People usually think of Plato as a philosopher. That is correct, as far as it goes; but it can be argued that Plato was not merely a philosopher. He actually created and gave the initial definition to the specific intellectual practise and way of life that has been called philosophy ever since, even though his own philosophic work was far less narrow than what has been common under the label philosophy in the last century. He is also the most influential of all the ancient philosophers, and perhaps of all philosophers. The other major ancient philosopher usually mentioned in this regard, Aristotle, was a member of Plato’s school, the Academy, for 20 years and can be seen as a kind of Platonist. Besides the sustained influence that these two have exerted on the subsequent history of Western philosophy, there was a third major ancient philosopher, Plotinus. Although Plotinus considered himself only to have explained more clearly what Plato said obscurely, he is today thought to have founded a rather different line of thought, now called Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism turns out to have been a very powerful influence from late antiquity to the nineteenth century even though this was unrecognized until one hundred and 50 years ago. In a way, then, all of the most influential ancient philosophy is Platonic.
Plato was not only a philosopher, however; and his importance and influence extend far beyond the specific field of philosophy. By common consent, he was the greatest writer of the ancient Greek language, even including classical Greek oratory, poetry, drama and history; he was also a superb tragic and comic dramatist, a fine poet, a composer of brilliant speeches, a ferocious social critic and reformer, a political, musical, educational and medical theorist, a mathematician, myth-maker, cosmologist and even, perhaps, a city planner. Due to this extraordinary richness in his writings, Plato’s influence can be found in many fields other than philosophy. He is a truly ‘interdisciplinary’ figure. In recent years, discussions of Plato are to be found in professional books and journals on aesthetics, anthropology, archaeology, art history, classical philology, city planning, drama, education, geography, Greek, history, law, literature, mathematics, medicine, music, penology, philosophy, politics, psychology, religious studies, rhetoric and sociology. Besides their extraordinarily complex and persistent influence on philosophers from his own day to the present, Plato’s dialogues have inspired poetry, dramatic performances, movies, sculptures, paintings and musical compositions. A computer program is named after Plato. Mathematical discussions of Platonic numbers and Platonic solids still occur. Scholars have written about Platonism in Music and the Platonics are a Rumanian rock band.
Plato is unique among the most prolific ancient authors in that every single text mentioned by an ancient source as having been written by him has survived somehow into the present, something not true, for example, about the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles or the dialogues and treatises of Aristotle. Yet we have less certain factual knowledge about him than about many others and disputes continue about the authenticity of Letters attributed to him and about political involvements on his part described in some of those Letters. Similarly, there are more and more fundamental disagreements about Plato than about any other philosopher. It is notorious that Plato scholars dispute not only about the proper interpretations of his works but also about the proper principles on which interpretations are to be based. Even so, his dialogues retain an apparently endless capacity to inspire interest and motivate discussion.
In the scholarly world of the last 100 to 150 years, the study of Plato has developed important divisions and conceptual antinomies. Since the Renaissance, and especially since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a distinctly modern interest in historical accuracy has increasingly supplanted the more ancient interest in Plato because of the impersonal and eternal truths to be found in his writings. Pursuing the question ‘What did Plato really think?’ has motivated the continuing clarification of the differences between Plato and the various Platonisms of the later tradition and has generated a number of influential interpretive commitments.
Interpreters who turn to the dialogues to discover Plato’s true doctrines, however, quickly encounter difficulties. Different and even mutually exclusive views of the same matter – for example, the composition of the soul or the characteristics of the best human society – seem to be put forward in different dialogues. How could it be that Plato really thinks that the soul is simple and has no parts (Phaedo) and that it has three parts (Phaedrus, Republic)? How could Plato hold that the best city would be governed by philosophers selected for their intellectual qualities and rigorously educated (Republic) and that it would be ruled by elected magistrates and a citizen assembly (Laws)? And what true Platonic views are we to extract from the many dialogues that end by explicitly stating that the participants have not discovered the correct answer to the question under discussion and that they must therefore begin again?
