Framing Theaetetus Plato and Rhetorical (Mis) Representation - C. Poster

Rhetoric Society of America
Framing Theaetetus: Plato and Rhetorical (Mis)Representation

Author(s): Carol Poster
Source: Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Summer, 2005), pp. 31-73
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CAROL POSTER
Framing
Theaetetus:
Plato and Rhetorical
(Mis)representation1
ABSTRACT: This
essay
is divided into two
parts,
the first
part showing
how certain
disciplinary
and
historiographical
habits and
ideologies
have
formed obstacles to rhetorical
reading
of Plato
by many
scholars in rheto-
ric. The second
part
reads
rhetorically
a
dramatically
related
group
of four
Platonic
dialogues,
Theaetetus,
Euthyphro, Sophist,
and
Statesman,
arguing
that Plato's commitment to Heraclitean
ontology
determines certain rhe-
torical,
temporal,
and
argumentative patterns
of these works.
I.
Prolegomena:
Plato and Rhetorical
Scholarship
rhetoricians should
interpret
Plato is
probably
an unanswerable
ques-
tion. Innumerable
commentators, including
ancient and modern rhetori-
cians,
have been
writing
about Plato for over two
millennia,
and no firm con-
sensus has been achieved about either methods or results of Platonic
exegesis.
This should
not, however,
lead to the conclusion that since we cannot
provide
uncontested accounts of
Plato,
the
only
alternative is radical
subjectivism.
In-
stead,
the
differing approaches
to Plato lead not so much to a fixed set of con-
clusions,
but to an
ever-expanding corpus
of
questions
and
topoi
of Platonic
interpretation,
which can contribute three
things
to rhetorical
scholarship:
1. A set of
questions
which serve as
entry points
into the Platonic
corpus,
useful not
only
for
scholarship
but for
pedagogy (as
stu-
dents
simply assigned
Platonic
dialogues,
without
any suggestions
for how to read them or what issues to
follow,
often
get
lost in the
bewildering profusion
of
arguments
and
counterarguments).
2. An
understanding
of which issues are contested and cannot be
assumed as fixed
starting points
for
interpretation
of Plato. Al-
though
there are no
necessarily "right"
or
"wrong" interpretations,
there are ones that have
consistently
led to dead ends and others
which have
consistently
been
productive. Interpretations
of Plato
that
depend
on factual or
logical errors,
of
course,
can be omitted
from consideration as
anything
other than historical curiosities.
3. A collection of
extremely sophisticated interpretive
tools which
can be
applied
to other
equally complex texts,
and
which,
because
of the dramatic nature of the Platonic
dialogues,
are
particularly
Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
3 1
Summer 2005
|
Volume 35
|
Number 3
sensitive to
arguments
from
ethos,
a
sensitivity
which should be
carried over into
understanding
even the narrative
personas
of
apparently monological
treatises
-
the
dry
Oxonian humor and
robust "common sense" of mid-twentieth
century ordinary
lan-
guage philosophers
or the
systematic thoroughness
and obsessive
documentation of
nineteenth-century
German
philologists being
just
as much authorial
personas
as the varied characters
through
which Plato
speaks.
Plato is an
especially
fruitful
figure
for
application
of rhetorical
approaches
to
historiography
and
interpretation.
Five of the areas in which rhetorical meth-
ods are
particularly productive
in Platonic
scholarship
are:
1.
Reception: especially analysis
of how and
why people
have ar-
gued
certain
ways
about Plato.
2. Rhetorical criticism of Platonic
scholarship:
i.e.
analysis
of what
needs to be
proven
about Plato and what can be
presumed,
what
type
of evidence we have for
given
claims about
Plato,
and what
types
of
analysis
are most
productive given
the
types
of evidence
we have about Plato.
3. Rhetorical criticism of Plato: examination of the intentions
of the Platonic
dialogues,
their
persuasive
effects on both their
original
and
subsequent audiences,
and how
they
were intended to
support
or refute various ancient theories and
practices.
4. Rhetorical form: demonstration of how the form of the Platonic
dialogues
itself acted as a vehicle of
persuasion (especially persua-
sion
through ethos).
5. Platonic rhetorical
paradigms: investigation
of the
ways
in
which the available ancient forms of
literary
or
persuasive
lan-
guage
affected the contours and
possibilities
of Platonic
thought.
This
essay
is divided into two
parts,
the first
being
a
summary
of what I con-
sider to be some of the more
important
issues which need to be addressed
by
rhetoricians
interpreting
Plato and the second
putting
those theories into
prac-
tice in an
analysis
of how
Plato,
in a
group
of
dramatically
linked
dialogues,
addresses the
relationships among knowledge, ontology,
and rhetorical form.
Platonic Studies
There are several
major contemporary
schools of Platonic
interpretation
among
classicists and
philosophers,
as well
as, naturally, many
individuals who
do not fit in
any particular
school. A rather
oversimplified outline, however,
will be useful context for
understanding
rhetorical
approaches
to Plato2:
1. Traditionalists:
generally
read Plato
dogmatically, seeing
his
work as
containing
fixed and
explicit dogmas, usually
found in
the statements of Socrates. Alfred Edward
Taylor (1926),
Paul
Shorey (1904, 1933),
and I. M. Grombie
(1962)
were
typical
of
32 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
this
approach
in the first two-thirds of the twentieth
century.
More
recently, "analytic philosophers"
combine a traditionalist
method with interest in
tracing
formal
arguments
in the
dialogues,
especially
in Socratic
speeches (e.g. Fine,
ed. 1999 and Vlastos
ed.
1971). Gregory
Vlastos
(1981)
and his followers within the
analytic
school also
investigate
the
relationship
of the historic
Socrates of the
"early dialogues"
to the Platonic Socrates of later
dialogues.
2. Dramatic
Interpreters: emphasize
the
importance
of the liter-
ary
form of the
dialogues
and the
interplay
of ideas with
dialogue
form
(e.g.
Arieti 1991 and Press
1993, 1997,
and
2000).
These
scholars,
who in the 1990s were somewhat of a radical
fringe,
but
since have
(inevitably)
become more established as
they
have
gained seniority,
tend to be more
open
to
interdisciplinarity
than
the traditionalists.
Philosophers sympathetic
to this
position
oc-
casionally publish
on Plato in
Philosophy
and Rhetoric.3
3. Esotericists:
argue,
on the basis of ancient
commentators,
that Plato had doctrines that cannot be found
explicitly
in the
dialogues (discussed
in Poster
1993).
This
group
includes several
who are
sympathetic
to
neoplatonic readings
of
Plato, e.g.
John
Niemeyer Findlay (1974),
the German
Tubingen
school
(e.g.
Kurt
Gaiser
1980;
Hans Joachim Kramer
1990;
and Thomas A. Szlezak
1999),
their Italian followers
(e.g.
Giovanni
Reale, 1997),
and
Straussians who believe that Plato
only
revealed his true esoteric
doctrines to a small
philosophical
elite and that Platonic exoteric
moral
principles
and
political
theories serve
primarily
to form a
society
which allows that elite to
prosper.
Straussians cluster in
Chicago,
and tend to be interested
primarily
in
politics,
in contrast
to the
metaphysical
focus of the Continental scholars
(Leo
Strauss
1975, 1978, 1983, 2000; and,
to a
degree,
his
students,
Seth Ber-
nadete
1984,
1989.
1991, 1993, 2000;
and
Stanley
Rosen
1983,
1987, 1995). Neoplatonic
scholars
(e.g.
John Dillon
1977,
1-10 and
Philip
Merlan
1960)
also tend to
interpret
Plato
neoplatonically.
4. Oralists
(e.g.
Eric Havelock
1963, 1982, 1983;
Walter
Ong
1982;
Kevin Robb
1993, 1994)
are often hostile to
Plato, seeing
him as
part
of a
global
shift
they
believe had occurred between
"oral" and "literate" modes of
thought
in classical Greece. Have-
lock
especially, although assigning
it a different
cause, imputes
to
Plato much the same totalitarianism as did Karl
Popper (1945).
6. Postmodernists: As Catherine Zuckert
points
out in her
cogent
Postmodern Platos
(1996), many
of the
postmodernist interpret-
ers of Plato are
primarily
interested not in
reconstructing
Plato
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
33
in ancient context but in
using
Plato as stimulus for their own
philosophical projects.
While this
approach may
be useful for
contemporary philosophic
and rhetorical
study,
its contribution
to the
understanding
of ancient texts
per
se
is,
at
best,
indirect and
therefore,
I shall not discuss their work here.
Despite
the
disciplinary emphasis by
classicists on
projecting
a rhetorical ethos
of
impersonal objectivity (discussed
in Hallett and Nortwick
1997),
even
fairly
narrowly philological problems
are often matters of
intradisciplinary polemic
within Classics and
grounded
in
personal
stances and
party
affiliations. While
this should lead rhetoricians to cite classical scholars with care and with at-
tention to the context of their
arguments
within the
disciplinary
conversations
of
classics,
this should not lead to the
polemical
excesses of Martin Bernal's
Black Athena4 nor the abandonment of historical
scholarship per
se
by
those
contemporary
theorists like Victor Vitanza
(1994)
who conclude that since we
cannot
gain perfect
and uncontested
knowledge
or
interpretation
of ancient
philosophy
and
rhetoric,
and that since classicists who claim
objectivity
can
be shown to be motivated
by
factors not
exclusively objective,
there is no
point
trying
to attain the best
knowledge
we can
by
careful
analysis
of ancient texts
and contexts. This is not the case.
First, proving
extrinsic motivation does
not
always disprove
conclusions
-
even
though, e.g.,
it is
possible
to show that
many
advocates of the heliocentric account of the solar
system
were
engaged
in
religious (often,
but not
exclusively, Protestant) polemic,
that does not suf-
fice to
disprove
the heliocentric
account;
one
may
well believe the
right thing
for the
wrong
reason.
Moreover,
there are
things
about classical texts that are
knowable with some
degree
of
certainty,
and
ways
of
judging
what
might
be
more or less
plausible
accounts of those
things
that are not knowable with
any
degree
of
certainty.
As Malcolm Heath
(2002)
has
pointed out, disagreements
can be viewed as
producing,
rather than
precluding, knowledge.
Even on basic
philological
matters such as the dates and the
authenticity
of certain Platonic
dialogues (Hippias Major, Epistle VII, e.g.),
there is no
gen-
eral consensus
among
classical
scholars,
much less on broader issues of herme-
neutic method5. There are no clear methods of
adjudicating among competing
systems
of Platonic
interpretation
other than
by
reference to the
original
texts
and contexts
(for specific claims)
and to one's
purpose
as an
interpreter (for
method), although systems
should be abandoned if
they
have internal incon-
sistencies,
lack
explanatory power,
or
produce
conclusions which conflict with
empirical
evidence
(identities
of
characters,
dates of
specific
historical
events,
common uses of Greek terms in the
period, etc.).
Where
empirical
evidence is
ambiguous
or
lacking,
it is
easy
for theoretical or
ideological presuppositions
to
fill the void. Rhetorical awareness of
underlying polemical impulses, however,
should
lead,
not to
dismissing
all
scholarship
as
biased,
but rather lead to
citing
works from several
disciplines
more
judiciously
while
avoiding
the tunnel-vi-
sion
resulting
from
allegiance
to individual
disciplinary ideologies.
34
Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
Below I will enumerate what seem to me areas where
1)
in
many cases,
rhetorical
scholarship
could benefit
by emulating
the technical meticulousness
advocated in classics and
2)
where classics
(a discipline
that is not without its
own tendencies towards
insularity)
could benefit
by
certain areas of meth-
odological sophistication
which rhetorical scholars
bring
to
interdisciplinary
Platonic conversations.
1. As discussed in John
Kirby's
"A Classicist's
Approach
to Rhetoric in
Plato"
(1997)
and Thomas
Conley's
"The Greekless Reader and Aristotle's
Rhetoric"
(1979),
rhetorical scholars often
try
to
bypass philological
issues
(e.g.
textual
variants,
the
precise meanings
of Greek
words,
historical con-
texts)
in order to move
directly
to rhetorical
analysis.6
But to
interpret
an
author one must establish what that author
actually wrote,
whether in the
local sense of individual words or
passages
within texts or the
authenticity
of entire
texts,
and those textual decisions are often matters which are not
settled as facts but
consequences
of
interpretive
theories.7 Translations
are,
as
it
were,
two removes from the author's
original text,
as
they
are the result of
a translator's
interpretation
in a
target language
of an editor's reconstruction
of a text in a source
language. Benjamin
Jowett's
translations, e.g., although
pedagogically
useful because
they
are
widely
available online and in
very
inex-
pensive editions,
were
described,
with almost as much
precision
as
malice, by
A. E. Housman as "The best translation of a Greek
philosopher
which has ever
been executed
by
a
person
who understood neither
philosophy
nor Greek." No
word in one
language
has
exactly
the nuances of a word or
phrase
in
another,
as Frances Gornford
pointed
out in a
frequently
cited
passage:
Many key-words,
such as
'music', 'gymnastic', Virtue', 'philosophy',
have shifted their
meaning
or
acquired
false associations for
Eng-
lish ears. One who
opened
Jowett's version at random and
lighted
on the statement
(at 549B)
that the best
guardian
for a man's
Virtue' is
'philosophy tempered
with
music', might
run
away
with
the idea
that,
in order to avoid
irregular
relations with
women,
he
had better
play
the violin in the intervals of
studying metaphysics.
