Socrates aims to reverse this
judgment
in accordance with noblesse
oblige
and he therefore
depends
on his audience's abhorrence
of
acting
the
part
of a slave. Callicles'
conception
of to
0U,07tp87ie (G. 485b7)
is indicated
by
comparing
485el and
486c3;
Socrates reverses this formula
beginning
at 518a2
(already implied
at
482d8).
The
process actually begins
at Ale. 1.134c4-6: wickedness is
00,07ip87i
while virtue is
8A.eu08pO7cp87i8;
Alcibiades is in a slavish
position (134cl0-ll)
from the start.
Compare
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 4.1
(1120a21-23):
"And of all virtuous
people
the liberal
[ol 8,8u0pioi]
are
perhaps
the most
beloved,
because
they
are beneficial
[d)(j),i|j.oi]
to
others;
and
they
are so in that
they give [v xfl aei]."
By
definition the liberal
(ol ,eu0pioi)
are not
slavish,
i.e.,
selfish. See also 1120al315 and 1120a2325.
10Rep.
347d6-8, 489b6-c3,
and 599b6-7. All involve the distinction between active and
passive
verb forms in the context of altruism and selfishness. In the
second,
not even the Book 1
penalty
impels
the
stargazing philosopher
to
struggle
for the helm
(this explains Rep.
498c9-dl).
In the
third,
Plato's Socrates would
only
be correct if there were no Plato's Socrates. See Altman 2009: 89-98.
the difference between active and
passive
verb formsis clearer in the
original
(347d4-8):
xqj
vxi
riSiv apxcov
o
7t(|>OK
x
aoxqj .ouji(|)pov
aKoneaGai XX x
x$ pxo
(j.svcp-
raaxs
7t
v
yiyvcnaKtov
xo
cb<|>eêa0ai |aM.ov
D-oixo orc' XXov
t
a^Xov
wijieXv Tipayâxa e'xeiv.
The true ruler
(ap%cov)
considers the
advantage
of the ruled
(xoj
.pxop.v<p)
when
ruling,
but
every
man of
understanding prefers
to be benefited
(ax|)sA,sta0ai)
rather than to benefit
(dx|>Xcov)
when
deciding
not to rule. The true ruler is
therefore
precisely
the
opposite
of the man of
understanding.
Unlike the true
ruler
(t<m
ovti
/.r|0ivo dp'/ojv),
the man of
understanding (ttcc

yiyvoocnccov)
is
guided by
his own
advantage
(to auxcp cu|i(j>pov).
On the other
hand,
it is
precisely
the nature
(tieûke)
of the true ruler not to be so
guided. Although
the
contradiction involved here is
scarcely
invisible,
the student who turns to
Republic
in the context of the ROPD is
particularly
well
prepared
to
interruptas
Glaucon
has
just
doneand
reject
the decision of the
knowing
man who would rather be
benefited than to benefit others.
In the
present
case,
it is
Gorgias
that "Plato the teacher"
(cf.
Stenzel
1928)
counts on the student
remembering;
indeed the
passage
is an
unforgettable
one. Socrates had
presented
an even more controversial variant of the ethical
abyss dividing
the active and
passive
verb forms in
Gorgias:
x iKEv
acrxiov
Eivai too 5iKiCT0ai
(i.e.,
"committing
an
injustice
is more
disgraceful
than
suffering
it,"
G.
482d8;
translation
mine).
Anyone
selfish
enough
to
uniformly
prefer o)(|>/a:a0ca
to
(cfiEcov (i.e.,
the man who is
guided exclusively by
to
auxo)
au(i(|)pov)
is most
unlikely
to consider to ciSikelv to be
aa/iov
than
iKEiaOm. But
strictly
as a matter of
logical argumentation,
the
argument
in
Gorgias
does not entail the
opposite
of what Socrates
says
about the CGMO.
The
relationship
between the two
active/passive pairs
is therefore
extremely
interesting: although
it is more difficult in
practice
to
undergo
to 8iKa0cu in
order to avoid the
greater
evil of to
SiKEv,
it is more difficult in
theory
to show
why
it is
acrxiov ("more shameful")
to
prefer oj<t>/.<T0ca
to
di)<j>Xcov.
In other
words,
there are
many generous people
who are
willing
to benefit others without
a return who would think twice about
suffering
an
injustice
rather than
avoiding
it
altogether by doing something
unethical to someone else. In
practice,
then,
the
willingness
to
undergo injustice
in
preference
to
performing
it is much less
common than
being willing
to benefit others. But in
theory,
it is another matter.
Socrates can
show,
as he does in
Gorgias,
that to ciikev is bad for the soul
(i.e.,
is not to auxw
ou|a(^pov)
but he
simply
cannot do this in the case of to
oj(|)E/.EK70ai:
it's
hardly contrary
to one's own
advantage
to be benefited. Nor can
he,
in
conformity
with the
censorship imposed upon
him
by
Plato's brothers
{Rep.
358b6-7 and
366e6),
invoke the Afterlife. In other words
(and
strictly
in the
context of the
ROPD),
it makes sense that the
active/passive paradox
in
Gorgias
is easier
(albeit only theoretically)
and therefore earlier than its
counterpart
in
26 PHOENIX
Republic
(1)
even if it is more
striking, paradoxical,
and far more difficult in
practice.
But
any
student who has
truly
been
persuaded by
Socrates in
Gorgias
will
object
to what she now hears in
Republic,
indeed the
story
of Socrates
from first to last concerns the benefactor
(o cbcfm/aov)
par
excellence who
willingly
endures
being wronged
(to SiKeaQcu),
likewise
par
excellence. Therefore the
intra-textuali.e.,
fictionalinterruption
of Glaucon at 347a6 deserves another
from the extra-textual student/reader who remembers
Gorgias: exactly
as Glaucon
interrupted just
a moment
before,
so now Plato is
challenging
(or
provoking)11
the student/reader to
reject
not so much the
logic
as the slavish self-interest of
rax

yiyvcocmov guided by
to
autrp au|i(|)pov.
And this would
simultaneously
constitute a
rejection
of the slavish literalism
appropriate
to a
merely
mute and
unresponsive
text.
It is now time to elucidate the CGMO as a microcosm of the
proleptic,
visionary,
and basanistic elements. Presented
proleptically
in section
i,
it is well to
recall that there are
proleptic dialogues
(or,
in the
present
case,
proleptic portions
of a
dialogue)
that are
designed
to confuse the reader in a
salutary way through
paradox concerning
matters about which it is
pedagogically necessary
for the
student to be confused if
they
are to be
prepared
for what is to come
(4).
It is
the first of three clauses
[I]
in the
single
sentence that describes the CGMO that
is
perfectly proleptic:
[I]
Were it to
happen
that a
city
of
good
men came into
being,
not to rule would be as
prized
as
ruling
is
today, [II]
and there it would become
crystal
clear
that,
in
reality,
the
true ruler has not the nature to watch out for his own
advantage
but that of the
ruled; [III]
for
every
one in the know would choose rather to be benefited
by
someone else than be
bothered with
benefiting
another.
[I]
is
paradoxical
on two levels:
(1)
it
explicitly
contradicts what most of us
think is
true,
guided
as we are
by
what is
"prized
...
today"
and
(2)
it is written
from the
philosopher's perspectiveunique
for
prizing
the chance not to rulea
perspective
that Plato will
eventually
want us to choose for ourselves but that he
here tells us
nothing
about,
not even that it is the
perspective
of a
philosopher.
Plato uses
prolepsis
(Kahn
1993:
138)
and
paradox
to awaken the student's
curiosity
about what the view will be like from the
mountaintops upon
which he
will
someday help
us to take our stand
(at
least for the moment before
returning
to the
Cave).
And it is
precisely
the view from the mountain that is
presented
in
section
[II]:
[II]
and there it would become
crystal
clear
[Kata(|)av] that,
in
reality,
the true ruler
[x(p
vtt
XrjGiv apxcov]
hasn't the nature to watch out for his own
advantage
but that of
the ruled ...
This clause is a microcosm of the
[II]
visionary dialogues (or,
in the case of
Republic,
the
vision-producing portions
of a
single dialogue). Everything
here
11
See Miller 1985 for a
path-breaking willingness
to see Plato
as.
directly engaging
the reader.
is
pure
Platonism
(6): here,
there is neither
paradox
nor test. The true ruler
possesses
the noble nature that is
inseparable
from noblesse
oblige.
Plato knows
(i.e.,
has
seen)
that the
possibility
of toj vti
/.r]0iv ap/cov ("the
true ruler
with
respect
to that which
truly
is")
has been realized in both Socrates and in
himself.
Just
as Socrates
quickened
this
conception
in Aristocles son of
Ariston,
so too will the re-made Plato now do the same for us:
i.e.,
the
purpose
of Plato
the teacher is to actualize this natural
potentiality
in his readers/students.
"[II]"
is,
in
short,
a
crystal
clear statement of altruism
and,
at the same
time,
the essence
of Platonic
justice
(5).
Plato does all this for our
benefit,
which is not to
say
that
it is not beneficial for him to do so as well. It has been well and
truly
said that
teaching
is the least
highly paid
but most
rewarding profession.
But it is not
only
the teacher who knows as a matter of fact that to be
cocj)e/.ojv
is
simultaneously
to
undergo
to
<b<|)eA,ict0cci precisely
when
being
the former is chosen in
perfect
contempt
for the latter.
But Plato the teacher was not content with
expressing
beautiful
thoughts
beautifully
and that is
why
he also
employs
the basanistic element
[III]:
[III]
for
every
one in the know
[r
...
yiyvcCTKWv]
would choose rather to be benefited
by
someone else than be bothered with
benefiting
another.
By contradicting
what he has
just
said in the
visionary
section,
Socrates here states
the
opposite
of the truth in order to test the student
(7).
In other
words,
Plato
challenges
the reader to raise the
questionsand,
on their
basis,
to make the
kinds of decisionthat lead to the truth. Plato the teacher was not
inclined,
at
least after he had
gained
some
teaching experience
(because
every
teacher learns
this lesson the hard
way),
to think that the student who
enthusiastically agreed
with him about
everything
had
really
or
necessarily gotten
the
point.
A student
could,
for
example, praise
the Socratic
position
in the
Gorgias
for its
logical
or
even rhetorical excellences but
revealby
a failure to
interrupt
hereher lack of
commitment to its
implications.
