tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11017234.post3777798988578388549..comments2023-11-16T07:12:40.867-05:00Comments on Dissoi Blogoi: Schofield on the 'Mouthpiece View'Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11017234.post-41633334392791084062007-10-18T04:45:00.000-04:002007-10-18T04:45:00.000-04:00I agree with the criticism of Schofield's position...I agree with the criticism of Schofield's position. While it is healthy to remain always sceptical about whether or not Plato agrees with anything said by a character, it is quite another thing to assume that he could not possibly do so. Ferrari has a review in BMCR in which he points to the existence of what he calls "committed" drama in which the author quite deliberately uses characters to express his or her views. Why in the world would that be precluded for Plato?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11017234.post-79917382668029297312007-06-21T05:36:00.000-04:002007-06-21T05:36:00.000-04:00It might be that the problem will get some new fac...It might be that the problem will get some new faces if we focus on other dialogues where the figure of Socrates is in more complicated position.<BR/>In the <I>Charmides</I> it is Socrates who - although being the main speaker - does not present Plato’s views (<I>pace</I> McKim and others I believe Plato is actually criticizing Socrates’ position in this dialogue). The <I>Timaeus</I> on the other hand presents us with a stranger to whom Socrates only listens and who (I believe) explains Plato’s views.<BR/>Hard to say whether one could do the same with the <I>Republic</I>, but generally one could hold a difference between Schofield’s (i) and (ii): the <I>Republic</I> is actually only one type of dialogue (in respect to the figure of Socrates) Plato used.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11017234.post-45438283062121017552007-06-18T17:11:00.000-04:002007-06-18T17:11:00.000-04:00Perhaps the mistaken conclusion is this: "If we ar...Perhaps the mistaken conclusion is this: <I>"If we are to believe that Plato himself wrote the Seventh Letter, it must follow that he is implying here that the Socrates of the Republic is him, or at any rate his spokesman."</I><BR/><BR/>Assuming that Plato wrote the Seventh Letter, we can conclude that Plato shares (at least some of) the views Socrates elaborates in the <I>Republic</I>. To the extent that making Socrates express and argue for his own views, then Plato uses Socrates as a 'mouthpiece.' Do we really need to conclude from this, however, that depicting Socrates in conversation is just Plato's way of arguing for his own theories? What would prohibit us from saying that Plato also uses the dialogue form to make suggestions about philosophy as an activity and about the relationship between philosophical ideas and moral character, or that he wrote the dialogues in a way that should lead the reader to question some of what Socrates says? Or that he wrote dialogues in order to avoid adopting a more dogmatic, authoritarian stance towards his ideas? As far as I can see, nothing that literarily-inclined interpreters of the dialogues (except maybe some Straussians and others who want to attribute views to Plato that contradict Socrates' own) see in the dialogues seems <I>prima facie</I> inconsistent with Plato sharing the vast majority of Socrates' ideas. As recent discussion here has brought out, Aristotle's comments about Plato seem to compel us to believe that Plato did in fact share many of the ideas that he makes Socrates express in the dialogues. It does not follow from that, though, that Plato must not "in some sense be all and none of the characters whose voices are heard in the conversation" or that it is in <I>not</I> "in the entire writing that the author speaks to us." Perhaps the only qualification we need add to Cooper's claim is that Plato <I>does</I> speak to us through individual speakers, but not through individual speakers <I>alone</I>. <BR/><BR/>Am I missing something?<BR/><BR/>Would it help at all to distinguish between two kinds of anti-mouthpiece view? One strong version would say: we have no grounds for attributing any of Socrates', the Eleatic Visitor, or the Athenian's views to Plato, and to do so violates the principles of the dialogue form. A weaker version would say: our primary aim in interpreting a Platonic dialogue should not be to determine what Plato thought, but to determine what Plato is doing with this particular dialogue; the bulk of this task involves analyzing arguments and determining what is being said, but our task will be incomplete so long as we leave dramatic elements unaddressed. Is that helpful, or no?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com