Complete Works (2 page)

Most readers will have little need to attend to such details of Thrasyllus’ arrangement, but one point is important. Except for
Laws,
as just noted, Thrasyllus’ tetralogies do not claim to present the dialogues in any supposed order of their composition by Plato. Indeed, given the enormous bulk of
Laws,
different parts of it could well have been written before or contemporaneously with other dialogues—so Thrasyllus’ order need not indicate even there that
Laws
was
the
last work Plato composed. Thrasyllus’ lack of bias as regards the order of composition is one great advantage that accrues to us in following his presentation of the dialogues. Previous editors (for example, both Hamilton and Cairns and Benjamin Jowett
¹¹
) imposed their own view of the likely order of composition upon their arrangement of the dialogues. But judgments about the order of composition are often as subjective as judgments about Platonic authorship itself. In modern times, moreover, the chronology of composition has been a perennial subject of scholarly debate, and sometimes violent disagreement, in connection with efforts to establish the outline of Plato’s philosophical ‘development’, or the lack of any. We have solid scholarly arguments and a consensus about some aspects of the chronology of Plato’s writings (I return to this below), but this is much too slight a basis on which conscientiously to fix even an approximate ordering of all the dialogues. Speaking generally, issues of chronology should be left to readers to pursue or not, as they see fit, and it would be wrong to bias the presentation of Plato’s works in a translation intended for general use by imposing on it one’s own favorite chronological hypotheses. Thrasyllus’ order does not do that, and it has the additional advantage of being for us the traditional one, common ground for all contemporary interpreters.
¹²
Such interpretative biases as it may contain do not concern any writer nowadays, so it can reasonably be considered a neutral basis on which to present these works to contemporary readers.

II. Chronological vs. Thematic Groupings of the Platonic Dialogues

In teaching and writing about Plato, it is almost customary nowadays (in my view unfortunately so: see below) to divide the dialogues into groups on the basis of a presumed rough order of their composition: People constantly speak of Plato’s ‘early’, ‘middle’ (or ‘middle-period’), and ‘late’ dialogues—though there is no perfect unanimity as to the membership of the three groups, and finer distinctions are sometimes marked, of ‘early-middle’ dialogues or ‘transitional’ ones at either end of the intermediate group.
¹³
Although this terminology announces itself as marking chronologically distinct groups, it is in reality based only in small part on anything like hard facts about when Plato composed given dialogues. (For these facts, see the next paragraph.) For the most part, the terminology encapsulates a certain interpretative thesis about the evolving character of Plato’s authorship, linked to the development of his philosophical thought. This authorship began, it is assumed, sometime after 399
B.C.
, the year of Socrates’ death, and continued until his own death some fifty years later. According to this thesis, Plato began as the author of dialogues setting forth his ‘teacher’ conversing much as we presume he typically actually did when discussing his favorite philosophical topics—morality, virtue, the best human life—with the young men who congregated round him and other intellectuals in Athens, where he spent his entire life. These, then, would constitute the ‘early’ dialogues, sometimes also thematically described as the ‘Socratic’ dialogues; they are all relatively short works. Only gradually, on this view, did Plato grow into a fully independent philosopher, with new ideas and interests of his own, as outgrowths from and supplements to his ‘Socratic heritage’. In his writings presumed to postdate the founding of the Academy, we see new ideas and interests first and primarily in the introduction of his celebrated theory of ‘Forms’—eternal, nonphysical, quintessentially unitary entities, knowledge of which is attainable by abstract and theoretical thought, standing immutably in the nature of things as standards on which the physical world and the world of moral relationships among human beings are themselves grounded. This happens in the ‘middle’ dialogues:
Symposium, Phaedo,
and
Republic,
most notably—much longer and philosophically more challenging works. The ‘middle’ dialogues are usually construed to include also
Parmenides,
with its critical reflections on the theory of Forms, and
Theaetetus.
Finally—still according to this interpretative thesis—the ‘late’ period comprises a new series of investigations into logic, metaphysics, the philosophy of physics, and ethics and political theory, from which these ‘Forms’ either are absent altogether or else at least the principal theoretical work is accomplished without direct and simple appeal to their authoritative status. These include
Timaeus,
Sophist, Statesman, Philebus,
and
Laws.
Along with these philosophical developments, Plato’s manner of writing dialogues was evolving, too. In the ‘middle’ dialogues, where Socrates continues to be the principal speaker, he is no longer limited to questioning and commenting upon the views of his fellow discussants, as in the ‘early’ dialogues, but branches out into the development of elaborate, positive philosophical theses of his own. In the ‘late’ dialogues, however (with the understandable exception of
Philebus
—see the introductory note to that work), Socrates ceases altogether to be an active participant in the discussion. Moreover, the conversation takes on the character of a dogmatic exposition of doctrine by the main speaker to an audience. One of these may play virtually the sole role of nodding assent from time to time or requesting further explanations, so as to register acceptance and provide an easy means of noting and dividing—and highlighting the importance of—the principal topics as they successively arise.

