The Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues by J. B. Kennedy (review)

The Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues argues for the view that Plato’s works are constructed on the model of a harmonic sequence of twelve notes (which Kennedy calls a ‘scale’ even though the twelve notes in his sequence span more than one octave). According to the book, when each dialogue is divided “musically” into equal sections, a symbolic passage can be located at the end of each section. These symbolic passages, it is suggested, are allegorical, in the sense that their meaning or their importance might not have been noticed except for their location. Thus, the musical structure provides the key to discovering the hidden meaning of the dialogues. Kennedy presents the claims for his view in two distinct phases. In the first chapter, he argues for the general view that Plato’s dialogues are allegorical. In subsequent chapters he presents the evidence for the specific musical structure that (he claims) provides the key to identifying allegorical texts. This evidence includes detailed “stichometric” analyses of the Symposium and the Euthyphro.

The general claim about allegory is familiar enough. Writers since ancient times have suggested that there was an esoteric Platonic doctrine, with some claiming further that Plato’s doctrines are contained allegorically in the dialogues themselves. What is novel about Kennedy’s claim is the suggestion that Plato’s doctrines can be found by counting lines of text in a dialogue. To that end, Kennedy painstakingly re-edited texts of Plato—removing punctuation and later insertions, and basing line-length on hexameter verse—in order to provide an approximation to what might have been found in original papyrus texts. Kennedy calls his analysis of texts according to the number of lines they contain “stichometric” (‘stichos’ = line), and finds that when the stichometrically edited Platonic texts are divided into twelfths, readily observable changes fall at or near the end of each twelfth. The decision to call this division “musical” is based on external claims about musical notation and harmony, as well as the perceived consonant or dissonant nature of corresponding passages in Plato. The number twelve is crucial in the scheme as belonging to the largely Pythagorean musical theory that Plato is supposed to favor. Kennedy’s general argument for musical structure is contained in chapters 2 and 3.

Kennedy provides stichometric analyses of the Symposium and Euthyphro in chapters 4 through 6. Most readers will find these chapters, which present the core evidence of the book, extremely difficult to work through. The presentation is by way of about one hundred pages of marked-up translation. Interestingly, the analyses of both the Symposium and the Euthyphro contain thirteen notes (there is a “note 0” corresponding to each dialogue’s introduction, a point whose importance will be mentioned in criticisms below). Each main note is divided into three parts. At the same time, the base-twelve musical structure overlaps another division of each dialogue into sevenths (according to Kennedy these represent disharmony associated with Orpheus and the seven-string lyre), and there are other subdivisions into eighths, ninths, and fifths. All of the subdivisions are marked, as well as each moment of harmony or disharmony, in each translated passage. Each page of marked-up translation is accompanied by brief comments (often less than half a page in length), and the comments do not address all the mark-ups.

The complexity of Kennedy’s stichometric analyses gives an appearance of intricate structure that hides a considerable amount of imprecision. There are two interrelated kinds of imprecision: one quantitative and one interpretative. Quantitative imprecision arises because even with the best efforts to reverse-edit them, Kennedy’s stichometric texts involve guesswork. The key passages are therefore allowed to occur at or near the expected lines. Thus, whether a significant note can be located at the right distance depends, to some extent, on independent judgment about the joints of a given dialogue, and that may be seen as a contamination of the method.

Interpretative imprecision...