Reading Plato

Thomas A. Szlezák, Graham Zanker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134656493
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Reading Plato offers a concise and illuminating insight into the complexities and difficulties of the Platonic dialogues, providing an invaluable text for any student of Plato's philosophy.
Taking as a starting point the critique of writing in the Phaedrus -- where Socrates argues that a book cannot choose its reader nor can it defend itself against misinterpretation -- Reading Plato offers solutions to the problems of interpreting the dialogues. In this ground-breaking book, Thomas A. Szlezak persuasively argues that the dialogues are designed to stimulate philosophical enquiry and to elevate philosophy to the realm of oral dialectic.

1
THE JOY OF READING PLATO

Above everything else, reading Plato entails a unique intellectual pleasure. The joy of engaging with his thought comes not only from experiencing the artistic perfection of his philosophical dramas. There is also the sense that as a reader one is not only a witness but somehow a part of the lively discussion which Plato presents in masterly strokes as if it were a natural interaction between characters who seem to be taken from life itself.

Directness and freshness, which have been admired throughout the ages as a characteristic of Greek art and culture in general, are qualities which few, even within that culture, achieved to the degree that Plato did. Although he was the spiritual heir of the immensely creative lyric and classical ages and was able to assimilate the experience of generations of poets and thinkers in a highly reflective way, he can at the same time create the impression that philosophical inquiry began, as if without any presuppositions, from zero, in the brilliant world of Athens he portrays.

A second, equally important characteristic of his literary world is its variety and its far-reaching intellectual richness. For the directness and authenticity of his presentation of the Athenian ambience in no way mean that as a writer Plato was completely dominated by the historical events and social limits of that world alone. With the sovereign sweep of a poet, Plato connects his native Athens with everything that Greek intellectual history had produced. Certainly, in undertaking this he was able to refer to historical events, for example when he makes the great intellectuals of the fifth century BC, who indeed liked coming to Athens, appear in the early dialogues in front of an Athenian public and advertise their new systems of education. But in the later works, when he makes a ‘Stranger from Elea’ who remains anonymous or even Parmenides himself (in the dialogue named after him) come to Athens and talk philosophy with the young Socrates, all biographical and historical plausibility is thrown aside. In the dialogue on the philosophy of nature, the Timaeus, a non-Athenian statesman and scholar, whom we are to imagine as a Pythagorean even if he is not explicitly described as such, speaks before a small group, of which only half are Athenians, on the topic of the structuring of the cosmos by means of the divine reason of the Demiurge; in Plato’s last work, the Laws, by contrast, an Athenian, who on this occasion remains anonymous and thereby reflects the culture of his city all the more, is on foreign ground, namely on Crete, in the company of two representatives of the conservative culture of the Dorians, when he drafts a comprehensive picture of a well-ordered future society and its intellectual foundations.

Apparently, then, Plato intended not only to broaden the intellectual horizon from time to time by the literary device of the choice of dialogue-partner, but in general also to reflect a complex historical process: first, the new scientific and social educational systems developed outside of Athens entered the politically powerful city; here, by engaging with the intellectual wealth imported from outside, Athenian conceptual philosophy was developed which, as soon as it was sure of its methods, shaped its responses more radically and assimilated the foundations of the fifth century, the philosophies of the Eleatics, Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans; finally, such an examination of the foundations resulted, as the Laws symbolise, in the transmission of a politico-moral system, which had evolved from the most rigorous, methodical schooling, to the whole Hellenic world through ‘the Athenian’. Thus, through the medium of the Platonic dialogue-partners from the early to the late dialogues, we pass through the historical development of Athens from intellectual receptivity to critical deepening and finally to normative creativity.

So the dialogues’ directness, their variety and their capacity to serve as a symbol, of which we have already received a first impression, have established Plato as the author who is regarded everywhere today, regardless of the differences between national cultures, as the author who is most effective at awakening an interest in philosophy. Whoever begins to conduct philosophical inquiry with Plato can be sure that he or she is on the right path.