In
short,
as this third clause
shows,
Plato tests his
students. He can even use Socrates
(to
say nothing
of less attractive
interlocutors)
to trick the reader into
accepting something
that is false for a
pedagogical purpose
(Beversluis 2000).
In
fact,
not
only
is
testing
an essential
part
of Platonic
pedagogy
but
having
an
authority figure present
falsehoods, half-truths,
or
merely partial
truths is the
principal way
Plato tests his
students/readers, i.e.,
begets
in them a
firm
possession
of the truth. As a rule of
thumb,
it is
prudent
to think of the
dialogues
in which "one in the know" takes the leadmen like
Timaeus, Critias,
Parmenides,
the Eleatic
Stranger,
and his Athenian
counterpartas
basanistic.
But there is far more to be said about this basanistic element: the ideal test
teaches both student and teacher. In other
words,
there is a
danger
in
taking
the notion of "test" too
literally.
To be sure Plato wanted to test his
students,
but
hardly
as an end in itself.
By testing
as well as
teaching
them
through
the
basanistic
element,
he was able to create a
truly
dialectical
pedagogy:
his students
come to know themselves in battle with the errors to which Plato
deliberately
28 PHOENIX
exposes
them. When students
reject
the selfishness of "the man in the
know,"
they
not
only
are
proved worthy
but also confirm within themselves
(Frede
1992:
219)
the inborn
insights
of which Plato's maieutic
pedagogy
is intended to deliver
them.
All of these considerations are built into the word "basanistic." To
begin
with,
most Platonic words for "test" are derived from
paavo.12
E. R. Dodds
explains
the term in his
commentary
on the
Gorgias
(1959: 280):
it is "the touchstone
(Au(a
/aOo),
a kind of black
quartz jasper
... used for
assaying samples
of
gold
by rubbing
them
against
the touchstone and
comparing
the streaks
they
left on
it." The
passage
from which the use of "basanistic" is derived is
Gorgias
486d2-7,
partly
because what Socrates
says
to Callicles afterwards is
exactly
what I conceive
Plato to be
saying implicitly
to his students
throughout (G. 486e5-6;
translation
mine):
"I know well that should
you agree
with me
concerning
the
things
this soul
of mine
[r| sjifi v|/oxr|]
considers
right,
that these same
things
are
ipso facto
[i]8r|]

true.
If
my
soul were
wrought
of
gold, Callicles,
do
you
not think I should be
delighted
to find
one of those stones wherewith
they
test
[|3aaavoucriv] goldthe
best of themand
the best
one;
which I could
apply
to
it,
and it established that
my
soul had been well
nurtured,
I should be assured that I was in
good
condition and in need of no further test
[Pcxavou]? (G. 486d2-5;
tr. W. D.
Woodhead)
It is therefore not
only
a
question
of a teacher
proving
a student
worthy
but of
finding
and
together confirming
the truth
through
dialectic
(cf.
Zappen
2004:
47).
III. LYSIS AND SYMPOSIUM
Unlike Kahn's
"proleptic,"
the
neologism
"basanistic" is
meaningful exclusively
in the context of the
ROPD, i.e.,
outside the context of mainstream Plato
scholarship.13
Kahn's intellectual context is the
chronology
of
composition
characteristic of that
mainstream;
while Kahn never doubts that the
Lysis precedes
the
Symposium
in order of
composition,
his remarkable claim is that it
anticipates
the latter
"proleptically";
i.e.,
that Plato had the "solution" of the
Symposium
"in
12
Plato
repeatedly
uses both the verb
(3aaavico (thirty-four instances)
and the noun
paavo
throughout
the
corpus.
See in
particular Rep.
7.537b5-540a2 and G. 486d3-487e2.
13
In a
lively exchange,
Griswold
(1999
and
2000)
and Kahn
(2000)
have succeeded in
bringing
a
series of
questions
relevant to the ROPD into the
scholarly
mainstream.
Although
the
pedagogical
solution
proposed
here is not mooted in their debate
(but
see Kahn 1996:
48),
the ROPD
hypothesis
splits
the difference between Kahn
(with
his dual commitments to
proleptic composition
and
chronology
of
composition)
and Griswold
(with
his mixed commitments both to "fictive
chronology"
and hermeneutic
isolationism)
having
excluded the second member
of
each
pair.
See also Osborne 1994:
58: "It remains
unclear, therefore,
whether the reader would be
expected
to
approach
the
Lysis having
the
Symposium
in
mind,
or to
approach
the
Symposium having already
read the
Lysis''
The
simple
fact of her
having
raised this
question suggests
that she inclines to the solution
being proposed here,
although
the leaden
weight
of
"chronology
of
composition"
is revealed at
58,
n. 19.
mind" when he wrote the
Lysis
(Kahn
1996:
267).
In Kahn's sense of the
term,
I would
agree
that the
Lysis
is
"proleptic."14
But
"proleptic" acquires
a new sense
in the ROPD
context;
it is the
(prior) complement
to the
(posterior)
"basanistic."
Once the
meaning
of
"proleptic"
has been transformed in this
way,
the intersection
between the first two sections of this article and mainstream Plato studies can be
stated: with
respect
to
Symposium,
the
Lysis
is
basanistic,
not
proleptic.
Demonstrating
this claim does not
require re-inventing
the wheel: the close
connection between
Lysis
and
Symposium
has
long
been
recognized
(Wirth
1895:
216).
In other
words,
the controversial
aspect
of this claim is
implicit
in the
term "basanistic" and thus in the notion of the
ROPD;
the textual evidence that
supports
the claimthe close thematic and substantive
relationship
between the
two
dialoguesis widely
known and it is therefore
unnecessary
to
argue
for a
new
interpretation
of
Lysis.
It is rather a
question
of
situating
the best available
interpretations
of
Lysis
in the context of the ROPD
hypothesis.
Kahn's serviceable
reading
of the
dialogue
(Kahn
1996:
281-291)
is
certainly
a
good place
to
start,
and the evidence he cites for
reading
it as
proleptic fully supports my
claim that
it is
actually
basanistic.15 But there are two other more detailed
readings
of
Lysis
that deserve
attention,
each
being constitutedappropriately enough, given
the
pairing
of Menexenus and
Lysis
in
Lysisby
a
pair.
The first of these is the recent
study
of
Lysis by Terry
Penner and
Christopher
Rowe
(2005),
the second is a
pair
of articles
by
Francisco
J.
Gonzalez
(1995
and
2000a).
In "Plato's
Lysis:
An Enactment of
Philosophical Kinship,"
Gonzalez
(1995:
69)
makes a brilliant observation:
The
Lysis
has the further
problem
that it has
always
existed in the shadow of two other
works that seem to
provide
solutions to the
problems
it raises: Plato's
Symposium
and
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
Consequently interpretation
of the
Lysis
has
generally
revolved around
these,
borrowing
its
light
from them.
Gonzalez then
proceeds
to offer a fourfold classification of
previous interpretations
based on two
differentiae:
the
Lysis
either
(a)
contains or
(b)
fails to
provide
the
solution(s)
supplied by
either
(i)
Plato or
(ii)
Aristotle. The basanistic
reading
of
14Kahn
(2000: 190) suggests
that he is now
disowning
the term
("I
was
[rc. beginning
with Kahn
1996] increasingly
uncomfortable with the term
'proleptic'
...");
I am
happy
to
adopt
it.
Although
derived from Kahn
1981a, 1988,
and
1996,
the term
"proleptic"
will be used hereafter
only
in the
context of the ROPD.
15
We
agree
that
Lysis
is a
puzzle
and that
Symposium provides
its solution
(Kahn
1996:
266-267)
but
only
Kahn is concerned with
squaring
this
insight
with the
chronological priority
of
Lysis
(281);
this creates a tension in his broad
conception
of
Lysis. Compare
266
("no
reader who comes to
Lysis
without
knowledge
of the doctrine
expounded
in the
Symposium
could
understand")
with 267
("Plato
thus
presents
us in
Lysis]
with a series of
enigmatic
hints that form a kind of
puzzle
for
the uninitiated reader to
decipher,
but that become
completely intelligible");
the ROPD eliminates
the
problem. Parsing
the exact difference between Kahn's views and mine is a
tricky
business: in the
ROPD,
it is
Hippias Major
that is
proleptic
with
respect
to
Symposium (Hip. Maj.
286dl-2: xi sail
to
KaA,ov;)
in Kahn's sense while Kahn himself
rejects
the
Hippias Major
as inauthentic
(Kahn
1981a:
308,
n.
10;
see also Kahn 1996:
182).
30 PHOENIX
Lysis
accounts for the existence of all four of these
types: deliberately
created
by
Plato as a testa test administered to the
young
Aristode
along
with Plato's other
students/readersthe
Lysis
can
only
be solved on a Platonic basis
by realizing
that its
explicit
failure to resolve
problems actually points
the
way
back to the
solution
already
contained in the
Symposium. Although
this solution is
implicit
in the
Lysis,
Aristode
attempted
to solve its
puzzleas
Plato intended that his
student/reader shouldwithout
embracing
or
grasping
his teacher's solution. The
relationship
between Aristotle and
Lysis
will be revisited at the end of this
section;
for the
present,
it is sufficient to
point
out that Gonzalez situates himself in a
fifth
category
(1995: 70):
"So
long
as this
dialogue
is not read on its
own,
its coherence
will remain in
question." Despite
his almost
polemical
insistence in 1995 that
his
reading
is
independent
of
Symposium
(1995:
71 and
88-89),
Gonzalez
clearly
derives little from Aristode
(1995: 87,
n.
38). Moreover,
in his "Socrates on
Loving
One's Own: A Traditional
Conception
of <1)1 AI A
Radically
Transformed"
(2000a),
Gonzalez
drops
his
polemical
stance and bases his
compelling reading
of
Lysis
on
conceptions
that
originate
in
Symposium
(2000a: 394).
Penner and Rowe
(2005: 300-307)
explicitly
address the
relationship
between
Lysis
and
Symposium
and their conclusion is that the two
dialogues
are consistent
(303).
If Gonzalez is more influenced
by
the
Symposium
than he
admits,
Penner and Rowe solve the
Lysis
on far more Aristotelian lines than Gonzalez
does
(260-279).