There
might
be some truth in
this;
but
only
after
reading widely
in other
parts
of the book would he discover that it was not
quite
what Plato meant
by describing logos,
combined with
mousike,
as
the
only safeguard
of arete.
(Gornford "Preface", v-vi)8
This does
not, however,
mean that one should leave
"keywords"
untranslated,
as is sometimes recommended,
for this
simply dodges
the
problem
of
figuring
out how to best understand the Greek terms and is of little
practical help
to
the Greekless reader.9 Rather than
unreflectively appropriating
Frances Gorn-
ford and W. K. G. Guthrie
(who quotes
Gornford in The Greek
Philosophers)
as "authorities" to
support
a
"keyword
method" of
studying
ancient Greek
texts
(which
is not
precisely
what
they
were
recommending),
it is
important
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
35
to understand their work in rhetorical context. Cornford was
translating
Plato
when a standard of ancient Greek at least
equivalent
to a third
year
course
in a
contemporary
North American
university
was
required
for entrance into
Cambridge;
his translation was intended
primarily
for those who either lacked
university
education or had
forgotten
their Greek but wanted to return to
Plato in their later
years.
Guthrie's Greek
Philosophers
was a
survey
intended
as
background reading
for
undergraduates
who were not
necessarily studying
classics. Neither book was written for fellow scholars nor were the
approaches
Cornford and Guthrie felt
helpful
in lower division
undergraduate pedagogy
in-
tended as methods of
scholarly investigation
or
guidelines
for how to write for
the
expert
audience of
scholarly journals,
as can be seen if one
compares
their
elementary pedagogical
works with their more
specialized scholarly
ones.
Like her
"keyword method",
Kathleen Welch's
(1990) suggestion
of com-
paring
translations with each other without
consulting
the
original (or
the
actual
purpose
of the
translator)
is not even useful for
historiography
-
James
Mill's
analysis, e.g.,
of where Thomas
Taylor
translated from Ficino's Latin
rather than Plato's Greek
(1809)
would not have been
possible
without close
attention to
Greek, Latin,
and
English
versions. Welch's own
comparison
(1990, 20)
of versions of Aristotle
by
Lane
Cooper,
John
Henry Freese,
and
Rhys Roberts,
intended to
compensate
for the
possible
biases of individual
translators
by selecting among
various
English
versions as
convenient, actually
compounds
the
problem,
for one can
only
understand
(and possibly remedy)
the aims and biases of translators
by examining
each translation
carefully
against
not
only
the
original
text but the other
writings by
that
particular
translator. If one examines
rhetorically
the three versions Welch
cites,
in
terms of
subject
matter
(the original
Greek
text),
authorial
intention,
and au-
dience one finds that
Cooper
was
expanding
and
paraphrasing
for "students of
composition
and
public speaking"
rather than
translating literally (a practice
not
unjustifiable given
the
difficulty
and terseness of an Aristotelian
original
which had not been
polished
for
public circulation),
that Freese
(following
the mandate of the Loeb Classical
Library)
was
trying
to follow the Greek as
closely
as
possible
for the benefit of those with
some,
but not
fluent,
Greek
(to
the detriment of
readability
of the
English text),
and that Roberts was
trying
to remain
relatively
faithful to the Greek but at the same time to balance that
aim with a desire to
produce (moderately)
readable
English.
Close attention
to issues of
"keywords," translation,
and the rhetoric of
philology,
does not
lead to a
way
around the difficult tasks of
philology,
but
suggests
that
rigorous
philological analysis
should be combined with
equally
meticulous understand-
ing
of the contexts and rhetoric of classical
scholarship.
2. One
minority position
in classical
studies, popularized by many
outside
the field
during
the 1980s and
early 1990s, posited
a
"great
divide" between
oral and literate "mentalities" in
antiquity,
with some
(most notably
Eric
36 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
Havelock) seeing
the
"sophists"
as
examples
of
"orality"
and Plato and Aristo-
tle as
examples
of "literate" mentalities. This
position
was
appropriated,
with
an
exaggerated
sense of the
significance
of
"orality," by many
rhetorical schol-
ars,
and
though generally
abandoned in more recent
scholarship
still retains a
surprising degree
of influence. While a
quite
narrow account of oral-formulaic
composition
is useful in
accounting
for certain features of Homeric
epic,
the
evidence for distinct oral and literate mentalities is
slight
and
archeological
discoveries have tended to move
sub-Mycenaean syllabic literacy
and archaic
alphabetic literacy
closer
together (see, e.g.,
Woodard
1997).
Recent classi-
cal
scholarship
has moved
beyond simplistic acceptance
or
rejection
of oral
theory
and the extremes of the
"great
divide"
theories,
to
investigation
of ac-
tual uses of and attitudes towards oral and literate communications and their
interactions with each other. Rhetoricians could offer a
unique perspective
on
some of these debates
by analyzing
the
argumentative assumptions
and strate-
gies underlying
the
contemporary scholarship
in this
field,
rather than
simply
taking
sides with
congenial
authorities.10
3. The circumstances of
composition
and modes of circulation of the Pla-
tonic
dialogues
are not documented in
any
useful detail in ancient sources
-
Cherniss' The Riddle
of
the
Early Academy
still remains the most
plausible,
if
not
provable, contemporary
account of their
pedagogical
use in the
Academy.
Whether the dates of
composition
of Platonic
dialogues
can be
determined,
and if
so,
whether
they
have
any particular interpretive significance,
is still
highly
contested in Platonic
scholarship,
as I have discussed elsewhere
(Poster
1998)
and
yet
often rhetorical scholars take terms like
"early"
and "middle"
dialogues
as known facts rather than
hypotheses, relying
on the
(possibly
unprovable) assumption
that Phaedrus was written after
Gorgias
to
support
the claim that a Platonic
critique
of rhetoric was followed
by
a reconstruction
of an "ideal" rhetoric.11 This Platonic
developmentalism,
which was assumed
by many
traditionalists,
has been
questioned
in more recent
scholarship (e.g.
James Arieti
1991,
Jacob Howland
1991,
and Debra Nails
1993).
It is
impor-
tant to be aware of the rhetorical
component
of
dating
Platonic
dialogues,
namely
that
"developmentalism"
is
usually brought
forth to
support specific
interpretations
of the
dialogues (as
discussed in
Poster,
"Ideas of Order" and
Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato).
4. Even more worrisome is a
tendency
that some rhetoricians share with
traditionalist and
analytic interpreters
to assume that
any
statement made
by
the Socratic character in a
dialogue
can be
excerpted
from its context and
prefaced by
the
phrases
"Plato
says"
or "Plato believes." But the words uttered
by
the Socratic character in a
dialogue
can no more be assumed to be the
"beliefs" of Plato than those uttered
by
a character in
Shakespeare's plays
can
be assumed to
represent Shakespeare's
own
beliefs,
an issue addressed with
some
cogency by
the contributors to Who
Speaks for
Plato?
(Press, 2000).
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus 37
While it is true that Plato admired and associated with
Socrates,
it is
equally
true that Plato was also influenced
by many
others
including Pythagoras,
Cra-
tylus, Parmenides,
and Heraclitus and was a
highly original
thinker.
Instead,
the utterances of Platonic characters should be
interpreted, particularly by
rhetoricians,
as
parts
of a
literary
construct that as a whole is intended to have
certain effects on its immediate audience. In
particular,
it is worth
examining
the
relationship
between Platonic uses of dramatic characterization and the
theories and
practice
of
impersonation
and
argument
from ethos in Greek
rhetorical
theory
and
oratory.
5. The Platonic canon in rhetorical
scholarship
is often limited to a
very
small
group
of
dialogues,
which do not
adequately
reflect the
range
of
posi-
tions articulated
by
Platonic characters.
Protagoras
is often read without the
Theaetetus
(which presents
Socrates
correcting
his own earlier
misrepresen-
tations of
Protagoras), Gorgias
and Meno without Parmenides and
Sophist
(which
further
analyze "sophist"
and
provide
a reductio ad absurdum of the
"theory
of
forms"), Republic
without
Laws,
and Phaedrus and
Symposium
without Philebus
(which gives
a more
complex analysis
of love and
plea-
sure)12.
The sheer number of cross-references and shared characters
among
the
dialogues suggests
that the Platonic
corpus
needs to be studied as a
whole,
and that
dialogues
read in isolation are liable to
egregious misinterpretation.
Furthermore,
it is
necessary
to read each
dialogue
as a dramatic
whole,
rather
than
interpreting
in isolation those sections of a
dialogue
that contain the word
"rhetoric,"
a fault exacerbated
by
the
frequent
use of
anthologies
rather than
complete
texts in
graduate
courses on the
history
of rhetoric.
Plato's
Gorgias,
for
example, opens
with a
preliminary
discussion of
rhetoric
occupying
some
twenty-six Stephanus pages (447-472),
which intro-
duces a
substantially longer (fifty-five Stephanus pages)
discussion of
justice
(473-527).
Even
among
ancient
commentators,
there was substantial debate
over the actual
subject
or aim of the
dialogue.
The author of the
Anonymous
Prolegomena
to Platonic
Philosophy (ed. Westerink)
considered
Gorgias
concerned with the social
problem
of
justice (XX.26). Olympiodorus,
in his
Commentary
on Plato's
Gorgias
summarized the ancient debates about the
aim or
topic
of the
dialogue (0.4).
Aristides' "To Plato in Defense of
Oratory"
probably responds
to
Pergamene philosophers
who invoked Plato's
Gorgias
in
their own attacks on rhetoric.
Generally, reception
has followed the interests
of the
receiver,
as it
were,
with
rhetoricians,
ancient and
modern, emphasiz-
ing
the rhetorical section of the
dialogue. Contemporary scholars, however,
like the
neoplatonic commentators,
should take into account the
"skopos"
or end of the
dialogues.
There is
nothing
in either the
dialogues
or ancient
testimonia to
suggest
that rhetoric was a central aim or interest for Plato.
Language
is
important
for Plato
-
it is a constant area of
investigation
in nu-
merous
dialogues
-
but it is discussed
instrumentally,
as a tool
(albeit
a
deeply
38
Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
flawed
one)
which is
necessary
for the task of
philosophizing,
but as a means
rather than an end of
philosophy (as
I discuss in the second
part
of this
study).
Rhetoric
per
se
appears consistently
as a misuse of
language
-
as Brad McAdon
("Plato's
Denunciation of Rhetoric in the
Phaedrus") points
out.
Even
given
the difficulties of
dialogue form,
it is
possible
to determine
what
subjects
are of
greatest
concern to Plato and which thinkers he considers
most
important by examining
the
degree
to which Plato
engaged
their
ideas,
either
by including
them as characters in his
dialogues
or
by having
the
partic-
ipants
in the
dialogues
discuss their words and ideas.
Among
the thinkers who
most interest
contemporary rhetoricians, Gorgias, Protagoras, and,
to a lesser
degree,
Prodicus are of obvious interest to Plato.
Thrasymachus
and Critias
were
important figures
in the
development
of rhetoric who were considered
quite important by
Plato and
rarely
discussed
by contemporary
rhetoricians.
Isocrates,
who is mentioned in
only
one
passage
in the
dialogues,
is an
insig-
nificant
figure
for
Plato,
and efforts in rhetorical
scholarship
to read a
signifi-
cant
degree
of interest in Isocrates into the Platonic
dialogues (e.g. Goggin
and
Long 1993)
are based on the false
assumption,
that because modern rhetorical
scholars are interested in both Plato and
Isocrates,
Plato must have been inter-
ested in Isocrates. But rather than
expend
considerable
ingenuity
on an effort
to inflate a
single passage
into an elaborate Platonic
response
to
Isocrates,
it
seems more
productive
to work from the
assumption
that the
figures
of
great-
est interest to Plato were those to whom he devoted the most words and focus
scholarship
on other more
significant relationships among
ancient thinkers.
While it
might
be true that the historical
figures
in the Platonic
dialogues
could
stand in for
positions
held
by
Plato's
contemporaries,
there is no reason to
sup-
pose
that Plato would have refrained from more overt attacks had he desired
to make them. As is made
apparent in, e.g.,
the
rivalry
between Demosthenes
and
Aeschines,
or almost
any play by Aristophanes
selected at
random,
Athe-
nians were not
noticeably
restrained in attacks on their
political, literary,
or
ideological rivals,
nor would
Plato,
who was
self-supporting
and without local
political ambitions,
have needed to be
circumspect.
Thus it is more
likely
that
the Platonic
preference
for
historical, fictive,
and
anonymous participants
was
based on ontic status rather than discretion.
