Resultados logrados

John Dillon

A notable feature of the Platonic Corpus (like some other ancient collections) is the inclusion of works the majority of modern scholars – and in some cases ancient schol- ars – deem spurious. Suspected works include Alcibiades I , Clitophon , Epinomis (often credited in antiquity to Philippus of Opus, probably correctly) and even Hippias Major ; their authenticity has also found defenders in recent years, some strenuous. This article con- centrates on two further categories to be cov- ered here: (a) works now almost universally regarded as un-Platonic, but included by the first-century CE editor Thrasyllus in his tetra- logical system (and hence classified as dubia ); and (b) works which had in antiquity been relegated to an Appendix (and so categorized as spuria ). The former group comprises the following: Alc . II , Amatores (or Anterastae , ‘Rivals in Love’), Hipparchus, Theages , Minos ; the latter: Axiochus, Definitions, On Justice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Eryxias, Sisyphus. They vary from the relatively well turned and interesting to the schematic and simpleminded. I will deal with them in turn, after first contributing some reflections on the composition of the corpus as a whole.

We cannot be sure whether any dubia, for example, Epin ., Hp . Ma ., Clit . or Alc . I , were already incorporated in the original edi- tion of Plato’s works, probably put together under Xenocrates (Alline 1915:46–50) and, if so, on what grounds. Xenocrates may have welcomed such documents as useful prod- ucts of the Academy, compatible with what

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50 Plato would have accepted, and thus the edi- tion was not intentionally confined to Plato’s works. We should try to penetrate the state of mind of whoever initially included these and other works that we do not deem genuine, and of whose origin they must surely have been aware. If the concept of an official Old Academic edition or collection is rejected, the next candidate will be Aristophanes of Byzantium ( c. 257–180 BCE), second Head of the Alexandrian Library, who arranged at least fifteen of the dialogues into trilogies. However, since Aristophanes only arranged some dialogues, he hardly concerned himself with dubia or spuria , but internal evidence (both of language and of philosophical con- tent, including antistoic themes) suggests that many of them crept into the corpus some- how during the period of the New Academy. Otherwise, prior to Thrasyllus, we have only the shadowy Dercyllides (Albinus, Isagoge 4) to whom one might plausibly attribute the tetralogical arrangement, but we have no idea what his contribution may have been.

We must, however, assume that during the evolution of our corpus, works which were plainly not Platonic (e.g. Alc . II , Just ., Virt . or Demod .) were admitted to the col- lection, albeit in a subordinate capacity, by editors aware of their spuriousness, who felt that they contributed to Platonist doctrine, perhaps as teaching aids for beginners (a role later played by both Alc . I and Thg .). At any rate, we need not imagine that ancient editors or readers, either of these or of the collected Epistles , were necessarily deceived concerning their status.

The topic of the short Alc . II is overtly (as represented by its subtitle in MSS), ‘prayer’ ( proseukhê ) – Socrates finds Alcibiades on his way to offer a prayer to the gods – but in reality it concerns rather the Stoic ‘paradox’ that all those not wise are mad, and then the

subversion of this in a ‘Socratic’ direction. A distinctly ‘Xenophontic’ (i.e. rather senten- tious) Socrates, starting from this Stoicizing position, proceeds to argue that it is actually better not to possess ‘technical’ knowledge unless one also knows what is best, that is, how and when best to apply one’s knowl- edge ( Alc. II 146e–7d). The work exhibits echoes of Alc . I ; so, it must postdate Alc . I . It is probably a product of the New Academy, designed to upstage the Stoics.

Rather different is the case of Amat ., the topic of which, as indicated in its subtitle, is the nature of ‘philosophy’. Couched in a nar- rative by Socrates (on the model of Charmides or Lysis ), this involves a dispute between two rivals in love whom Socrates engages over the relative merits of physical training ( gymnastikê ) or cultural pursuits ( mous- ikê ). The supporter of the latter, who defines philosophy as the acquisition of ever more technical knowledge ( Amat. 133c), might be expected to find support from Socrates, but Socrates cuts him down, by dismissing this in favour of the ideal of self-knowledge. Unlike Alc . II , this could be a product of the later Old Academy, and embodies an attack on Peripatetic philosophy, which could be seen as encouraging polymathia .

