Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T19:41:44.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Dating of the Phaedrus and Interpretation of Plato*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Julius Tomin*
Affiliation:
Oxford

Extract

Two hundred years ago, at the very dawn of modern Platonic studies, W.G. Tennemann built his System of Platonic Philosophy around the assumption that the Phaedrus belongs to Plato’s later works. His name and his opus may have been forgotten, yet the shadow of his picture of Plato still hangs over current interpretations. For example, it was he who excised the historical Socrates from the dialogue and deprived of its Socratic character the discussion of the relative merits of the spoken and the written word. In the dialogue the spoken word is a proper vehicle for philosophy, for moral and intellectual growth and elevation, and the written word is its pale derivative with nothing truly positive to offer; stripped of its Socratic ‘veneer’, this view of the relative merits of language and writing had to be reinterpreted. Tennemann understands the criticism of the written word as an indication that Plato must already have published dialogues which had encountered a negative response: an important point for him, since he was the first to dismiss the ancient tradition that viewed the dialogue as Plato’s first. In the second half of the twentieth century G.E.L. Owen similarly deduces from it the dating of the dialogue, but he takes the disparagement of the written word as Plato’s self-criticism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Tennemann, W.G.System der Platonischen Philosophie (Leipzig 1792), 1.119.Google Scholar

2 Owen, G.E.L.The Place of the Timaeus in Plato’s Dialogues’, The Classical Quarterly, N.S.3 (1953), 94–5.Google Scholar

3 Kant, I.Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 852–6, B 880–4.Google Scholar

4 Tennemann, op. cit., v.

5 Nussbaum, M.C.The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge 1986), 470–1.Google Scholar

6 Hackforth, R.Plato’s Phaedrus (Cambridge 1952), 3.Google Scholar

7 Guthrie, W.K.C.A History of Greek Philosophy 4 (Cambridge 1975), 43;Google Scholar cf. Tennemann, 117–8.

8 Guthrie, 43.

9 Denniston, J.D.The Greek Particles (Oxford 1954), 56 and 108–9.Google Scholar

10 Tennemann, 117–9.

11 Olympiodorus, Vita Platonis, ed. Westermann, in Didot (1862) 2.

12 Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of his Works’, in vol. 1 of Plotinus, Loeb Classical Library edn.Google Scholar

13 Hermeias, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, ed. Couvreur, (Paris 1901), p.9.11–16.Google Scholar

14 Scholia Platonica, ed. Greene (Oxford 1938), 67.

15 Kesters, H.Plaidoyer d’un Socratique contre le Phèedre de Platon (Louvain 1959), xi.Google Scholar

16 Themistius, Oratio 26, Dindorf 329c.

17 Hermeias, p.9.14–15.

18 Hermeias, p.35.20; Diogenes Laertius states that Plato set out Lysias’ speech word for word in the Phaedrus (3.25).

19 Friedländer, P.Plato 1 (London 1958), 198212;Google Scholar cf. Hackforth, 162.

20 Aristotle, Ars Rhetorica 1406a.

21 Hackforth, 162; Friedländer, 198–212.

22 Tr. H.M. Hubbell (Loeb edn.).

23 De Vries, G.J.A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato (Amsterdam 1969), 8;Google Scholar Hackforth, 3.

24 Cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1.53: ’ilia ratio… Platonis, quae a Socrate est in Phaedro explicata, a me autem posita est in sexto libro de re publica.’

25 Cicero, de re publica 6.27–8.

26 Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 1.39, 49.

27 Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 1.71; King’s tr. in Loeb edn.

28 Cicero, Brutus 1.15.

29 King’s tr. in Loeb edn.

30 E.g. Nussbaum, 470.

31 von Arnim, H.Sprachliche Forschungen zur Chronologie der Platonischen Dialoge’, in: Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akad. d.W., Phil.-Hist. Klasse, Wien 1912, 3. Abh. 2-7.Google Scholar

32 Pohlenz, M.Aus Platos Werdezeit (Berlin 1913), 355–8.Google Scholar In his review of Wilamowitz’ Platon Pohlenz recants his placing the Phaedrus prior to the Lysis; the recantation is a testimony to the consensus-building concerning the late dating of the Phaedrus: ‘The individual arguments, which are held to be decisive for the late provenance of the Phaedrus, would not appear to me to be of binding force even today .... I gratefully recognize that it was again Wilamowitz who showed me the right way .... Wilamowitz too placed the dialogue differently at different times. When still young he perceived in the Phaedrus the exultations of Plato’s youthful heart singing in full tones. Slowly he transferred the dialogue to Plato’s later days as he himself progressed in age. “A happy summer day” is the title of the chapter devoted to the dialogue. Wilamowitz now depicts the mood which overwhelmed Plato after he finished his main work, the Republic, and accomplished more or less his other literary plans. Wilamowitz lets us feel how Plato, who as a teacher learnt to appreciate the spoken word, yet again and again felt in himself the impulse that drove him to writing, how that man on a quiet day on his paternal country estate began to listen to the song of the Muses and did not withstand the temptation and followed the poetic inspiration.’ (Pohlenz, , ‘Ulrich v. Wilamowitz, Platon’, Goettingische gelehrte Anzeigen [1921] 1921).Google Scholar