6. Rhetorical
historiography (perhaps
as
yet
another unfortunate side
effect of a manner of
thinking
based on
"keywords")
has tended to fetishize
the term
"rhetoric," treating
the word "rhetoric" as if it
represented
some
transcendent
reality
rather than
simply being
a convenient label
existing
within a
system
of
differences,13
and thus
ignoring
works
dealing
with issues
of
persuasion, language, oratory, writing, writing pedagogy,
etc. in which the
word "rhetoric" does not occur.14 Yet if we are to make claims for the
general
utility
of a "medium-sized"
(if
not
necessarily "big")
rhetoric that makes useful
contributions to
multiple disciplines,
we need to
incorporate
into our research
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
39
studies of the entire
range
of verbal and
persuasive practices,
not
just
those
which use the term "rhetoric" or one of its
cognates. Trying
to
pin
down what
is or is not "rhetoric" to valorize or
marginalize
certain areas of
inquiry, is,
on the
whole, unproductive.
As Edward
Schiappa points out, "scholarship
ad-
vances not
through metadisciplinary wrangling
. . . but
through
the
production
of
exemplary
work."
("Critiques
of
Big
Rhetoric"
271)
One
example
of
fetishizing
the term "rhetoric" that has
produced
a truism
of rhetorical Platonic
scholarship unsupported by
the
specific
details of the
Greek text is the claim that Socrates in the Phaedrus
(261 sq.) attempts
to
reconstruct a "true rhetoric"
(e.g.
Black
1958,
Gurran
1986,
Golden
1984,
and
Murray 1988)
as
opposed
to the "false rhetoric" of the
sophists
condemned in
Gorgias (a point solidly
refuted
by
Brad McAdon
2004).
In Plato's
Greek,
the
good
arts
being praised by Socrates,
with the assent of
Phaedrus,
are called
those of "dialectic" and
"speech,"
not
"rhetoric,"
as I have
pointed
out else-
where
(Poster
1993 and
1997).
7.
Accompanying
the fetishization of the term "rhetoric" is a
problem
which Richard
Whately
called
"party-feeling" (The
Use and Abuse
of Party-
Feeling
in Matters
of Religion15),
the
tendency
for
group partisanship
to move
from a
preference
for a certain ideas held
by
a certain
party
to
unquestioning
acceptance
of a
complete
and
ready-made ideological program
associated with
that
party.
In
rhetoric,
this
appears
as a form of
disciplinary
team
spirit,
mani-
fested, e.g.,
in Vickers
(A Defense of Rhetoric)
and more
recently,
the discus-
sions of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies found in Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
34:3
(2004), which, although perhaps
a
deplorable necessity
in the scramble
for
departmental funding
and rank in the academic
prestige economy,
can be
inappropriately
transferred to historical
inquiry, especially
when "rhetoric"
(or "sophistic")
is treated as the "our team" or "the
good
team" and
"philoso-
phy"
as the
opposing
"other team" or "bad team" in what becomes
nearly
a
college
football
rivalry
account of ancient
thought,
one that obscures the an-
cient lines of demarcation and
polemic,
which follow
quite
different
patterns.16
Although
it is
important
to trace how ancient rivalries
functioned,
and also to
be aware of how modern academic
politics may
affect
historiography,
modern
and ancient
quarrels
should not be
mapped
onto each
other,
as
they
are
prod-
ucts of
quite
different cultural contexts.
This team
spirit approach
has led to certain modern
"parties" constructing
narratives in which Plato is described as
having "marginalized"
the
sophists,
with Plato cast as
part
of a "bad" team of
oppressive authority
and the
sophists
as
oppressed underdogs
who are
accordingly
sentimental favorites. In
reality,
the
sophists
were the "TV dons" of
antiquity, commanding huge
audiences
and
salaries,
and the
philosophers
a
marginal group
of eccentric intellectuals.
Moreover, although
certain
neosophists (e.g.
Jarratt
1991,
Vitanza
1994,
et
sim.)
claim that Plato
marginalized sophists,
in
fact, contemporary neosophists
40 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
seem to write
only
about the
figures
Plato
popularized (or
made
central).
Such
figures
as
Antiphon
and Anaximenes and the
post-classical
Greek
sophists
and
rhetoricians have
been,
to a
large extent, ignored
in rhetorical
historiography,
with a few notable
exceptions (e.g.
Robert Gaines
1982, 1985, 1991, 2003;
Robert Reid
1996;
and
Jeffery
Walker
2000). Also,
even more
significantly,
the
Older
Sophists,
like
Socrates,
the
Eleatics,
and the
Heracliteans,
form a
group
of
recurring
characters in the Platonic
dialogues,
whose ideas are
investigated
in some
depth,
in contrast to characters like Ion or
Euthyphro
whose ideas are
dismissed in
single
rather short
dialogues.
Perhaps
the most
important
issue is not
just
whether team
spirit
has led to
inaccurate
history
in
specific
cases
(which
it
unfortunately has)
but whether
rhetorical
scholarship
benefits
by
a
partisan
attitude that results in
cheering
for favorite ancient thinkers and
booing opposing
ones in the manner of
overly
excitable football fans rather than an
approach
based on a more neutral curi-
osity
about ancient
questions.
Not
only
do such
polemics
distort accounts of
antiquity,
but also limit
interdisciplinarity,
for if one is
mainly
concerned with
praising
the friends and
castigating
the enemies of
"rhetoric,"
one is far less
likely actually
to
investigate
the issues of other
disciplines
and
engage produc-
tively
in
interdisciplinary dialogue.
New
Paradigms for
Rhetorical Platonic
Scholarship
Thomas Kuhn
(The
Structure
of Scientific Revolutions)
and Richard
Rorty
(Contingency, Irony,
and
Solidarity)
have described the
process
of
discovery
in both scientific and humanistic
disciplines
not as a
gradual evolution,
but as
a series of
paradigm shifts,
of
abandoning
certain
conceptual
structures and
vocabularies which have ceased to be
useful,
in favor of new
concepts
and
vocabularies. These shifts are not a matter of
producing
new answers to old
questions,
but of
asking
new
questions. Many
of the
questions
that dominated
rhetorical
scholarship
about Plato in the 1980s and 1990s
grew
out of
very
specific
institutional circumstances. Rhetoricians in both Communication and
English
have found themselves considered or treated as involved
primarily
in service functions
(first year writing
and
public speaking courses)
for their
institutions, contributing mainly
to lower division studies
preliminary
to the
central intellectual aims of the broader academic culture. Graduate
programs
in rhetoric have often been treated
(by
those outside the
field)
as
places
that
aimed
merely
to
replicate
a new
generation
of teachers and administrators
to fulfill similar service functions.
Rhetoricians, therefore,
have been
quite
concerned with
demonstrating
the
scholarly legitimacy
of the
discipline
in face
of institutional
marginalization.
Much of the rhetorical
scholarship concerning
the
history
of
rhetoric,
as it
were,
has reflected a concern for
self-legitimation
of rhetoric as an academic
discipline (discussed
in Poster
1998).
This led to two
major impulses
in rhetorical
scholarship,
one that focused on the
pedagogical
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
4 1
functions of the
discipline
and
argued
for the
centrality
of
pedagogy
and one
that strove for
prestige by
affiliation with humanistic traditions of historical
scholarship17
or social sciences. The first of these
impulses
has
led,
in the
history
of
rhetoric,
to numerous works which either studied the
history
of
writing pedagogy
in its own historical context or
attempted
to
recuperate
ancient authors for the modern
classroom,18
a
type
of work that has had a
salutary
effect on
speech
and
writing pedagogy
and has led to an
important
new
way
of
viewing
ancient teachers of
rhetoric, by understanding
their
systems
as not
just
abstract theories but as
shaped by pedagogical practices.
If this
approach
has not
always
been
grounded
in meticulous
scholarship,
it
has made a substantial contribution to
interdisciplinary
classical
scholarship,
and has contributed to several other
disciplines, especially
classical and
medieval studies and the
history
of education. The second of these
impulses,
the
quest
for transferred
prestige, by using
the cachet of
antiquity
to secure
prestige
for the
marginalized contemporary discipline
of
rhetoric,
has had
somewhat less
positive effects,
for it has
led,
in
many cases,
to
seeing
ancient
thinkers
primarily
in terms of
polemical utility,
with those ancient thinkers
who were "for" rhetoric
(or
certain models
thereof) being applauded
and
those who
"against"
rhetoric
being
calumniated. Of
course,
not all historians
of rhetoric fall into these
categories
-
in
fact,
much of the
outstanding
work
in the
field,
and
especially
that done in the
past decade,
avoids anachronism
and
party-spirit
in favor of historical reconstruction
-
but the
pedagogical
and
transferred
prestige impetuses
have often defined the contours of rhetorical
study
of Plato as reflected in rhetoric
journals
and
graduate pedagogy
in
English
and Communications.
The second
part
of this
essay
does not
respond directly
to either of these
two
approaches
that rhetoricians have
commonly applied
to
Plato,
and neither
agrees
nor
disagrees
with
them,
but seeks instead a "third
way"
of rhetorical
Platonic
scholarship,
in
light
of Richard
Rorty's methodological suggestions:
To
say
that there is no such
thing
as intrinsic nature is not to
say
that the intrinsic nature of
reality
has turned
out, surprisingly,
to
be extrinsic. It is to
say
the term "intrinsic nature" is one which
it would
pay
us not to
use,
an
expression
which has caused more
trouble than it has been worth. . . . On the view of
philosophy
which I am
offering, philosophers
should not be asked for
argu-
ments
against
. . . the idea of "the intrinsic idea of
reality."
The
trouble with
arguments against
the use of familiar and time-hon-
ored
vocabulary
is that
they
are
expected
to be
phrased
in that
very vocabulary.
. . . This sort of
philosophy
. . .
[suggests ignoring]
the
apparently
futile traditional
questions by substituting
new and
possibly interesting questions.
It does not
pretend
to have a bet-
ter candidate for
doing
the same old
things
which we did when we
42 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
spoke
in the old
way. Rather,
it
suggests
that we
might
want to
stop
doing
those
things
and do
something
else.
(Rorty, "Contingency,
Irony,
and
Solidarity" 9)
Rather than
insisting
on the
vocabulary
of "rhetoric" and
asking
whether
Plato was "for" or
"against" it,
Part II of this
study begins by asking
what
ques-
tions and terms
relating
to
language
and
persuasion appear
in a
group
of dra-
matically
related Platonic
dialogues
and seeks to understand how Plato
argued
about those
questions,
and rather than
reading
Plato in terms of "rhetoric" as
a fetishized
keyword,
reads Plato's
dialogues rhetorically.
II: A Rhetorical
Reading
of Plato's Late Maiuetic
Dialogues
This section examines Plato's
investigations
of
persuasive language
as
they
are embodied and articulated
rhetorically
in a
group
of four dramati-
cally
related
dialogues, Theaetetus, Statesman, Sophist,
and
Euthyphro, par-
ticularly emphasizing
Theaetetus and
Sophist.
These
dialogues
are
important
correctives to the ones more
commonly
studied
by rhetoricians,
both because
of the
problems they
discuss
(the relationship
of
being
to
language
and knowl-
edge)
and the manner of discussion
(cooperative
rather than
agonistic,
as
discussed in Blondell
2002,
256
sq.).
In
Theaetetus,
Plato
explicitly
revisits an
earlier treatment of
Protagoras, substituting
for the
entertaining,
albeit
gentle,
satire of the
Protagoras
a sustained
engagement
with
Protagorean
rhetorical
epistemology.
In
Sophist, similarly,
as well as
pursuing
the often
quoted
and
dismissive definition of the
"sophist,"
the characters discuss how the
problem
of
non-being
makes
sophistic language necessary
and unavoidable in all con-
versation,
and how
despite
its unavoidable
limitations, sophistic language is,
in
fact, something
even
philosophers
cannot
avoid,
as is demonstrated
by
the
form of the Platonic
dialogues
themselves. These
points
are not set forth as
Platonic
"dogmas,"
but rather
dramatically enacted,
with each claim embodied
in the ethos of the character
articulating it,
the
very dialogue
form
showing
that Plato understands the
relationship
between
knowledge
and
language (for
living
human
beings)
not as a universalizable and disembodiable
abstraction,
but
something
which varies
depending
on the individual
knowing, speaking,
and
hearing.
Because of
this, especially
as
rhetoricians,
we should read the
Platonic
dialogues
not as non-rhetorical
apodictic proofs
but as rhetorical ar-
guments
from ethos about
thought
and
language.
Hermeneutic Methods
For rhetorical
understanding
of the Platonic
dialogues,
the virtues of
dramatic
reading
seem self-evident: Plato wrote
dialogues,
not
treatises19;
he never
spoke
in
propria persona (except, perhaps,
in
Epistle VII,
if it is
authentic)20;
he
only
lectured once
(the
infamous lecture "On the
Good").21
There is a
difference, though,
between
reading
Platonic
dialogues
with
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
43
sensitivity
to the nuances of dramatic form and
reading
the
dialogues
as
drama. The
biographical
tradition
suggests
that Plato abandoned
tragic
poetry
for
philosophy,
not that he
merely
offered
up
a new
type
of
tragedy
in
prose.
