The Neoplatonist Interpretation of Plato: Remarks on its Decisive Characteristics

The Neoplatonist Interpretation of Plato: Remarks on its Decisive Characteristics R. F. HATHAWAY A MAJORITYOF THE PHILOSOPHERSTODAYwho have taken time to reflect on the problem would assert that the later Neoplatonie interpretation of Plato is, if not false in every parL at least grossly mistaken on some general points. A massive historical problem is involved, of course, as long as we are seeking some chain of influences leading up to the Neoplatonic exegesis? But the real underlying question is this: what is the decisive characteristic of the Neoplatonie interpretation? That the question is worth raising may be dubious until we pause to remember that Neoplatonism was one of the most powerful forces that shaped the tradition of philosophy, that it had a perhaps decisive role in the philosophical theology of medieval times, and that it still has certain charms both for students of the dialogues of Plato and for many others who are not ex professo philosophers. More important, we can never be sure that we too will not be misled in the same way that the Neoplatonists were misled and by the same features of Plato's dialogues. It is frequently forgotten that the Neoplatonist commentators had an excellent text of the dialogues, possessed critical philological principles,9 and lived in some periods in a genuinely critical philosophical environment.' Neoplatonism, in other words, can be seen as a persistent problem. My argument is this: the decisive characteristic of the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato is its obliviousness to the genuine Socratic element in the dialogues.' Some very obvious facts show this to be the case, First, the Neoplatonists claimed a Of. Entretiens sur l'antiquitd classique V: Les sources de Plotin (Vandoeuvres-Gen~ve, 1960 [transcript of 1957 symposium]); Philip Merlan, From Platonism to Neoplatonism (The Hague, 1953) and Monopsyehism, Mysticism and Metaconsciousness (The Hague, 1963). 9 See J. Freudenthal, Anna. 6: "Kritische Arbeiten der Neuplatoniker" at the end of his article, "Der Platoniker Albinos mad der falsche Alkinoos," Hellenistische Studien, III (Berlin, 1879), pp. 316-317. Freudenthal's judgment was to some extent biased by his hasty acceptance of the pnr~ling passage in the unknown Platonist (Pseudo-Olympiodorus) of the sixth century. See the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, ed. (with intro, and notes) L. O. Westerink (Amsterdam, 1962), 26 6-9. Cf. Westerink, p. xxxvii. s Sympathy for this fact is, despite Dodds's criticisms, one of the merits of T. Whittaker's The Neo-Platonists (Cambridge, Eng., 1918); see Dodds's Proclus: The Elements of Theology (Oxford, 1963), pp. xii-xiii. Cf. Olympiodorus, In Phaed., ed. W. Norvin, 123 3; Damascius, Das Leben des Philosophen Isidoros, fibers. R. Asmus (Leipzig, 1911), pp. 68, 89. 9 The remark of Dodds that "the 'Socratic' Plato was not entirely neglected" by the Neoplatorfists (Les sources de Plotin, p. 94) rests solely on his observation that their curriculum included at least one dialogue currently regarded by scholars as "Socratic," viz., the First hlcibiades. [19] 20 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that Plato was a dogmatist and not, as the "New Academy" had assumed, a sceptic.' This means that they were predisposed to disregard the aporetic character of the dialogues and therewith an essential feature of what we mean by Socratic dialectic. It also means that they took Plato's myths as dogmatic teachings in need of didactic exegesis rather than as Socratic elucidations of a certain kind bearing directly on the aporetic state of the moral questions. The Neoplatonists certainly do treat Plato's myths in their commentaries as the theological closure of the open state of the moral questions raised by Socrates.' Second, the Neoplatonists transformed the Socratic teaching, such as it was, about the virtues. They altered the distinctively political character of Socrates' way of raising the question about the "human and political virtue" by demoting the moral or political virtues to minimal conditions of the "purification" or theological virtues.' These two omissions---of Socratic dialectic as revealing the aporetic nature of the moral questions and of Socratic political philosophy--would seem ultimately to be connected.' In general, by being the first to assert a systematically dogmatic, didactic interpretation of the (if anything) cryptically dogmatic and certainly nondidactic dialogues of...