But such a characterization is unfair to their brilliant and
subtle
reading:
it steers an
ingeniousif potentially self-contradictory16course
between Plato and Aristotle that
preserves
the best of both. This is not the
place
to review this remarkable
book,
an amiable
product
of a
philosophical
dialogue
between friends about
friendship;17
but it is
noteworthy
that Penner
and Rowe discover the
key
that unlocks their
synthetic
solution to the
Lysis
in
the
Euthydemus
(264-267, 268,
and
276).
Set in the
Lyceum
(Euthd. 271al)
the destination Socrates does not reach in
Lysis
(Planeaux 2001)it
follows
Symposium
and
Lysis
in
my
ROPD. To
summarize,
Penner and Rowe
(2005: 303)
provide
an ultra-modern and
post-Platonic
solution to the
Lysis
that nevertheless
reveals
something amazing
about Platonic
pedagogythe strictly philosophical
continuity
between
Symposium
and
Lysis
that
emerges
when
guided retrospectively
by Euthydemuswithout any regard
for the details of dramatic
presentation:
the
key
idea in the
Symposium,
of eras as desire for
"procreation
in the beautiful"
(206c ff.),
is in essence a colorful elaboration of Socrates' conclusion about the
genuine
lover in
Lysis
222a6-7,
albeit a
brilliantbrilliantly
colouredand
suggestive
elaboration. That
is,
it
adds
nothing
of
philosophical
substance.
16Penner and Rowe 2005: 267
(emphasis
in
original):
"Let us
try
to offer an
explanation
of the
idea of
being good
in
itself
as a means to
happiness
17
Compare
the more dialectical but less amiable
relationship
between Hans von Arnim and Max
Pohlenz described in Gonzalez 1995:
81,
n. 27 and
83,
n. 29. See von Arnim 1914: 59 for an
anticipation
of Kahn's
"proleptic"
that
emerges
in
dialogue
with Pohlenz.
Naturally
Penner and Rowe have no reason to ask themselves whether a student
could discover the essence of "the
genuine
lover" in
Lysis
without
having
read
Symposium.
The more
intriguing implications
of the basanistic element in Platothat it
not
only challenges
the student to
apply
an earlier solution but leads her farther
as a result of
doing
sois
implicit
in the claim made
by
Gonzalez
(1995: 71)
that
"Lysis goes beyond" Symposium
(also
Geier 2002:
66).
Although by
no means
entirely
uncomfortable with the
judgment
of Penner and Rowe that Gonzalez
reverses
here,
the latter seems closer to the truth
(Gonzalez
1995:
89):
The
important point
is that the
Lysis,
in
pursuing
the relation between love and what is
oIkeov,
discloses
something
about love that we cannot learn from
reading
the
Symposium.
But Gonzalez can
only bring
his reader to a
place
where this sentence is
intelligible
in the context of Diotima's crucial
description
of to o'ikhiov at
Symposium
205e5206al,
a
passage
he has
just quoted
(1995: 88,
n.
40)
before
adding
(88-89):
The
difference, however,
is that while this
suggestion
is not at all
pursued
in the
Symposium,
it is the main theme of the
Lysis.
This observation does not commit me to the view that
the
Lysis
was written after the
Symposium.
Gonzalez is
right.
But with no alternative
ordering principle
to which he can
turn,
he is forced to add this second sentence. With so much excellent work
done
by
others on
Lysis,
there has been no need to offer a new
reading
of the
dialogue
but
only
to
propose
that the
readings
of those who have elucidated
its
philosophical
content be considered in a
pedagogical
context
by raising
the
question:
"What role does the
Lysis play
in Plato's
pedagogy?"
The broad answer
to this
question
is embodied in the ROPD and more
specifically
in its basanistic
element. A few
pedagogical
details are worth
mentioning:
the student/reader is
prompted
to recall Diotima's
psxaû (the
Leitmotiv and
pyr\
of her
discourse;
Symp.
201el0-202a3)
at
Ly.
216d3-7,
although
Plato
basanistically
withholds the
verbal cue
pctaqij
until
220d6;
this in turn
accomplishes
the return of
philosophy
at
Ly.
218a-b6
having
been introduced to the student/reader at
Symp.
204al-4.
The
7tpcoxov (fuz-ov {Ly.
219dl)
introduces the student/reader to the notion of
infinite
regress,
recalls the Beautiful of
Symposium,
and
points
forward to the
Good
(Kahn
1996:
267);
its nature would be the central
topic
of discussion in
any academy worthy
of its name. In short: the Platonic solution to the
Lysis
requires applying Symp.
205e5-206al
(6)
to
Ly.
221e7222a3
(7).
The ideal
examination
question
for the basanistic
Lysis
would be:
"Why
is
Lysis
(unlike
Menexenus)
silent at 222a4?"
(Geier
2002:
136-137).
I would
suggest
that the
silence of
Lysislike Lysis
himself
{Ly.
213d8)is
philosophical
in Plato's sense
of the term while the
Xuoi
of the
Lysis
is the third
component
of
any
true
friendship
(see
Hoerber 1959:
18-19):
the un-embodied Beautiful revealed
by
Diotima
{Symp.
211a5-b5).
32 PHOENIX
It is
revealing
that Aristotle introduces the
meaning
of the word
.6cn
employed
above: "as a technical
term,
a. solution of a
difficulty" (LSJ II.4). Plato,
on the other
hand,
uses
italong
with
"separation" (x&ipiapoc,
Phd.
67d4)in
the service of
precisely
the dualistic
metaphysics
that Aristotle
rejected.
It is
usually
put
that
way:
"Aristotle
rejected
the
separable
Forms." From Plato's
perspective,
however,
it would be stated otherwise: "Aristode never was able to
grasp
the
Idea"
(cf.
Chang
2002).
Given the tremendous
impact Lysis
had on Aristotle's
conception
of
friendship,18
itself the
culminating topic
of his Nicomachean
Ethics,
there is
something
to be said for the view that Aristode's failure
(on
Plato's
terms, that
is)
to
pass
the test of
Lysis
as a
neophyte
had a decisive
impact
on
his
subsequent philosophical development. Ingenious attempts
have been made
to absolve Aristotle of
equivocation
on the word oivcsov at Nicomachean Ethics
9.9;19
a Platonist is
spared
this
joyless
task. But Aristotle's heroic
struggle
with the
Lysisregardless
of its successindicates that Plato intended the student/reader
to
struggle
with it and that he created it in the belief that it could
only
be solved
by
one who followed Diotima's hint that the essence of to oIkov would more
nearly
resemble what her student Socrates would later call "the Idea of the Good"
than it would the self s alter
ego,
so
vividly
described in the
speech
of
Aristophanes
the comedian
(cf.
Sheffield 2006:
110-111).
IV. MENEXENUS AND THE TRAGEDY OF SYMPOSIUM
The last words of the
Symposium20
(a)
establish its dramatic connection to the
first words of
Lysis,
(b)
offer the reader/student the most
important
clue to its
interpretation,
i.e.,
that
Symposium
itself
proves
Plato's Socrates
right
(and
then
some)
by being
at once
comedy
and
tragedy,
and
(c)
indicate
whyi.e.,
in order
to
bring
its
tragedy
to
lightMenexenus
is the
necessary
and
perfect teaching
tool
(4)
for
preparing
the student/reader to
interpret Symposium correctly.
Plato could
not have known that Athenaeus
{217a)
would
eventually
record the
year
(416
b.c.)
that
Agathon
won the
prize
for
Tragic
Drama. But
any
reader of
Thucydides
could deduce from the drunken
entry
of Alcibiades
(cf.
Thuc.
6.28.1)
that the
cjuvouGia
(Symp.
172a7)
takes
place before
the Great
Fleet,
under the influence of
18
Price 1989: 1: "In his two
surviving
treatments
[jc. concerning friendship],
in the Nkomachean
and Eudemian
Ethics,
Aristotle
effectively
takes the
Lysis
as his
starting point;
with no other Platonic
dialogue
does he show such a
detailed,
yet implicit, familiarity."
19
Kahn
1981b;
Price 1989:
122-123;
Annas 1977:
550-551;
Pakaluk 1998: 205-208 and 2005:
283-285;
and Penner and Rowe 2005: 319.
20
Symp.
22362-12
(tr.
M.
Joyce):
"Socrates was
forcing
them
[jc.
Agathon
and
Aristophanes]
to
admit that the same man
might
be
capable
of
writing
both
comedy
and
tragedythat
the
tragic poet
might
be a comedian as well. But as he clinched the
argument,
which the other two were
scarcely
in
a state to
follow, they began
to
nod,
and first
Aristophanes
fell off to
sleep
and then
Agathon,
as
day
was
breaking. Whereupon
Socrates tucked them
up comfortably
and went
away, followed,
of
course,
by
Aristodemus. And after
calling
at the
Lyceum
for a
bath,
he
spent
the rest of the
day
as
usual,
and
then,
toward
evening,
made his
way
home to rest."
Alcibiadeshe with
whom,
of
course,
the ROPD
begins
(Prot. 309al-2)sailed
to
Sicily
(415 b.c.)
and
after, perhaps
it should be
added,
the Battle of Mantinaea
(418 b.c.).
Readers of
Xenophon's
continuation of
Thucydides
(see
Hell.
5.2.5)
would have some reason to
suspect
Plato's
Aristophanes
of anachronism in the
case of Mantinaea
(Symp.
193a2-3;
cf. Dover
1965)
but
probably only
if
they
had
also read/heard Menexenus. And that is
precisely
the
point:
aside from Plato's
contemporaries, only
readers of
Xenophon's
Hellenica know that Socrates had
been dead for
many years
when Plato's Socrates enacts
Aspasia referring
to the
King's
Peace
{Hell. 5.1.31)
in Menexenus
(245c2-6).
The
important point
here
is that without
understanding
the
War, i.e.,
the
dialogue's
historical
context,
the
comic element of
Symposium
dominates,
while
understanding
its
tragic
element
depends
on
Thucydides.
But
Symposium delights
even without
knowledge
of
Thucydides,
while Menexenus without
Thucydides
is
unintelligible
and
probably
unthinkable
(cf.
Dionysius
of
Halicarnassus,
Demosthenes
23).
And
appreciating
the funniest
joke
in Menexenus
depends
on
having
read
Xenophon's
Hellenica as
well.21
To
begin
with,
Socrates refers to the most famous
(and
hopeful) passage
in
Thucydides
at Menexenus 236b5: the Funeral Oration of Pericles
(Thuc. 2.3546).