Now, in its broad outlines, such a division of Plato’s works into three chronological periods could be correct—the interpretative thesis, or rather theses, on which it rests do have some plausibility, though they are obviously not compelling. But in fact we have really only two bits of reliable, hard information about the chronology of Plato’s writings. One of these I have already mentioned:
Laws
was left unpublished at Plato’s death. The other derives from the fact that
Theaetetus
seems to present itself as a memorial honoring its namesake, a famous mathematician and longtime associate of Plato’s in his Academy, who died an untimely death in 369
B.C.
: that seems to date the dialogue to about 369–365 or so. Since internal evidence links
Theaetetus
to
Sophist
and
Statesman
as its two successors, that would suggest (though of course it does not prove) that those three dialogues were written in that order, after about 367—therefore in the last two decades of Plato’s life, his sixties and seventies. Useful as that information may be, it is obviously not sufficient basis for fixing any complete chronological guide to the reading and teaching of the dialogues. As for
Laws,
however, it began to be noticed already in the nineteenth century that its sentences are characterized by the frequency and constancy of a number of stylistic features that it shares with only a few other dialogues: the four that I listed above as ‘late’—
Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman,
Philebus
—plus
Critias.
On the obviously not perfectly secure assumption that, at least cumulatively, such stylistic affiliation, setting these works off strongly from all the others, must fix a chronological grouping, exhaustive ‘stylometric’ investigations have led to a consensus in favor of adding these five works to
Laws
—independently known to be a late composition—as constituting Plato’s last period.
¹⁴
Thus one might claim substantial hard evidence in favor at least of recognizing these six works (plus
Epinomis,
if it is by Plato) as constituting a separate, late group. But stylometry does not strongly support any particular order among the six, nor can it establish any particular ordering of the remaining dialogues among themselves—though some do claim that it establishes a second group of four dialogues as the latest of the nonlate group:
Republic, Parmenides, Theaetetus,
and
Phaedrus
in some undetermined order. So, even if we accept the somewhat insecure assumption noted just above, no hard data support the customary division of the dialogues into chronological groups, except with respect to the last of the three—the ‘late’ dialogues
Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman,
Philebus,
and
Laws.
The classifications of ‘early’ and ‘middle-period’ dialogues rest squarely on the interpretative theses concerning the progress of Plato’s work, philosophically and literarily, outlined above. As such, they are an unsuitable basis for bringing anyone to the reading of these works. To use them in that way is to announce in advance the results of a certain interpretation of the dialogues and to canonize that interpretation under the guise of a presumably objective order of composition—when in fact no such order
is
objectively known. And it thereby risks prejudicing an unwary reader against the fresh, individual reading that these works demand.

For these reasons, I urge readers not to undertake the study of Plato’s works holding in mind the customary chronological groupings of ‘early’, ‘middle’, and ‘late’ dialogues. It is safe to recognize only the group of six late dialogues. Even for these, it is better to relegate thoughts about chronology to the secondary position they deserve and to concentrate on the literary and philosophical content of the works, taken on their own and in relation to the others. In some cases it may indeed seem desirable to begin with a preliminary idea about the place of a given dialogue in the series (
Gorgias
and
Protagoras
earlier than
Republic,
say, or
Theaetetus
before
Sophist,
or
Symposium
before
Phaedo
). Certainly, a study of such sets of dialogues might lead one to argue that the philosophical ideas they contain show an evolution in some particular direction. But chronological hypotheses must not preclude the independent interpretation and evaluation of the philosophical arguments the dialogues contain; so far as possible, the individual texts must be allowed to speak for themselves. However, in reading the dialogues, it may help to be aware from the outset of certain thematic groupings among them. In our introductory notes to the individual works, we inform readers about such links from the work in question to others and provide other information that may help in placing the work in the proper context within Plato’s writings and in the Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries
B.C.
One very large group of dialogues can usefully be identified here. These are what we may call the Socratic dialogues—provided that the term is understood to make no chronological claims, but rather simply to indicate certain broad thematic affinities. In these works, not only is Socrates the principal speaker, but also the topics and manner of the conversation conform to what we have reason to think, both from Plato’s own representations in the
Apology
and from other contemporary literary evidence, principally that of the writer Xenophon,
¹⁵
was characteristic of the historical Socrates’ own philosophical conversations. Included here are fully twenty of the thirty-six works in Thrasyllus’ tetralogies and (allowance made for their post-Platonic authorship) all seven of the dialogues that he classified as spurious: from the tetralogies,
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rival Lovers, Theages, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Greater
and
Lesser Hippias, Ion, Menexenus, Clitophon,
and
Minos.

One can think of these works, in part, as presenting a portrait of Socrates—Socrates teaching young men by challenging them to examine critically their own ideas, Socrates as moral exemplar and supreme philosophical dialectician, Socrates seeking after moral knowledge, while always disclaiming the final possession of any, through subjecting his own and others’ ideas to searching rational scrutiny. But just as there is no reason to think that these dialogues are or derive in any way from records of actual conversations of the historical Socrates, so there is also no reason to suppose that in writing them
¹⁶
Plato intended simply to reconstruct from memory actual arguments, philosophical distinctions, etc., that Socrates had used, or views that he had become persuaded of through his lifelong practice of philosophical dialectic. To be sure, one evident feature of these dialogues is that in them Socrates does philosophize in the way the historical Socrates, according to the rest of our evidence, did. He seeks the opinions of his interlocutors on moral, political, and social questions and subjects them to searching critical examination. It is true that, in some of them, such as
Gorgias,
he also comes forward with distinctive moral and political ideas of his own, to which he attempts to show his interlocutors, despite their overt denials, are logically committed since these ideas follow from propositions that the other speakers have themselves granted. But, by contrast with dialogues such as
Phaedo
and
Republic,
he does not engage here in elaborate positive philosophical construction, putting forward ambitious philosophical theses of his own and offering independent philosophical argument and other considerations in their favor. In particular, Socrates says nothing about the theory of Forms. That is a sign that in these dialogues Plato intends not to depart, as he does elsewhere, from Socratic methods of reasoning or from the topics to which Socrates devoted his attention, and no doubt he carries over into these portraits much of the substance of Socrates’ own philosophizing, as Plato himself understood it.