Rhizomata 2015; 3(2): 214232

Reviews

Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue: The Return to

the Philosophy of Nature. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013
(xvi + 249pp., ISBN-13: 978-1-107-03145-6 [hb])

Reviewed by Catalin Partenie: Department of Political Science, National School of Political

Studies and Administration, Bucharest-010643, Romania, E-mail: cdpartenie@politice.ro

DOI 10.1515/rhiz-2015-0011

This is a sequel to a book Kahn published in 1998 Plato and the Socratic Dia-
logue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (CUP, Cambridge). What Kahn
offers in these two volumes is a comprehensive interpretation of Platos philoso-
phy, from the first dialogues to the Timaeus. I would like to state from the begin-
ning that I consider Kahns volumes an outstanding scholarly achievement. Since
I aim at giving the reader an overview of his interpretation in its entirety, I shall
begin by referring to his first volume.

1Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (1998)

Here Kahn deals with the dialogues that precede the Republic and argues that this
group as a whole and each of its members are best understood from the perspec-
tive of the Republic (p. 41). His interpretation (which he calls most resolutely uni-
tarian, p.40) stresses the continuity of Platos thought, and rejects the notion of
a sharp break between the earlier dialogues and the metaphysical doctrine of the
Phaedo and the Republic (p. 39). He does not deny Socrates enormous influence
on Plato, nor the plausibility of recognizing different stages in the formulation of
Platos thought (p. 40), but he claims that the relation between these dialogues
and the Republic is proleptic or ingressive: they provide us with various points
of entry, various stages of ingress, into the Platonic thought-world that finds its
fullest expression in the Republic (p. 48). According to Kahn, Plato reached the

1All quotations in this section are from Kahns 1998 book.

2Kahn quotes Jaeger (1944, p.152): For Plato the goal was fixed and the outlines of the whole
scheme were already visible to him, when he took up pen to write the first of his Socratic
dialogues. The entelechy of the Republic can be traced with full clarity in the early dialogues.
Kahn endorses Jaegers somewhat extravagant claim [] not as a strictly historical claim but as
a hermeneutical hypothesis, a proposal for the most insightful reading of the dialogues (p. 41).

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views that are at the core of the Symposium, Phaedo and the Republic long before
he wrote them, and a preparation for them occurs in seven dialogues, which Kahn
calls the threshold dialogues (Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Protagoras, Meno,
Lysis and Euthydemus, pp.4142). Just as the Republic is a proleptic composition
that rise to a crescendo in Books VIVII, so the early dialogues follow a plan of
ingressive exposition, leading from dialogue to dialogue to the very climax in the
central books of the Republic (p. 63). The evidence is of two kinds: (i) enigmatic
and puzzling passages in the threshold dialogues whose clarification is provided
by passages in the Symposium, Phaedo and the Republic; and (ii) passages in the
Symposium, Phaedo and the Republic that deliberately emphasize their continu-
ity with ideas and formulations familiar from the earlier works (p. 60).
Kahn believes that the Seventh Letter was indeed written by Plato; relying
on it, he claims that in his youth Plato was drawn to politics but then at some
point he changed (and that must have been c. 388 BCE, according to the Seventh
Letter). This Kehre from politics to philosophy is at the core of the Gorgias. There,
says Kahn (following Dodds and others), when Plato speaks about choosing one
of the Two Lives (the life in philosophy and the usual life in politics), he speaks
about his own decision as reported in the Seventh Epistle (p. 51). Kahn, p.52:
The Gorgias says explicitly what the Seventh Epistle implies: that [] philoso-
phy pursued in the Socratic spirit is the only realistic way of working for polit-
ical improvement. And with this new conception, Kahn suggests, came a new
conception on Platos part of his own role: he will be a teacher and a writer. The
project of teaching will be pursued in his activities in the Academy, following
his return to Athens. The project of writing will take shape in a new series of dia-
logues that begins with the dialogues of definition and culminates in the Repub-
lic (p. 52). Kahn believes that the plan itself, and the composition of the threshold
dialogues, happened in the middle or late 380s (pp. 5859).
Why, however, did Plato not reveal his plan from the beginning, preferring
a gradual disclosure and aporia? For a pupil of Socrates that must have had

3Cf. Dodds (1959), p. 31 (quoted by Kahn p. 51): Here [in the Gorgias] behind the figures of
Socrates and Callicles, we can for once catch sight of Plato himself. For in the light of the Seventh
Letter it is fairly clear that the Gorgias is more than an apologia for Socrates; it is at the same time
Platos apologia pro vita sua.
4The views that are at the core of the Symposium, Phaedo, Cratylus, Republic and Phaedrus
constitute a theoretical understanding of nature and knowledge (p. 368). This understanding,
claims Kahn, forms a coherent and unitary epistemology and metaphysics; but, he argues, Pla-
tos epistemology and metaphysics were required by his basic enterprise, begun in the Gorgias
but not successfully carried out there, of providing philosophic understanding and justification
for the radical claims of the Socratic moral life (p. 368).

