Socrates: Philosophy in Plato's Early Dialogues (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 303 d'examiner la conception de Simmias (cf. 2:187 = PMdon 86b) pour y reconnaitre un scheme de pens~e nettement h~raclitden (quoique appliqu~ h l'~me de mani~re non h~raclit~enne): beau retournement du pythagorisme selon une option fondamentalement contraire. Et Platon revient au pythagorisme en approfondissant la th~se avec une tr~s grande habilet~ qui en expulse le mat6rialisme. I1 n'y a donc pas d'alternative entre harmonia et immortalitd, mais entre deux harmonies, l'une mat~rialiste (qui devait d'ailleurs rev~tir une grande importance dans le d~veloppement ult~rieur de la pens6e de Platon), l'autre id6aliste, en affinit~ avec la nature de l'~me immortelle (comme l'avait bien vu au si6cle dernier Boeckh, 4 d'ailleurs stimul~ par l'id+e fausse que le PMdon et le TimOe 6taient chronologiquement voisins). Je crois sinc~rement--et fi mes propres risques!-que c'est aplatir selon la lectio facilior un penseur puissant, original (et moderne, nnllement en opposition, par exemple, avec certains concepts scientifiques comme celui de mOtastabilitd, appel6 par les observations de 1:67 sur Cratyle 4o2a) que de juger sa doctrine "fondamentalement inconsistante" (1:8o), alors qu'elle a longuement retenu et de plus en plus fascin~ un Platon. Si la place ne me faisait d~faut, je pourrais g+n~raliser sur d'autres exemples. Riche d'information et de r6flexion, 6videmment tr~s travaill6 et ais~ h consulter avec ses tables et appendices, cet ouvrage peut rendre des services et il est dommage qu'il se soit malheureusement brid6 et corset6 de limitations trop ~troites. JEAN BERNHARDT C.N.R.S., Paris Gerasimos Santas. Socrates: Philosophy in Plato's Early Dialogues. Arguments of the Philosophers. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, Pp. xiii + 343. $25.oo Santas's intention is "clear exposition and development of Socrates' ideas as we find them in Plato's writings, and criticism of his ideas and arguments in the setting of contemporary philosophy" (p. xi). His subject, then, is neither the spaced-out Socrates of Aristophanes nor the preachy pundit of Xenophon but the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues. By "philosophy in Plato's early dialogues" Santas means the "reasoned search for true knowledge" as it is exhibited in the elenchus, the logically exacting, often destructive cross-examination of ethical notions and principles. Accordingly , his aim is to reconstruct the arguments of that Socrates in as logically precise a way as possible so as to exhibit them clearly and evaluate their strength, validity, soundness. To be sure, Santas is aware that there is more to the Platonic Socrates than what Vlastos, following Nietzsche, has called his "despotic logic," namely, playfulness, sarcasm , irony, personal insult, story-telling, and so forth. And Santas seems puzzled, 4 August Boeckh, Gesammeltekleine Sch@en, vol. 3, P. 139, n. 1 (texte publk? en 18o7 dans une 6tude sur le Timdeet traduit dans mon livre cit6 en n.1 cidessus, fi lap. 148 de ce livre). 304 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY even at times embarrassed by the logical untidiness of his Socrates, the frequent absence of "neat argumentation" (p. 22) or of a logically well-formed argument. For Santas, however, since the central characteristic of Socrates is discursive argument, all that does not clearly enter into the logical structure of the argument is put aside or attributed to his teaching philosophy to nonphilosophers rather than philosophizing proper (p. 67). Logical sloppiness or error is attributed to the "length" and "complexity " of Socratic arguments or the "non-existence at the time of any logical standards" (p. 168). Nowhere in his otherwise well-argued and clarifying book does Santas ask why Socrates elected to philosophize in dialogue form or why his pupil, Plato, chose to write philosophy in dramatic dialogues or what presuppositions this commitment to dialogue carries. Although Santas is adept at exposing many important general presuppositions of Socratic procedure, he never asks himself whether a method of analysis wedded to Gross Standard Form is best suited to capture the Platonic Socrates of the early dramatic dialogues, h is as though this Socrates were best captured by those with a mastery of Copi's...