But in the context of
Symposium,
it is what Socrates'
Aspasia says
about
Sicily
at
242e6-243a3 that is more
important:
she endorses
precisely
the
pretext
(Thuc.
6.8.2)explicitly
unmasked as such both
by Thucydides
himself
(Thuc. 6.6.1)
and his Hermocrates
(6.77.1)that
Alcibiades used
(Thuc. 6.18.1-2)
to
persuade
the flower of Athens to race
(Thuc. 6.32.2)
towards their
tragic
end
(413 b.c.)
in the Great Harbor of
Syracuse
(Thuc. 7.71;
cf.
Finley
1938:
61-63).
In
fact,
Aspasia's speech
is as interwoven with
Thucydides
(Bruell
1999:
201-209)
as it is
with lies and
pretexts;
the anachronism
involving
the
King's
Peace of
Xenophon
(Cawkwell 1981;
cf. Badian 1987:
27)
is
only
the funniest of these.
Naturally
there are
many things
in
Symposium
that are
infinitely
funnier. But before
being
allowed to attend a
performance
of
Symposium
(see
Ryle
1966:
23-24),
the student
was tested
by
Menexenus. In other
words,
I
propose
that a
proven knowledge
of
the facts
of Athenian
history
as recorded
by Xenophon
and
Thucydidesto
be
demonstrated
by pointing
out the deliberate errors Plato makes in Menexenus
was a
prerequisite
for
seeing/hearing/reading
the
Symposium, something
even the
dullest students
badly
wanted to do
(Aulus Gellius,
Nodes Atticae
1.9.9;
see
Snyder
2000: 111-113 and
95).
There is an understandable
tendency among university professors
to
imagine
Plato as a
university professor writing
for his
peers;
the Plato of the ROPD
is,
by
contrast,
a teacher of the
youth.
But the
question
of what other authors
21
Although
this is not the time to
argue
the
case, (1)
the
importance
of
Xenophon
for
interpreting
Menexenus, (2)
the fact that
Xenophon
also wrote a
Symposium
(see
Thesleff 1978 and
Danzig
2005),
and
(3)
the remarkable resemblance between
Lysis
and Mem.
2.6,
all
point
to the same conclusion.
Will
anyone deny
that Plato's masterful Meno becomes a far
greater dialogue
for one who has read the
description
of Meno
(An. 2.6.21-8)
in
Xenophon's
Anabasis}
34 PHOENIX
Plato assumes his readers will have read
clearly requires independent study;
some
reasons for
including Xenophon
and
Thucydides among
these have now been
sketched. There are easier
examples
(Homer
and
Hesiod)
and more difficult ones:
without Andocides
(On
the
Mysteries,
35),
for
instance,
one would not know that
Eryximachus
was
implicated
in the matter of the Herms
(Nails
2006:
101).
In
short,
serious students of Plato need to ask what kind of readers he
anticipated
having
and thus what he
expected
those readers to know. It is as mistaken to
doubt that Plato considered his
writings
to be a
KTrj|i
alsi
(Thuc. 1.22.4)
as it is to assume that he believed
every literary
work he knew would share this
distinction. It
may
be useful to consider four
categories
of authors from Plato's
perspective: (1)
the ancient
writers,
like
Homer,
whose
immortality
he
clearly
anticipated, (2)
contemporary
writers who would survive
along
with
him, (3)
those writersboth ancient and currentwhom he set about to immortalize
by
making
them
prerequisite
to his own
work,
and
(4)
those who would either not
survive
(77. 22cl-3)
or do so in
fragments
(Ion
534d4-7).
Whether he
regarded
Thucydides
as
belonging
to the second or third
category may
be
debatable;
that
he both
anticipated
and counted on
Thucydides' immortality
is not.
In her The
People of
Plato: A
Prosopography of
Plato and Other
Socratics,
Debra
Nails
(2002)
has created a landmark in Plato studies. Not
surprisinglygiven
her intimate
knowledge
of the historical contextshe has also written the best
piece
on the
tragic
element of
Symposium
(Nails 2006).
She shows the influence
of three events on the
dialogue:
the
profanation
of the
Mysteries,
the mutilation
of the
Herms,
and the execution of Socrates. Possessed of so much
knowledge
herself,
she does not
stop
to wonder what Plato could
reasonably expect
his
readers to know. This
probably explains why
she fails to
emphasize
the most
obvious
tragic
element in the
dialogue
(Nails
2006:
101,
n.
63):
that Athens is
poised
on the
precipice
of the Sicilian
Expedition (Salman
1991:
215219).
It is
also worth
noting
that Nails not
only
makes a "dramatic
chronology"
of Plato's
dialogues possible
but that she is
clearly
interested in
arranging,
and
perhaps
reading/teaching
them in that order
(Nails
2002:
307-330;
cf. Press
2007).
To
the extent that shein
support
of Charles L. Griswold
Jr. (1999:
387-390
and 2000:
196-197)is
contributing
to
loosening
the
grip
of the
chronology
of
composition,
she does
well;
to the extent that she
may simply replace
one form
of modern over-concern with historical
development
with an
equally
unhistorical
form of
it,
she misses the Harbor for the Herms
(but
see
Ly.
206dl).
This is not to
say
that Plato was unaware of
chronology:
it is
clearly
one
of several themesin addition to the War and its historiansthat connect
Menexenus and
Symposium
(3).
Not
only
does
Aristophanes
echo
Aspasia's
anachronism but the
Symposium
as a whole
begins
with an anachronism detected
and corrected
(Symp.
172cl-2).
But there are
many
other connections that seem
more characteristic: the
provenance
of both
dialogues
is
problematic (Menex.
249el and
Halperin 1992),
both feature a wise woman
(Halperin 1990;
Salkever
1993:
140-141),
both women elucidate their theme with a
myth
of
origins
(Menex.
237el-238b6 and
Symp.
203b2-d8),
and both
dialogues
are concerned
with
rhetoricremarkably gorgeous
at times
{Menex. 240d6-7,
247a2-4 and
Symp.
197d5-e5, 211bl2)as
revealed in
reported speeches,
a circumstance
that also
joins
both with
Thucydides
in
yet
another and
remarkably
subtle
way
(Monoson
1998:
492).
Andrea Wilson
Nightingale
has identified a theme that
binds
together
all three
dialogues
(Menexenus,
Symposium,
and
Lysis):
the
dangers
of encomiastic rhetoric.22 Unlike Diotima and
Socrates,
who humble their
respective
auditors in order to
improve
them,
Aspasia
and
Hippothales praise
theirs in a
damaging way (Nightingale
1993:
115).
Of all the
connections,
the
most
significant
is that both
Aspasia
and Diotima are brilliant women
(Halperin
1990:122-124)
from whom Socrates is man
enough
to learn
(Phaenarete
prepares
for the triad at Ale 1.
131e4;
cf. Tht.
149al-4).
The fact that
Aspasia's
discourse
proves
unreliable could
easily
lead the reader
astray
(4)
about the
priceless
value
of Diotima's
(6);
the
Lysis
tests whether this
trap
has been avoided
(7).
It bears
repeating
that basanistic and
proleptic
must not be hardened into fixed
and exclusive
categories, especially
when
applied
to entire
dialogues. Although
Menexenus
proleptically prepares
the reader for
Symposium,
it is also basanistic:
every step
of
Aspasia's speech
tests the student/reader's
knowledge
of Athenian
history.
Basanistic with
respect
to
Symposium, Lysis
is
proleptic
with
respect
to
Republic.
The essential
point
to
grasp
is that Plato has both of these elements in
his
pedagogical
toolbox. But with
respect
to the ROPD as a
whole,
the basanistic
significance
of Menexenus can
hardly
be
overemphasized:
it is the
first dialogue
where the student is
challenged
to
reject
most
everything
its
principal speaker
has to
say.
These skills will be
put
to use in
Symposium
(cf.
Salman 1991:
224-225)
but will
become of central
importance
when the student/reader meets
Timaeus, Critias,
Parmenides,
the
Eleatic,
and the Athenian
Strangers.
At the start of his
career,
Kahn
(1963: 220)
laid down four
things
an
adequate
interpretation
of Menexenus must
explain: why
did Plato
(1)
attribute the
speech
to
Aspasia,
(2)
include the
glaring
anachronism, (3)
systematically
distort Athenian
history,
and
(4)
write a funeral oration in the first
place?
The relation between
Menexenus and
Symposium
in the ROPD has now
provided
answers to these
questions.
But the
dialogue
with
Thucydides
that
begins
in Menexenus continues
in
Symposium
not
only
because the shadow of
Syracuse
(cf.
Halperin
2005:
56)
hangs
over the festivities at
Agathon's
but because Pericles called
upon
the citizens
of Athens to become lovers of its
power
in the Funeral Oration
(Thuc. 2.43.1)
and
Thucydides reports
that the
passion
Alcibiades
ignited
in the Athenians for
Sicily
was erotic
(Thuc. 6.45.5).23
There is a sense in which
Thucydides
is
present
at the
Symposium
and delivers his own oration about Love. To
put
it another
way,
22
See the
opening
sentence of
Nightingale
1993: 112: "Plato
targets
the encomiastic
genre
in three
separate dialogues:
the
Lysis,
the
Menexenus,
and the
Symposium
23
Compare
the
relationship
between
rj Xi (which
is both
rj
'
8<j>e7iofivr|
and
rj
8
xrjv enopiav
xfj t6xt|s u7iOTi0saa)
and
epco
rii mvxi
(which, although
it follows in order of
presentation,
is both
nv r|yo6fievoc;
and
fiv tt)v 7tiPouA,T)v K^povucov)
with what Diotima
says
of Penia
36 PHOENIX
Aspasia's
Funeral Oration stands
approximately halfway
between the Funeral
Oration of Pericles and the Sicilian
Speech
of Alcibiades
inThucydides
(6.16-18)
and it is these
speeches
that must
ring
in the ears of the auditor who would
weep
during
a
performance
of
Symposium.
Kahn
(1963: 220)
adds a fifth criterion that has
nothing
to do with Plato
per
se: he
requires any interpretation
to
explain
the fact recorded
by
Cicero
(Or. 151)
that the Athenians of his
day
listened to a
public
recitation24 of the Menexenus
each
year.