Hipparch ., about which doubts were expressed by Aelian ( Varia Historia VIII.2), is a curious production, involving a disputation of Socrates with an unnamed ‘companion’ on the moral status of ‘gain’ ( kerdos ). The com- panion begins with a simpleminded denun- ciation of the money-grubber, or ‘lover of gain’, which Socrates then picks apart by get- ting him to agree that gain is useful, and so, is a good, and all men desire it. The dialogue acquires its name not from a participant, but from the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, who is dragged into the dis- cussion as the author of the precept ‘Do not

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51 deceive a friend’. The purpose of the work seems dialectical rather than ‘ethical’, which would be consistent with a New Academic date.

Thg . is more polished, centring on a request by Socrates’ old friend Demodocus for advice on the education of his son Theages, who is badgering him to be allowed to study state- craft with a sophist. The employment of the Socratic elenchus is here rather ham-handed, as is usual in doubtful works, but its most un- Platonic aspect is a long speech by Socrates concerning his daimonion , or divine sign. The statement that its influence is always negative is Platonic enough, but Socrates’ description of its power in respect of his would-be students, is quite un-Platonic. It seems designed almost to elevate Socrates to the status of a divine man. It could, from the linguistic and stylistic point of view, conceiv- ably be a product of the Old Academy, but may be much later. Its genuineness, however, was never doubted in antiquity.

Min . is a brief discussion between Socrates and an unnamed companion, and begins with an attempt to define ‘law’. There is a central digression involving the excellent education given directly by Zeus to Minos, the legen- dary Cretan law giver, from whom the work gets its name. Superficially it serves as a more Socratic introduction to the topic of Laws , but its dialectical nature and structure are reminiscent of Hipparch .

Among works relegated to the Appendix as spuria , Ax . takes the form of a protreptikos , calculated to dispel the fear of death, in which Socrates, at the urging of Cleinias, delivers a discourse to Cleinias’ father Axiochus, who thinks that he is dying. It is well composed and quite lively, but its language is notably un-Platonic, many forms being otherwise unattested before late Hellenistic times. It also draws upon an established tradition of

consolation - literature. It may be dated to the last period of the New Academy.

Def . was attributed in ancient times to Speusippus ( Anon . Proleg . 26), and an item by that name is listed among his works by Diogenes Laertius (D. L. 4.5), but what we have seems rather to be a product of multiple authorship. It consists of a list of 185 defini- tions of philosophical terms, in no obvious order and often providing multiple explana- tions. More precisely, there is a first section ( Def . 411a–14e), in which the terms are arranged according to the scholastic division of philosophy, first formalized by Xenocrates, into physics, ethics and logic (including epis- temology), followed by a somewhat shorter section (414e–16d), exhibiting no order whatever. While it may partly originate with Speusippus, it has the appearance of a work to which anyone could add, and a number of the definitions reflect Stoic formulations.

Just . and Virt . are among several dia- logues described as akephaloi (‘headless’) in a list preserved by Diogenes Laertius (3.57), which contained many lost works along with Halcyon (a lively little work, preserved in the corpus of Lucian, though much ear- lier). ‘Headless’ cannot mean simply that they lack a frame-story or conversation, since that is common. It highlights rather their extreme lack of any introductory ele- ment. The Just . begins ‘Can you tell me what is the just?’, and the Virt ., ‘Is virtue some- thing teachable?’ In either case, Socrates is presented as addressing an anonymous interlocutor. Both dialogues last for just over three pages. In the former, we are faced mainly with a scholastic exercise in method, but the conclusion is reached that no one is willingly unjust. In the latter, Socrates con- cludes that virtue is neither teachable nor a gift of nature. These may be no more than student exercises, drawing respectively on

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52 such works as Gorgias, Republic bk 1 and Men ., and cannot be dated.

