Plato's Styles and Characters: Between Literature and Philosophy (Beitrage zur Altertumskunde)

The significance of Plato’s literary style to the content of his ideas is perhaps one of the central problems in the study of Plato and Ancient Philosophy as a whole. As Samuel Scolnicov points out in this collection, many other philosophers have employed literary techniques to express their ideas, just as many literary authors have exemplified philosophical ideas in their narratives, but for no other philosopher does the mode of expression play such a vital role in their thought as it does for Plato. And yet, even after two thousand years there is still no consensus about why Plato expresses his ideas in this distinctive style. Selected from the first Latin American Area meeting of the International Plato Society ( (http://www.platosociety.org) www.platosociety.org ) in Brazil in 2012, the following collection of essays presents some of the most recent scholarship from around the world on the wide range of issues related to Plato’s dialogue form. The essays can be divided into three categories. The first addresses general questions concerning Plato’s literary style. The second concerns the relation of his style to other genres and traditions in Ancient Greece. And the third examines Plato’s characters and his purpose in using them. Table of Contents 7 Introduction 11 Plato’s Literary Style 13 Beyond Language and Literature 15 The Three Waves of Dialectic in the Republic 25 Plato’s Unfinished Trilogy: Timaeus–Critias–Hermocrates 43 The Myth of the Winged Chariot in the Phaedrus: A Vehicle for Philosophical Thinking 57 Perspectivism, Proleptic Writing and Generic agón: Three Readings of the Symposium 73 Plato’s Argumentative Strategies in Theaetetus and Sophist 87 “Reading Plato’s Sophist” 99 Other Genres and Traditions 111 Detailed Completeness and Pleasure of the Narrative. Some Remarks on the Narrative Tradition and Plato 113 The meeting scenes in the incipit of Plato’s dialogue 129 The Philosophical Writing and the Drama of Knowledge in Plato 147 Comic Dramaturgy in Plato: Observations from the Ion 167 Amicus Homerus: Allusive Art in Plato’s Incipit to Book X of the Republic (595a–c) 183 Performance and Elenchos in Plato’s Ion 197 Plato and the Catalogue Form in Ion 213 Orphic Aristophanes at Plato’s Symposium 221 Socrates as a physician of the soul 237 The Style of Medical Writing in the Speech of Eryximachus: Imitation and Contamination 251 Gorgias, the eighth orator. Gorgianic echoes in Agathon’s Speech in the Symposium 263 Plato’s Phaedrus: A Play Inside the Play 273 Plato’s Characters 289 He longs for him, he hates him and he wants him for himself: The Alcibiades Case between Socrates and Plato 291 Five Platonic Characters 307 Who Is Plato’s Callicles and What Does He Teach? 327 Doing business with Protagoras (Prot. 313e): Plato and the Construction of a Character 345 Theaetetus and Protarchus: two philosophical characters or what a philosophical soul should do 367 The Role of Diotima in the Symposium: The Dialogue and Its Double 389 Contributors 411 Citations Index 417 Author Index 421 Subject Index 429

The significance of Plato’s literary style to the content of his ideas is perhaps one of the central problems in the study of Plato and Ancient Philosophy as a whole. As Samuel Scolnicov points out in this collection, many other philosophers have employed literary techniques to express their ideas, just as many literary authors have exemplified philosophical ideas in their narratives, but for no other philosopher does the mode of expression play such a vital role in their thought as it does for Plato. And yet, even after two thousand years there is still no consensus about why Plato expresses his ideas in this distinctive style.

Selected from the first Latin American Area meeting of the International Plato Society (www.platosociety.org) in Brazil in 2012, the following collection of essays presents some of the most recent scholarship from around the world on the wide range of issues related to Plato’s dialogue form. The essays can be divided into three categories. The first addresses general questions concerning Plato’s literary style. The second concerns the relation of his style to other genres and traditions in Ancient Greece. And the third examines Plato’s characters and his purpose in using them.

Die Reihe Beiträge zur Altertumskunde (BzA) wurde 1990 begründet. Sie enthält vorwiegend deutschsprachige Monographien und Tagungsbände, jedoch auch Texte, Übersetzungen und Kommentare von antiken Werken, die von bleibender Wirkung sind. Die einzelnen Bände der Beiträge zur Altertumskunde sind nützliche Arbeitsinstrumente und bieten einen klaren Zuwachs an Erkenntnissen zur Altertumskunde. Pro Jahr erscheinen etwa acht Bände