Hugh Benson

This broad-ranging _Companion_ comprises original contributions from leading Platonic scholars and reflects the different ways in which they are dealing with Plato’s legacy. Covers an exceptionally broad range of subjects from diverse perspectives Contributions are devoted to topics, ranging from perception and knowledge to politics and cosmology Allows readers to see how a position advocated in one of Plato’s dialogues compares with positions advocated in others Permits readers to engage the debate concerning Plato’s philosophical development on particular topics Also includes overviews of Plato’s life, works and philosophical method.

While the early Platonic dialogues have often been explored and appreciated for their ethical content, this is the first book devoted solely to the epistemology of Plato's early dialogues. Author Hugh H. Benson argues that the characteristic features of these dialogues--Socrates' method of questions and answers (elenchos), his fascination with definition, his professions of ignorance, and his thesis that virtue is knowledge--are decidedly epistemological. In this thoughtful study, Benson uncovers the model of knowledge that underlies these distinctively Socratic views. What emerges is unfamiliar, yet closer to a contemporary conception of scientific understanding than ordinary knowledge.

I argue against a formidable interpretation of Plato’s Divided Line image according to which dianoetic correctly applies the same method as dialectic. The difference between the dianoetic and dialectic sections of the Line is not methodological, but ontological. I maintain that while this interpretation correctly identifies the mathematical method with dialectic, ( i.e., the method of philosophy), it incorrectly identifies the mathematical method with dianoetic. Rather, Plato takes dianoetic to be a misapplication of the mathematical method by a subset of practicing mathematicians. Thus, Plato’s critique of dianoetic is a not a critique of mathematics, as such, but of mathematicians.

The last two decades have witnessed a virtual explosion of research in Socratic philosophy. This volume collects essays that represent the range and diversity of that vast literature, including historical and philosophical essays devoted to a single Platonic dialogue, as well as essays devoted to the Socratic method, Socratic epistemology, and Socratic ethics. With lists of suggested further readings, an extensive bibliography on recent Socratic research, and an index locorum, this unique and much-needed anthology makes the study of Socratic philosophy accessible to both scholars and non-specialists.

After an introductory discussion primarily aimed to differentiate her approach to reading the Platonic dialogues from the so-called argument-focused approach, Gordon argues that Socratic dialectic—which she understands as “the question and answer depicted in the dialogues between Socrates and the interlocutors”—does not simply aim at uncovering inconsistencies in the interlocutors’ belief sets, but at urging through extra-logical means the interlocutors to live a particular—philosophical—kind of life. Next, she argues via a discussion of reader response theory for the parallelism between Socrates’ relationship with his interlocutors and Plato’s relationship with his readers. Thus, Plato, like Socrates, should be seen as urging his readers through extra-logical means to live a particular life—‘to turn toward philosophy’. The remainder of the book consists of four chapters devoted to discussing the extra-logical means by which Plato accomplishes this urging—his use of dramatic effects, his use of character development, his use of irony, and his use of images. While I presume that Gordon would not object to my parenthetical inclusion of ‘logical’ in the description of her argument, it is clear that the focus of her attention in this book is the extra-logical means.

In the first chapter of The Contribution of Socratic Method and Plato’s Theory of Truth to Plato Scholarship, Rod Jenks argues that since Socrates and Plato take the Socratic elenchus to establish truths and the Socratic elenchus can only establish consistency, Socrates and Plato must be committed to a coherence theory of truth. Jenks denies any explicit recognition of such a commitment in Plato’s early dialogues. The claim is rather that “early Socratic practice as recorded by Plato makes sense only against the backdrop of the assumption of a coherence theory of truth”. It is, according to Jenks, Plato’s solution to “the problem of the elenchus.” In the middle and later dialogues, Jenks argues, Plato exposes the philosophical foundations of this assumption and addresses various problems associated with it, only to return to the Socratic elenchus—now supported by a philosophically grounded CTT—in the Philebus.