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Does Socrates Speak For Plato - Cohn PDF
Does Socrates Speak For Plato - Cohn PDF
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Dorrit Cohn
"
^m lato says," "Plato believed that," to Plato": expr?s
"according
I?^sions of this kind have, for more than two millennia, preceded
JL. or of words Plato explicitly attributes to
quotations paraphrases
Socrates. The idea that Plato may not have been speaking through the
voice of his Socrates has surfaced only quite recently. It is in the last
twenty years or so that we have come to read, with increasing frequency,
statements that deny the so-called "mouthpiece theory": "Plato himself
never speaks directly to his readers. Only his characters speak.. .";*"It is
crucial to note that there is no character called 'Plato' who speaks in any
. . . Still more
of the dialogues; importantly, we are not justified in
Plato with any of his characters. Indeed, there are positive
identifying
reasons why he cannot be identified even with Socrates . . .";2
"Why
should Plato speak through Socrates any more than Shakespeare
through Hamlet? Indeed, Plato seems very often critical of his master."3
The wide spread of this "dialogic" interpretation of Plato's works may be
gauged from the fact that at least five volumes have appeared since 1988
that announce themselves as collections of essays illustrating this new
approach.4
transmitting knowledge.
It may be possible to understand Socrates' polemic against writing
here, and his corollary advocacy of oral discourse, as the representation
of a historically an aging man launching a defensive
significant moment:
move new form of communication increasingly
against literacy?the
fashionable with the younger men of Socrates' time. The relationship of
On the face of it, the Symposium is Plato's most "dramatic" work. This
is true despite the fact that it has a narrative frame. Told by Apollodorus
on the basis of the report given to him by Aristodemus?and in part
confirmed by Socrates?of a that had taken place years earlier,
banquet
of the text embed the verbatim and uninter
major portions supposedly
predetermined topic.
Socrates' celebrated on the nature of Eros?includ
pronouncements
through the ages, been identified as the gospel truth according to Plato.
Paul Friedl?nder, to cite one example among many, describes Socrates'
discourse as "the highest insight," "the fulfillment of the mystery," "the
path of the Forms," and Socrates himself as "the mouthpiece through
whom some higher being is announcing its wisdom."14 Only occasional
critics note in passing that the Symposium may call for a different dramatic
reading: one that does not automatically identify the author with the
character of Socrates.15
II
We must first attend to the fact that Plato's dialogues, unlike literary
dialogues, deal primarily with philosophical questions: a fact reflected in
the generic label of "philosophical dialogues" that has traditionally been
applied to them. Even this term itself, combining as it does an adjective
that signals philosophy and a noun that signals literature, suggests its
nature.
paradoxical
It may be useful to recall at the start that,
though there are few post
Kantian philosophical dialogues, this form was not infrequently used in
earlier centuries: Saint Augustine, Thomas More, and Descartes wrote
philosophical dialogues, and the genre reached a veritable vogue in the
eighteenth century, with works by Shaftesbury, Diderot, Berkeley,
Hume, and others.26 Plato, to be sure, is the who
only philosopher
consistently chose the dialogue over the essay or treatise. It
philosophical
is accordingly Plato's work that brings up questions the
concerning
characteristics of this genre with particular urgency.
A comment Hume made ? propos of his Dialogues concerning Natural
Religion points to this philosophical genre's peculiar nature. Attributing
to his work a "restless inquiry," he indicates that the dialogue is most
meaningfully employed when a philosopher deals with questions "so
obsc\ire and uncertain" that the author can propose no definitive and
secure answer.27 By
using the dialogue form, in other words, a philoso
pher can keep his own views?even if he does hold definite views?to
himself, like the fabled "silence of God." This authorial silence is, as we
will see, the formal feature that the philosophical holds in
dialogue
common with drama (as well as with the of narrative fiction).
dialogue
But this structural analogy between the philosophical and the literary
dialogue also brings into view their crucial contrast: the first takes on the
meaning of an ideational search, the second partakes of a plot (in the
Aristotelian sense). The philosophical dialogue is contextualized in such
abstract questions as "What is justice (the good, the true)?" and framed
in an atemporal or gnomic present tense; it partakes of a sequence of
arguments that, without referring to mimetic events, are expressed by
disembodied speakers who stand for normative rather than
ideologies
ideas" are tied to the past and future of the participants: the language of
the dream scene in Shaw's Man and Superman continuously refers to the
history and imminent choices (here between an afterlife in heaven or in
hell) of Don Juan, the Devil, Ana, and her father.
Granted that Plato's works on occasion integrate philosophical prob
lems into dramatized existential situations. The most extreme case is the
Phaedo: here we find ourselves in the final scene of a tragic plot, with
Socrates arguing for the immortality of the soul in direct relationship to
his imminent death. But this merely indicates that in practice the
philosophical dialogue may gravitate away from its pure or ideal form,
and contextualize itself fictionally (in a context that may, in turn, be
historically based). It may therefore seem appropriate to picture the
philosophical and the literary dialogue as two poles on a sliding scale,
where the two forms can be variously seen to gravitate toward each
other.
