Interpreting Plato's Dialogues (review)

In Interpreting Plato's Dialogues, J. Angelo Corlett succeeds at offering a concise summary of various competing answers to the question of how Plato's dialogues ought to be interpreted. The significance of the question is rooted in the fact that one's assumptions about Plato's mode of expression inevitably influence how one interprets the dialogues. Meanwhile, the question is bewildering because, as Corlett quotes Woodruff, "reading Plato is hard work and inevitably frustrating: total satisfaction in interpretation eludes us" (64–65). Corlett divides Platonic scholarship into two main approaches to the question of what the dialogue format allows readers to say about Plato's own views. He labels interpreters who maintain that Plato's mind can be discerned from the dialogues "Mouthpiece interpreters," and those who deny that "Plato's theories, doctrines, and/or beliefs are able to be deciphered from Plato's works as we have them" (11) "Anti-Mouthpiece interpreters."

His chief complaint against Mouthpiece interpreters is that there is not sufficient reason at present to believe that Plato meant to reveal his own views in his dialogues. While Corlett acknowledges that evidence could be unearthed for this, he argues that "the burden of argument is on Mouthpiece interpreters to support their claim that the dialogues express, unambiguously, Plato's theories, doctrines, and/or beliefs" (57). The central strength of Interpreting Plato's Dialogues is that it points out the dangers inherent in assuming that Plato's views can be harvested from the Platonic dialogues, as well as in presuming that the scholarly tradition has made clear what those views are. Furthermore, he makes a strong case for the necessity of interpreting the dialogues in a way that includes earnest consideration of all dramatic and Socratic elements.

Ultimately, Corlett endorses the Socratic version of the Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation. His argument rests heavily, though not exclusively, on the merits of the Socratic Interpretation, which "argues that Plato's body of written work is to be construed as being influenced primarily and almost exhaustively by his mentor Socrates, whose philosophical 'method' permeates at least most dialogues" (14–15). Since Corlett acknowledges that both the Mouthpiece and Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretations have dramatic and Socratic versions, it is disappointing that he does not devote much attention to the work of Mouthpiece scholars who emphasize the Socratic Interpretation. Such scholars would agree that no character is ever speaking for Plato as a mouthpiece and that phrases such as 'Plato says . . . ' should be abandoned in favor of phrases such as 'Plato's Socrates says . . . '. However, Socratic-Mouthpiece interpreters would deny Corlett's claim that not one theory or belief is evident in the dialogues and reasonably attributable to their author.

Corlett contends that the attribution of the Socratic method to Plato by Anti-Mouthpiece interpreters like himself differs from the Mouthpiece interpreters' attribution to Plato of messages such as: (1) the unexamined life is not worth living; (2) a good person cannot be harmed; and (3) knowledge includes knowing that one knows nothing. Corlett writes that, "at worst, the Socratic Interpretation is 'dogmatic' in a minimal way, ascribing to Plato the beliefs entailed by a standard construal of the Socratic Method but nothing more" (59). But here the amount of dogma seems irrelevant, given that Corlett contends repeatedly that "there is no way of knowing whether Plato himself subscribes to a particular view" (58). So, despite Corlett's denial that the Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation in effect turns the interpretation of Plato's dialogues into a subjective project, he has subjectively admitted the Socratic method into the purportedly empty set of notions attributable to Plato.

Plato's choice to write dialogues rather than treatises does indicate that he wanted to express himself differently than his philosophical predecessors. It is probable that he preferred to be an author who, in the spirit of Socrates, prompted his readers to search for truth on their own by having his characters model philosophical activity. Nevertheless, his choice to be an author also indicates his desire to use words...