One of the most widespread modern ideas about Plato to grow out of the pursuit of his true views was ‘developmentalism’, the belief that apparent doctrinal inconsistencies among the dialogues can be explained as products of Plato’s intellectual development from a youthful and uncritical follower of Socrates to a much more systematic and dogmatic thinker in his middle and later years. Based on either or both thematic considerations and statistical analysis of certain details of the dialogues’ style, it was believed that one could clearly distinguish groups of ‘early’, ‘middle’ and ‘late’ dialogues and correspondingly different phases in Plato’s philosophic development. This developmental view was very widely accepted for much of the twentieth century, but opposed by a smaller group of interpreters, notably Paul Shorey and Harold Cherniss, who held that Plato’s true views had an underlying unity throughout.
As far reaching as the division between a developmentalist and a ‘unitarian’ interpretation, as the latter is sometimes called, and reflecting the increased specialization and disciplinary separation in educational curricula, another division grew between the Plato whose written texts are taught in departments of Greek or of classics and the Plato whose theories and arguments are taught in departments of philosophy. This disciplinary division reflected and, at the same time, encouraged the belief that literature was something separate and distinct from philosophy, so that, in the study of Plato one could separate the literary and dramatic aspects of the dialogues for study by philologists and assign the study of theories, arguments and ideas to philosophers. The literary and dramatic aspects could be thought of as the form in which content was presented that was independent of that form.
Finally, among philosophers, two further divisions developed in the mid-twentieth century. The first was between those who sought to recover the truth from Plato’s dialogues by emphasizing minute logical analysis of arguments extracted from their dialogical contexts and those who thought the truth lay in a broader confrontation with fundamental assumptions. The latter were sometimes referred to as ‘continental’ because they tended to be from continental Europe while the former tended to be from England and the English speaking countries. They are sometimes referred to as ‘analytical’ both for their methods of logical analysis and assessment and for selecting only overtly ‘logical’ parts of dialogues for study.
A second division was created by those who, following the lead of Gregory Vlastos, thought that study of a subset of Plato’s ‘early’ dialogues could be used as sources for the discovery of the true philosophy of Socrates, rather than the philosophy of Plato, although debates existed from the beginning about the historicity of Plato’s Socrates in separation from the rather different Socrates that is found in the contemporaneous writings of Xenophon and Aristophanes.
In Plato scholarship of the last 25 to 30 years, however, four major developments have undermined and resolved these divisions. First, through the work of Holger Thesleff, Debra Nails and others, it has come to be widely recognized that despite the general developmental consensus, there was never, in fact, agreement about exactly which dialogues went into the three groups. More significantly, it was shown that neither thematic nor stylistic evidence unambiguously supports the division of Plato’s dialogues into three groups. Evidence of revision and school accumulation has provided further evidence that assuming the dialogues to have been written in the way modern books are, at one time and by the author alone, is misleading. This has led to the demise of the developmental consensus that existed 50 years ago and a considerable weakening of the developmental-unitarian opposition. They also serve to undermine the project of finding an historically significant Socratic philosophy in Plato’s ‘early’ dialogues, and, in fact, those who pursue ‘Socratic philosophy’ now do so without making historical claims.
Second, interpreters in many disciplines have increasingly recognized that Plato made extensive use of a large variety of literary and dramatic elements. The dialogues are rich in images and metaphors, puns, jokes and other forms of humour like multiple kinds of irony. Plato has borrowed story lines from mythology and literature, language from poetry and rhetoric and characters and settings from history, but has transformed them so as to create connections and resonances between the literary elements on the one hand and central philosophic themes and ideas on the other. Evidence of reworking and revising his own material suggests that this was deliberate on Plato’s part. The tendency of current work is to recognize, therefore, that form and content cannot be detached from each other without misrepresenting the complex wholes that Plato worked so hard to produce. Similarly, Platonic doctrines should not simply be read off of the dramatic, dialectical conversations of which most dialogues consist, nor should arguments be extracted for analysis and assessment in separation from their dialogical settings, specific characters, settings, topics and overall conversations. The more interdisciplinary and holistic approach in recent scholarship has generated a growing appreciation of the philosophic importance of dramatic and literary characteristics and has led to identification of a variety of structures in the dialogues – pedagogical, pedimental and musical – other than the logical structure of arguments and conclusions, and to recognition that Plato’s dialogues are philosophical texts of an essentially different kind from the expository writings of most philosophers in the Western canon.
