Abstract
This chapter provides a taxonomy of approaches to the Platonic Question and articulates the Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation of Plato’s dialogues. It then provides in-depth criticisms of the Mouthpiece Interpretation of Plato’s dialogues, exposing various logical errors employed by its supporters. It also seeks to differentiate the Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation from other anti-mouthpiece approaches, clarifying that while some objections to the latter might be plausible and render problematic some of the other anti-mouthpiece approaches, they do not render problematic the Socratic Anti-Mouthpiece Interpretation.
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- 1.
These terms are borrowed from the coherentist epistemology of Keith Lehrer as it is expressed in Lehrer (2000).
- 2.
- 3.
See McCabe (2008: 104–106), where McCabe also notes various passages from the Sophist, the Statesman, the Theaetetus , and the Phaedo to support her point.
- 4.
As Anthony Kenny writes: “The man who is, as it were, the patron saint of philosophers, Socrates, claimed that the only way in which he surpassed others in wisdom was that he was aware of his own ignorance.” (Kenny 2006: 13)
- 5.
What I refer to as Socratic open-mindedness and persistence is called “double open-endedness” in Nails (1995: 20).
- 6.
The Socratic Interpretation disagrees, however, with McCabe’s reading of the condemnation of mimêsis or imitation as ways of doing philosophy by way of reading the dialogues of Plato. (McCabe 2008: 94) To think that just because the mimetic arts are condemned by a character (no matter which one) is a good reason to think that readers cannot and should not follow the arguments and analyses of the dialogues in order to learn how to do philosophy and to further each particular argument and analyses as best one can is a misunderstanding. Reading Plato’s dialogues may include certain aspects of passive learning. But it also, insofar as the Socratic Interpretation holds, bids us to engage the contents of the dialogues as active learners, as active philosophical participants.
- 7.
To this short list might be added the general point that Socrates, perhaps even Plato, “. . . commits himself—in his ways of writing—to a substantial philosophical position: that there is no line of demarcation between the constraints of logic and those of ethics, of psychology or metaphysics, or epistemology .” (McCabe 2008: 108) However, that this amounts to a substantive philosophical belief, doctrine or theory of Plato’s is unclear. I would think that is it actually one of the smaller ideas of which Peterson might well attribute to Socrates and Plato.
- 8.
In fact, some have seen the remainder of the dialogue as the strong precursor of what has later become known as the “Gettier problem” even though it is questionable that E. Gettier added anything new and philosophically interesting to what perhaps ought more accurately to be known as the “Socratic problem of knowledge.”
- 9.
Contrast, however, Peterson (2011: 14–15) where Peterson holds a version of the Mouthpiece Interpretation , albeit a moderate one.
- 10.
- 11.
It is worth noting that many of the reasons provided to deny the authenticity of the Seventh Letter have been debunked [See, for instance, P. Deane’s undermining of the Levinson, et al. “attempt to demonstrate on stylometric grounds that the Seventh Letter was certainly not by Plato and was possible written by Speusippus” in Deane (1973)]. However, as noted in the Preface to this book, even if the Seventh Letter is spurious, it would not follow without further argument and solid evidence that it is unreliable in depicting Plato’s denial that he has set any of his substantive views in writing. For a writing can be inauthentic insofar as Platonic authorship is concerned, yet remain reliable in containing or depicting the general aim of an author (in this case, Plato). It would appear, then, that it is an open question as to whether or not the Seventh Letter is authentic and/or depicts Plato’s aims in composing dialogues.
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Corlett, J.A. (2018). Interpreting Plato Socratically. In: Interpreting Plato Socratically. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77320-9_2
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