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216 Reviews

pedagogical value. But, Kahn argues, Plato was aware that his metaphysics
(the disembodied souls of the Phaedo, for instance, or the pre-natal myth of the
Phaedrus) was not at home in the Greek society of his time (his only ally [ was]
the Orphic-Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnation, p.67). So, by not revealing his
plan from the beginning he also wanted to gradually prepare his audience for an
unfamiliar vision of the world.
The volume ends with a chapter on the Phaedrus, seen as the last Socratic
dialogue (p. 371).

2Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue (2013)

In the preface to the second volume Kahn stresses three things about the dialogues
written after the Phaedrus: (i) with two exceptions, Socrates is no longer the main
speaker; (ii) their audience is different they are not targeted anymore at a
wider public, they are works of philosophy written for philosophers (as Kahn
says in his first volume, p. 382); and (iii) they have a different goal: reshaping
the theoretical basis of Platonic philosophy in order to include the study of the
natural world (p. xii). Before Socrates, Greek philosophy had been primarily a
philosophy of nature. In his earlier works, Plato turned away from this tradi-
tion towards an investigation of the conditions for a good human life and a just
society. In his late dialogues, however, his philosophy becomes post-Socratic,
in the sense that it now returns to problems that were of primary concern for
Socrates predecessors: the nature of knowledge and the nature of the physical
world (p. xii). The outcome is a gradual (and partial) emergence of a new theory
of nature and change within the framework provided by a revised metaphysics of
Form (p. xv).

5The ordinary Greek reader or auditor, whom we may conjure up from the world of comedy and
oratory, from the lectures of the sophists and the writings of Xenophon, is wholly unprepared to
take seriously Platos metaphysical vision (p. 68). In the Symposium, Kahn argues, the seismic
gap between world views is most vividly dramatized in the frustrated passion of Alcibiades, who
is unable to establish emotional contact with Socrates even in bed, because they inhabit differ-
ent worlds (p. 69).
6Socrates is replaced by Parmenides, the visitor from Elea, the statesman-scientist Timaeus
and, in the Laws, by an anonymous Athenian (who, claims Kahn, is a masked appearance of
Plato himself). The two exceptions are the Theaetetus and Philebus; there Socrates remains the
main speaker, but he is a less dramatic figure and less directly involved in the social life and
conflicts of the Athenian polis (p. xi). Unless otherwise noted, all quotations in this section are
from Kahns 2013 book.

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 Reviews 217

In the Parmenides the classical theory of Forms comes under attack, but the
basic contrast between Forms and sensibles is reaffirmed. In Chapter 1 (The Par-
menides) Kahn reads closely the two parts of this dialogue (the six aporias and
the eight deductions) and argues that the Second Deduction of Part Two repre-
sents the conceptual outline for a theory of nature, with the details to be deter-
mined by further argument or perhaps by observation (p. 41). The methodical
exercise of the Parmenides may be seen as a preparation for physics, but by itself
it cannot provide a basis for natural science (p. 46).
For Kahn, the late dialogues from the Parmenides to the Timaeus are moments
of a single quest. The Parmenides is a philosophical introduction to Platos later
work (p. 2); the Theatetus and Sophist are its sequels, and parts of the Philebus
and Timaeus are seen as responses to some of its problems. In Theaetetus both
the theory of Forms and the distinction between Forms and sensibles disappear.
Has Plato temporarily abandoned metaphysics in order to discuss the concept of
knowledge from what is essentially an empiricist perspective, seeking to define
knowledge first in terms of sense perception and then in terms of doxa or belief,
but in both cases without a stable ontology without any reference to the need
for unchanging objects of cognition? (p. 50). Kahn takes his clue from a passage
in the Parmenides which insists that the method of dialectic requires us to con-
sider not only the consequence of our own thesis but also what follows from its
denial (136a) the thesis in question being that knowledge and understanding
(nous) require an object that is stable and unchanging. In the Theaetetus, Kahn
argues in Chapter 2 (The Theaetetus in the context of the later Dialogues), Plato
(i) attempts to define knowledge as sense perception and as doxa, which for him
implies a denial of the thesis that knowledge and understanding require an object
that is stable and unchanging; but because he fails, Plato also (ii) supports the

