Chasing Plato

Political Theory

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 421-439

  Deneen, Patrick J ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84997968048     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591700028003006     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. For a witty version of how the needs of each age result in certain interpretations of Plato, see T. M. Robinson, “Plato Oxoniensis,” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 (1967): 90–102. Noting interpretations ranging from Plato as proto-Christian to Plato as a planner for “the reconstruction of society in post-war Europe” (91), he observes that “there are as many ‘Platos’ as there are philosophical movements” (94).
2. An extraordinarily helpful book on the history of Platonic interpretation is Eugene Tigerstadt's Interpreting Plato (Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1976).
3. See also Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. Charles L. Griswold Jr. (New York: Routledge, 1988).
4. Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, ed. and trans. L. G. Westerlink (Amsterdam, 1962), 4. I have slightly altered Westerlink's translation in a few places, 28.
5. These thinkers are much more complicated than these labels imply; however, I merely want to suggest that these labels get regularly attached to these thinkers. For example, Josiah Ober notes that Vlastos presents “the ‘Socrates’ depicted in Plato's early dialogues as a quasi-liberal who respected Athenian constitutional arrangements and appreciated the freedom, openness, and diversity of Athenian society.” Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 158.
6. While there is no shortage of recognition of Leo Strauss's conservatism, for one example, see Shadia B. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St. Martin's, 1997).
7. The question of Platonic chronology is a lively field. On Vlastos's chronological views, see Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), esp. chap.
8. For a persuasive critique of Vlastos's position, see especially, Jacob Howland's essay “Re-reading Plato: The Problem of Platonic Chronology,” Phoenix 45 (Autumn 1991): 189–214.
9. Charles L. Griswold Jr. notes many problems of chronological assumptions in his review of Charles Kahn's Plato and the Socratic Dialogue and even more tellingly points out the many opposing views that Kahn—and most “developmentalists”—consistently overlook. Griswold, “E Pluribus Unum: On the Platonic ‘Corpus,’” Ancient Philosophy 19 (1999): 361–397.
10. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 59–60.
11. J. Peter Euben, ed., Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986);
12. J. Peter Euben, John R. Wallach, and Josiah Ober, eds., Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstitution of American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994);
13. J. Peter Euben, The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
14. For various readings that take Plato's recommendations seriously, and hence view them as threatening to democracy, see Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little Brown, 1960), chap 2
15. and Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 20–41.
16. For a reading that views Plato's recommendation as ironic, and hence a warning to philosophy by philosophy, see Mary Nichols, Socrates and the Political Community: An Ancient Debate (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).
17. Milton, Areopagitica;
18. Mill, On Liberty, chap. 2.
19. Speech of Stephen A. Douglas at the Public Recognition in New Orleans (Baltimore: Travers, 1860), 4.
20. Allan Bloom, “Western Civ,” in Giants and Dwarves: Essays 1960–1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 13–31. Bloom takes comfort in the fact that he has been attacked by Arthur Schlesinger for being a reactionary, while Walker Percy has accused him of being “a nihilist.” He states that “this equilibrium of criticism reassures me that I am in the right way” (19).
21. There is a certain similarity between the machinations of Athena in the Eumenides and the appeals of the Federalists during the American founding. After all, according to the Articles of Confederation, changes to the Articles could only be made by unanimous consent of the states. The Federalists, however, perhaps illegally claimed that the Constitution could be ratified by nine of thirteen states. As one constitutional scholar has written, “[The] foundation of American legality was itself the product of a blatant and conscious illegality. But this illegality is indeed a paradox and not a contradiction. … Every legal system is governed, at the end, by principles whose authority cannot be found in law.” Richard S. Kay, “The Illegality of the Constitution,” Constitutional Commentary 4 (1987): 57–58. I am grateful to my colleague Keith E. Whittington for pointing out this article to me.
22. Apology, 30e.
23. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cummings (New York: Continuum, 1991), “The Concept of Enlightenment” and “Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment.” Rocco is content to summarize Horkheimer and Adorno's view of Odysseus without subjecting it to the “critical” vision he recommends throughout his book.
24. On the implications of this choice, see Martha C. Nussbaum's “Transcending Humanity” in Love's Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 365–91. Horkheimer and Adorno are so unwilling to perceive any redeeming features in antiquity in general, and of Odysseus in particular, that they assert one of Odysseus' primary objectives is that of “self-preservation.” They are correct that he attempts to preserve his “self” in resisting the lure of the lotus-eaters and other temptations that threaten his self-consciousness, but they do not recognize that this priority does not justify the attempt to go beyond the limits of life itself.
25. Adorno was generally opposed to participation in politics, arguing for a need to withdraw to one's “own house,” a view which extended, to the surprise of the New Left, to the student movement in the 1960s. He argued that a contemplative “nicht-mitzumanchen” was preferable to an all-consuming “mitmachen.” See Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little Brown, 1973), 291
26. and Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School (New York: Free Press, 1977), 189 ff.
27. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences [trans. unknown] (New York: Random House, 1970), xxiii.
28. Meno, 80e, 81c-e. I have used G.M.A. Grube's translation in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997).