Scott Hemmenway

This volume adds two more to the list of Platonic dialogues to which Benardete is publishing commentaries. The Being of the Beautiful deals with the trilogy Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman; and Socrates' Second Sailing is on the Republic. In his introduction to the present volume he promises yet another book, The Gods of the Poets, which will treat the Protagoras and Symposium, and which will be closely related to the present book because of the thematic connections between the two pairs of dialogues.

This volume contains translations of the following dialogues: Hipparchus, Minos, Lovers, Cleitophon, Theages, Alcibiades I, Laches, Lesser Hippias, Greater Hippias, and Ion. Each translation is accompanied by a short interpretive study, some previously published, designed to serve as an introduction and stimulus to further reading and studying of the respective dialogues. Contributors, both translators and interpreters, are mostly professors of Political Science, and they include Allan Bloom and the late Leo Strauss. In his introduction, the editor discusses the status of these neglected texts and argues for an unprejudiced reconsideration of these fascinating Platonic dramas and important works of political philosophy.

This study addresses the interpretative problem of how Plato ought to be read and orients itself within the debate between Hellenists, on the one hand, who treat the dialogues as works of literary and dramatic art, and philosophers, on the other hand, who concentrate on the arguments and their logic. Stokes argues for a model of interpretation that takes both Plato the philosopher and the dialogue form seriously. He then systematically applies this method to three whole conversations or dialogues: the Laches, the conversation between Socrates and Agathon in the Symposium, and the Protagoras.

In support of an interpretation of the techne-analogy not as a doctrine about virtue, but as a dialectical tool employed by the Platonic Socrates, I analyze an atypical example: the 'healthy city' of 'Republic' II. First, I survey the more 'typical' uses of the techne-analogy in Book I, where Socrates seeks to understand justice by comparing it to various 'technai'. Then, I proceed to show that Socrates' Healthy City, essentially an association of craftsmen, is used in a very similar manner to provoke questions about the relation of virtue to knowledge. Finally, I speculate on the kinds of considerations about justice that Socrates tries to draw his interlocutors to by means of the Healthy City, looking backward to Book I and forward to the rest of the 'Republic'.

A different perspective is offered on the problematic arguments for the identity of various virtues in the 'Protagoras' by taking into account the dramatic context in which Socrates makes these arguments. A close examination of the portrayal of Protagoras's profession of sophistry, particularly in his telling of a version of the Promethean Myth, reveals a concealed and ignoble doctrine about human virtue. Viewing Socrates' primary intention to be exposing the sophist, particularly his conception of virtue as disunified, explains some of the puzzling aspects of the arguments Socrates offers for the unity of the virtues.

Two speeches in Plato's Theaetetus, Socrates' well-known description of himself as a midwife and the 'digression' in the middle of the dialogue, wherein Socrates contrasts the philosopher and the public orator, have apologetic dimensions; they are, in part, attempts by Socrates to account for, and hence correct, his and the philosopher's undeserved public reputation. A careful reading of these passages in their dramatic contexts as philosophical apologies reveals interesting parallels to the Apology, insights into some of the major themes of the Theaetetus, and a fuller appreciation of Socratic philosophy as portrayed in Plato's dialogues.