From willett@suac.ac.jp Wed Oct 31 00:56:25 2001 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f9V8uON76008 for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:56:24 -0800 Received: FROM mxu1.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Wed Oct 31 00:56:20 2001 -0800 Received: from somail.suac.ac.jp (somail.suac.ac.jp [202.223.132.34]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f9V8uJw13744 for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:56:20 -0800 Received: from sfw ([202.223.132.33]) by somail.suac.ac.jp (8.9.3+3.2W/3.7W) with SMTP id RAA27104 for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 17:56:09 +0900 (JST) Received: from simail2.ist.suac.ac.jp ([172.16.8.81]) by sfw.suac.ac.jp; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 17:56:08 +0000 (JST) Received: from c0604 ([172.16.65.182]) by simail2.ist.suac.ac.jp (Mirapoint) with ESMTP id AGQ00355 (AUTH k0194002); Wed, 31 Oct 2001 17:56:05 +0900 (JST) From: "Steven J. Willett" To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 18:08:12 +0900 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Socrates/Plato Divide? Message-ID: <3BE03E0C.21935.38FCA85D@localhost> X-pmrqc: 1 In-reply-to: <006c01c161b9$5efd7f00$0e02140a@stv203f> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) On 30 Oct 2001, at 22:08, Janice Siegel forwarded the following from Frank Williams: > My puzzle: I sort of understand why philosophers neglect 1) and 2) > - they're under the sway of disciplinary orthodoxy, and they are > not well-versed in literary subtleties. But I find it curious that > (in my limited experience) classicists and English profs also > routinely assume that Socrates is Plato's mouthpiece. In contrast, > they don't simply assume that Antigone always speaks for Sophocles, > or that Agamemnon is the mouthpiece for Aeschylus, etc. Why the > different approach to Plato? English professors and Classicists do not, I think, routinely assume that Socrates is Plato's "mouthpiece" in the narrow sense it is used here. Plato wrote philosophy, not poetry or drama. There is a growing appreciation of the philosophical purposes in embedding the argument within a dramatic setting. The locations, the chronologies and the protagonists of the dialogues constitute more than an arbitrary and disposable backdrop. Long ago Paul Friedlaender understood the significance of the drama for the philosophy. More recently some commentators have focused on Plato's "mimetic irony," in which the dynamic flow of conversation helps the interlocutor recognize the inadequacies of his position by seeing it reenacted before him. The conversation literally accomplishes in deed that which is sought in words. Ronald M. Polansky has in fact made the drama a key element of his commentary on the Theaetetus in _Philosophy and Knowledge. A Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus_ (Bucknell UP, 1992). The introduction (pp. 21-25) defends the use of the dramatic aspects of a dialogue in philosophical explication. Despite a real danger of dogmatic or capricious linkages between dramatic context and philosophical content, Polansky believes--correctly in my view--that Plato's intention qua writer emerges clearly from a careful study of both. Naturally, there is no guarantee that, in any single dialogue, Socrates exhaustively represents Plato qua philosopher. The dramatic Socrates might portray (1) Plato's mature, settled thought at the time of writing, (2) only those elements of thought an astute reader could grasp, (3) mere trials of reasoning or even (4) pure play with rational possibilities. But in all cases there is some serious philosophical intent, some desire to grapple with the truth or, at least, truth's trailing mantle. We should always, therefore, remember that the sweep of Plato's mind was certainly far greater than what appears in the dialogues. > His works seem to > have dramatico-historical settings, character development, etc. > about as much as the works of other authors of "literature." Eg., > the Republic, taken at face value, seems basically like a > first-person novel (Socrates tells an unidentified audience what he > recalls of what happened "yesterday"), as much so as Huckleberry > Finn or David Copperfield; but no one uncritically identifies > Huck's words with the Twain's personal beliefs, nor David C's with > those of Dickens. Why should one think that what Socrates says is > what Plato believes (or believed at the time he wrote it)? This question stems from a profound inattention to genre. As I said above, Plato is writing philosophy, not literature. If one assumes, however, that the dramatic setting justifies us in regarding the dialogues as pure literary constructs, then we can easily subsume philosophy into drama and depreciate it as a narrative device. That leads to the nonsense of calling the Republic a first-person novel. I know of no serious critic of Plato who regards the Republic, or any other dialogue, to be simpliciter narrative. Everyone understands that the degree of real Socrates in the dramatic Socrates varies along a continuum from some of the earlier dialogues, which may (to a greater or lesser extent) express the thought of the historical figure, to the middle and later ones that express the thought of Plato. The days of A. E. Taylor are long gone. I personally hold to the view that Socrates influenced Plato less by any concrete philosophical ideas than by the tenor of his life, the types of question he asked and the heuristic example of his rationalist ethics. Although Prof. Williams' premise of a disjunction between Plato's personal beliefs and Socrates' philosophical beliefs is clearly wrong, what would be the result of accepting it as a proposition? Well, a lot of English professors, the true chattering class, might play fast and free with the philosophy along the lines I suggested above. But the philosophers, and all who take philosophy to be one of mankind's supremely important endeavors, would still have to grapple with the argument. To take just one field: Arthur Danto has argued that the dialogues set the agenda for the whole history of aesthetics and that they rightly devalue art in comparison with philosophy. The stance of the dramatic Socrates to the relationship between art and polity is uncompromisingly stern. More perhaps than any other aspect of the Platonic corpus, it has caused moral outrage and charges of philistinism. Unfortunately, the arguments raised in the Ion, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Philebus, Republic (especially the notorious tenth book), Phaedrus and Laws are despite some failings far- ranging, intellectually powerful, ethically sophisticated and constantly threatening to our contemporary aesthetic orthodoxies. Christopher Janaway confronts the full scope of the attack in _Images of Excellence. Plato's Critique of the Arts_ (OUP, 1995) and shows how difficult it is to counter "him" if "he's" given a fair hearing. In his last chapter he does indeed try to counter Platonic aesthetics from a modern perspective, but at every point notes the philosophical risks and liabilities. Nothing philosophical is changed by assuming the disjunction. ====================================== Steven J. Willett Shizuoka University of Art and Culture Dept. of International Culture, Faculty of Cultural Policy 1794-1 Noguchi Hamamatsu City, Japan 430-8533 Tel/Autofax: (53) 457-6142 Japan email: willett@suac.ac.jp US email: sjwillett@earthlink.net .