Kahn intends this criterion to short-circuit the
attempt
to
present
the
dialogue
as "a
playful joke"
or a
"parody
or satire of
contemporary
rhetoric."
Although
the
dialogue
is
something
more than
these,
it is also
these;
Lucinda
Coventry
(1989)
is a
particularly
reliable
guide.
Kahn's own
explanation
(1963:
226-230)
is
possible
but there is a
simpler
one that furnishes its foundation:
Athens was
great
and Plato had loved her. The fact that he
expresses
this love
more
sincerely
in
Symposium
than in Menexenus cannot
change
the fact that it is
also a far more cumbersome vehicle for
expressing
that love on an annual basis
in front of a crowd. If Athens were not
great,
there would be no
tragedy
in
Symposium:
her self-deluded
epco
would have
brought upon
her
precisely
the
retribution she deserved. It is seldom remarked or
pondered
that Plato's
dialogues
preserve
a vivid
memory
of Athens in the
hey-day
of her
democracy.
It is also
seldom
pondered
or remarked that
Plato,
after
abandoning
the ne
plus
ultra in
aristocratic
names,
became an
unpaid
teacher and recreated
just
outside of Athens
a
remarkably enduring
"school of Hellas" after the Great War
(see
Cornford 1967:
4243)
had
destroyed
its Periclean
exemplar.
There is
considerably
more civic
pride
in Plato the Athenian than Plato lets on
(Kahn
1963:
224).
Protagoras
is intended to initiate the reader/student/hearer into that beautiful
bygone
world of
power,
wealth, wit,
ambling professors, eager
students,
absolute
confidence, refinement,
and
neglected flute-girls
(Prot. 347d4-5),
as well as
prepare
them for another Beautiful that
gradually emerges,
in the
dialogues
that
follow,
at once
from,
in accordance
with,
and in
opposition
to,
the
worldly beauty
that was "famous Athens." The
perpetual
dualities of the
Symposium
(Ziolkowski
1999;
cf. Hoerber
1959)
bring
these two beauties
together
at the moment of
crisis and at the
place
of
Kpcn (mixture):
the
great party
where Diotima the
mantic Mantinaean
(through Socrates,
Apollodorus, Aristodemus,
and
Plato)25
(203b7)
and Poros
(203d4)
in
Symposium,
on which see
Halperin
1990: 148. Valuable work has been
done on the
importance
of
pco
in
Thucydides;
see
Ehrenberg
1947:
50-52;
Bruell 1974:
17;
Forde
1986:
439-440;
Monoson 1994:
254,
n.
8;
and Wohl 2002: 190-194.
24Ion,
whose hero's
profession
is to charm the audience
(compare
Menex. 235b8-c5 and Ion
535d8-e3)
with a
public
recitation of Homer from whom he claims to have learned how to be a
general
because he knows what it befits a
general
to
say (Ion 540d5),
precedes
Menexenus in the
reconstructed ROPD.
25
Amidst so
many publications
on
Symposium,
the work of David M.
Halperin (1985,1986,1990,
1992,
and
2005)
stands
outalong
with The
People of
Platoas a
signal
achievement for
contemporary
Plato studies in the United
States;
an
equally
brilliant article
by
Charles Salman
(1991)
deserves wider
revealed the
heavenly
Beautiful
just
before Alcibiades the chameleon
(Plut.
Ale.
23.4)seemingly
hell-bent on
destroying
its
earthly embodiment,
or rather the
social and historical context from which its beholders had
emergedtold
the
story
of Socrates at Potidaea
(Symp.
220c3-d5).
From a
philosophical standpoint,
it is Diotima's
Beauty
that is the essence
of
Symposium
and Plato the teacher will
duly
ensure that the student/reader has
assimilated this essence in
Lysis.
The
soaring
soul that
escapes
into
eternity
in
Phaedoafter
impregnating
us all with the Beautiful it
engendered
(Morrison
1964:
53)
while on earththis is the last act of a divine
comedy
conceived in
Symposium.
It is therefore
tempting
to
imagine
Socrates entranced at
Potidaea,
rapt
to the
sight
of
heavenly Beauty.
F. M. Cornford
(1971: 128)
indicates on
metaphysical grounds why
this is not
likely:
the Idea is
perceived
im
Augenblick.
It
accompanies
its admirers wherever
they go.
It is
only
the auditor of
Thucydidesthe
student who has
already passed
the
test of Menexenuswho knows what Socrates was
actually doing
in Potidaea and
thus will
experience Symposium
as the
tragedy
it is. As one of three thousand
Athenian
hoplites
sent there to crush a revolt
(Thuc. 1.61),
Socrates arrives in
Potidaea
just
before the Great War broke out: indeed the
Expeditionary
Force
of which he is a
spear-carrying
member
(Nails
2002:
264-265)
becomes the
torch that will set all Hellas ablaze
(Thuc. 1.5667).
Narrated
by
Alcibiades,
charming
assassin of Athenian
greatness,
the
story
of Socrates'
all-night vigil
is,
like
Symposium
itself,
susceptible
of a comic
reading: contemplation
of the
eternal Idea remains a true
delight.
On the other
hand,
the
historical, dramatic,
and
metaphysical
context
suggests
that it was not
Being
but
Becoming
(Shanske
2007:
119-153)
that the
stationary
Socrates
(Geier
2002: 19-20 and
63-66)
contemplated throughout
that fateful northern
night:
he was
imagining
the
sinuous
alternatives,
both rational and
senseless,
of a movement
unfolding
in
time that
Thucydides
also realized
right
from the start would become
something
massive
(Thuc. 1.1.1).
After
many
a terrible
year,
the
conflagration
will
destroy
the
power
of the violet-crowned
city
whose lovers Pericles had exhorted its citizens
to
be,
eventually leaving
them
only
Plato's
Aspasia
as ironic consolation for the
loss of a
truly glorious past.
In
retrospect,
it will be the moment
just
before the
departure
for
Sicily
(cf.
Thg.
129c8d2)historical
setting
for the intellectual
triumph
recorded in Plato's
Symposiumthat
marks the
turning point
on this
fatal
path
to civic
calamity. Tragedy
and
comedy
are
fully
mixed in "the last of the
wine"
(Renault 1956)
only
where Plato meets
Thucydides.
We owe it to those
who suffered
unspeakably
in the
quarries
of
Syracuse
(Thuc. 7.87)
to
acknowledge
attention. It would also be
cowardly
not to
acknowledge
here
my
considerable debts to Renault
(1956),
Hamilton
(1930: 204-226),
and Cornford
(1967: 42-43).
In the context of the
latter,
consider Annas
1999: 95
(cf. above, 21,
n.
5):
"It is
easy
to remain unaware of the extent to which our attitude to it
[sc.
Republic],
as a
political
work,
and as the obvious
centerpiece
of Plato's
thought,
derives from Victorian
traditions, particularly
that of
Jowett."
Some eras are
evidently
more
receptive
to Plato's
teaching
than
others.
38 PHOENIX
how much both historian and
philosopherto say nothing
of Socrates
(Thg.
128d3-5 and
Joyal
1994:
26-27, 29)loved
the men and
boys
who so
skillfully
and
senselessly
"raced with one another as far as
Aegina"
(Thuc. 6.32; Jowett).
V. THE READING ORDER
Unlike
Becoming,
the Idea is
eternally
what it is and never
changes
over time:
its
contemplation requires
no
stationary
Socrates. Neither did Plato ever abandon
it. It
is, moreover,
difficult to believe that
anyone
who
actually
embraces it
could think that he did.
Why
would he? Where he
appears
to be
doing
soin
Parmenides,
for
example
(Prm. 130el-e4;
cf.
Festugire
1969:
297)he
is
testing
his readers/students to see if
they
have. And
beginning
with
Aristotle,
so
many
have done so that Plato's detachment from Platonism has become an article of
skeptical
faith. This is the
injustice
that
restoring
the ROPD aims to redress: it
reclaims Platonism for Plato
by allowing
"the
unity
of Plato's
thought"without
excising
its
deliberately
un-Platonic moments
(Shorey
1903:
408)to
emerge
within a dialectical but
ultimately
harmonious
pedagogical program
(cf.
Lamm
2000:
225).
To be sure this Platonism will be unlike earlier
versions;
each
age
must leave its own mark on the immortal
dialogues
of Plato. But an
overriding
concern for
"chronology
of
composition" nearly accomplished something entirely
unacceptable:
it remade the
philosopher
of timeless
Being
into a mere
process
of
Becoming. Beginning
in the nineteenth
century,
Plato evolves', he
seeks,
discovers
and then
outgrows
the idealism of his "middle
dialogues."
It is time to realize that
the nineteenth
century,
in accordance with its own
Zeitgeist
(in
a double sense
of that
term)
was
predisposed
to look at
everything
sub
specie temporis.
Whatever
gains
were made in other fields of
study,
the essence of Platofor whom
Becoming
was
unintelligible
and the better
(i.e.,
Progress) meaningless
without
the Goodcould
only
become obscured
thereby.
Meanwhile a
twentieth-century
"Plato" has
emerged
who is even less Platonic: this el'ScoXov does not abandon the
Idea, Recollection,
or
Immortality
because he never
seriously
embraced them in
the first
place.
It is now time to
explain
what it means to be
agnostic
with
respect
to the
dominant
paradigm
of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century
Platonic
scholarship:
the
chronology
of Platonic
composition
is no more relevant to
reconstructing
the
ROPD than
reconstructing
the ROPD was to nineteenth- and
twentieth-century
Platonic
scholarship.
The ROPD offers no basis for
denying
or even
doubting
the conclusions drawn from
stylometric analysis
and vice versa. Plato could have
composed
the
dialogues
in
precisely
the order
presently accepted
and
gradually
worked them into an
evolving
ROPD of which even the initial
conception
must
have been a
comparatively
late
development.
It is the conclusion
tacitly
but
illegitimately
derived from
that must be
categorically rejected:
order of
composition
cannot
prove
that Plato abandoned the Idea of the Good. To
put
it another
way:
if
stylometry
can tell us what
dialogues
were
composed
after
Republic,
it cannot tell us how to read them
(Nails 1994).
Even if the
assumption
upon
which
stylometric analysis depends
is correct and Laws was the last
dialogue
Plato
wrote,
this still
proves nothing
about the
tA,6
of Plato's
thought
in
any
philosophical
sense,
or about how he busied himself at the end of his
long
life.