33 Hackforth, 3.

34 Chemiss, H.F.Relation of the Timaeus to Plato’s later dialogues’, in Allen, RE.(ed.), Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics (New York 1965), 344–6.Google Scholar

35 Nussbaum, 470.

36 Hackforth, 4. To make von Arnim’s argument work, Hackforth discards Taylor’s suggestion (in Plato, the Man and his Work) that the tripartition theory was a piece of fifth-century Pythagoreanism, although it is based on the testimony of Posidonius. Hackforth leaves unanswered Taylor’s observation from his Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (449) that in the Gorgias (493ab) the tripartite soul is implied; its lowest part is there referred to as ‘the seat of desire’.

37 Nussbaum, 473 n.34.

38 Groag, E.Zur Lehre vom Wesen der Seele in Platos Phaedrus und im X. Buche der Republik’, Wiener Studien 37 (1915), 219–22.Google Scholar

39 Nussbaum, 470.

40 Robin, L.La Théorieplatonicienne de l’amour (Paris 1964: orig.ed. 1908), 92123.Google Scholar

41 Owen, 94–5.

42 Gregory, VlastosCreation in the Timaeus; is it a fiction?’, in: Allen, R.E. (ed.), Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics (New York 1965), 415–16.Google Scholar

43 Robin, 97; cf. 70–1.

44 Cf. Vlastos, G.The Disorderly Motion in the Timaios’, The Classical Quarterly 33 (1939), 79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Hackforth, R.Plato’s Cosmogony’, The Classical Quarterly N.S. 9 (1959), 21.Google Scholar

46 In the Meno a slave chosen at random finds correct answers to a specific geometric problem and Socrates claims that if he were to be questioned further and correctly, his initially uncertain right opinion would be transformed into knowledge, and that similarly he would acquire knowledge of the whole field of geometry, and indeed of every other branch of learning (85 ce).

47 Adam, J.The Republic of Plato (reprint Cambridge 1963), 335–7, on 476cl9.Google Scholar

48 Archer-Hind, R.D.The Timaeus of Plato (London 1888), 142.Google Scholar

49 Cornford, F.M.Plato’s Cosmology (London/New York 1937), 144.Google Scholar

50 Note the use of in 44d3, 48e2, 53bl, 58a5, 69c1, 81b1.

51 An attempt might be made to save Recollection for the Timaeus by interpreting differently the clause in 51 e, taking adverbially and translating ‘and the human race to a small extent’. It would fail, since the sentence is not independent and is contrasted with the leading clause which ascertains every man’s access to true belief (); it can therefore only mean that intelligence which gives access to Forms is shared with gods only by a small section of mankind.

52 David, BostockPlato’s Phaedo (Oxford 1986), 71.Google Scholar

53 Cf. Bury, R.G.The Symposium of Plato, 2nd ed. (Cambridge 1932), xliv–v;Google ScholarHackforth, R.Immortality in Plato’s Symposium’, The Classical Review 64 (1950), 43–5;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLuce, J.V.Immortality in Plato’s Symposium: A Reply’, The Classical Review 2 (1952), 137–9;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bostock, 67.

54 E.g. Bostock, 4.

55 E.g. Bostock, 8–9; 71.

56 Bostock, 99.

57 Aristotle, Metaphysics 987a32–bl0.

58 Schleiermacher, F.Platons Werke, 2nd ed. (Berlin 1817), 1.76.Google Scholar

59 Cf. Schleiermacher, 72.

60 Lysias, 12 Against Eratosthenes 1720, tr. Lamb in the Loeb edn.Google Scholar

61 J. Harward’s tr. in The Platonic Epistles, with minor changes.

62 Anonymi Vita Platonis, ed. Westermann in Didot (1862), 7.

63 Nussbaum, 87; 200–33.

64 Robin, 70.

65 Nussbaum, 210.

66 Nussbaum, 15.

67 Nussbaum, 210.

68 Nussbaum, 207–8.

69 Hermeias, pp. 10–13; cf. p.l.

70 Hermeias, p.265.11–12:

71 Meritt, B.D.Greek Inscriptions’, Hesperia 8 (1939), 76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 Lysias’ authorship is affirmed by Plato himself, confirmed by Diogenes Laertius (3.25) and Hermeias (p.35.20) and indirectly by Themistius, Oratio 26, Dindorf 329c:

73 Nussbaum, 232.

74 Tennemann, 118.