In line with this, third, interpreters have come to appreciate the character of Socrates in the dialogues as something other than the two-dimensional mouthpiece for Platonic doctrines he was long thought to be. On the contrary, his character is forever inquiring, viewing all conclusions as open to reconsideration and revision. This resonates with what happens in nearly all of the dialogues: they end by explicitly denying that the participants have come to know the answer to the question they have been discussing. These facts are consistent with Plato’s choice to write no treatises, but only dialogues in which he himself never speaks and suggest that Plato’s philosophizing might be, unlike much of the subsequent Western tradition, nondogmatic, open-ended and nonauthoritarian.
Fourth, reflection on facts and reports about the writings and views of Plato’s students in the ancient world by John Dillon, Harold Tarrant and others has led to a clearer understanding of the evolution of Platonic thinking, the ways in which the ancients understood the dialogues and the Platonic thought in them. Thus, we have come to a clearer recognition of the similarities and differences between the Old Academy in the first generation after Plato’s death and the later, ancient New Academy, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. This, in turn, has enabled us to see more clearly the sources of beliefs about Plato’s thought that are, to some extent, still influential today and to see that they are not simply part of Plato’s own thought as expressed in the dialogues (more detailed treatments of interpretive developments will be found in Chapter 5).
We are in a period of significant change in the orientation and content of thinking about Plato. The trend is towards more holistic, contextual and interdisciplinary approaches. Due to this, the time is ripe not only for a new guide book to Plato, but for a new kind of guide or companion. This volume is unlike existing ones in several important ways. Rather than limiting the topics included to philosophy, in our choice of contents we have also gathered articles on characters, education, language, myth, poetry, rhetoric, textual history and a variety of special features of the dialogues as written texts. Contributors include not only philosophers, but specialists in Classics, Comparative Literature, English, Greek, History and Political Science; and they are professors in Australia, Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Scotland, Switzerland, the United States and Wales.
Rather than a small number – perhaps 10 to 20 – of long articles on a proportionally limited array of subjects, we have gathered a rather large number – more than 140 – on a very large array of subjects. And rather than articles that share a single methodology or interpretive approach, we have been pluralistic, seeking to include many different approaches. In fact, our aim was to have all of the current approaches represented in order to give as complete a picture as possible of the current state of knowledge and research about Plato. Pluralism in interpretation is not only a fact, however, it is, importantly, how error and vacuity are avoided (Heath 2002).
In sum, the aim was for the greatest possible breadth of coverage so that the volume would be encyclopaedic in what it offers readers. It should be useful to undergraduates and graduate students as well as interested general readers, and even professionals who may need a quick orientation on an aspect of Plato’s work, thought or later influence. Articles are designed to offer a concise, lucid ‘starting point’ or introduction to their topics and to indicate the main problems that have been debated and the main lines of these debates. But beyond providing basic knowledge of a topic, it is hoped that the extent of the topics treated and the diversity of specializations and scholarly orientations represented will help keep readers’ preconceptions open to revision, so that we, like Plato’s Socrates, may be reflective and critical, constantly evaluating and reevaluating our own assumptions.
The volume is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1, Plato’s Life – Historical and Intellectual Context, begins with Plato’s biography and then includes a number of individuals, groups, cultural practises and movements that elucidate the intellectual context in which Plato lived and wrote. Chapter 2 is introduced by a general discussion of the entire body of Platonic writings and the manuscript tradition. After this, in alphabetical order are individual articles on each dialogue, as well as one each on the dubious and spurious ones and on the Letters. Chapter 3 includes articles on a variety of specific features of the dialogues as texts, such as their use of drama, humour and irony and a variety of structures that recent interpreters have identified as ways of understanding Plato’s thought as expressed in the dialogues. Chapter 4, the longest, deals with a wide variety of themes and topics explicitly treated in the dialogues. Chapter 5 concerns the Later Reception, Interpretation and Influence of Plato and the Dialogues. It begins with the history of the Academy in antiquity, and continues through later ancient Platonisms, the medieval, renaissance, modern and contemporary interpretive approaches.
