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Reviewed by:
  • Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato ed. by Debra Nails and Harold Tarrant
  • Verity Harte
Debra Nails and Harold Tarrant, editors. Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 132. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2015. Pp. xii + 366. Cloth, €30.00.

Tradition has it that ‘deuteros plous’ (second sailing), an idiomatic expression used by Plato most famously at Phaedo 99c–d, refers to the use of oars to get to one’s destination in the absence of suitable wind for sailing. The nautical motif is a gesture towards the seafaring credentials of Holger Thesleff, the scholar to whom the volume pays tribute, the author, most notably for this occasion, of three books and several articles on the style, chronology and metaphysical outlook of Plato’s dialogues, now conveniently gathered together in a single volume, Platonic Patterns: A Collection of Studies by Holger Thesleff (Parmenides Publishing, 2009).

But the expression also points towards the subtitle’s talk of “alternative perspectives,” which naturally raises the question, alternatives to what? To each other or to some unnamed perspective, perhaps taken as “mainstream” and intended as foil or target? On occasion, the seeming frustration of a scholar charting a course outside of one candidate mainstream, the general run of Anglo-American Plato scholarship, does surface. So, Lloyd Gerson (“Ideas of Good?”), who, defending a Proclan reading according to which the Republic involves two ideas of the good, one coordinate with other forms and a second superordinate to them, chastises (other) “English-speaking” scholarly attempts to understand the relation of the form of the good to other forms: “All such efforts are hopeless, both as exegesis and as philosophy” (226–27).

By and large, however, the stance of the volume is both pluralist and inclusive, inviting dialogue between existing, diverse approaches, such as Thesleff himself was keen to encourage (see, for example, remarks in his introduction to Platonic Patterns, xvii). It is a signal merit of the volume to bring together papers by scholars working in a diverse range of scholarly traditions, several of whom more commonly publish their work in French, German or Italian. It also includes a nicely reflective piece by Jan Stolpe, author of a Swedish translation of the complete works of Plato, who, only adding to the difficulties of anyone who takes on any such Herculean task, argues that, since Plato writes in diverse styles (a fact Thesleff carefully documented and described) translations ought to reflect this in their own adopted style(s).

Among those scholars who do not typically publish in English, some—including Rafael Ferber (Ferber and Gregor Damschen, “Is the Idea of the Good Beyond Being?”) and Thomas Alexander Szlezák (“Are There Deliberately Left Gaps in Plato’s Dialogues?”)— take this opportunity to reiterate in new and short form central claims of work they have published in other languages. Ferber and Damschen, somewhat puzzlingly, offer what they [End Page 154] call a “formal proof for the metaontological interpretation”—their view that, in describing the form of the good as “not ousia but even superior to ousia, surpassing it in rank and power” (Republic 6, 509b8–10, tr. Ferber, 197), Socrates should be understood as saying it “is not ousia in the sense of not being at all” (198), meaning, perhaps, that “being” cannot be ascribed to it; it is not (a) being. What is puzzling is that the “proof” they outline (200–201) could at most prove the position, the form of the good is not being (the proof’s official, stated conclusion), not that this position represents the correct interpretation of Socrates’s remark. How could any (deductive) proof do that? As Ferber and Damschen note, “textual exegesis of [Republic] 6, 509b8–10 seems to lead to endless controversy” (198), a fact evidenced by this volume, since Gerson (above, see especially 234 with n26) takes the interpretive line that Ferber and Damschen oppose. Nevertheless, I doubt that formal proofs can take the place of such exegesis.

As with many collections of papers, the quality of papers is somewhat uneven. Especially in light of its pluralism, different readers will find different pieces more or less engaging. Some personal highlights (necessarily selective, due to limitations...

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