Demod . is also ‘headless’. It falls into four parts, only the first of which explicitly involves Demodocus (father of Theages). This part comprises an argument by Socrates against the coherence of the concept of tak- ing counsel together ( symbouleuesthai ). The other three parts address other questions of ‘practical ethics’: (a) is it right to con- demn someone after listening only to their accuser? (b) who is at fault ( hamartanei ), he who asks unsuccessfully for a loan or he who refuses? (c) in whom is it better to put one’s trust, in strangers or in friends and rela- tions? The arguments appear to be exercises in ‘equipollence’, and compatible with the New Academy rather than with the Platonic tradition.

Eryx . concerns the ethical status of wealth, and the nature of true wealth, consequent on Socrates and a group of friends viewing a Syracusan ambassador – described as the richest man in Sicily, but also the wickedest. Socrates argues that only the wise man is rich, while Critias counters that without some wealth one cannot even exercise one’s wis- dom. Socrates, however, comes back with the argument that riches are only advantageous to those who know how to use them, viz. the wise. The dialogue is well composed and exhibits no distinctively late features. It has been argued that the examination of the dis- tinctively Stoic thesis that ‘only the wise man is rich’ necessitates a New Academic prov- enance, but the theme of the self- sufficiency of virtue was also explored in the Academy under Polemon.

The Sis ., lastly, is concerned, like Demod . I, with the theme of ‘taking counsel’. The scene appears to be set, most oddly, not in Athens, but in Pharsalus in Thessaly, where Socrates is conversing with a prominent citizen of

that town, Sisyphus, who had to miss an interesting talk by the musician Stratonicus the previous day by reason of having to attend a meeting of the City Council. The wisdom of consulting with one’s peers, irre- spective of their expertise or wisdom, had plainly become something of a topos in the Hellenistic period, if not before. This would seem to be a product of the New Academic period.

EUTHYDEMUS

Monique Dixsaut

The Euthydemus is entirely governed by ambiguity. The Socratic art of argument, dia- lectic (q.v.), is introduced facing its double, the art of ‘fighting with words’ or eristic. The aim is to bring their differences to the fore, but the dialogue also reveals to what extent their practises are formally identical. The characters move in couples: Euthydemus and his elder brother Dionysodorus, who late in life have discovered the most refined version of pancratium, the art of refuting any asser- tion whether true or false; young Cleinias and his lover Ctesippus, Socrates and Crito, or Socrates (who relates) and Socrates (who dialogues). A conversation between Socrates and Crito at the beginning and at the end provides the framework of the dialogue: Socrates’ long account of the discussion he had the previous day. It is divided into three eristic sections separated by two dialectical ones.

The two sophists pretend that they can teach excellence (q.v.; aretê ) and exhort anyone to philosophize, the rules being that the interlocutor agrees to answer, that he does not answer by means of another ques- tion and that he adds no determination or

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53 qualification, thus committing a ‘parapht- egm’. In order to make a demonstration ( epideixis ) of their ‘protreptic’ knowledge, the sophists first ask Cleinias whether those who learn are wise or ignorant, and whether they learn what they know or what they do not know. By compelling the boy to agree that in any case it is impossible to learn, the two brothers state from the outset what essentially differentiates them from the phi- losopher: a sophist never learns anything, whatever the length of time he spends ‘rolling about among arguments’ ( Sophist 264a2). Due to his refusal to cram his memory with what he may have said, he is doomed to an indefinitely repetitive present.

Socrates explains to a perplexed Cleinias that the sophists are only preparing him to find out about ‘the correctness of names’, and then he questions the boy in his turn to give the conversation a more serious turn. Both agree that all men certainly wish to be happy ( eu prattein ) and believe that it means hav- ing many good things, but Socrates shows that what matters is not possessing them, for nothing can benefit us unless we make good use of it. Since nothing can bring about right use except knowledge ( epistêmê ), knowledge (q.v.) is in fact the only good worth having. But the nature of such knowledge remains unspecified.