7The first four deductions begin with the assumption If the One is and Deductions 1 and 2
consider what follows for the One. The attributes denied of the One in Deduction 1 are presented
in Deduction 2 in positive form. As a result, the One is described by a series of apparently incom-
patible attributes: one and many, whole and part, limited and unlimited, in itself and in another,
in motion and at rest, same and different, like and unlike, equal and unequal, larger and smaller,
older and younger (p. 39). Although the One of Deduction 2 has spatial and temporal proper-
ties and a share in becoming (and hence it is certainly not a Form), there is no mention here of
any sensible properties such as color or smell, nor even of such qualities as hot and cold, wet
and dry. The possibility of sense perception (aisthsis) for the One of Deduction 2 is expressly
affirmed at 155d6; and yet this One is never described in sensory terms. Deduction 2, and the
other deductions insofar as they are constructive, provide a strictly conceptual framework for the
spatio-temporal being of the natural world (p. 20).
8A thesis formulated in Republic V and reasserted in Sophist 249bc (p. 50).

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thesis that knowledge and understanding do require an object that is stable and
unchanging (although this conclusion is not explicitly formulated, pp. 4950).
To conclude: read as an exercise in dialectic, the Theaetetus provide indirect
support for the Eleatic thesis, that an ontology of stable Being is required as the
object for Knowledge.
In Chapter 3 (Being and Not-Being in the Sophist), Kahn argues that in the
Sophist the visitor from Elea describes a new way of understanding Forms, namely
as members of a connected network that is the object of a new conception of dia-
lectic. Whereas the classical theory spoke only of the relation between forms and
their sensible homonyms, the new dialectic takes as its object a conceptual system
within which the forms are defined by their relations to one another (p. 112).
Chapter 4 (The new dialectic: from the Phaedrus to the Philebus) is an over-
view of what dialectic is for Plato. From the Gorgias to the Republic and beyond,
dialectic is a method of question and answer that is opposed to eristic and is a
pursuit of essences. However, in the Republic dialectic includes the method of
hypothesis, whereas in the Phaedrus, Sophist, Statesman and Philebus it becomes
a method of division and collection. As described in the Sophist, dialectic takes
as its object a conceptual system of forms or kinds with no immediate application
to the world of nature and change. By contrast, the object of dialectic in the Phile-
bus is described as a cosmic order in which the principles of Limit and Unlimited
are blended to constitute a changing world (16c17a, 23c27b) (p. 157).
In Chapter 5 (The Philebus and the movement to cosmology) Kahn shows
that in this dialogue Plato formulates, for the first time in an explicit manner,
a number of themes that will be fully developed in the Timaeus: causation as
making, the world soul, the raw material of the world (the principle of the Unlim-
ited), and the role of mathematics in organizing the world (what corresponds to
the Limit is not the Forms as a model for creation [] but rather the role of norma-
tive mathematics, p.166).

9As a whole, the Theaetetus can be seen as repeating on a broader scale the argument against
an ontology of flux (181c183b) (p. 51).
10Here genos and eidos are to be understood in terms of both syntax and ontology (p. 112).
11Plato was a realist, and for him the method of Division and Collection must reflect the struc-
ture of reality (cf. the Philebus 16c9d2, where he claims that dialectic is grounded in the struc-
ture of the cosmos). Yet only in the Philebus the method of Division and Collection occurs in a
heavily charged metaphysical framework.
12There are earlier references to a divine maker, notably in the Republic VI (507c), but also
in the Sophist (266bc) and Statesman (270a, 273bd). As to the mixture of Limit and Unlim-
ited, it points to a blend between Parmenides and Anaximander, and more generally to a union
between Being and Becoming. Ultimately, it will be this sort of mixed ontology that Plato has

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 Reviews 219

In Chapter 6 (The Timaeus and the completion of the project: the recovery
of the natural world) Kahn argues that in this dialogue Plato finally expands the
theory of Forms to include the natures of Fire, Water, and the other elements;
which means that here, for the first time, the theory of Forms is fully extended
to apply to the world of nature (p. 181). The Timaeus provides an answer to the
problem of participation, namely how sensibles imitate Forms, and the answer is
this: by way of mathematics. It is by imposing mathematical structure on the
disorderly movement of phenomena in the pre-cosmic Receptacle by imposing
peras on apeiria that the Demiurge produced the body and the psyche of an
orderly world as images of the Forms. [] He made use of mathematical princi-
ples to organize the phenomena and motions of the Receptacle in the best way
available, making them resemble as far as possible the system of eternal Forms
that served as his model (p. 203). Kahn relies mainly on what Plato says at 53b
(taken as an echo of a preceding passage, 50c), namely that the Demiurge has
taken things in disorder and differentiated their shape with figures and numbers
(p. 203). The noetic Animal of the Timaeus must somehow correspond to the
network of Forms sketched in the Sophist as the object of dialectic, and the
mathematical structures of the Timaeus constitute just that blend of Being and
Becoming in the natural world that is presented in the Philebus as the combina-
tion of peras and apeiron (p. 205). Kahn admits, however, that in the Timaeus
Plato has not explained exactly how these mathematical structures serve as like-
nesses or imprints of the Forms; if that matter was ever to be explained, it can
only have been in Platos oral teaching (p. 204).
Platos best political rule is the one he imagined in the Republic, the rule of the
philosopher-king. The Statesman, Kahn argues in the last section of the volume
(Epilogue. Plato as a political philosopher), is a transitional dialogue, in which
Plato is moving from the position of the Republic to the position of the Laws (p.
233). In the myth of the Statesman the ideal ruler belongs to the mythical age of
Kronos because that is where the philosopher-king of the Republic has been relo-
cated (p. 233). Plato has realized that the principle of the philosopher-king must
be abandoned and that the second best solution, which he develops in the Laws,
is the rule of law seen as an embodiment of reason. In Laws X there are no Forms,