At the same time, his powers of stimulation are by no means limited to the philosopher’s initial stages. The truly astonishing thing is rather that Plato not only defined the standard of what could from then on in Europe be called philosophy, but also elaborated a number of essential questions of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy in so fundamental a way that, in spite of such an immensely fruitful development of two and a half thousand years, it is impossible not to take account of his approaches to solutions, or at least his statement of problems.

These should therefore be the most important factors for the modern public’s experience of reading Plato. The sense that we can take part in philosophy at its first and still unadulterated origins, bound together with the conviction that we are being confronted with questions of a relevance which remains undiminished, and sustained by our experiencing virtuosity in language and composition, produces for the receptive reader the sense of intellectual joy with which we began.

2
THE READER PARTICIPATES

Taken on its own, however, this experience still does not explain why the question of how one should read the text is debated with special passion and controversy precisely in the case of Plato. Even non-specialists have come to know that this is the case. With no other thinker does the question of the literary form in which the philosophical subject-matter is cast and, as a consequence, the question of the manner in which the reader must approach this particular form, gain so much importance as with Plato. For with no other thinker is the form of the representation so directly relevant to the subject-matter as with him; the correct understanding of the dialogue-form and the correct understanding of the Platonic conception of philosophy are interdependent. It is a paradoxical situation: this author, who is unrivalled in his ability to facilitate the experience of entering philosophical inquiry, appears to need his own specific system of hermeneutics for being understood.

It is certainly no coincidence that the interpretation of the works of Plato and the independent discipline of philosophical hermeneutics have come into very close contact with one another at two important points in their development. It was the important Romantic philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) who was the first to reflect on the active role of the reader and from this developed a method of interpreting the dialogues, the fundamentals of which many even today still regard as valid. It was also Schleiermacher who re-thought the old problem of theology concerning correct exegesis and thus advanced to a universal hermeneutics which can be regarded as the actual beginning of modern hermeneutic philosophy. And, in our own century, HansGeorg Gadamer took his philosophical starting-point precisely from Plato and in his first work, Platons dialektische Ethik (1931), thereby deepened and put in concrete form Schleiermacher’s pioneering insights on the meaning of form for content. Gadamer also produced, in his main work, Wahrheit und Methode (1960), a new foundation for philosophical hermeneutics.

The question of the correct way of reading Plato is ultimately a question of the ways in which the reader plays a part in what he or she is reading. That we cannot, when reading, abstract ourselves from our own ego, that we cannot annul our manifold limitations and that as a consequence we ourselves form a vital factor in the process of reading is a datum which is valid for every kind of reading and is accepted by everyone. With Plato, however, there is the additional fact that, as we noticed at the outset, the reader almost inevitably gets the feeling not only of being a witness but in some scarcely definable way also of being part of the argument which he is following—which must also have consequences for the way in which he responds to the content. And, inasmuch as the deep-seated, personal participation in the dialogue is obviously not an effect which is merely accidental in the works of Plato or in any way against the author’s intention, the problem with which we are confronted here cannot simply be one of eliminating as extensively as possible all subjective elements in our reception of the texts. Certainly, the aim is to be able to orientate oneself by the subject itself alone (see Phaedo 91c); but as long as one is still only on the way toward this aim, it would not be helpful to act as if it were already achieved and on that basis to eliminate the possibility that decisive hindrances (but in favourable cases aids as well) may exist within ourselves for approaching the aim. Obviously, we should react to Plato’s dramas with our entire being and not only with our analytical reasoning. The question is therefore what form the active participation of the reader should take and what part his spontaneous contribution may have in the construction of meaning.

3
AN EXAMPLE OF INDIVIDUAL RECEPTION

Nobody was more conscious than Plato that the reception of philosophy is conditioned by each individual’s limitations. Again and again he makes us experience how an interlocutor is hindered by his own particular mind-set from grasping what is meant.