The essential question that presents itself when we take the dialogic
form of Plato's works seriously, iswhether they lend themselves to being
understood as closed or as open perspectival structures. It will be clear
from what I have said above that th? diagnosis of a closed perspectival
structure corresponds to the identification of Plato's views with those of
Socrates, and the diagnosis of an open perspectival structure to the
nonidentifictation of their views, which in turn makes Socrates into a
dramatic character who speaks for himself, not for his author.
Itmust be acknowledged, I think, that there are strong arguments in
favor of the as closed structures.
understanding dialogues perspectival
Socrates holds a role in all but one of the twenty-five dialogues, whereas
the cast of other figures keeps changing. What ismore, in all but five late
dialogues he is clearly the leading or focal character who speaks more
volubly than his interlocutors. And he is of course not only featured
quantitatively, but qualitatively as well. Acting as the guide and leader of
the philosophical exchanges, and often also as the character who
initiates the problem under discussion and has the last word, Socrates'
presence exerts an immeasurable pressure on the other participants in
the dialogic scene. By the same token, he also pressures the reader, who
may find it difficult not to attribute to Socrates the truth, the author's
truth. Difficult, but not impossible. There are, as we have seen in the
first part of this essay, a number of reasons?both in individual dialogues
and in the juxtaposition of different dialogues?that can move a reader
to override the inducement exerted by Socrates' featured role and to
resist identifying his views with his author's. Like other authors of
dialogic texts, Plato does not tell us whether his works are to be read as
closed or open perspectival structures. The characteristic nature of his
philosophic genre is to provide no answer to this question, to desist from
imposing either choice on his reader. He gives us, in sum, no definitive
indication as to whether or when he does or does not identify (or even
Harvard University
NOTES
phy and Literature, ed. Doug Boiling (New York, 1987), p. 76.
3 James A. Arieti, as Drama
Interpreting Plato: The Dialogues (Savage, Md., 1991), p. 4.
4 Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. Charles L. Griswold, Jr. (New York, 1988);
Methods of Interpreting Plato and his Dialogues, ed. James C. Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith
(Oxford, 1992); Plato's Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations, ed. Gerald A. Press
(Lanham, Md., 1993); The Third Way: New Directions in Plato Studies, ed. Francisco Gonzales
(Lanham, Md., 1995); Plato's Dialogues: The Diabgical Approach, ed. Richard Hart and
Victorino (Studies in theHistory
Tejera of Philosophy, 46 [Lewiston, N.Y., 1997]).
5 This on the part of Plato scholars
shortfall an
advocating anti-mouthpiece theory has
been noted by Harry Berger, Jr.; see "Levels of Discourse in Plato's Dialogues" in Literature
and the Question ed. Anthony J. Cascardi (Baltimore, 1987), pp. 77-100; see
of Philosophy,
esp. pp. 80-81.
6 A number of modern critics who adhere to the spokesman theory resolve the problem
raised the critique of written discourse in the Phaedrus by resorting to the "esoterist"
by
hypothesis: Plato is a philosopher who did not reveal his true thoughts in his written work,
expressing them only in his unrecorded oral teaching to his disciples in the Academy. See
Luc Brisson's to L'interpr?tation
"Pr?sentation" ?sot?riste de Platon (Les Etudes philosophiques,
1-9; see
1998], esp. 4).
[Janvier-Mars,
7 See, for example, Ronna Burger, Plato 'sPhaedrus: A Defense of a Philosophie Art ofWriting
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1980), p. 6. An especially case is that of Paul Friedl?nder.
interesting
This critic
understands Socrates as Plato's most of his three
spokesman throughout
volume work; but one of the rare moments when he questions this assumption is when he
"
comes to discuss the latter part of the Phaedrus-. [Plato] wrote books throughout his long
life, whereas Socrates lived so completely in the medium of conversation that one cannot
even imagine him writing. Thus was not Plato farthest removed from Socrates precisely
where he depicted him most Indeed we encounter here, in symbolic form, an
intimately?
original difference between him and his teacher" (Paul Friedl?nder, Plato, vol. 1, tr. Hans
Meyerhoff [New York, 1958], p. 110; hereafter cited in text as P). Friedl?nder concludes
that the Phaedrus must be regarded as the work which the problem of Plato's
foregrounds
relationship to the fundamentally different Socrates?a problem he disregards through
out most of his work.
8 Charles S. Griswold, Self-Knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus (New Haven, 1986), pp. 217-18.
9 I quote the translation of the Phaedrus by Harold North Fowler from Plato, vol. 1 (Loeb
Classical Library Edition, Cambridge, Mass., 1914), p. 275A; hereafter cited in text.