About this
matter,
Dionysius
of Halicarnassus
(De
compositione
3.16)
preserves
for the modern reader some external evidence:
5
n^xcov, to
sauxo
iaXyoo ktevmv
kc
Pocrtpoxiov,
kc navra
xpnov
vanXKmv,
o is^wcv
yor|KovTa y6yov> tr\.
And Plato was not
through
with
combing
and
curling
his
dialogues,
and
braiding
[va7i.8K>v]
them in
every
which
way, having
reached his
eightieth year. (Translation
mine)
Clearly
this "hair-care"
imagery
is
purely metaphorical. Dionysius
is
simply
asserting
that Plato took
great pains
to
beautify
and adorn his
dialogues;
this
will
scarcely surprise anyone
one who has read them. On the
surface, then,
the
sentence
suggests
that
(1)
Plato took his
dialogues seriously
in a
very playful
manner,
tinkering
with them until the
end,
and
(2)
Plato labored over
precisely
the Platonic
dialogues
as a whole.26 This sentence
expressly
does not confirm the
typical
vision of a tired old
Plato,
bent double over the tedious Lawstoo sick to
make the
required
final revisionsand
leaving
behind
only
a few scattered notes
for
Philip
of
Opus
to turn into
Epinomis (Diog.
Laert.
3.37).
It is
only
with this
conception
that the ROPD
hypothesis
is
incompatible,
not
or
chronology
of
composition per
se.
This, then,
is what it means to be
agnostic
on
the
question.
The most
amusing
element in the
passage
from
Dionysius
is his use of the
word avan/.r.KOiv:
only
in context of the extended hair-care
metaphor
is it
proper
to translate it as "braided"
(cf.
Pausanias
10.25.10).
Even as
"braided," however,
the word
suggests
the
principles upon
which the ROPD is based. The
braiding
of
hairat
any
time or
placerequires separating
a rich
long
mass of it into three
distinct strands and
weaving
them
together,
one over
another,
again
and
again.
In
fact,
the literal sense of the va-
(meaning "up,"
"over,"
or "over
again")
in
vTtK0)v
captures precisely
this
aspect
of
intertwining
three discrete strands.27
This affords a
poetic expression
of Plato's
pedagogical methodology
as embodied
in
Phaenarete, Diotima,
and
Aspasia respectively:
the
interweaving
(or
braiding)
of
proleptic, visionary,
and basanistic elements in his
dialogues.
The real
meaning
of the word vaTtKrav
is,
after
all,
simply "inter-weaving."
It would not have
been
tendentiousalthough
it would have
appeared
to be soto translate the
sentence as
"grooming
and
embellishing
his
dialogues,
and
inter-weaving
them in
26
As when a
Mother,
or dear older
Sister,
on the
night
of the
Prom, lovingly arranges
and
rearranges
the
young girl's gown
and
tresses,
again
and
again regardingwith
the
skeptical eye
of
more than
nostalgic
loveeach
tiny
detail before
sending
her off into the world of men.
27The most
delightful
use of the word is in Pindar 01.
2.70,
where he
conjures
an
image
of
girls
joining
their hands in a
dancing
chain
( opfioc).
40 PHOENIX
every way."
In other
words,
this
passage
from
Dionysius suggests
that Plato
may
have been
tinkering
with the
ROPDi.e.,
with the dramatic details on which its
construction
entirely dependsuntil
the
very
end.
To
begin
at the
end,
the Laws and
Epinomis
are best understood as a thirteen
book basanistic
dialogueits
anti-Platonic character becomes
luminously
clear
in the star-lit
Epinomis {Epin.
990al-4;
cf.
Rep.
528e6-528c4)
reflecting
that
character backwards onto Laws
{Leg.
820e4)
for those who have not noticed it
already {Leg.
714c6, 661b2,
and
648a6)with
the
crowning impiety
of Laws 7
{Leg.
818cl-3;
cf.
624al)
dead in the middle. The Athenian
Stranger
is,
as Leo
Strauss discovered in 1938
(2001: 562),
the kind of Socrates who would have
followed Crito's advice and fled from Athens to
Sparta
or Crete
{Cri. 52e5-6).
As
is the case with the Eleatic
Stranger
(Gonzalez 2000b),
the Athenian's views no
more reflect Plato's than does the
speech
of
Aspasia
in Menexenus. And also like
Sophist
and
Statesman,
Laws and
Epinomis
are embedded in the First
Tetralogy
of
Thrasyllus,
the latter
pair
between Crito and Phaedo
(compare Leg.
647el-648a6
with
Ly.
219e2-4).
This leaves
only
one
pair
of
dialogues
in the
quartet {Apology
and
Crito)
between which two
dialogues
have not been
interpolated. Hipparchus
and Minos are a matched set
(Grote 1865)
who find no other
home;
the second
is
propaedeutic
both to Crito and the
journey
made in Laws
{Min. 319e3;
cf.
Morrow 1960:
35-39)
while the
pair
mirrors
Sophist
{Min. 319c3;
cf.
Hipparch.
228b5-e7)
and Statesman
{Pit. 309dl-4).
I
propose
that these curious
dialogues
are the conversations Socrates had with the
sympathetic
but
anonymous jailor
of indeterminate
age
who bursts into tears in Phaedo
(116d5-7).28
The fact
that both
Hipparchus
and Minos were
personae
non
gratae
in Athens illustrates
how
comparatively
restrained Socrates had beenand
defensively patriotic
on
one occasion when confronted
by
an Ionian's truth
{Ion 541c3-8)29before
his
city definitively
cut herself off from
him;
despite Hipparchus
and
Minos,
Crito
reveals that he never did the same to her. This creates the
following ending
for the ROPD:
Euthyphro, Sophist,
Statesman,
Apology, Hipparchus,
Minos, Crito,
Laws,
Epinomis,
and the
visionary
Phaedo
(6).
It is worth
making
it
explicit
that
Socrates is the
philosopher
whom the Eleatic
Stranger,
for all his
many
divisions,
never
distinguishes {Soph.
217a6-b3 and Pit.
257b8-cl)
while the Eleatic
Stranger
is,
at
best,30
the un-Socratic
philosopher already
described
(4)
by
Socrates in
Theaetetus
(173c8-174a2;
cf.
144c5-8).
The Athenian
Stranger,
Plato's final test
of the reader/student
(7),
is
prefigured
there as well
{Tht. 176a8-b3).
28
Only
if Socrates had added that the two had
passed
the time
jittsuovte
could this connection
be called
"snug";
it would also have made it obvious
(Hipfarch.
229e3 and Min.
316c3).
But the
question
of Law
clearly
links Minos and Crito. Consider
soAp.
41a3.
29
Neither Ion nor
anyone
else has heard of
Apollodorus
of
Cyzicus;
Plato alone
preserves
his
name. For the other two
examples
at Ion 541dl-2one found in
Thucydides (4.50),
the other in
Xenophon
(Hell. 1.15.18-9),
both in Andocidessee the invaluable Nails 2002 adloc.
30
Straussians
(e.g., Cropsey
1995)
tend to be
extremely
reliable
guides
to the basanistic
dialogues
once one realizes that
they mistakenly regard
these as
"visionary."
The ROPD now has a
delightful beginning (Protagoras),
a
mighty
middle
(.Republic),
and a
happy ending
(Phaedo).31
Before
proceeding,
it is
necessary
to
explain why
the ROPD includes all
thirty-five dialogues by Thrasyllus.
It
is
easy
to
systematize
Plato's
dialoguesor any
other
given body
of evidence
in
any
field of
studywhen
the critic is
empowered
to exclude
any
evidence
that does not fit a
pre-conceived system.
This is
precisely
what Friedrich
Schleiermacher did
(Lamm
2000:
232-233)
and it is what is
happening again
among
the
proponents
of "dramatic
chronology":
the
authenticity
of Laws is
already being
denied
(Tejera
1999:
291-308;
Nails 2002:
328;
and Press 2007: 57
and
69)
and the
chronologically inexplicable
Menexenus
already
shows a
tendency
to
disappear
(Press
2007:
72-73).
If it were not for Aristotle's
testimony,
Menexenus would have been
dropped
from the canon
long ago
(Guthrie
1975:
312).
By finding
a home in the
ROPDsnugly
ensconced between Ion and
Symposium
(2)
and without reliance on Aristotle's
testimony
(cf. Dean-Jones
1995:
52,
n.
5)Menexenus
may yet
rescue her less fortunate
sisters,
unnamed
by
the
Stagirite.
For what it is
worth,
finding places
for
Menexenus,
Hipparchus,
and Minos was the most
challenging problem
encountered in
reconstructing
the ROPD. But
excluding any
of them because
"they
did not fit" would have
vitiated the
project,
at least in its
proponent's eyes.
As it
happens,
all
thirty-five
dialogues
do fit and thus the ROPD ismirabile dictuconfirmed at the
very
same moment that it confers
authenticity
on its most
despised components.
But it would have been
impossible
to discover even the
general
location of
Hipparchus
and Minoswhich seem to be
"early" dialogues
in
any
sense of that
wordwithout
starting
with the
assumption
that
Republic
is
literally
the center
of the ROPD
(5):
eighteenth
in a series of
thirty-five.
It turned out that
there was no
place
for
Hipparchus
and Minos
among
the seventeen
dialogues
that
prepared
for
Republic,
while there was an
opening
for a matched set after
it.
The
elementary
Alcibiades
Majorthe
first conversation between Socrates and
Alcibiadesfollows
Protagoras,
while Alcibiades Minor
necessarily
follows it in a
chronological
sense. More
importantiy
it now becomes unclear to Alcibiades
{Ale.
2.148a8-b4)
that the
things
he had
originally hoped
that Socrates would
help
him
acquire
{Ale. 1.104d2-4)
are
actually
worth
acquiring
(1).
This rehabilitation
of
ignorance
{Ale. 2.143b6-c3)
already
(4)
stands in
sharp
contrast with the
rival
pretensions
of the
knowledgeable Hippias
{Ale. 2.147d6)
who was
present,
along
with Alcibiades and
Socrates,
in the house of Callias
{Prot.
315b9-cl and
316a4).
Plato's
proclivity
to create
paired dialogues
has
already
been observed
in the interstices of the First
Tetralogy;
this
pattern
is established
early
in the
ROPD where two
Hippias dialogues
are
paired
with two Alcibiades
dialogues,
both
beginning
with the
greater {Hip. Maj.