TECHNICAL TOOLS AND CONVENTIONS
The volume makes use of several technical tools and conventions of which the reader should be aware. Translations of Plato, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from those in Cooper, J.M. (ed.) (1997), Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Since its appearance, this has been the standard English collection of translations.
Important Greek terms are transliterated into the Roman alphabet and set in italics, for example, akrasia (lacking control of oneself) and paideia (education). We use macrons to distinguish the Greek eta (ê) from epsilon (e), for example, epistêmê (knowledge), merê (parts), genê (kinds) and eidê (forms). We also use macrons to distinguish the Greek omega (ô) from omicron (o), for example, erôs (love) and logos (account). The Greek letter upsilon is sometimes transliterated as y (as in psychê) and sometimes u (as in muthos). Although this is inconsistent, it accurately reflects the absence of a scholarly consensus on the question.
Although the words Form and Idea are often used interchangeably, in discussions of Plato we use ‘form’ only and do not capitalize.
Multiple forms of crossreferencing are used in this volume. Besides the Table of Contents that lists each article by title in each section, there is an Index of Names and an Index of Topics at the back of the volume. The most frequent form of crossreference is the abbreviation, q.v., used within articles to refer interested readers to a related article by title. Thus, the sentence ‘The dialogues offer many more candidate methods (q.v.) for discovering reality amid appearances’ refers the reader to the article on Method, which can be found either through the Table of Contents or through the Index. The titles of the dialogues and the names Plato and Socrates are not crossreferenced because they are used so often.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Each article is intended to give the reader a clear, concise introduction to the subject or topic indicated in its title. To inform the reader where to learn more about the topic and specific aspects of it, secondary sources are indicated through references within the article in an abbreviated form: author’s last name and year of publication and, perhaps specific page numbers. Thus ‘Heath 2002’ cited above will be found to refer uniquely to ‘Heath, M. (2002), Interpreting Classical Texts. London.’ Similarly, ‘Gerson 2003:79–88’ uniquely refers to Lloyd P. Gerson, Knowing Persons published in Oxford and to pages 79–88 in that volume. Full information about all citations is given in the Bibliography, pp. 309–47. Other examples are given below:
Reference in the text |
Full citation |
Derrida 1972a. |
Derrida, J. (1972a), ‘Plato’s pharmacy,’ in B. Johnson (Trans.), Disseminations. Chicago (repr. of ‘La pharmacie de Platon,’ Quel Tel, pp. 32–3). |
Ferber 2002:189 |
Ferber, R. (2002), ‘The Absolute Good and the Human Goods,’ in G. Reale and S. Scolnicov (eds), New Images of Plato: Dialogues on the Idea of the Good. Sankt Augustin, pp. 187–96. |
Kraut 2008:pt4 |
Kraut, R. (2008), ‘Plato,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E.N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/plato/>, accessed 1 June 2008. |
Rowe 1989:177 |
Rowe, C. (1989), ‘The Unity of the Phaedrus: A Reply to Heath,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. 7, 175–88. |
The understanding of Plato – or any other author – is a collaborative, dialectical and historical process. The hope of the editors is that the present volume will be a part of that process. It is collaborative in that contributors offer together their views of topics on the study of which they have spent a great deal of time and energy. It is dialectical both because the reasoned views of contributors disagree on various points and because we try to make clear to the reader the reasons for our sometimes differing views. It is historical insofar as we offer more than a dozen articles on the historical contexts in which Plato wrote and more than 20 articles on the history and varieties of reception and interpretation of Plato. Views of the right answers as well as identification of the important questions are always – as a matter of fact – under discussion. This is the nature of the world of knowledge. Collaboration in pursuit of truth happens both through cooperation and through disagreement. Rational criticism and disagreement, as Plato’s Socrates might agree, are intellectual, social and ethical goods.
Gerald A. Press