in mind, adding an intermediate blend to the simple dualism of the classical theory of Forms
(p. 165).
13In the Republic the study of mathematics was designed to turn the soul upwards, to liberate
it from the darkness of Becoming and direct it toward the intelligible realm of Forms; in later
dialogues, and especially in the Timaeus, the aim of mathematics is rather directed downwards,
to identify structure in the realm of nature and change. This new function for mathematics was
first announced in the Statesman (pp. 1589).

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Demiurge, Receptacle, not even the pair of Limit and Unlimited. This, Kahn
argues, is not because Plato has changed his metaphysical ideas, but because his
goal there is to refute atheism for a less philosophical audience (p. 215).

3Kahn and the Platonic dialogues

Put in its most drastic form, Kahns claim in the first volume is that we may read
some ten dialogues of Group I (from the Laches to the Phaedo and the Cratylus)
as if Plato had written them all at the same time, but offered them to the world
in successive stages (p. 64). Today, Kahn writes in the preface to his second
volume, I would formulate my view more cautiously, to avoid the impression
that Plato never changed his mind, or that he knew where he was going from the
start. I would now rely less on the notion of prolepsis as suggesting such a plan
in advance, for which there is no direct evidence (p. xiii). Now, in the second
volume, Kahn distinguishes three stages in the period before the Republic: (i) a
pre-metaphysical stage (the so-called Socratic period); (ii) a stage of the implicit
theory of essences (the dialogues of definition, Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro,
Meno); and (iii) a stage of the explicit theory of Forms (Cratylus, Symposium,
Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus). Hence the view which I previously described as
unitarian can perhaps be more accurately formulated as the progressive working
out of a theoretical basis for what was at first an essentially practical conception:
the ideal of virtue modeled on the figure of Socrates (p. xiv).
In the first volume, Kahn claims that in the dialogues that precede the Re-
public there is an unmistakable artistic plan, according to which there is a con-
tinuity of content and a gradual disclosure of ideas, from the Laches and Euthy-
phro to the Phaedo and the Republic; and that the evidence for a comprehensive
artistic plan should be seen as a reflection of the underlying unity of Platos phil-
osophical position (p. 63). In his second volume, Kahn grounds his interpretation
of the Theaetetus on a passage in the Parmenides. I am relying here, he says, on
an unspoken complicity between the author and his readers. As readers we have
access to the presentation of Platos philosophy in earlier and later dialogues.
Hence we are in a position to draw conclusions that the metaphysically barren
Socrates of the Theaetetus will not draw for us (pp. 5253). This is typical of
Kahns interpretation of the late dialogues which assumes an unspoken complic-
ity between Plato and his reader. Kahns Plato is a philosopher who has integrated
works written over a long period of time into a coherent whole and who counted
on the memory and perspicacity of his reader to see how they are connected. Put
in its most drastic form, Kahns main claim in his two volumes is that only the one

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 Reviews 221

who reads all of Platos dialogues from the vantage points of the Republic and the
Timaeus will really get it.
We know, however, very little about Plato and what happened at the Academy
when he was there. He wrote his dialogues in a print-free world, in which a text
came in the form of a vulnerable scroll, not a hardback edition with a decent print
run; yet all his dialogues have survived, and this is what we have. In spite of a
number of controversial interpretations, Kahns two volumes are coherent, unitary
and, to use his own term, ingressive: they provide two majestic points of entry into
the Platonic corpus. We can only hope that Plato has fully embodied his mind in it.

References
Dodds, E. R. (1959): Plato. Gorgias (Oxford).
Jaeger, Werner (1944): Paideia, vol. II (Berlin: De Gruyter; English translation by G. Highet,
Oxford 1944).

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