Philosophy as Drama: Plato’s Thinking through Dialogue

Description

Plato’s philosophical dialogues can be seen as his creation of a new genre. Plato borrows from, as well as rejects, earlier and contemporary authors, and he is constantly in conversation with established genres, such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, and rhetoric in a variety of ways. This intertextuality reinforces the relevance of material from other types of literary works, as well as a general knowledge of classical culture in Plato’s time, and the political and moral environment that Plato addressed, when reading his dramatic dialogues. The authors of Philosophy as Drama show that any interpretation of these works must include the literary and narrative dimensions of each text, as much as serious the attention given to the progression of the argument in each piece. Each dialogue is read on its own merit, and critical comparisons of several dialogues explore the differences and likenesses between them on a dramatic as well as on a logical level. This collection of essays moves debates in Plato scholarship forward when it comes to understanding both particular aspects of Plato’s dialogues and the approach itself. Containing 11 chapters of close readings of individual dialogues, with 2 chapters discussing specific themes running through them, such as music and sensuousness, pleasure, perception, and images, this book displays the range and diversity within Plato’s corpus. This book contributes to our understanding of Plato by a series of readings of individual dialogues and issues, in a way that combines close attention to the texts with taking seriously their dramatic and literary aspects. In thus focusing on elements related to Plato’s use and development of the dialogue form, this anthology contributes to and continues a strand in Plato scholarship that has been growing in momentum in the past decades. Among the literary approaches furthered in the volume, the various contributions divide broadly into four different dimensions of Plato’s work. The first, “Genre and philosophical dialogue”, offers reflections on the works’ formal characteristics and their implications. Plato’s use and abuse of established genres, and the texts’ interlocution with other texts before and after Plato, are important features here. The question of ethical improvement is perhaps the most obvious topic common to all of Plato’s dialogues. A second approach, termed “Virtue and soul-shaping”, accordingly tackles questions of how values are portrayed, communicated, and criticized, sometimes through choice of metaphor, other times by means of something approaching instruction. Not unrelated to the question of ethical betterment are Plato’s reflections on reason and its place in human life. The section “Reason and irrationality” suitable provides discussions of what we might think of as its various limitations – in relation to culture, pleasure, and forms of irrationality. Finally, “Place and displacement”, concretizes the relations between place, position, and their absence in some of Plato’s dialogues. The problematic vantage point of philosophy itself is among the topics discussed here. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents List of Contributors A note on transcribed Greek versus Greek fonts Preface Introduction Genre and the philosophical dialogue Virtue and soul-shaping Reason and irrationality Place and displacement Note Part One Genre and the Philosophical Dialogue 1 The Whole Comedy and Tragedy of Philosophy: On Aristophanes’ Speech in Plato’s Symposium1 Notes Bibliography 2 A Praise of the Philosophical Written Speech? Ethics and Philosophical Progression in Plato’s Symposium1 Love of honour in Phaedrus’ speech: a stepping stone to love of virtue Pausanias’ speech: beauty as a way of acting Eryximachus’ speech: the harmonizing power of craft smanship Poetry and the art of speech writing: the eulogies of Aristophanes and Agathon The ultimate proof of Plato’s power as a writer. Diotima’s ladder of love Notes Bibliography 3 Socrates’ Appeals to Homer’s Achilles in Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito Socrates’ use of Homer’s poetry in the Apology of Socrates The example of Achilles Socrates’ allusion to Homer’s poetry in the Crito Tentative conclusion Appendix: Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates and its critics Notes Bibliography 4 Plato’s Ring of Gyges and Das Leben der Anderen Gyges and the imagination of the other The Life of Others Here comes the sun: Gyges and the poets Erôs and understanding Notes Bibliography Part Two Virtue and Soul-shaping 5 Plato’s Inverted Theatre: Displacing the Wisdom of the Poets A possible theatre image in the Phaedrus1 Watching something different Watching differently Love Virtue Notes Bibliography 6 Gods, Giants and Philosophers: On Being, Education and Dialogue in Plato’s Sophist 245e6-249d51 The dialogue form of the Sophist An interpretation of the Sophist 245e6-249d5 The dialogical context of the Gigantomachy Interrogating the corporealists Power and eidē Notes Bibliography 7 Philotimia . On Rhetoric, Virtues and Honour in the Symposium1 Introduction The impact of the rules and demands of the encomium genre Preoccupation with honour as displayed within a competitive rhetorical contest: five speakers Excursus: the relationship between the speeches and the paideia Diotima: Th e greater mystery: what erôs does to the philosophers (210a-212b) Discrepancies between the lesser and the greater mystery Aristophanes, a dissenting voice: Eros does not give us virtues, and the value we hope he will give us is completion Alcibiades: disrupting the encomiasts’ harmony between virtues and honour Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part Three Reason and Irrationality 8 The Significance of the Ambiguity of Music in Plato The importance of mousikê in ancient Greece The ambiguity of music: mousikê as pharmakon Music beyond the human: ontological implications of mousikê Mousikê as an educational part of politics The mousikê of philosophy or philosophy as mousikê Notes Bibliography 9 Pleasure, Perception and Images in Plato The replenishment account of pleasure Revisions of replenishment (A): pleasure as perception in the Theaetetus Revisions of replenishment (B): mental pleasures in the Timaeus Revisions of replenishment (C): false pleasures in the Philebus Conclusion: pleasure, perception and images in art Notes Bibliography 10 The Limits of Rationality in Plato’s Phaedo Introduction Ambiguous feelings Fables and mimetic impulses Hypotheses and charms Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part Four Place and Displacement 11 Place ( topos ) and Strangeness (atopia) in the Phaedrus Introduction Part one: place and strangeness in the Prologue Part two: place and strangeness as recurrent themes in the Phaedrus Conclusion: the strangeness of serious play Notes Bibliography 12 Hunt: Method and Metaphor. A Reading of the Sophist 216a1–226a6 Introduction The Prologue (216a1-217b9) Paradigm for the hunting-method (218b6-219b7) An interlude (224d4-e6) Towards a conclusion Notes Bibliography 13 Plato’s Sophist: A Different Look1 Notes Bibliography Index