10 The idea
that literacy caused a kind of conflict between fathers and sons in
Oedipal
the latter halfof the fifth century b.c. is suggested by Bennett Simon inMind and Madness
in Ancient Greece: The Classical Roots ofModern Psychiatry (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978), p. 189. Simon
refers in this connection to the thesis of Eric A. Havelock concerning the rise of literacy in
Plato's time; see Havelock's Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 198-204;
hereafter cited in text as PP.
11 For me this valuation is not necessarily lessened by reference to the so-called "Seventh
Letter." If we take this text to be authentic (a matter still in dispute among Plato scholars)
it need not be read in the manner it has been read by most critics: as a confirmation of
Socrates' argument against written discourse in the Phaedrus. I am more inclined to agree
with Herman L. Sinaiko, who understands Plato's statement his own doc
concerning
trines?"There is no written work of mine, nor will there ever be; for they [my doctrines]
cannot be expressed in words"?as "quite literally true," in the sense that Plato never
to his readers" (Love, Knowledge, and Discourse in Plato, p. 11).
speaks direcdy
12 It is astonishing how rarely this fact has been noted. Of the very few critics who
mention it, I have found only one who perceives that it may lead the reader "to suspect
that the Socrates of the Republic does not speak for Plato himself but according to the
design of a dialogue he is in ..." (Victorino Tejera, Plato's Dialogues One by One: A Structural
Interpretation [New York, 1984], p. 110). Another critic who briefly relates the form of the
to the idea that Socrates must be understood as a fictional character is Ronna
Republic
see "Plato's Non-Socratic Narrations of Socratic Conversations," in Plato's Dia
Burger;
logues: The Dialogical Approach, ed. Richard Hart and Victorino Tejera, pp. 121-42.
13 I quote the translation of the Republic by Paul Shorey from Plato, vols. 5-6 (Loeb
Classical Library Edition, Cambridge, Mass., 1930 and 1935), p. 396 C; hereafter cited in
text as R
14 PaulFriedl?nder, Plato, vol. 3, tr. Hans Meyerhoff (Princeton, 1969), pp. 26-28.
15 See
Stanley Rosen's Introduction to his Plato's Symposium (New Haven, 1968), which
suggests that none of the Symposium participants is a spokesman for the author's views and
that a correct understanding of this work must recognize "the difference between Socrates
and Plato" (p. xxxv). See also Michael C. Stokes, Plato's Socratic Conversations: Drama and
Dialecticin Three Dialogues (Baltimore, 1986), a work that at one point advises the reader of
the Symposium to "reflect on the difference between the fictional and context-bound
Socrates and the philosophic dramatist Plato" (p. 172).
16 For Martha Nussbaum's interpretation, see the entitled "The of
chapter Speech
Alcibiades: A Reading of the Symposium" in The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge, 1986), esp.
pp. 184-99; hereafter cited in text as FG.
17 For Jonathan Lear's see
the chapter entitled "Eros and Unknowing:
interpretation,
The Psychoanalytic Significance of Plato'sSymposium" in Open Minded: Working out the Logic
of the Soul (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), esp. pp. 156-66.
18 Kenneth M. Sayre, Plato's Literary Garden (Notre Dame, 1995), p. 5; hereafter cited in
text as PL.
...
19 See, for example, Albert Cook, who says at one point: "If Plato feels free to
change
his doctrines within a or to maintain doctrines we would feel to be
single dialogue,
contradictory, then he would be all the more free to do so from to dialogue" (The
dialogue
Stance of Plato [Lanham, MD., 1996], p. 21).
20 David Sedley, "The Dramatis Personae of Plato's Phaedo," in Philosophical Dialogues:
Plato, Hume, Wittgenstein, ed. Timothy Smiley (Oxford, 1995), p. 5.
21 See Berel Lang, The Anatomy of Philosophical Style (Oxford, 1990), pp. 11 ff. for a critical
perspective on this trend. Lang follows this up by referring to the philosophers'
pervading
standard disregard of Plato's dialogic form as a typical case in point
(pp. 14-15).
22 See, for example, Michael Frede, "Plato's Arguments and the Dialogue Form" in
Methods of Interpreting Plato and his Dialogues, ed. James C. Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith,
pp. 201-19; and David Halperin, "Plato and the Erotics of Narrativity," in the same volume,
pp. 93-129.
23 Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading (New Haven, Conn., 1979), p. 103.
24 G?rard Genette, Fiction and Diction, tr. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993), pp.
21-29.
25 Giovanni Reale, "Le Ph?dre, manifeste de Platon, '?crivain' et
programmatique
'philosophe,'" Les Etudes philosophiques (janvier-mars, 1998), 131-48; see esp. 132,134,141.
26 See Michael in the British Enlightenment:
Prince, Philosophical Dialogue Theology, Aesthet
ics, and theNovel (Cambridge, 1996). See also K.J. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions: The Formation
of English Renaissance Dialogue D.C., 1985).
(Washington,