Socrates then surrenders the conversation to the two eristics, who seize the occasion to complement a first series of paradoxes follow- ing from the sophistic theory of logos. Each single argument is cut to the familiar Eleatic pattern: ‘is’ and ‘is not’ obey a strict law of contradiction, any middle being excluded. So, to wish that Cleinias becomes virtuous is to wish him not to be (i.e. not virtuous): to be dead; similarly, knowing excludes every form of not knowing, hence the impossibility of ignorance, false statement and contradiction.

Socrates is quite familiar with the latter argu- ment, having heard it from the followers of Protagoras, but the Socratic Antisthenes may be the target (Brancacci 2005:217–23). Since their teaching has turned out to consist in nothing but refutation, the sophists make themselves ridiculous when they argue that refutation is impossible.

Before resuming his discussion with Cleinias, so as to give an example of how a dialogue should be conducted, Socrates insists that the sophists must be listened to because, in spite of everything, they urge one to phi- losophize (that is probably the reason why, the day before, his daimonion had prevented Socrates from leaving the palestra). The high- est good has been identified with a knowledge that must be both a science of production and a science of use, but now neither the art particular to the orator nor the art of leading men (strategy or politics) fulfils that demand. For just as the general does not know what to do with his quarry and hands it over to the statesman, so the geometer hands his to the dialectician, Cleinias explains (Crito doubts Cleinias could have said that, and Socrates is not quite sure he did: the story comes to us as filtered all along through ‘Socrates’ ironic screen’) (Friedländer 1964:179). A royal art has emerged into view, but if it makes men good and useful, that will be only thanks to a knowledge which has no object but itself, that is, the art of making others good and useful (cf. Charmides 166e ff.). Socrates is no more a teacher than the sophist since neither of them is able to teach something .

The eristics make a pretence of coming to the rescue. From Socrates’ admission that he knows one thing, they move on to the conclusion that Socrates knows, has always known and will always know, everything. Confounding that which is other with that which is not, and using the equivocation of

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54 words such as ‘his’ or ‘yours’, the sophists establish that any man who is a father is a father of all and that Ctesippus’ father is a dog. So the reader is led to understand the necessity to introduce qualifications in the law of contradiction by specifying ‘when’ and ‘to what respect’. Next it is the theory of par- ticipation (q.v.) which comes in for its share of derision: to say that a beautiful thing is beautiful because a certain beauty is present with it ( para ) amounts to saying that if an ox is present with you, you are an ox. Since Socrates and the ox are both physical par- ticulars, the only possible mode of presence is a physical one, and any difference between forms and particular objects is denied. Dionysodorus’ ox is the comic equivalent of Parmenides’ sail ( Parmenides 131B–C; cf. Sprague 1962:29), and both point to the danger of using spatial terms like being ‘in’ or ‘over’: here, the sophists come nearest to being philosophers.

Are those sophisms borrowed from some collection or from a treatise written by Euthydemus, or did Plato make them up himself? No one will ever know, but in any case it is clear that he groups and connects them after a strategy of his own, and in such a way as to provide a key to them. While Aristotle’s Soph . El . proceeds according to an ordered listing of the causes of par- alogisms, Plato is more interested in their content: the problems they raise. Socrates clarifies the semantic equivocation of learn- ing ( manthanein ), ‘acquiring knowledge’ or ‘understanding’, but for him the difficulty remains and will be solved only by ventur- ing the hypothesis of reminiscence ( Meno 80e f.). The Eleatic denial of change and becoming, along with an eristic technique, is applied to major problems of Plato’s phi- losophy: learning, is virtue teachable, forms and participation, capacity ( dunamis ) active

and passive, due measure, the existence of an opposite of being, sameness and differ- ence, otherness and not being, etc. Each will prove to be dealt very seriously in later dialogues.

When Socrates suggests again that Crito and his sons should follow the eristics’ teaching his friend remains reluctant. He does not seem to consider, however, that Socrates would be a decent teacher – a doubt strengthened by the conversation he just had with ‘somebody’ who, after listen- ing to the debate, has concluded that phi- losophy ‘is worth nothing’. It hardly matters whether Isocrates is referred to here (as is probably the case) or not. Socrates con- structs an hybrid type who stands halfway