One of the most famous examples is Callicles in the dialogue, the Gorgias. Callicles represents the thesis of the so-called natural right of the stronger. According to this it is right and proper that the man who is superior to the others in strength and power subjugate them and ruthlessly use them for the furtherance of his own interests. The thesis goes that nature itself desires the dominance of the stronger; the traditional view of justice, which limits the fulfilment of one’s own desires in terms of the rights of others, is nothing other than an ideological construct of the weak by means of which, for their self-protection, they wish to discredit the strong man’s healthy striving after the uninhibited fulfilment of his instincts and wishes (see Gorgias 482c–486d).

Plato could have had this thesis debated in a calm and disassociated manner as a simply theoretical contribution towards a basic foundation of ethics. Instead, he makes Callicles express it as his own peronal belief. It is not just an intellectual ‘position’ but the direct expression of his pathological ambition and his boundless egocentrism. When Socrates demonstrates to him with compelling reasons that the conventional concept of justice makes sense while the so-called right of the stronger is self-contradictory, Callicles can no longer follow Socrates’ reasoning—certainly not, however, out of a lack of intelligence, because he obviously has no little of that, but because of the limitations of his character. It is stated quite openly that it is his unbridled drives which hinder him from understanding and accepting Socrates’ theoretically well founded and morally wholesome view (see Gorgias 513c).

In particular, Callicles has a perverted view of himself: he identifies himself with his desires and instincts (Gorgias 491e–492c). He does not know and does not want to know that human beings are more than their instincts and that reason does not exist in them to be deployed purely instrumentally in the service of their instincts, but is a divine force which exercises control over the lower parts of the soul. Socrates obviously has a corresponding theory of the inner structure of man available as a reply (see Gorgias 493aff.), but when he sees that Callicles would not be able to know what to make of it, he does not even begin to explain it with arguments, but is content to give a few hints which are only understandable in their full range from the fully developed doctrine of the soul in the Republic. Callicles is, however, made aware that he still does not know even the ‘Lesser Mysteries’; but initiation into the ‘Greater Mysteries’ is not permissible without a knowledge of the lower step (497c). Put another way, the real solution of the problem, which for Plato can be produced only by recourse to the inner structure of man, does not need to be imparted to a character like Callicles, since he lacks the personal qualifications for accepting such truths adequately.¹ Thus Callicles receives only an ad hominem refutation as Socrates demonstrates the contradictory nature of his position, on Callicles’ own level of argumentation (494bff).

With this brilliant example of literary characterisation Plato tells us with all clarity that his philosophy demands the whole human being. Intellectual capability alone is insufficient; what is required is an inner relationship between the thing which is to be conveyed and the soul to which it is to be conveyed. Anybody who is not prepared to enter upon a process of inner transformation is not entitled to know the full solution either.

But a positive attitude is needed not only towards the case which the philosopher presents. Because philosophical inquiry is a process which goes on between individual human beings, good will

toward one’s partner is also necessary. Plato shows in a very striking way that the conversation between Socrates and Callicles ceases to be real communication because Callicles cannot meet his partner with good will.² In fact it is Plato’s conviction that real philosophical inquiry is only possible among friends, and that philosophical argumentation, if it is to be productive in real terms, can be conducted only in ‘well-intentioned refutations’ (

, Letter 7, 344b5). This conviction, which determines Plato’s character-depiction in all dialogues, is discernible with particular clarity—apart from the Gorgias—in for example the Lysis, the Symposium, the Phaedrus and the Republic. Indeed, ‘friendship’ is not to be understood in this connection as subjective, random inclination, and thus as a mere emotion, but follows from the shared orientation towards the ‘divine’ and the ‘erernally existent’, and in the final analysis towards the idea of the Good itself.

Callicles is certainly an extreme character. Plato has drawn him, in all his ruthlessly open profession of immorality, with intentional provocativeness—as a provocation directed at philosophical opponents who disapprove of his foundation of ethics in a metaphysical doctrine of the soul and the Ideas, but also as a provocation directed at the future reader—to us, then, who all have in ourselves a Callicles, at least potentially. The challengingly true-to-life portrait of a basic hostility to ethics compels us to clarify our attitude to the ‘right of the stronger’—our conscious attitude and even more our unconscious one.