286b4c2 and
Hip.
Min.
363al2).
Since
31
For the
relationship
between Phaedo and
Protagorasevidence
that Plato has created a true
encyclopaediasee
Reuter2001: 82-83.
42 PHOENIX
Alcibiades is a man of action and
Hippias
a
pretentious know-it-all,
the Erastai
(or
"Rival
Lovers")
bridges
the
gap
(2)
between one
pair
(Amat.
132d4-5 with
Ale. 2.143b6-c5 and
145c2)
and the other
{Amat. 133cll, 137b4,
and 139a4-5
with
Hip.
Min.
363c7d4).
Lesser
Hippias
concerns Homer
{Hip.
Min.
363a6-bl)
and is therefore followed
naturally
by
Ion
(3).
The result is:
Protagoras,
Alcibiades
Major,
Alcibiades
Minor, Erastai,
Hippias Major, Hippias
Minor, Ion, Menexenus,
Symposium,
and then the basanistic
Lysis
(7).
It will be noted that
Tetralogy
7 of
Thrasyllus
is
identical,
while
Tetralogy
IV
contains,
given
the
difficulty
of
placing
Hipparchus,
but one
perfectly
understandable error. It will also be noted that
the
visionary Symposium
(6)
is ninth in the ROPD:
mid-point
of the seventeen
Republic dialogues
(5).
Between
Lysis
and
Republic,
the
greatest problem
is the
placement
of
Theages.
Completing
the set of five "virtue"
dialogues
(without it,
there would be no
dialogue
devoted to
wisdom),
containing
the
only explicit
reference in the
dialogues
to the Sicilian
Expedition,
and essential to
unlocking
a
key passage
in
Republic {Rep.
496b7-c5),
it
clearly
deserves a home. It is
easy
to see
why Thrasyllus placed
it in
company
with Laches and Charmides
(Tetralogy
V)
although
its reference to Charmides
(
Thg.
128d8-el)
suggests
that it should not
have been
placed prior
to it. But
Theages
also
points
backwards to
Gorgias {Thg.
127e8-128al)
as Meno does as well
{Men. 70b2-3);
indeed
Gorgias
and Meno
seem as
inseparable (Tetralogy VI)
as Laches and Charmides. It is the return of
"divine
dispensation"
(Oeta noipa
first
appears
at Ion
542a4;
cf. Men. 99e6 and
Thg.
128d2)
that
suggests
the answer:
Theages
comes between
Gorgias
and Meno
(compare
also G.
515dl,
Thg.
126a9-10,
and Men.
93b7-94e2)
and
prepares
the reader to take the conclusion of the latter
seriously
(cf.
Reuter
2001).
The
danger posed by Anytus joins
Meno to the
preliminary charge brought against
Socrates in
Cleitophon.
To
return, then,
to
Symposium-. Lysis
is followed
(cf.
Tetralogies
IV and
V)
by Euthydemus
where Socrates
finally
reaches the
Lyceum
and
Ctesippus (Ly.
203a4)
wins the love of his beloved
{Euthd. 300d5-7)
in
a manner that shows how well he has been
taught
(Altman
2007:
371-375).
Remaining
in the
Lyceum
(3),
the men
fighting
in armor
{Euthd. 271d3)
join
Euthydemus
to Laches
{La. 178al)
which is
linked,
in
turn,
to
Charmides,
not
only
as a virtue
dialogue
but
by
the War
{La.
181bl and Chrm.
153al;
cf.
Symp.
220e8-221al and
219e6).
It should be
emphasized
that Laches stands
prior
to Charmides not
only
because of the former's dramatic link to
Euthydemus
but also
by
virtue of the latter's
comparative complexity
(see
Guthrie 1975: 125
and
163).
Another kind of war breaks out in
Gorgias',
the
opening
late arrival
is a
joke (G. 447al-2).
It is Plato's
manly/cowardly
former self that connects
Charmidesa
dialogue
filled with Plato's relatives
(Nails
2002:
244)to
Gorgias.
In Callicles we meet the
pre-Socratic
Aristocles
(Dodds
1959:
14,
n. 1 and
Bremer 2002:
100101)
in whom Socrates
finally
discovered his
touchstone,
by
whom he would be
completed (cf.
Arieti 1991:
92),
and
through
whom he would
became "a
possession
into forever."32 These conclusions
may
be summarized:
Lysis, Euthydemus,
Laches, Charmides,
Gorgias, Theages,
Meno,
Cleitophon,
and
Republic.
Thrasyllus gets
the central tetrad
right:
once the
purpose
of
Cleitophon
is
recognized, Republic,
Timaeus,
and Critias are
explicitly
linked. The
question
is:
where to
go
from there? Readers of
Thucydides
have heard
quite enough
from
Hermocrates the
Syracusan (e.g.,
Thuc.
6.76.2-77.1;
cf. Criti.
108b8-4);
there
is no Hermocrates
(at
least
by
Plato)
any
more than the
Philosopher
is
missing.
The
dialogue
that breaks off on the brink of its final
speech
( Critias)
precedes
the
only dialogue
that does not
begin
at its own
beginning.
"Protarchus" as follower
(Phlb. llal-2)
is but the first
anomaly
of Philebus. But before
proceedingand
in
recognition
of the fact that the ROPD
falls,
as it
were,
off the
edge
of the
world at Critias 121c5it is
necessary
to take stock.
Only
the most committed
proponents
of dramatic
chronology
will
deny
on the basis of its frame
(not
so Nails
2002: 320-321 and
308)
that Theaetetus
precedes Euthyphro.
Between Critias and
Theaetetus,
there is room left for four
dialogues.
In
alphabetical
order,
the
dialogues
that remain are:
Cratylus,
Parmenides, Phaedrus,
and Philebus. There are few
dramatic or
chronological
indications to work with here but various "theoretical
and
metaphysical"
connections
emerge, especially
when Plato's
proclivity
to
pair
dialogues
is taken into consideration. Taken as a
pair, Cratylus
and Parmenides
prepare
the
way
for the
yiyavxofiaxia
described in
Sophist (Soph.
246a4):
not
only
are Heraclitus
(Cra.
411cl-5 and
440e2)
and Parmenides
presently
considered
the
principal poles
of
pre-Socratic thought
(Guthrie
1965:
1)
but it is
probable
that Plato too
regarded
them in this
light
(Tht. 152e2).
With a reference to
Euthyphro
(but
not
Euthyphro),
the
Cratylus
{Cra. 396d5)
is attracted to the end
of the
quartet
while both Phaedrus and Parmenides take
place
outside Athens.33
Both of these also
pivot
on a
represented
discourse. A more
deliciously
ironic
matched set is found in Phaedrus and Philebus:
despite
the
sexy
name Plato has
32
The
assumption
that Callicles
(to say nothing
of a modern reader influenced
by
Nietzsche)
could
not
change
his mind under the influence of Socrates in
Gorgias
(Beversluis
2000:
375)
is unwarranted.
In the case of Plato and
Callicles, compare
As You Like It
(IV.iii.135-137):
"Twas
I;
but 'tis not I.
I do not shame to tell
you
what I was since
my
conversion so
sweetly
tastes
being
the
thing
I am."
Recognizing
that Plato was
fully
aware of Socrates' and his own
pedagogical
effectiveness and the
literary immortality
that would attend the two
together
(G. 527d2-5)
is a
good
first
step; many
errors
of
interpretation
could also be avoided
by keeping
in mind that Plato loved both Adeimantus and
Glaucon,
his brilliant older brothers immortalized in
Republic.
331 am
grateful
to Catherine Zuckert for
bringing
this connection to
my
attention. I have made
a deliberate decision not to revise this
paper
on the basis of
my subsequent
encounter with Plato's
Philosophers:
The Coherence
of
the
Dialogues (Chicago
2009);
for
my
review of this
important
book,
see Polis 27
(2010)
147-150.
Profoundly grateful
to Zuckert for
broaching
the ROPD
question
in
the context of a
post-developmentalist reading
which conceives all
as
dialectically
coherent,
I observe there that her order's
dependence
on dramatic
chronology
"has traded one form of
chronological
over-determination for another"
(150).
44 PHOENIX
given
the
latter,
it lacks both sex
appeal
(but
see Wood
2007)
and
charm; .these
defectsbut not othersare
lushly
redressed in Phaedrus?A
The results of this
investigation may
now be
presented:
The
Reading
Order of Plato's
Dialogues
Protagoras
Timaeus
Alcibiades
Major
Critias
Alcibiades Minor Philebus
Erastai Phaedrus
Hippias Major
Parmenides
Hippias
Minor
Cratylus
Ion Theaetetus
Menexenus
Euthyphro
Symposium Republic Sophist
Lysis
Statesman
Euthydemus Apology
Laches
Hipparchus
Charmides Minos
Gorgias
Crito
Theages
Laws
Meno
Epinomis
Cleitophon
Phaedo
Republic
stands at the center of the
thirty-five
interconnected
dialogues
(2).
Guided
by
the
ROPD,
Plato's student/readers follow a blazed trail
(3)
through
terrain of
gradually increasing difficulty
(1)
that
prepares
them
(4)
for the
peak
experience
at the
mid-point
of their
journey
(5).
Much like one of the
imaginary
Guardians,
the reader/student is led
up
to the
sunlight
(6)
and
then,
before
being
sent back down into
politics
at the
age
of
thirty-five,35
is tested
(7)36before
34
A serious
problem
needs further attention: on the basis of what
plausible conception
of what
Plato
expected
his readers to know are we to
distinguish
Critias in Critias from Critias in Charmides
(Rosenmeyer 1949;
Lampert
and Planeaux
1998)
and
Cephalus
in Parmenides from
Cephalus
in
Republic (Prm. 126al-4;
cf. Miller 1986:
18-23).
35
Rep.
539e2-540a2
(Shorey):
"For after that
[c.
after the Guardians reach the
age
of
thirty-five]
you
will have to send them down
[Katapipaaxsoi]
into the cave
again,
and
compel
them to hold
commands in war and the other offices suitable to
youth,
so that
they may
not fall short of the other
type
in
experience
either. And in these
offices, too, they
are to be tested
[[iaaaviaxoi]
to see whether
they
will remain steadfast under diverse solicitations or whether
they
will flinch and swerve."
36
Rep.
