Plato, the Athenian Stranger

Socrate, l’âme de volonté et de pensée de Socrate, vivait encore pour Platon. Elle vivait en Platon.

A. Diès ¹

When does Plato speak for Socrates and when for himself? When is Socrates being accurately represented by Plato, if ever? These are perennial puzzles of the dialogues: the “Socratic question.” ² By the end of his writing career Plato undoubtedly speaks his own thoughts in his own voice, or at least a voice that is not Socrates’. This would be fairly evident even without the subsidence of Socrates as a character and participant in the dialogues. Conversely, it seems a fair assumption that the earliest dialogues present something much like the real Socrates, an assumption supported by the testimony of Xenophon and Aristotle. It is the great dialogues of the middle period that are most problematic. Here the voices are blended; some Socratic inspiration seems certain, Platonic addition and development just as certain, with no very clear way to distinguish the two, though many attempts have been made to do so. But implied in the “Socratic question” is a perhaps even more interesting “Platonic question.” Why is there this extraordinary unity, this remarkable fusion of voices (and minds) in the first place, which seems to be virtually unparalleled in literary history? And what can it tell us about Plato, the person and his work?

Though Plato was, and was well-known to be, an intimate follower of Socrates, Plato never even appears in any of the dialogues, let alone presents a view in his own person. Why this curious posture of anonymity? ³ It makes a certain sense if in the beginning it was Plato’s intention simply, or mainly, to memorialize Socrates and his conversations. But such a project did not require the suppression of authorial voice (compare Xenophon); this was a deliberate choice—and highly effective, for Plato succeeds in creating the illusion that we are hearing the very voice of Socrates himself unfiltered by narrative memory. So successful is the illusion, indeed, that it persists into later dialogues where only on reflection do we come to realize that some of the things “Socrates” is saying could hardly have been in the thoughts of the historical Socrates. No one would have known this better than Plato. Why then the pretense? Perhaps it was not a pretense at all, but rather that in seeking to re-present Socrates, Plato became so identified with him, became so immersed in the other’s character, as in effect to create a new self, a fusion de deux êtres. The “Socrates” that emerges in the middle-period dialogues is the literary representation of that new self, neither Socrates nor Plato but the result of Plato’s assimilation of Socrates to his own spirit. A literary creation, yes (though neither ex nihilo nor in Plato’s own image), but more than that, a transformation of Plato’s own psyche that alone made possible his great philosophical achievements. Without Socrates, there would probably still have been a Plato, but very different from the one we know, one more like the unnamed philosophical “strangers” of the late dialogues, where the dissolution of the Plato-Socrates bond becomes increasingly evident.

In the beginning Plato identified himself profoundly with Socrates, or so his brilliant early impersonations suggest. The basis for this identification is not difficult to reconstruct from the image of Socrates he created. For one thing, Socrates is portrayed as a powerfully erotic figure, particularly through the compelling testimony of Alcibiades in the Symposium—a man of immense personal force and magnetism, a satyr concealing a god. The word “satyr” connotes not only ugliness but sexual, phallic energy. Socrates was not only an intellectual mesmerizer, a seducer of minds, he was also physically powerful, a hardy soldier, one who could endure lightly the harshness of Attic winters, who could outdrink his comrades and without any sleep go about his business the next day fresh and vigorous, a man among men, gentle but formidable, stirring fear, resentment, and envy in a Meletus, and fascination and adoration in a Plato. In the Symposium Socrates...