Plato himself shows no evidence of
admiring tragedy
as a vehicle
for
philosophical discourse;
ancient
commentators,
in
fact,
were to
reject
the
possibility
of
tetralogic arrangement being
based on imitation of
tragic
performance
for
precisely
that reason.22 Rather than
trying
to understand the
form of Platonic discourse in terms of
genres
he
disliked, instead,
it seems
more reasonable to examine the rhetorical
strategies
of Platonic
writing
as
grounded
in the areas of
thought
in which he
appeared
to be most
interested,
ontology, epistemology, metaphysics,
and
theology. (Ethics, although
a
major
interest of Plato's seems to have a less direct
relationship
with
literary
form of
the
dialogues.)
This
study argues
that the form of the Platonic
dialogues
can be
accounted for
primarily
as an
attempt
to create a
way
of
writing
which would
adequately
enact Platonic
conceptions
of
being
and
knowledge
as
grounded
in
rhetorical ethos.
The
dialogues
I shall use to discuss how Platonic theories of
being
affect
human
knowledge
and the
implications
of this for
writing
are a
dramatically
related
group,
which
directly engages
these
problems, namely
Theaetetus-
Euthyphro-Sophist'Statesman.23
Theaetetus and
Sophist
are
particularly
important
for rhetoricians because of the
light they
shed on the
paradox
of
Platonic
writing,
as
they
both insist on the
inadequacy
of the
very language
they
use.
Euthyphro
and Statesman add to the dramatic
group
two distinct
types
of
relationship
between character of interlocutor and success of elen-
chus. The hermeneutic
problem
of the
explicit
distrust of
language
in the
dialogues
is
complicated by
the
subjects
of discussion
-
knowledge, being,
and
language
-
which are
portrayed
as
quite
as
problematic
as the
linguistic
means
by
which
they
must be discussed. For
Plato,
these issues are inextrica-
bly interdependent:
we cannot
give
an
adequate
account of
knowledge
unless
our
language
has the
capacity
to do so. As the Eleatic
Stranger points
out at
Sophist 260a5-9,
"if we were
deprived
of this
[logos],
we should be
deprived
of
philosophy"
-
but
language itself, though
essential to
philosophy,
cannot be
its
singular starting point
for we cannot know how to
go
about
saying anything
unless we have
prior knowledge
of that about which we are
trying
to
speak.24
The
problems
of
knowledge
and
language
are even further
complicated by
the
nature of what can be known or
articulated, namely
either the
changing phe-
nomena,
which fixed words can
only approximate,
or transcendent
unchang-
ing ideas,
which can
only
be reflected
faintly
and
distortedly
in the dark
glass
of
phenomenal
words. On the one
hand, language
fails at least
partially
in so
far as its fixed and abstract nature is removed from the individuated flux of
the
phenomenal world,
a failure at the center of the Heraclitean
critique
of
language
which Plato inherited.25 On the other
hand,
the
very phenomenal
44 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
and inconstant
(as
a word not
only
can have
multiple
simultaneous
meanings
but
also,
as shown
by
the
etymologies
of
Cratylus,
can
vary
in
meaning
over
time)
nature of words makes
language inadequate
with
respect
to the
unchang-
ing objects
of true
knowledge (the forms,
the
definite,
or the
One).
While the
dialogic
form of Plato's work makes it difficult to reconstruct a
platonic theory
of
language per se,
it is
possible
to adumbrate the
problems
which concerned
him from the
dialogues
and use
Epistle
VII as evidence of the areas in which
Plato or one of his immediate followers
thought
solutions to or clarifications
of such
problems might
be found. Of
particular
interest are the four
stages
of
apprehension
-
name, definition, image,
and
knowledge
-
from which follow a
fifth
category,
the
thing
itself
(Epistle
VII
342a-344e).
Plato
explicitly rejects
both
language (Epistle
VII
342c, 343a, 344c)
and discursive reason alone as
able to
comprehend
the fifth. He
suggests (Epistle
VII
342d)
that of the four
inferior
categories, knowledge,
the
subject
of the
Theaetetus,
comes closest to
the
fifth,
and
insists, repeatedly
on the
fallibility
of
language.26
Plato's "late maieutic"
dialogues,
Theaetetus and
Sophist,
which are
par-
ticularly important
for rhetoricians due to their
engagement
with
sophists
and
language, require, perhaps,
even
greater methodological
self-awareness with
respect
to
interpretive assumptions
than the rest of the Platonic
corpus.27
These
dialogues
share in common with the rest of the Platonic oeuvre the
general problems
of Platonic
interpretation
such as Platonic
silence,
dramatic
form,
the Socratic
question,
and
chronology,
but add to these the
complication
that the
dialogues
themselves
directly
address
questions
of
knowledge,
meth-
od,
and
understanding,
so that as one
interprets
these
dialogues
one must take
into account what the
dialogues
themselves
say
about
interpretation.
Thus not
only
should attention be
paid
to
Epistle
VII and testimonia as
points
outside
the
dialogues
which can
mitigate
the
necessary circularity
of
interpretation
of
the
dialogues,
but
also,
when
examining any given dialogue
of this
group,
one
ought
to look at other
dialogues
which stand in some
explicit relationship
of
dramatic
sequence
to the
given dialogue
under
consideration,
for
dramatically
related
dialogues
often show the
progress
or outcome of the maieutic
process
described in the
given dialogue.
In the case of a framed
dialogue
such as The-
aetetus,
the exterior frame also can serve both as a
guide
to
interpretation
of the inner
dialogue
and as a
way
of
situating
the
dialogue
as a whole with
respect
to
dramatically
related
dialogues.28
What are
interpretive problem
for readers of the Platonic
dialogues
are
rhetorical
problems
for Plato himself. Plato somehow needed to construct a
literary
form that could work around the constraints of
necessarily
limited
knowledge
and
unsatisfactory language.
As I shall
argue below,
I think he man-
aged
this
by using dialogue
to
recapitulate simultaneously multiple
elements
of his
ontology.
The
dialogue
form
(re)presents
the dualism of the indefinite
dyad
which is the Platonic
principle
of
becoming,29
and thus the substrate of
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus 45
the
phenomenal world; reading
a
given dialogue sequentially,
as theories are
set
forth,
examined and
discarded,
is to
experience
the flux of the
physical
world as embodied in a
language
that
constantly changes speakers, stances,
tone,
and
style (see
Fish
1980).
A
dialogue
as a
whole,
as one associates30 with
it in
memory
after
multiple rereadings
is a
unity,
like the One
beyond being,
which when
perceived
outside the
temporal
flux of the
dialogue
as it is read
sequentially,
can kindle the flame of
knowledge
described in
Epistle
VII
(34
Id
and
344b8-10).
These two
ontological
substrates are
particularly prominent
in
the "late maieutic"
dialogues,
and
self-reflexively foregrounded
in the discus-
sion of the
relationships among becoming, flux, knowledge,
and
language
in
Theaetetus and
Sophist.
Ontological Principles
Although venturing
to attribute
any
doctrine whatsoever to Plato is to
tread amidst the
quicksands
of
interpretative theory, understandings
of Pla-
tonic
dialogue
still must be
grounded
in some
assumptions
about Platonic
ontology. Any discussion, reading, interpretation,
or
learning depends
on
some basic
agreement
on what sort of entities exist. For
example,
the Eleatic
Stranger's
use of the
example
of Theaetetus
flying (Sophist 263a) depends
on
the
general ontological presumption
that our world does not contain human
beings capable
of
flight
unaided
by
mechanical contrivances. The case of the
flying mathematician,
as it
were,
does not offer
problems
of dramatic contesta-
tion with
respect
to the
specific
claim
concerning flight
-
neither the
subject
of the sentence nor the Eleatic
Stranger
nor
any
of the listeners claim at
any
point
that Theaetetus has
flown,
is
flying,
or will
fly.
This
agreement
indicates
to a reader a set of shared
ontological assumptions
in which to
ground readings
of the
dialogues;
whatever the more arcane details of Platonic
metaphysics,
quotidian
natural laws still
apply
within it.
Universals,
on the other
hand,
such
as
justice
or
beauty,
or human
types
such as the
philosopher, sophist
or states-
man, however,
do not
engender any
such
general agreement.
Making
claims about elements of Plato's
ontology
other than individu-
als is
very
much
complicated by
the
non-dogmatic
or dramatic nature of the
Platonic
dialogues.
No statement
by
one of the characters in the
dialogues
concerning
the existence or non-existence of
any particular
class of entities
can be assumed to
represent
a
genuine
Platonic
position.
Unless one assumes
with Kramer
(1990),
which I do
not,
that the
agrapha dogmata,
the unwrit-
ten doctrines attributed to Plato
by
later
commentators,
contain
specific
writ-
able doctrines not
expressed
in the
dialogues,
but nonetheless
recoverable,
one cannot resort to
locating
a
systematic
Platonic
ontology
in the
agrapha.
Despite
this
apparent impasse, however,
there are still several
possible ways
of
coming
to use Platonic
ontology hermeneutically by locating
the shared as-
sumptions
which make the discussions
among
the characters in the
dialogues
possible (like
the non-existence of mathematicians
capable
of
flight
unaided
46 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
by
mechanical
contrivances), namely
the
ontological
substrates of Plato's rhe-
torical
strategies, Epistle VII,
and the
reports
of Plato's students.31
On the most
general level,
it can be claimed that there are two classes of
objects
in the Platonic
ontology, things
visible to the
eye
and
things percep-
tible to the mind
(noeta).32
Both the
objects
of
perception
and the
objects
of
knowledge
are discussed in the
majority
of the Platonic
dialogues
and are often
presented
in terms of a radical bifurcation between the two. While Plato
may
consider the
objects
of
perception
in some
way
inferior to the
noeta,
unlike the
Eleatics,
he does not
dispute
their existence.
Although
the
non-phenomenal
elements of the Platonic
ontology
are not writable
(discussed
in Poster
1993)
and the
phenomena
are not knowable
(for they
are
only becoming
rather than
being),
the Platonic
dialogues
do
presume
that it is
possible,
at least on the
level of
opinion,
to discuss
phenomena
and come to some
agreements
about
them
-
whatever the
metaphysical
status of Theaetetus
might be,
he does not
fly
-
and also that the
phenomena
are not the
only
class of entities about which
the intellect
reasons;
Platonic use of
language
is
grounded
in these
presump-
tions.
Support
for a Platonic
assumption
of
general
division between
changing
objects
of sense
perception
and
unchanging objects
of
knowledge,
the former
tending
to be
dyadic
in some manner and the latter
unitary,
can be found
outside the
dialogues
as
well,
both in
Epistle
VII and in the
reports
of Plato's
students and later commentators. Aristotle's
reports
of Plato's
philosophy,
especially
as
glossed by Simplicius,
also
emphasize
a dualistic
ontology.
In
Metaphysics 987b20,
Aristotle claims that for Plato the Great and Small is
the first material
principle
and the One is the
principle
of
being.33 Simplicius
(On
Aristotle's
Physics 187al2)
mentions that Aristotle in his books "On the
Good"
reports
that Plato considered the
principles
of all
things,
even the forms
themselves,
to be the One and Indefinite
Dyad (he
aoristos
duas)
which he
terms the Great and Small
(to mega
kai
mikron).
Although
there has been considerable
scholarly
debate as to whether
the One and the Indefinite
Dyad
are
explicitly
discussed in Plato's
dialogues
or
not,
the
question
of which
dialogues explicitly
address the
ontological
questions
to which the One and the Indefinite
Dyad
discussed
by
later
commentators are relevant is somewhat less debatable. The
dialogues
Theaetetus, Sophist, Parmenides,
and Philebus all raise
questions
about the
nature of
being
and
becoming
and the One and the
many
in terms of
ontology
and its
epistemological consequences.34
The
synthesis
of
methodological
self-
consciousness with
ontological
content in these
dialogues
links the
ontological
questions
of what
things
are and what is the manner of their
being
with the
rhetorical
question
of how
they
can be said
(pos legetai)35
Whether these
dialogues
are
distinguished by
conventional
chronologies
of
composition
or
by
their esoteric nature and/or
audience,
as a
group they
are
closely
related in
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
47
subject matter,
level of
abstraction, and,
to some
degree, style (as
discussed
in
Sayre 1992).
While much of the
contemporary
debate
concerning
Platonic
ontology
has centered on Parmenides and
Philebus,
the discussion of the
Protagorean/Heraclitean theory
of flux in the Theaetetus not
only
illuminates
many
of the
ontological components
Aristotle and others attribute to the
agrapha,
but also makes
apparent
the
ontological exigencies
which underlie
the rhetorical substrate to the
literary
form of the Platonic
dialogue.
Because
of
this,
and because
they explicitly engage Protagorean/Heraclitean
rhetorical
ontology
and the
relationship
of
sophistic
to
knowledge, analysis
of these
dialogues
can
provide
a valuable to corrective to a
portrait
of Plato in rhetorical
scholarship
based
primarily
on the less
epistemologically
and
ontologically
sophisticated arguments oiPhaedrus, Gorgias,
and
Protagoras.