537d3-8
(Shorey
modified):
"when
they
have
passed
the thirtieth
year
to
promote them,
by
a second selection from those
preferred
in the
first,
to still
greater honors,
and to
examine,
testing [paacmovca] by
the
capacity
for dialectic
[-cf)
xo
iaXyecsQai Sov|ai],
who is
capable
of
leaving
"the
Academy"as
to the
strength
of her commitment to the Idea of the
Good.37
By way
of a
conclusion,
it is
only
natural that a discussion of the ROPD should
end with
Republic
7.38 In a
single
conditional sentenceso
long
that it will be
considered in three installmentsSocrates offers the student/reader a
preview
of Plato's
post-Republic pedagogy.
In the first
part
of the sentence's
protasis,
Socrates elucidates the
negative
characteristics of the
inadequate
Guardian in such
a manner as to
bring
(or
begin
to
bring)
the true
philosopher
into
sight:
And is not this true of the
good
[xo yciBoG]
likewisethat the man who is unable to
define
[iopaaaBai]
in his discourse
[xq> X6y(p]
and
distinguish
and abstract from all
other
things
[arab
xcov aM-oov tkxvtcov
<|>eA,>v]
the
aspect
or idea of the
good [xf)v
xo
yaGo i5av]
...
{Rep.
534b8-cl; Shorey)
Applied
to the
ROPD,
these words indicate that:
(1)
if the Good is
present
in
the
dialogue (tcp Xycp)39
but
hidden,
the student must find
it; (2)
if the
presence
of the Good is
merely apparent,
the student must
expose
this
appearance
as
fraudulent; (3)
if the Good is
entirely
absent,
that is decisive for
anything
else the
discourse
my
contain;
and
(4)
if the Good is
present,
the student must cleave to it.
... and who
cannot,
as if in battle
[kc coarcep
v
through
all refutations
emerging
[i
JKXVTCOV
Xyxcov Sieicov],
not
eager
to refute
by
recourse to
opinion
but to essence
Ijari
Kotx
Soâv
XX Kax' oaav
jtpoGoiaopevo Aiyxeiv], proceeding throughout
its
way [SiaJtopsrixat]
in all of these
[v
noi
xouxoi] [if. refutations]
with the discourse
untoppled
[7txrxt xcp ,6ycp]
...
(Rep.
534cl-3;
translation
mine)
disregarding eyes
and the other senses and
go
on to
Being
itself
[en*
ax to
ov] along
with truth.
And it's no doubt a task for careful
guarding, my
dear fellow."
37Rep.
526d8~e7
(Shorey
modified):
"What we have to consider is whether the
greater
and more
advanced
part
of it tends to facilitate the
apprehension
of the idea of
good [ttjv
too
ayaGoo ISeav].
That
tendency,
we
affirm,
is to be found in all studies that force the soul to turn its vision round to
the
region
where dwells the most blessed
part
of
reality [t 05ai|a0vaTa.T0v
too
vto],
which it is
imperative
that it should behold." "You are
right,"
he said. "Then if it
compels
the soul to
contemplate
Being [oocnav],
it is
suitable;
if
Becoming
[ysveaiv],
it is not."
38
Although
not included here in the
ROPD,
the Letters should be read in tandem with
Republic,
perhaps
between Books 5 and
6,
in order to cut off the second
("Sicilian")
alternative at
Rep.
473cll
d2. On the other
hand,
Rep.
434e4-435a2 needs to be read
(or reread)
in the
light
of
Ep.
7.341c4-d2
(see above, 23,
n.
7).
Either
way,
the Letters should be read as an
integrated literary
workwith
its most
important component artfully placed
in the center (there
are thirteen
Letters)contrived
for a
stricdy pedagogical purpose,
not as a collection of
alternately
accurate or inaccurate historical
documents whose
veracity
we are
challenged
to determine. See Strauss 2001:
586;
Dornseiff
1934;
and Wohl 1998.
39
It will be noted
that, although
I have retained
Shorey
s translation for this first section
(I
will
be
using my
own translations for the next
two),
his
rendering
of tco
Xoytp
as "his discourse" is too
restrictive. I am
suggesting
that the
student,
not while
speaking
his own
speech
but while
reading
any particular dialogue
(as
if it were
TCp [too n.TCvo] ,ycp)
must be able to
separate
(i.e.,
to
iopiaaaGai by <J>)v)
the wheat
(i.e., ttjv
too
yaGoG ieav)
from the chaff
(i.e.,
ji tcdv aAAcov
rcavTcov),
all
explicitly
named, defined,
and treated as such.
46 PHOENIX
Interpreting
most of the
post-Republic dialogues
in the ROPD
(the
exceptions
being
the
dialogues
of
Tetralogy
I)
will be
analogous
to war. Wherever the
%copicT|i6c
between
Being
and
Becoming
(defined
by
the
unitary
and transcendent
Idea of the
Good)
is
passed
over
(Phlb. 23d9-10)
or attacked
(cf.
Gadamer
1986:
13)as
it will be in various
ways by
Timaeus, Parmenides,
the Eleatic
and Athenian
Strangers,
even
by
Socrates himself
{Phlb. 27b8-9;
cf. Westerink
1990:
39.26-29)the
student/reader must defend it i Ttavxcov
cXcyyav.
In
evaluating
the
arguments
of men like
thesevenerable,
intelligent,
and
impressive
gentlementhe
student/reader must
judge
and criticize
only
on the basis of
Being
(kcit' omav)
and not
according
to what seems to be
reputable (pt]
tcai
oav),
even if that means
refuting (sAiyxeiv)
Socrates himself. Students must
prove
themselves able to
proceed through
all of these tests
(v
nam
xoxoi)
with what
Socrates calls "the discourse intact." The stakes are
high,
as the
apodosis finally
reveals:
the man who lacks this
power, you
will
say,
does not
really
know the
good
itself
[ax
to
yaGv]
or
any particular good
[ooxe
akko
yaGv oosv]
but if he
joins
himself in
any
way
to some
image
[XV
eX
Jtfl
eIScoou
xiv ijirtxexaij
he does so
by reputation
but not
knowledge [56^,
ok
sjncrcrmfl <|>jrtsc70tti.].
{Rep.
534c4-d6;
translation
mine)
This conditional sentence is the "Battle
Hymn
of the
Republic"
It must sound in
the ears of the reader/student amidst the "severe studies"40 that follow
Republic
in
the ROPD.
There is one final
point. Regardless
of the role the ROPD
played
when Plato
himself
presided
over the
Academy,
there is some indication in
Republic
7 that
leaving
others the
pleasure
of
reconstructing
it
may
have been intended
by
its
creator to become
part
of an eternal
curriculum,41
hidden in
plain sight (Rep.
432d7-e3).
This
question
turns on how
broadly
one
interprets
x
pa0r|(j.axa
at
Rep.
537b8-c3.42 If it
applies only
to the five mathematical sciences of Book
7,
40
Rep.
535b6-9
(Shorey): "They
must
have,
my
friend,
to
begin with,
a certain keenness for
study,
and must not learn with
difficulty.
For souls are much more
likely
to flinch and faint in severe
studies
[v ia/upoic fiaOrîaaiv]
than in
gymnastics,
because the toil touches them more
nearly,
being peculiar
to them and not shared with the
body."
41
Rep.
531c9-d4
(my
modification of
Shorey):
"And I'm
thinking
also that the
investigation
of
all these studies we've
just gone through [r|
tootcdv Ttavxcov a>v
SiE^WiOanEV n0o5o],
if it arrives
at the connection between them
[Jt tr|v M.r|taov
Koivcovav
ijiKTiTai]
and their common
origin
[aoyyveiav]
and
synthesizes [ouXAoyicrSfl]
them with
respect
to their affinities with each other
[rj
ecttiv
>,r|oi oKEx],
then to
busy
ourselves with them contributes to our desired
end,
and the
labor taken is not
lost;
but otherwise it is vain."
A2Rep.
537b8-c3
(Shorey): "'Surely
it
is,'
he said. 'After this
period,'
I
said,
'those who are
given preference
from the
twenty-year
class will receive
greater
honors than the
others, and
they
will
be
required
to
gather [auvaKtovJ
the studies which
they disconnectedly [x
te
xrjv âOrâia]
pursued
as children in their former education into a
comprehensive survey [si ovov|/iv]
of their
affinities with one another
[oki6tt|t6
te
M.r|Xa>v
tSv
paOrinaTtov]
and with the nature of
things
[ko tt
to
vto, <|)6cte(]'."
What Socrates here calls a
cjvoyi
I am
calling
the ROPD: a
comprehensive
vision of the
only surviving
Platonic
nuOriuu
:a the reconstruction of which would
it is hard to
say why
Socrateswho has been
very
careful to discuss these in the
proper
order
{Rep.
528a6-b2)refers
to them as x
%68r|v |xaOr|fj.a'ca:
it is not
the five sciences as
taught
to the
imaginary
Guardians but the
as
they
have come down to us that are "scrambled"
(xu5r|v).
In either
case,
the
search for the ROPD has and will
long
remain a
delightful
and
perfectly
harmless
exercise in dialectic as described
by
Socrates.43 But even if the reconstruction of
the ROPD could be considered more serious than a
merely pleasant pastime,
one
must never lose
sight
of the
playful
Plato,
he who created the most beautiful flute
girls
who ever
danced,
eternally
interwoven,
arm in arm.
Depto. Filosofia
Campus
Universitrio,
Trindade
Florianpolis 88.010-970
Sta.
Catarina,
Brasil
whfaltman@gmail.com
fulfill the mandated auvaKiov in accordance with both
oIksiotti (i.e.,
the various links he uses to
join
the
dialogues)
and
fj
xou
vxo (|)ucji (sc.
the dualistic
metaphysics
of
Republic
7, i.e., Platonism).
43
Rep.
537c4-7
(Shorey):
"That,
at
any
rate,"
he
said,
"is the
only
instruction that abides
[r]
xoiauxri |i0r|ai ppaio]
with those who receive it." "And it is
also,"
said
I,
"the chief test
[peyiaxti
ye
...
TtEpa]
of the dialectical nature and its
opposite
[8iaA.sKxiKrj <j)6a(o
kou
|ir|].
For he who
can view
things
in their connection is a
dialectician;
he who
cannot,
is not
[ |iv. yap guvo7txik
ia.8Kxuco,

fi ri ou]."
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