From goya@racine.vjf.cnrs.fr Wed Oct 31 00:38:55 2001 Received: from mailscan4.cac.washington.edu (mailscan4.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f9V8crN42438 for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:38:53 -0800 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan4.cac.washington.edu ; Wed Oct 31 00:38:53 2001 -0800 Received: from smtp.noos.fr (verlaine.noos.net [212.198.2.73]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f9V8cqQ04917 for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:38:52 -0800 Received: (qmail 2579964 invoked by uid 0); 31 Oct 2001 08:38:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?195.132.104.63?) ([195.132.104.63]) (envelope-sender ) by 212.198.2.73 (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 31 Oct 2001 08:38:47 -0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <006c01c161b9$5efd7f00$0e02140a@stv203f> References: <006c01c161b9$5efd7f00$0e02140a@stv203f> Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 09:39:01 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Michael Chase Subject: Re: Socrates/Plato Divide? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" A rapid initial answer to this very complex question would first state the obvious: a purely literary approach to Plato's Socrates would not be sufficient, becuase Socrates is not, like Antigone, a literary creation but a real flesh-and-bone philosopher whose life and character is attested not only by Plato but also by Xenophon, Aristophanes, Aristotle. etc. I think most experts would say that while Plato unquestionably puts his own slant on his portrayal of Socrates, he was not at complete liberty to invent features or events which had *no* basis in reality. Secondly, I don't believe it is the case that scholars hold that Socrates is simply a mouthpiece for Plato. The standard view is that this may be the case for such "late" dialogues as the Laws, Philebus, Sophists, etc., this is only the end result of Plato's development. It is usually thought that Plato "started off" in his earlier dialogues - Apology, Euthyphro, Crito, etc. - by giving a fairly accurate reproduction of the thoughts and style of the historical Socrates; by the time of such "middle" dialogues as the Phaedo, Symposium and Phaedrus he begins to put more and more of his own ideas into Socrates' mouth; finally, the later dialogues witness an almost complete abandonment of dramatic and mimetic pretensions, and the personnage Socrates is simply made to expound purely Platonic doctrines. I'm not sure the above picture is actually true, but it's the most widely accepted. Finally, literary analysis of Plato's dialogues has indeed been attempted; one thinks of such works as Ferrari's _Listening to the Cicadas_. In my view the most promising contemporary trend has been to situating the Platonic dialogues back within the literary genre to which they belonged: the *sokratikoi logoi*. Socrates' philosophical and personal impact was so intense that he seems to have inspired an entire genre of brief dialogic dramas, of which Plato's are only the most famous; most of the rest (by such "Socratic" philosophers as Aeschines of Sphettos and Antisthenes) have disappeared. According to this line of thought, Plato's degree of inventiveness will have been constrained not only by the known facts of Socrates' life, but also by the traditions and conventions. of a fully-developed literary genre. In short, the portrayal of Socrates in Plato's dialogues seems to be the result of at least the following factors: the actual features of the historical Socrates; the literary and philosophical intentions of Plato; and the constraints of the literaery genre of *sokratikoi logoi*. I personally doubt that the precise extent of the influence of each of these factors will ever be determined. HTH, MIke. -- Michael Chase (goya@vjf.cnrs.fr) C.N.R.S./Annee Philologique Paris .