Ontology
and Dramatic Form
Narratively,
Theaetetus is one of the more
complexly
framed Platonic
dialogues.36
The
dialogue opens
with a conversation between Eucleides and
Terpsion concerning
the
middle-aged
Theaetetus who is
being brought
home
injured
from the Athenian
camp
at Corinth. This conversation reminds Eu-
cleides of Socrates'
(correct) prophecy
that Theaetetus would become an ad-
mirable man.
Socrates,
a little before his own
death,
had conversed with the
young Theaetetus,
and recounted the conversation to
Eucleides,
who wrote
Socrates' account in a
book,
and then corrected his book in further conversa-
tions with Socrates. The inner
dialogue
is cast as a
transcription
of a slave's
reading
aloud of Eucleides' book.
The
speakers
of the inner
dialogue
are
not, therefore,
men of the
present,
existing
in the world of
becoming
as
apprehended through aisthesis,
but men
of the
past.
Past actions and characters are determinate because of their
very
pastness.
Actions of the
past
no
longer participate
in
becoming;
one
properly
can refer to them
only
as
having
been.
Instead,
the
past
exists in the realms
of kleos and
logos, only changing
in so far as words themselves are
perceived
through
the senses. Past
deeds, however,
rather than the
present
words which
represent them,
are no
longer phenomenal
and thus
belong
to the realm of
nous as
objects
of
possible knowledge
rather than
opinion.
The inner
dialogue Socrates,
like the Socrates of the
Euthyphro,
is
portrayed
in the
process
of
philosophizing
while on his
way
to answer
the accusations of
Meletus, although
the Socrates of Theaetetus differs
dramatically
from the one of
Euthyphro,
for the Socrates of the unframed
dialogue Euthyphro
is situated in a
changing dialogic
world of
becoming,
philosophizing
in the
present tense,
and not
ending
his conversation with
fixed conclusions but
merely being
left at an
aporia,
which will
only
be
resolved
by
his
impending
death. His
death,
as well as
being, according
to the
famous discussion in Phaedo
(another
framed
dialogue), something
towards
48
Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
which all
philosophers aim,
has
specifically
narrative
significance
not
only
for
the reasons
explicitly
discussed
by
Socrates and his interlocutors in
Phaedo,
but also because the dead are no
longer becoming
but
being,
in the realm of
unchanging
or
only gradually changing
remembered fame
(kleos)
as held
(like
the
dialogues
after
they
have been
read)
in
memory
and sustained
by repeating
aloud or
rereading
of
logoi.37
The fixed
image
of the framed Socrates of Theaetetus does not exist in the
semantic
present (see
below for discussion of
syntactic present), participat-
ing
in the
changing
world of
becoming,
but rather in the
past,
as remembered
(thus
as
having kleos)
and then transmuted into the
absolutely
static medium
of
writing,
dead words on the
page.38
This static conversation of the
past
is
completed,
but as the frame
shows,
this
completion
has the sense of the Greek
perfect tense,
an action
completed
in the
past
with an effect in the
present.
The
present
tense of the actual verbs in the
dialogue,
like the mimetic form
of direct rather than
reported speech
is a dramatic illusion. The conversation
of the
past
interior
dialogue
created the noble Theaetetus of the more recent
frame,
as well as
inspiring
Eucleides'
continuing
interest in
philosophy,
and is
being projected
into the future as it
might
awaken the desire for
philosophy
in
Terpsion,
who
himself, through
the slave's
reading
and thus his
hearing
of
Eucleides' book
(which
is what all future readers are
engaging),
is
handing
down the
philosophical spark
to the
posterity
in which we ourselves now read
the
dialogues.
In terms of dramatic
chronology
of the interior
dialogue,
the unframed
Euthyphro
intervenes between the framed Theaetetus and
explicitly
unframed
(though implicitly
embedded in the Theaetetus
frame) Sophist,
for Theaetetus
ends with Socrates
walking
to the Stoa of the
King
Archon where he would en-
counter
Euthyphro,
and
Sophist begins
on the
subsequent morning,
followed
by
Statesman the next
day.
The four
dialogues
work as a dramatic
group.39
While the interior Theaetetus ends with the conclusion that all the
philosophi-
cal
offspring
which have been examined are false
(210b),
the frame
provides,
as it
were,
a
happy ending,
for it shows the narrative or human
offspring
of the
Socratic
conversation,
the adult
Theaetetus,
to be an admirable and admired
man.40 From a theoretical or
logical point
of
view, however,
the discussion
of flux and
opposites
in Theaetetus
produce
not a
genuine philosophical
off-
spring,
concerned with
being
and the
One,
which are the
proper
task of the
philosopher,
but rather a
necessarily preliminary investigation
of flux and the
many,
a task
proper
to the
sophist
such as
Protagoras.41
At
Sophist 259d5-7,
the Eleatic
Stranger
in
fact,
characterizes
antilogic
or
argument
from
opposites
that was characteristic of
sophistic practice
as "no true
elenchus,
but ...
plainly
the newborn
offspring
of some brain that has
just begun
to
lay
hold
upon
the
problem
of
being."
In terms of
narrative, however,
the discussion of flux is situ-
ated as the
beginning
of Theaetetus'
specifically philosophical education,
but
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
49
not as a
purely elementary exercise,
for it is
building upon
his
already impres-
sive mathematical
knowledge.
In terms of
ontology, however,
the
Protagorean
dyadic
flux is an
object
of
inquiry preliminary
both to the Heraclitean ontol-
ogy
which admits both
dyadic
flux and monadic
logos (as
discussed in Poster
1996),
and to the
study
of
being
itself.
The unframed
Euthyphro, however,
eschews such direct
ontological
ab-
stractions,
and instead shows Socrates
leading Euthyphro
from certain knowl-
edge
to an
aporetic
conclusion with
respect
to
piety.
Unlike the
willing
and
brilliant
young Theaetetus, Euthyphro
shows no
signs
of
philosophical genius,
and
despite
a
fairly good-natured willingness
to
play along
with
Socrates,
a cer-
tain intellectual
inflexibility. Euthyphro
is often considered a dolt and straw
man,
an
unequal
contestant in a battle of wits and
unworthy
of Socrates' refu-
tative
efforts,
but if we consider him from the
point
of
ethos,
he is
possessed
of certain virtues.
Euthyphro
is a
genuinely pious man, willing
to be
subject
to
ridicule and
enmity
in order to behave in accordance with his
religious
beliefs.
Like Socrates or
Antigone,
he believes that he has immediate
personal
knowl-
edge
of the
gods' wills,
and is
acting
in accordance with what the
gods
tell him.
Unfortunately,
he is
wrong.
As West
(1993, 156)
has
pointed out,
his
prophe-
cies
concerning
the successful outcomes of his trial and that of Socrates turn
out false.
Euthyphro's
case is
unlikely
to
prevail
and Socrates is condemned to
die. The
falsity
of
Euthyphro's prophecies,
like the brilliant career of Theaete-
tus,
is known to readers of the
dialogue,
which was written after the death of
Socrates. The
story
of
Euthyphro
unfolds more
tragically
than
comically.
As in
tragedy (which
deals with known stories rather than the fictive/new/unknown
ones of
comedy),
the reader knows the
ending
of the
story
and
Euthyphro's
failure like that of
many tragic
heroes
(Oedipus, Greon, etc.)
is
prideful
un-
willingness
to be turned from a
path
which the audience knows will lead to
destruction. While
Alcibiades,
or
many
of Plato's clever
sophists
or
sophisti-
cally
trained
young men,
are
examples
of cleverness without
virtue,
or the
intellectual
capacity for,
and
perhaps exposure to, philosophy
without the will
to
pursue it, Euthyphro
is an
example
of will to virtue and
piety
without the
knowledge
or
ability
to
change.
The
sequence Theaetetus-Euthyphro-Sophist
dramatically
embodies an
ontological perspective
on education.
Theaetetus,
which discusses
change,
shows a
capable
and
willing student,
who
through
a discussion of the nature of
knowledge
and
change,
himself be-
comes
changed
to one who is
prepared
to
approach philosophy. Euthyphro,
which discusses
piety,
the
object
of which is the
unchanging
world of the di-
vine,
shows an inflexible but virtuous man who
through
his
inability
to
change
is unable to reach
any
true
knowledge
of virtue or
piety,
and
thus, despite
his
best
efforts,
acts in a manner
effectively impious
and without virtue.
Next,
the
Sophist (268c-d) provides
a
happy ending,
as it
were, reinforcing
the
message
of the frame of
Theaetetus,
that a
gifted
and
willing pupil
can
successfully
50 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
progress
towards
philosophy, by
himself
changing
and
being changed through
understanding change
or
becoming,
and from there
moving towards,
if never
actually reaching,
an
understanding
of fixed
being.42
The Eleatic
Stranger
(Sophist 268c-d),
with the
help
of his able and
cooperative interlocutor,
The-
aetetus, discovering
the real
sophist
and
pinpointing
him in a fixed location
from where he cannot
slip away, speaks
an exact truth
(talethestata).
The sub-
sequent dialogue,
the
Statesman,
shows that the
happy (in
both the nontech-
nical sense and in Austin's
sense) ending
of the
Sophist
was not
accidental,
nor
dependent
on the
specific person
of
Theaetetus,
but rather
repeatable
and
generalizable
-
at least to other talented and
cooperative
interlocutors. The
Eleatic
Stranger,
with the
help
of the
Younger Socrates, successfully
locates
the statesman
(311b-c), just
as he has
previously
found the
sophist
in his dis-
cussion with Theaetetus.
In these four
dialogues,
the
degree
to which the
participants
succeed in
defining
or
locating
the
object
of their
inquiries depends
on the nature of the
object
under discussion as well as the interlocutors. The statesman and the
sophist
are
successfully defined; piety
and
knowledge
fail to be
defined;
and
definition of the
philosopher
is not
attempted.
Both the statesman and the
sophist belong exclusively
to the
phenomenal
world of
flux,
and thus can be
located
by
a dialectic method
grounded
in
Protagorean/Heraclitean antilogy,
which instantiates the
dynamic equilibrium
of
simultaneously present op-
posites. Piety
and
knowledge,
whose
objects
are a divine
unchanging world,
cannot be found or defined
accurately by phenomenal language
as it occurs
within
time,
one word
following
the other in an
ever-changing sequence.
True
knowledge (episteme)
is not to be found in
perception
but in soul
directly
en-
gaged
in realities
(ta onta) (Theaetetus 187a).
The
philosopher
himself is not
discussed,43
because in so far as one
par-
ticipates
in
philosophy,
one
partakes
of
things beyond language,
like the One
of Parmenides whom Socrates claims to reverence more than
any
other man
(Theaetetus 183e).
Socrates thus refuses to discuss
being flippantly (Theaete-
tus
183e), perhaps
because of the
inadequacy
of
language
with
respect
to the
Parmenidean
(and Platonic)
One. If it is
impossible
to discuss the
One,
how-
ever,
and
philosophy depends
on our
ability
to have discussions
(see Sophist
260a5-9,
cited
above),
then in order to
philosophize,
we must
go beyond
Par-
menides,
as the Eleatic
Stranger
claims to be
doing
at
Sophist 258c8-d9,
where
he
points
out that in his discussion with Theaetetus he has
proceeded
"further
in his
investigation"
than Parmenides because
they
have been
talking
about
non-being. Language depends
on a mixture of
being
with
non-being,
a
mixing
characteristic of the
dyadic phenomenal
world of which
sophists
discourse.
Unlike the
simple One,
or the
many simple forms,
words are
multiplicities
and mixtures. Words
themselves,
on the most literal
level,
are combinations
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
5 1
of letters
(Sophist
252el
sq.)
and our
power
of discourse is derived from the
interweaving together
of the forms44 as the Eleatic
Stranger
mentions at
Soph-
ist
259e8-9,
as
part
of his
inquiry (Sophist 260b8-10)
into the
question
of
whether
non-being (to
me
on) mingles
with
opinion
and
speech (doxe
to kai
logo mignutai).
Mingling
and
Logoi
The
problem
of
mingling provides
an
ontological counterweight
to the
dramatic
optimism concerning
true
opinion implied by
the
endings
of
Sophist
and Statesman. The
very linguistic
nature of the
dialogues
limits the
range
of
topics
that
they
can
happily
address. The
corporeal world,
like the world of
discourse,
is a mixture. Thus
speech
can imitate
phenomena
more
adequately
than it can imitate
noeta,
because it is the
corporeal
or
phenomenal
embodi-
ment of
thought,
as the Eleatic
Stranger says: "Well, then, thought
and
speech
are the
same; only
the
former,
which is a silent inner
dialogue
of the soul
with itself has been
given
the
special
name of
thought" (Sophist 263e3-6).
But
speech, being corporeal,
imitates
only
"the
appearances
of
things
but not
the
reality
and the truth"
(Republic 596e4-5),
and the
very
Platonic
dialogues
we read are not the real conversations of the
participants
but
only
the
things
which resemble them
(Republic 597a3-5)45. Plato,
like the
painter imitating
the cabinet
maker, presents
to us
images
that he himself situates at three re-
moves from
reality.