4
POSSIBLE MISTAKEN ATTITUDES ON THE PART OF THE READER

While good will towards one’s discussion-partner is necessary for any genuine understanding, for us as readers the live opposite number is replaced by written depiction. Reaching a correct attitude is undoubtedly made difficult by this, inasmuch as any wrong attitudes which may crop up cannot be corrected by the book, in contrast with when one is dealing with a personal partner. It is thus of decisive importance that certain irritations which might be experienced when reading Plato should be recognised as such and counteracted. It should be remembered that here we are dealing with irritations which we know by experience may be felt by a reader who is basically open-minded and interested in philosophy, who in addition has taste and education. It has to be realised that these are a consequence of Plato’s conception of the correct manner of philosophical communication, and are thus in the final analysis a consequence of his concept of philosophy; only in this way can we avoid letting passing irritations become a lasting obstacle to assimilating Plato’s thought.

(a) In the aporetic dialogues, whenever a solution is not reached after a long, vain search even at the last attempt, the reader, for whom the point of the strange, aimless journey remains concealed, easily gets the impression that the whole process has been just an idle exercise, or at any rate is a prelude far too extended for fruitful philosophical inquiry, which meanwhile has not yet eventuated.

(b) In the constructive dialogues, whenever it is said of the most essential problems that they cannot be discussed ‘now’ or that they must be tackled on another occasion, one impatiently asks oneself why such rewarding themes are, as it were, only paraded before us and immediately removed again, and whether there was anything at all in Plato’s thought which corresponded with this continual foreshadowing of even more essential material, or whether the reader is turned into a Tantalus who is merely made to believe that real fruit is present.

(c) Finally, common to the early and later dialogues is the unshakable superiority of the leader of the discussion over any given partner. One might accept that the Athenian in the Laws is instructing his inexperienced Dorian friends unrelentingly from an inexhaustible supply of superior knowledge, or that the Stranger from Elea has a considerable advantage over the young people with whom he is conversing; but in th...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• 1. THE JOY OF READING PLATO
• 2. THE READER PARTICIPATES
• 3. AN EXAMPLE OF INDIVIDUAL RECEPTION
• 4. POSSIBLE MISTAKEN ATTITUDES ON THE PART OF THE READER
• 5. ONE DOES NOT SEE WHAT ONE DOES NOT KNOW
• 6. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLATONIC DIALOGUES
• 7. QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CHARACTERISTICS
• 8. FOR WHOM IS PLATO WRITING?
• 9. DOES A PLATONIC DIALOGUE SPEAK WITH SEVERAL VOICES?: THE MODERN THEORY OF THE DIALOGUES
• 10. AN ANCIENT THEORY OF INTERPRETATION
• 11. THE INTERPRETATION OF SIMONIDES IN THE PROTAGORAS
• 12. THE CRITIQUE OF WRITING IN THE PHAEDRUS
• 13. THE DEFINITION OF THE PHILOSOPHER BASED ON HIS RELATIONSHIP TO HIS WRITINGS
• 14. THE MEANING OF TIMIΩTEPA
• 15. ‘SUPPORT FOR THE LOGOS’ IN THE DIALOGUES
• 16. THE ASCENT TO THE PRINCIPLES AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL COMMUNICATION
• 17. SOME ‘GAPS’
• 18. THE DOCTRINE OF ANAMNESIS AND DIALECTIC IN THE EUTHYDEMUS
• 19. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ALLUSIONS FOR READING PLATO
• 20. PLATO’S DRAMATIC TECHNIQUE: SOME EXAMPLES
• 21. IRONY
• 22. MYTH
• 23. MONOLOGUE AND DIALOGUE WITH IMAGINARY PARTNERS
• 24. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DIALOGUES: WHAT THEY REALLY MEAN
• 25. HOW AND WHY THE DIALOGUE-FORM HAS BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD
• 26. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ESOTERICISM AND SECRECY
• 27. PLATO’S CONCEPT OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE OBJECTIVES OF THE DIALOGUES
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE