"Studies in the Styles of Plato," Acta Philosophica Fennica, Fasc. XX (review)

Book Reviews "Studies in the Styles of Plato," Acta Philosophica Fennica, Fasc. XX. By Holger Thesleft . (I967. Pp. 192) Thesleff's monograph will introduce a novel clarity and conservatism into the modern discussion of Plato's uses of styles. Although Thesleff respects stylometry and hopes for results in "problems of chronology" from stylistic analysis of the dialogues, his results for chronology are negative (pp. 8, I1, 172-173), and his work represents a turn away from the textual atomism of the nineteenth century in its worst excesses and from the programmatic claims of the stylometrists. His primary aim is to provide, through analyses of stylistic patterns in the dialogues which Thesleff judges authentic (including a detailed analysis of the Republic), a philological theory of the /unction of style in forming the mysterious edifice of the Platonic dialogue. Some of his ancillary aims are to assert his own views about the "order" of the dialogues and about the "'spurious" dialogues (those not rejected by the ancients which Thesleff rejects are: Hippias M., Hipparch., Theages, Alc. I, Alc. 2, Amatores, Cleitopho, and Minos). Since his general views of spuriousness and order of composition relatively agree with the current consensus, it is 0nly necessary to note that he uncritically continues to label Plato's late dialogues "critical," a term derived from philosophic not philological interpretation . It is perhaps time to forewarn the philosopher that in these and other matters (e.g., assigning dates to dialogues when all that we know with certainty are a few post quem's) philological objectivity is equivalent to philological intuition. The constructive restdts of Thesleff's study are in his theory of style classes, in his analyses of dialogues, and in his observations about the role of style in structuring a dialogue. (I will return to the problem of style classes below.) Thesleff claims that the structure of many, not all, "authentic" dialogues follows a "compositional rhythm" BABAB, where B denotes roughly conversation and A argument or elenchus. He emphasizes that the central B passage, frequently broadened into dialogue approaching monologue (D) or monologue (LD, is the peak of the dialogue or its true culmination: to this basic structure he gives the label "pedimental" (34). In emphasizing the centres of dialogues Thesleff is correct, although it is surprising that Thesleff can quote the "simile" of the living being in Phaedrus 264c (33) without seeing that Plato likened his dialogues not to the setting up of structural members as in architecture, but to the imbuing of material with the shape and soul of a living being as in sculpture. The architectonic in the dialogues lies in the whole family of dialogues and the order or kosmos which they form. This seeming quibble over similes has serious consequences for Thesleff's view of structure as sequential; the simile at Phaedrus 264c is no merely vague likeness, but a determining principle at the foundations of Plato's art. In assessing Thesleff's philological results, it is always necessary to set aside unconscious philosophic importations. When he writes that the "function of the E passages is on the whole not to carry the main argument" (57), he assumes certain things about the nature of a philosophic argument with which not every philosopher would agree. When he says the questioning of the Elean Guest in the Sophist and Statesman "is BOOK REVIEWS 203 nowhere very strict," he imports some idea of his of the nature of strictness in argument and seems simply wrong to boot. He wishes to deny strictness to the argument of the Laws, noting the rigorously strict A dialogue at X 900c-903a as an exception, but his own analysis shows that Laws I-II itself contains A dialogue (151: ADE) and hence an argument. He asserts that in late dialogues replies of the interlocutor "tend to lose much of the factual importance which the replies have in elenctic" (51); he thus implies that interlocutionary utterances effectively carry on the argument only if they possess factual content, which is simply false? He also reiterates the worn and incorrect view that the interlocutors in the Sophist and Statesman have no important philosophic role in the argument. Thesleff's work abounds in...