All
linguistic
imitation is thus
inherently imperfect.
Eucleides
emphasizes
the distance between his book and the actual conversation when he describes
how he handles oratio
obliqua:
Now this is the
way
I wrote the conversation: I did not
represent
Socrates
relating
it to
me,
as he
did,
but
conversing
with those
with whom he told me he conversed. And he told me that
they
were the
geometrician
Theodorus and Theaetetus. Now in order
that the
explanatory
words between the
speeches might
not be
annoying
in the written
account,
such as "and I said" or "and I
remarked,"
whenever Socrates
spoke,
or "he
agreed"
or "he did
not
agree,"
in the case of the
interlocutor,
I omitted all that sort of
thing
and
represent
Socrates himself as
talking
with them.
(The-
aetetus
143b4-c6)
Eucleides'
explanation
of his rhetorical reasons for omission of such words
as "I said" or indications of oratio
obliqua may
be
trustworthy
with
respect
to the
apparent
motivations of his dramatic
character,
but are
considerably
less innocent when read in a
larger
Platonic context. Plato himself does not
universally
avoid such
constructions,46
and in the Statesman has the Eleatic
Stranger expound
the
necessity
for tedium in
pursuit
of
philosophy;
he
argues
that the
appropriateness
of the form of a
philosophical
discourse should be
52 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
judged only by
whether it "makes the hearer better able to discover the
truth"
(Statesman
286e and
sq.).
Even more
significant, however,
is that
the
type
of diction Eucleides decides to use for convenience is
precisely
the one condemned
by
the Socrates of Plato's
Republic.
While there is no
extrinsic reason to assume doctrinal
compatibility
between
Republic
and
the
Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman triad,
the
ontological
discussions in these
three
dialogues
do
help
to resolve an
apparent paradox concerning
mimesis in
the
Republic. Moreover,
the notion of mimesis in the
Republic clearly parallels
the
literary application
of the
theory
of imitation in the
Sophist.
In
Republic,
Book
III,
Socrates describes
everything
said
by
fabulists or
poets
as narration
(diegesis),
and
portrays
them as
proceeding
either
by pure
narration or
by
a narrative that is effected
by imitation,
or
by
both
(Republic
392d5-7).47
He defines
pure diegesis
as narration in which "the
poet
himself
is the
speaker
and does not even
attempt
to
suggest
to us that
anyone
else is
speaking" (Republic 393a7-8),
i.e. indirect
speech,
and mimesis as the
type
of
narration where the
poet speaks
in the voices of his dramatis
personae,
as in
tragedy
or
comedy.
Socrates
emphasizes
that the
poet can, by using diegetic
method,
"conceal himself nowhere" and
accomplish
"his entire
poeticizing
and narration without imitation"
(Republic 393c8-dl).
Of the two
methods,
Socrates claims
diegesis
to be
clearly superior
and
argues
that the
guardians
should,
in
general,
eschew mimesis
(Republic 396e-397b).
If the
mingling
of mimesis with
diegesis
is
rejected
for the
guardians
on
moral
grounds,
there also are
epistemological
reasons for
rejection
of mimesis
in discourse that aims at
understanding
true
being. Simple diegesis (haple
diegesis, Republic
394b
1)
without
any
mixture of mimesis is
possible.
For dis-
cussion of true
being,
which is also
unmixed, pure diegesis
would be far more
appropriate
than the mimetic form Eucleides chooses in the Theaetetus frame.
In
Republic
Book X
(especially 598d-602c)
Socrates
unequivocally
condemns
imitation,
and
points
out that those who had true
knowledge
would not devote
themselves to the
fashioning
of
images
but instead would devote themselves to
realities
(599a5-b5),
and the Eleatic
Stranger
contrasts imitations with truth
in a similar manner in his division at
Sophist
235e ff. How does the
explicit
framing
of Theaetetus as mimetic affect the
way
in which the
dialogue
is un-
derstood? Are we to assume that this
inquiry
into the nature of
knowledge,
like
all other
imitations,
is itself at a third remove from the truth
(Republic
602cl-
3)
and read this Platonic
dialogue
like we
might
Homeric
epic
or Attic
tragedy?
Or does the caveat of the frame rescue the interior
dialogue
from its mimetic
nature
by calling
attention to its own
necessarily misleading
nature?
As the Eleatic
Stranger
discusses in the
Sophist, meaning
is
generated
by interweaving;
names on their own mean
nothing (244c-d
and
259e-260a)
and even names themselves are
blendings
of letters. In order to
philosophize
at
all,
letters must
mingle
to form
names,
words must combine in
sentences,
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
53
sentences combine to make
speeches, speeches by multiple
characters blend
to form
philosophical dialogues,
and those
eager
for
philosophy
must in turn
mingle
or associate with
(in
the sense of
sunousia,
discussed
above) philo-
sophical
discourse. Not
only
do
single
names mean
nothing,
but even
single
sentences,
such as the
"puzzling
little
phrases"
of the obscure Heracliteans
(Theaetetus 179e-180d),
fail to
bring
forth
philosophical offspring.
As Plato's
strictures on imitation
imply,
the mimetic
mingling
of the Theaetetus will not
lead to
knowledge
of
being,
but
only
to a "newborn
offspring" (Sophist
259d5-
7,
discussed
above), preliminary
even to the
attempts
at
separation
we find in
the method of division
practiced
in
Sophist
and Statesman.
Preliminaries, however,
are
necessary.
The
pursuit
of
knowledge
must
start
somewhere,
and
just
as human
babies,
when newborn or
young,
must
first master
elementary matters,
such as
linguistic competence (in
the non-
technical sense of
distinguishing "dogs"
from
"cats"),
so
philosophical
learn-
ing
also
proceeds by stages,
and this notion of
progressive stages
of
learning
is
what informs Plato's
apparently
inconsistent
theory
of
mimesis,
and
justifies
his
writing
of mimetic
dialogues.
As Alexander Nehamas
points
out
(1982, 53),
"[t] hough
children can learn from
imitation,
the adult inhabitants of the
city
are not to be
exposed
to it." This is the crucial difference in dramatic situa-
tion between Books III and X of the
Republic;
the earlier book discusses the
education of
children,
the later one adult
society.48
The
question
of mimesis
and the role of
poetry
in
learning
are
solidly grounded
in
ontological
consider-
ations. The
paideutic
issue of
learning
to act well as a child
by apprehending
exempla
of
good things
but as an adult
by approaching
the Good itself
through
dialectic,
is
analogous
to the
epistemological
issue of first
needing
to learn the
particulars
to
trigger
in some
way knowledge
of the
forms,
but
then,
as Bostock
says (1988, 19)
"once that has
happened
our
experience
of this world has no
further role to
play [in acquiring
true
knowledge]."
The
youthful
Theaetetus
is not
yet prepared
to
inquire directly
about the
objects
of true
knowledge,
even were such unmediated
inquiry possible. Instead,
Socrates' conversation
with him centers on how we know the
particulars,
an intermediate
stage
be-
tween the
very preliminary
discussions of
particulars themselves,
without self-
conscious
methodological awareness,
and actual
philosophy.
The self-aware
methodological
focus on
knowledge
in Theaetetus followed
by
the more
rigor-
ous dialectic of the
Sophist give
Theaetetus the tools he will need to become
philosophical;
since the
middle-aged
Theaetetus of the frame is described as
kalos te kai
agathos (Theaetetus 142b7)
and is known to the readers as a bril-
liant mathematician and
generally
admirable
character,
it seems that readers
are invited to
interpret
the
process
as
having
succeeded.
The interior
dialogue
of the
Theaetetus, then,
does not stand in
direct,
but
only
in
paideutic,
relation to the
unmingled
truth or
being
of the One. As
the Eleatic
Stranger claims,
if
not-being
does not
mingle
with
being
all
things
54 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
are true
(Sophist 260b9-cl).
Since discourse is the
product
of such
mingling,
however,
no
discourse, including
that of Plato or his characters can be
entirely
true. From the
mingling
of
non-being
"false
opinion
and false discourse come
into
being;
for to think or
say
what is not
-
that is where falsehood arises in
mind or words"
(Sophist 260b9-c4).
From falsehood
grows deceit,
and conse-
quently
discourse
(including Plato's)
is filled with
images
and likenesses and
fancies
(Sophist 260c6-9).
The
dialogue, thus,
in
investigating
the
relationship
between
knowledge
and
aisthesis,
uses the
necessarily misleading
medium of
language
to discuss the
equally misleading phenomenal
world of
becoming.
The narrative structure of the
Theaetetus, then,
rather than
violating
Plato's
ontological
strictures
against mimesis,
enacts the
very ontological
claims the
dialogue
addresses. Imitative
form,
for
Plato,
was not
only
not a
fallacy,
but inherent in the nature of the
cosmos,
as well as in
language.
The
frame
appropriately begins
an
investigation
of
being
and
becoming
with a self-
referential mention of indirect
speech
that makes the audience aware of the
problematic
nature of the mimetic form of the inner
dialogue. Surrounding
both outer
dialogue
and frame are the other
dialogues
of the dramatic se-
quence,
as well as the cross-references which extend
throughout
the
platonic
corpus.
The audience of Plato's written
dialogues
is not left with a
specific
set of
logical solutions,
but rather narrative
closures,
in which the lives and
reputations
of the now dead interlocutors show how
philosophical
ideas and
conversations
shaped
the ethical choices of individuals and communities.
Plato's
frame,
which introduces the
Theaetetus,
is thus itself
finally
framed
by
another unwritten and unwritable
frame,
that of the reader's
participation
in
the
dialogue
as it extends forward into
history
and is
experienced
within the
temporal
flux of the
phenomenal world,
which is where both Plato's
dialogue
and this
essay
leave us.
Conclusion
This
analysis
of selected Platonic
dialogues
should
suggest
that it is indeed
possible
for rhetoricians to
"drag
Plato back to the orators like a
runaway
slave"
(Aristides,
"Defense of
Oratory" 463)
but in order to do this well we
must
radically reappraise
the common
understandings
of Plato in
contempo-
rary
rhetorical
scholarship.
As a
starting point,
it will be
necessary
to avoid
transferring
the
habit, necessary
for academic
politics,
of
acting
as advocates
of
rhetoric,
to historical studies of rhetoric and other verbal
practices.
Rather
than
trying
to fit Plato into
contemporary paradigms by searching
for isolated
passages
of
dogma
within the statements of a Socratic character and then
either
approving
or
disapproving
such reconstructed
dogmatic content,
rheto-
ricians should examine Plato's actual rhetorical and
pedagogical practices
in
historical context. Such an
examination, paradoxically, yields
a Plato closer to
and more useful for
contemporary
rhetorical studies than the anachronistic
one based on
contemporary disciplinary
frameworks.
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus 55
One of the most distinctive characteristics of the Platonic
dialogues
is
that
they
are
self-consciously pedagogical
and rhetorical in a manner almost
unique among major
western
philosophers.
Rather than
laying
out some
philo-
sophical system
in a
monological treatise,
the
dialogues
examine
ontology,
epistemology,
and ethics
by showing
the
processes by
which
people
learn and
teach them and the
practices
that inculcate habits of
teaching, learning,
and
intellectual
investigation.
Since
language,
for
Plato,
is the tool
by
which ideas
are
learned, taught,
and
understood,
as the
dialogues grapple
with notions of
being
and
knowledge they explicitly
address the issue of how
language
affects
the
ways
in which
phenomena
are
apprehended.
The
practice
of
philosophy,
as it
appears
in the
dialogues
and was
taught
in the
Academy,
is a constant
striving
towards an unreachable
goal, demanding
a
life-long
commitment to
learning
and
inquiry.
Thus all
learning
itself is
rhetorical,
in that
(1)
it can
only
be done
by
means of
language; (2)
it
requires
self-conscious reflection about
the
linguistic
tools it
employs; (3)
it is
dialogical; (4)
it is audience-centered
(different types
of interlocutor
require
different
methods); (5)
it is
overtly
and
self-reflexively pedagogical.
For
Plato,
because of the
interdependence
between
language
and
episte-
mology, precision
of utterance and
argument
are crucial skills for the
aspiring
philosopher.
Thus
generalized (liberal)
rhetorical studies
(as opposed
to the
vocational
approaches
of
many professional sophists)
were a standard
practice
at Plato's
Academy,
a tradition continued
through
late
antiquity
under such
Platonists as
Porphyry, Proclus, Syrianus,
and Iamblichus
(Poster 1998).
One
might
even
say
that in Aristotle the Platonic
Academy
had the first and most
influential of all
graduate
instructors in first
year writing.
While Plato
was,
as far as we can tell
(Poster 1997),
in one sense
implacably opposed
to the common uses of rhetoric in the courtroom and
assembly,
in another
sense,
due to his insistence
upon language
as a
necessary
tool for
thought,
he was also a
strong
advocate of a
"big
rhetoric" and a seminal
figure
for the institutional
development
of
epistemic
and liberal
writing
instruction. As rhetoric re-examines its institutional roles and
disciplinary
nature,
it
may
well benefit from
revisiting
Plato not as a source of
dogmas,
but
as a thinker who examines how
language
functions in the
processes
of
thinking
and
learning.
English Department
York
University
Notes
1. I wrote a
preliminary
version of the second
part
of this
essay
as a
Visiting
Fellow at
University
of Iowa
Project
on the Rhetoric of
Inquiry
in 1998-99 and
56 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
presented
drafts at the 1998
meeting
of Classical Association of the Midwest
and South and the
University
of Iowa Classics
Department Colloquium
Series
(23
March
1999).
York
University
research
funding
and the excellent
library
system
of
University
of Toronto have enabled me to
compose
the first
part
and
expand
and revise the second
extensively.
I owe thanks for
extremely
useful
discussions and
suggestions
to Brad
McAdon,
Susan
Miller,
Thomas
Miller,
and
Rhetoric
Society Quarterly editor, Gregory
Clark.
My greatest
thanks are owed
to
Jeffrey
Walker for a detailed and
cogent reading
of the
manuscript
and John
Finamore for numerous useful
suggestions, Platonic, neoplatonic,
and
gastro-
nomic. I should
apologize
in advance for the inordinate number of self-refer-
ences,
but
given
that the
length
of this article
already
exceeds the
patience
of most
readers,
rather than summarize
positions
I have
argued elsewhere,
I
substitute references for the sake of
brevity.
2. A
complete bibliographic survey
of this conflict would fill a substantial
monograph.
Several
scholars, however,
have discussed the
history
of Platonic
interpretations
in
depth.
In
particular,
Poster
(1998),
Thesleff
(1982),
and
Tigerstedt (1974, 1977)
discuss the
history
of Platonic
interpretation
and its
relationship
to notions of
authenticity
and
chronology
of the
dialogues.
Sev-
eral recent edited collections discuss issues of dramatic
interpretation
of the
dialogues
and
provide
extensive summaries and
bibliographies
of the conflicts
between advocates of dramatic
reading
and those with whom
they disagree;
especially
valuable are Gonzalez
(1995),
Griswold
(1988),
Hart and
Tejera
(1997),
and Press
(1993).
3. The
special
issue of
Philosophy
and Rhetoric on Plato
(1993)
edited
by
Ken-
neth Dorter
provides examples
of what is often termed "the new Plato."
4. Bernals
(1987) simply replaces meticulous,
if not
undisputed, scholarship
with uncritical
reading
and radical
ideology;
see
Mary
Lefkowitz 1996 for refu-
tation. Susan Jarratt
(1991)
and
Jasper
Neel
(1988)
both use Plato and the
sophists
in what are
essentially polemical
works
concerning contemporary
English departments;
their work is often tendentious and invokes Plato
mainly
instrumentally
as an
enemy
of rhetoric.
5.
Tigerstedt (1977)
discusses how
questions
of
authenticity
are as much the
results of as the
grounds
for
interpretation.
I have discussed the
relationship
between
interpretation
and
dating
of Platonic
dialogues
in Poster
(1998).
6.
Despite
such welcome
exceptions as, e.g.,
Thomas
Conley,
Janet
Davis,
Robert
Gaines, Larry Green, Katya Haskins,
Brad
McAdon,
Edward
Schiappa,
Robert
Sullivan,
and
Jeffrey Walker, many
rhetoricians who claim to be
doing
radical revision of ancient
thought
still
rely
on the translations and editions of
the classicists
they
claim to be
challenging.
7. One's beliefs
concerning authenticity
of
Epistle
VII have
significant
consequence
for how one
interprets
Plato
(as
I have discussed in "Plato's
Unwritten
Doctrines"). Many
of the odder
interpretations
of the Aristotelian
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
57
enthymeme
have been based on an intrusive
gloss
in
early printed
editions of
the Prior
Analytics
and determinations of
authenticity
of rhetorical texts and
their
interpretation
have been
intimately
connected for several centuries
(as
I
have discussed in
"Theology, Ganonicity,
and Abbreviated
Enthymemes").
For
discussions of how the
history
of the Aristotelian
corpus
and its concomitant
textual
problems
affect
interpretations
see Felix
Grayeff
s
interesting,
if not
entirely reliable,
Aristotle And His School and Brad McAdon's
"Reconsidering
the Intention or
Purpose
of Aristotle's Rhetoric.
"
8. One
particularly complicated
rhetorical issue which remains in translation
from Greek is the tradition of Greek first
being
translated into Latin and then
from Latin to
English
in
many European
educational contexts
-
even when I
was a
graduate student,
some of the more traditional Hellenists would have
students who were
having difficulty
with Greek texts translate the Greek into
Latin first before
attempting
to determine the
English
sense of the text. There
conventional translations of Greek terms which have come into
English
via
Latin
cognates (e.g.
"arete" into "virtus" into
"virtue";
"techne" into "ars"
into
"art")
result in terms which would not have been chosen had the transla-
tion been
directly
from Greek into
English,
e.
g.
"intrinsic" and "extrinsic"
proof
make far more sense in
English
than the conventional "artistic" and
"inartistic"
(which
are
particularly bewildering
for
undergraduates).
9. An
example
of the awkwardness of untranslated Greek terms can be seen
in,
e.g.,
Alan Gross'
"insisting]
to the
point
of
pedantry
on the
primacy
of Aristo-
tle's
key
words"
(2000, 26,
see Poster 2002 for review of entire
volume):
To
complete
a definition of techne
by aitia,
we must also
specify
its
eidos,
its hou
hothen,
and its heneka. The eidos of a techne is
the essential form of its
products.
As with
episteme,
the essence
of
techne,
its to ti en
einai,
is a
potency
resident in the
psuche;
but
only
in the case of technai is this
potency
the
equivalent
of
eidos,
the essential form
that,
when combined with
matter, just
is
a
product
...
(Gross 2000, 28)
For the
"keyword
method" see also Kathleen Welch
(1990)
whom Gross cites
as his source. The
opposite
extreme can be found in Malcolm Heath's transla-
tion of
Hermogenes'
On
Issues,
which eschews all use of Greek
terms,
a strat-
egy critiqued by
Yun Lee Too in her review
(1997)
of the translation.
10. For
example, Christopher
Johnstone's Introduction to his edited
volume,
Theory, Text,
and Context: Issues in Greek Rhetoric and
Oratory,
and
Tony
Lentz, Orality
and
Literacy
in Hellenic
Greece,
both
over-emphasize
the
divide between
orality
and
literacy
in
antiquity.
One
interesting
issue in rhe-
torical
historiography
is the
relationship
between
orality/literacy theory
and
Roman
Catholicism, particularly
in the case of Walter
Ong
and his teacher
Marshall
McLuhan,
and more
recently,
John Miles
Foley.
For more balanced
58 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
treatments of ancient oral and literate
practices,
see
Sickinger (1999),
Thomas
(1989, 1992),
Yunis
(2003).
11.
E.g.
Rollin
Quimby's (1974, rpt. 1979) using
Gilbert
Ryle's
rather eccentric
Plato's
Progress
as if it
represented
a consensus on Platonic
chronology,
rather
than an
interesting
but
idiosyncratic work,
which
sparked great
initial interest
which
quickly
waned
(as
discussed in The
Progress of
Plato's
Progress,
ed.
Freis
1969). Tigerstedt (1977)
shows that the
arguments concerning dating
and
authenticity
of the Platonic
dialogues
are as much results of
interpretive
assumptions
as
starting points
for
interpretation.
Ancient
sources,
as
well,
must be read with some caution as
they
often are based on
guesses adjusted
to
conform to theories.
Diogenes
Laertius'
chronologies,
for
example,
are in
part
determined
by 1)
the
assumption
that a man's most
important
work was done
at the
approximate age
of
forty (considered
the date at which he
'flourished')
and
2)
that
philosophic
sects could be
organized
and documented as
regular
successions of masters and
pupils.
Aristotle recasts earlier
philosophers
as
partial precursors
of
specific
elements of his own
philosophical system (dis-
cussed in McDiarmid
1953)
and
patristic
writers
reshape pagan predecessors
as sources of Christian heresies
(Osborne 1987,
Mansfeld
1992).
In order to
use ancient sources
concerning Plato,
for
example,
as a
supplement
to the
dialogues,
one must
pay
attention to the rhetorical aims and contexts of those
ancient writers rather than
taking
them as
purely objective
sources of facts.
12. An
admittedly
unscientific
survey
of tables of contents of Rhetoric
Society
Quarterly,
Rhetoric
Review, Philosophy
and
Rhetoric,
and
Pre/text, suggests
that well over half the articles on Plato
by
rhetoricians in
English
and Commu-
nications are concerned
primarily
with
Phaedrus, Gorgias,
and
Protagoras.
A
similar
proportion
can be found in the
essays
collected
by
Keith Erickson in
Plato: True and
Sophistic
Rhetoric.
13. This treatment of the
general
term "rhetoric" as
though
it refers to some
thing
rather than
merely being
an abstraction which shifts use and
meaning
over time
presumes
an extreme realist account of
language
which is
not,
I
think, supportable (as
I have discussed in
"Being, Time,
and Definition: To-
wards a Semiotics of
Figural Rhetoric," 2000.)
14. This limitation of rhetorical
historiography
to those works that
specifically
use the term rhetoric can result in
misperceptions
of how verbal skills were
taught
and theorized in
many periods.
See Woods
(1990), e.g.,
for the medieval
period.
15. Bacon uses the term "Idols of the
Tribe,"
for the same
phenomenon
in his
New
Organon, (1960,
48
sq.)
16. This "team
spirit" approach
to
historiography
can be found in numerous
works of rhetorical
scholarship, including
Barrett's The
Sophists,
Covino's The
Art
of Wondering,
Vicker's
Defense of Rhetoric,
and the works of the self-de-
scribed
"neosophists." Popper (The Open Society
and Its
Enemies)
and Have-
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus
59
lock
(Preface
to
Plato)
take similar
positions,
albeit within the
disciplinary
contexts
of, respectively, philosophy
and classics. James
Kastely's Rethinking
the Rhetorical Tradition is an
example
of the benefits of
moving beyond
this
"team
spirit"
to more
sophisticated interpretive strategies.
17.1 have discussed this issue of
using
ancient authors for transferred
prestige
in rhetorical studies in
"(Re)positioning Pedagogy:
A Feminist
Historiography
of Aristotle's Rhetorical
18. Nelms and
Goggin (1993) provide
a
dated,
but nonetheless
useful, bibliog-
raphy
of
contemporary pedagogical appropriations
of ancient rhetoric
19. See Press
(1993, 110nl3)
for
summary
of
scholarly
discussions of Plato's
choice of dramatic form.
20.
Arguments concerning
the
authenticity
or
inauthenticity
of
Epistle
VII
are numerous and inconclusive. For the
purpose
of this
essay,
I will assume
that the
philosophical
excursus is either authentic or written
by
someone in-
timately
familiar with discussions of
philosophy
in the
Academy
either
during
Plato's life or
shortly
after his death. See
Guthrie,
Gadamer
(1980),
Gaiser
(1980), Sayre (1995, xviii-xxiii),
and White
(1976, 200-215)
for discussions of
Epistle
VII and its relation to Plato's
dialogues.
Kurt von Fritz
(1971) argues
for the
authenticity
of
Epistle
VII but
against mystical interpretation
of the
philosophical
excursus. Edelstein
(1966) argues against
its
authenticity;
Bris-
son
(1987), Ledger (1989),
and Morrow
(1962)
in favor. Brandwood's
(1990)
stylometric analysis
evidence
supports
its Platonic
authorship,
and dates it in
close
proximity
to Phaedrus.
21. For a discussion of Plato's lecture "On the
Good,"
see Gaiser
(1980).
Cherniss
(1962)
reconstructs the actual
teaching
methods of the
Academy.
While other of Cherniss's conclusions are
quite controversial,
his
description
of Plato as
setting problems
or
asking questions
of his students rather than
lecturing
and
providing
solutions for them seems a
quite persuasive
account
of Platonic
teaching.
22.
Diogenes
Laertius recounts that Plato wrote
tragedies
when
young,
but
burned them when he came under the influence of Socrates
(III.5).
Plato's
objections
to
tragedy appear
in the famous
passages
of the
Republic;
other
uncomplimentary
references to the
genre
are scattered
throughout
the
dialogues (see Nightingale 1995,
60-92 for recent discussion of the
"quarrel
between
poetry
and
philosophy").
The author of the
Anonymous Prolegomena
to Platonic
Philosophy (Westerink 1962) objects
to those who claim Plato
composed
his
dialogues
in
tetralogies
in imitation of the
tragic poets by
pointing
out that Plato himself criticizes the
poets
for
writing "images
of
images." (X.24.20-25.29). Neoplatonists
who
attempted
to fuse Hellenic
paideia
into a unified whole in face of the
increasing
threat from
Christianity
could assimilate Homer to Platonic
philosophy (see esp. Porphyry's
Cave
of
the
Nymphs,
Proclus'
Commentary
on Plato's
Republic)
and even
manage
to
60
Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
reconstruct Plato as a rhetorician
(especially Olympiodorus' Commentary
on
Plato's
Gorgias
but also
Porphyry's
and
Syrianus'
commentaries on rhetorical
technai),
but even their
aggressive syncretism
failed to find much in the
way
of
support
for Plato as dramatist. Given the
unanimity
of evidence
concerning
Plato's
opposition
to
tragedy (biography,
Socratic comments in
dialogues,
later
commentators)
and a
complete
lack of evidence on the other side
(suggesting
that Plato admired
tragedy),
it would be odd indeed to view Plato
as a
tragedian.
Plato's
dialogues
are closer
generically
to
comedy,
and there
is some evidence that Plato was influenced
by Sophron's
mimes
(Aristotle,
Poetics 1 and
Diogenes
Laertius
3.9-18).
23.
Phaedrus, Gorgias,
and
Protagoras
all discuss
rhetoric,
but do not tie it
clearly
to
problems
of
being.
The discussion of true
naming
in
Cratylus
also
contributes a
quite interesting perspective concerning
the
possibility
that true
naming depends
on
ontology.
The discussion of this
study, however,
is limited
to a
group
of four
dialogues, Theaetetus-Euthyphro-Sophist-Statesman
that
stand in a
clearly
delimited dramatic
sequence
with
respect
to one another.
The reason for this restriction of focus is to avoid
making
the
argument
of this
study dependent
on the
relationships among dialogues
for which there is no
clear internal method of
determining sequence
or
relationship. Euthyphro
is
included in order to
emphasize
the
independence
of dramatic and
metaphysi-
cal
sequencing
from traditional
chronology. Clay (1988)
discusses discontinui-
ties in the
dialogues.
Poster
(1998)
discusses the
relationship
between order
of the
dialogues
and
interpretation
thereof. See Blondell
(2002)
for extended
discussion of the Platonic
dialogue
in relation to Athenian drama.
24. See Bostock's discussion of Meno for an astute
analysis
of this
problem
(1988, 16-17).
25. That Plato inherits a Heraclitean as well as Parmenidean
critique
of ordi-
nary
and
epic language
is
apparent
in several
dialogues
other than
Theaetetus,
most
notably Cratylus.
26. Platonic
misology,
as his
objection
to or distrust of
language
has been
termed, appears
in
Epistle
VII
(341c)
and also in Phaedrus 275
sq.
For an es-
pecially
lucid discussion of Platonic
objections
to
writing,
see
Sayre (1988).
27.
Sayre (1992, 221)
uses the term "late maieutic
dialogues"
to refer to
a
group consisting
of
Theaetetus, Statesman, Sophist, Parmenides,
and
Philebus. In
following
his
terminology,
I am
agreeing
with his sense of the
relatedness of the
dialogues
he
groups together.
28. Numerous recent
essays
address the
question
of how
framing
effects in-
terpretation
of
dialogue.
Several
essays
in Press
(1993)
and Gonzalez
(1995)
discuss this
issue,
as does Johnson
(1998).
29. Whether we follow Thesleff
(1993)
in
constructing
a "two-level" model of
Plato's
ontology
or retain a more traditional "two-world" notion is not crucial
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus 6 1
to this
argument,
so
long
as Platonic
ontology
can be described as in some
form
dyadic.
I
would, however, argue
that Thesleff s
"pedimental"
structure
could be
equally
well enacted in
diegetically organized discourse;
while his
theory
could account for Platonic narrative
structures,
it does not necessitate
a
specifically
mimetic
dialogue
form. See Poster
(1993)
for discussion of the
interpretive
functions of the
agrapha.
30. For discussions of the role of sunousia in Plato see Robb
(1993, 77)
and
Sayre (1995, 17).
31. Here it is
important
to make a distinction between what
might
be termed
a
strong
esotericist
position
of
claiming
that there are fixed and determinable
Platonic doctrines to be found outside the
dialogues (espoused
most
strongly
by
Kramer
1990, Findlay 1974,
and Reale
1997)
and a certain hermeneutic es-
otericism which would
only suggest
that
points
outside the
dialogues
are useful
in
avoiding
hermeneutic
circularity
when
interpreting
Platonic
dialogues.
32. On a level of common
sense,
one could
distinguish
between
things
that can
be kicked and
things
that cannot. One
might
also
distinguish things (such
as
mathematical terms and
equations)
which
appear
to exist in a "timeless
pres-
ent" of the
analytic copula (described
in Owen
1974)
from those which are
subject
to
change (including
those
things
that can kick
back).
For
purposes
of
this
study,
it is
possible
to bracket the
question
of
precisely
what the distinc-
tion
may
be in
Plato,
whether it
changed
from
dialogue
to
dialogue,
and the
number of levels of different sorts of
being.
I do
assume, however,
that Plato
considered the
unkickables,
as it
were,
better in some
way
than the kickables
and did not consider
kicking things
a
way
of
achieving
true
knowledge.
33. Testimonia
concerning
Platonic doctrines are collected in a
very
useful
Appendix
to Kramer
(1990).
34.
Sayre (1983) argues
for the Indefinite
Dyad
as
part
of an
emerging
ontol-
ogy
most
fully
articulated in Plato's Philebus. He also makes the
quite
sensible
statement,
contra
Gherniss,
that even if there is no
formally
coherent
body
of
"unwritten doctrines" and that Plato's
teaching
in the
Academy
was
protreptic
rather than
dogmatic,
that "it is
simply
not credible that Plato never discussed
serious
philosophical
issues with his close associates"
(1983, 81).
This
position
supports
the hermeneutic
utility
of testimonia without the
necessity
of
posit-
ing
a
full-fledged system
of unwritten
teachings.
35.
Perhaps
the most seminal and
profound analysis
of Plato as a
"logos-phi-
losopher,"
one for whom
questions begin
with a discussion of how
things
can
be
said,
is that of Gadamer
(especially 1980, 197-199).
36.
Along
with an interest in the dramatic
reading
of Plato's
dialogue
has been
an increased
emphasis
on careful
reading
of frame structures. While Bostock
(1988, 14)
and
Burnyeat (1990, 3-7)
treat the frame
only briefly, mentioning
Theaetetus' future
prominence
as a
mathematician, Tschemplik (1993)
and Johnson
(1998)
examine the frame as
interpretively significant.
Their
62 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
theoretical
perspective
is
strongly narratological, however;
thus
they
both
interpret
Plato as
though literary
mimesis and narrative art were somehow the
point
of the
dialogues.
But Plato is no more a dramatist than he is a
dogmatist;
both the
subject
matter of the
dialogues
and
reports
of his life
emphasize
that his interests were
primarily
theoretical.
Taking
as a
starting point
for
interpretation
of Plato
genres
he disliked and
subjects
that did not interest
him seems somewhat
perverse.
Johnson's translation of Plato's use oioimai at
Phaedo 59blO as "if I am not mistaken" and his use of that
reading
to
interpret
the frame as a self-conscious indicator of narrative
unreliability
seems to me
a case of
strong over-interpretation.
Plato
routinely
uses oimai in its normal
sense of "I think"
(i.e.
"it seems to
me");
Socrates' interlocutors often use it as
a neutral
response indicating agreement (s.v. LSJ).
37. The
framing
of
Phaedo,
like that of
Theaetetus, explicitly
locates it as a dia-
logue
that is
dramatically
dated
after
Socrates' death.
Socrates,
like the heroes
of
tragedy
and
epic,
exists within a realm of kleos sustained
by
recoun
tings
(logoi)
of his life. Poster
(1996)
discusses the
relationships among logos, kleos,
and
ontology
in Heraclitus and
Protagoras.
38. See Phaedrus 275e and note 26 above.
39. This
grouping
is based on internal dramatic
sequence,
as I am not en-
tirely optimistic
about the
possibility
of
determining
the
chronology
of com-
position
of Plato's
dialogues
and am even less
optimistic
about
assigning any
philosophical significance
to such dates were
they
to
prove
determinable. For
discussions of these
problems
see Nails
(1995),
Poster
(1998)
and
Tigerstedt
(1977). Clay (1988) provides strong
caveats
concerning
the
assumptions
of
dramatic continuities.
40. See Arieti
(1991, 1-19)
and Press
(1993)
tor extensive discussions ot
principles
of dramatic
interpretation.
It is
interesting
to note that the con-
versations in
Sophist
and Statesman follow
many
of the contextual and con-
versational
guidelines
laid down for successful discussion
by
Austin
(1970)
and Grice
(1975).
In so far as
following
these rules enables the characters to
philosophize
and
to,
on
occasion, bring
forth
genuine offspring,
one could
say
that their
philosophizing
has been
performed happily
in a technical sense as
well as in the sense of the
plots
of the
dialogues having "happy" endings
in a
nontechnical sense. Beversluis
(2000) argues strongly
for
reassessing
the value
of Socrates' interlocutors.
41. It is not
inappropriate
thus that
Protagoras'
head
appears
in the
dialogue
and that the voice of
Protagoras
is of considerable
utility
in
advancing
the dis-
cussion of flux. See Ford
(1994)
for discussion of
Protagoras'
head.
42.
Sophist
marks a
particularly interesting
case of a
dialogue
in which
Socrates
deliberately
effaces himself in favor of an Eleatic
Stranger.
In this se-
quence
of
dialogues,
the
anonymous stranger
is more successful than Socrates
in
locating
the answers to
questions
rather than
ending
with
aporiai.
Plato
Poster I
Framing
Theaetetus 63
himself,
who
always
writes in alienis
personis, may
be
using
the
anonymity
of the
stranger
to
emphasize
that
good philosophical teaching
should not be a
matter of charismatic
leadership.
That the
pupils
in Phaedo are worried about
how to
philosophize
after the death of Socrates is an indication of a failure
of Socratic
teaching
-
Plato
may,
in
fact, emphasize
his own lack of
presence
in the
dialogue
because the written Phaedo is evidence of a Platonic solution
(founding
an
Academy, writing dialogues, etc.)
to that
very problem
and his
own
conspicuous
absence from his
dialogues
is a
way
of
making
sure that his
students will not suffer the same difficulties at his own death. The introduction
to the
Sophist,
which
playfully compares
the
Stranger
to the
gods
who walk
unknown
among men,
makes the
fairly
serious
point (Sophist 217b-c)
that al-
though
the
Stranger
is not a
god (theos)
in so far as he is a true
philosopher
he
is
properly
called divine
(theios).
The
Stranger' modesty (217-218)
as well as
his
anonymity
reveal him
as,
I
suspect,
a
philosopher
of the
type
Plato himself
strives to emulate.
43. The
philosopher,
who is mentioned at the
beginning
oi
Statesman,
is never
actually
discussed. The reason for this reticence
may
be the
quasi-divine
na-
ture of the true
philosopher (see
note 27
above).
The Phaedo
suggests
that one
cannot
truly
be a
philosopher (as opposed
to
aspiring
towards or in
training
for
philosophy)
until after death when the soul is
separated
from the
body
in
which case the
philosopher
indeed would be
impossible
to locate in the
phe-
nomenal world.
44. dia
gar
ten allelwn ton eidon
sumploken
ho
logos gegonen
hemin
(Soph-
ist
259e8-9).
For discussion of this
passage,
see Akrill
(1965).
Jan
Swearingen
(1991, esp. 82)
reads the
interweaving
of names from a feminist
perspective
as
generative
and
erotic,
a
commingling
which is
necessary
for the
engenderment
of
philosophical offspring.
I think her claim of the
utility
of this
concept
of the
generative
nature of
mingling
for feminist discourse is
interesting,
but am not
sure that the worlds of
generation
and
becoming
are ones to which Plato
gives
unqualified approval.
45.
Although
the
passages
in
Republic
are far more detailed and
frequently
cited,
the Eleatic
Stranger
makes similar comments about imitation at
Soph-
ist 234b
sq., distinguishing
between
images
and realities and
arguing
that
the
sophist's
verbal
images
are like the
painter's
visual ones. The
similarity
between the two
accounts, however, justifies
the
interweaving,
as it
were,
of
material from
Republic
into this account of Theaetetus and
Sophist.
Accounts
of Plato's lecture "On the Good" also would
suggest
that Plato had no
strong
objections
to
being
tedious in a
good
cause.
46. For discussion oioratio
obliqua
in Plato see Tarrant
(1955).
Johnson and
Tschemplik (1993)
discuss indirect discourse in the framed
dialogues.
47. For an overview of mimesis and
diegesis
in Plato and
Aristotle,
see
Kirby
(1991).
64 Rhetoric
Society Quarterly
48. A similar distinction between the imitations and
images through
which
children learn and the
appropriateness
of realities for adult
philosophers
is also made at
Sophist
234
sq. See,
on the other
hand,
Gill
(1985),
for an
argument
that this distinction is of different
types
of soul rather than
ages
of
the same soul. Since Theaetetus
clearly possesses
a
philosophical type
of
soul,
this issue is not crucial to
my argument.
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