Complete Works Read online

  PLATO

  COMPLETE WORKS

  PLATO

  COMPLETE WORKS

  Edited, with

  Introduction and Notes, by

  JOHN M. COOPER

  Associate Editor

  D. S. HUTCHINSON

  HACKETT PUBLISHING COMPANY

  Indianapolis/Cambridge

  Copyright © 1997 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

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  For further information, please address

  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

  P. O. Box 44937

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  Jacket design by Chris Hammill Paul

  Text design by Dan Kirklin

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Plato.

  [Works. English. 1997]

  Complete works/Plato;

  edited, with introduction and notes, by

  John M. Cooper;

  associate editor, D. S. Hutchinson.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0-87220-349-2 (cloth: alk. paper)

  1. Philosophy, Ancient.

  2. Socrates.

  I. Cooper, John M. (John Madison).

  II. Hutchinson, D. S.

  III. Title.

  B358.C3 1997

  184—dc21

  96-53280

  CIP

  ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-349-5 (cloth)

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-60384-671-4

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Editorial Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Euthyphro G.M.A. Grube

  Apology G.M.A. Grube

  Crito G.M.A. Grube

  Phaedo G.M.A. Grube

  Cratylus C.D.C. Reeve

  Theaetetus M. J. Levett, rev. Myles Burnyeat

  Sophist Nicholas P. White

  Statesman C. J. Rowe

  Parmenides Mary Louise Gill and Paul Ryan

  Philebus Dorothea Frede

  Symposium Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff

  Phaedrus Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff

  Alcibiades† D. S. Hutchinson

  Second Alcibiades* Anthony Kenny

  Hipparchus* Nicholas D. Smith

  Rival Lovers* Jeffrey Mitscherling

  Theages* Nicholas D. Smith

  Charmides Rosamond Kent Sprague

  Laches Rosamond Kent Sprague

  Lysis Stanley Lombardo

  Euthydemus Rosamond Kent Sprague

  Protagoras Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell

  Gorgias Donald J. Zeyl

  Meno G.M.A. Grube

  Greater Hippias† Paul Woodruff

  Lesser Hippias Nicholas D. Smith

  Ion Paul Woodruff

  Menexenus Paul Ryan

  Clitophon† Francisco J. Gonzalez

  Republic G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve

  Timaeus Donald J. Zeyl

  Critias Diskin Clay

  Minos* Malcolm Schofield

  Laws Trevor J. Saunders

  Epinomis* Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.

  Letters‡ Glenn R. Morrow

  Definitions* D. S. Hutchinson

  On Justice* Andrew S. Becker

  On Virtue* Mark Reuter

  Demodocus* Jonathan Barnes

  Sisyphus* David Gallop

  Halcyon* Brad Inwood

  Eryxias* Mark Joyal

  Axiochus* Jackson P. Hershbell

  Epigrams‡ J. M. Edmonds, rev. John M. Cooper

  Index

  Names listed are those of the translators.

  *It is generally agreed by scholars that Plato is not the author of this work.

  †It is not generally agreed by scholars whether Plato is the author of this work.

  ‡As to Plato’s authorship of the individual Letters and Epigrams, consult the respective introductory notes.

  INTRODUCTION

  Since they were written nearly twenty-four hundred years ago, Plato’s dialogues have found readers in every generation. Indeed, in the major centers of Greek intellectual culture, beginning in the first and second centuries of our era, Plato’s works gradually became the central texts for the study and practice of philosophy altogether: in later antiquity, a time when Greek philosophy was struggling to maintain itself against Christianity and other eastern ‘wisdoms’, Platonist philosophy was philosophy itself. Even after Christianity triumphed in the Roman Empire, Platonism continued as the dominant philosophy in the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean. As late as the fifteenth century, in the last years of the Byzantine empire, the example of George Gemistos Plethon shows how strong this traditional concentration on Plato could be among philosophically educated Greeks.1 When Plethon, the leading Byzantine scholar and philosopher of the time, accompanied the Byzantine Emperor to Ferrara and Florence in 1438–39 for the unsuccessful Council of Union between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, he created a sensation among Italian humanists with his elevation of Plato as the first of philosophers—above the Latin scholastics’ hero, Aristotle. Plato’s works had been unavailable for study in the Latin west for close to a millennium, except for an incomplete Latin translation of Timaeus,2 but from the fifteenth century onwards, through the revived knowledge of Greek and from translations into Latin and then into the major modern European languages, Plato’s dialogues resumed their central place in European culture as a whole. They have held it without interruption ever since.

  In presenting this new edition of Plato’s dialogues in English translation, we hope to help readers of the twenty-first century carry this tradition forward. In this introduction I explain our presentation of these works (Section I), discuss questions concerning the chronology of their composition (II), comment on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote (III), offer some advice on how to approach the reading and study of his works (IV), and describe the principles on which the translations in the volume have been prepared (V). But first, a few basic facts about Plato’s life and career.

  Plato, a native Athenian, was born in 427 B.C. and died at the age of eighty-one in 347.3 He belonged, on both his mother’s and father’s side, to old and distinguished aristocratic families. At some point in his late teens or early twenties (we do not know when or under what circumstances), he began to frequent the circle around Socrates, the Athenian philosopher who appears as the central character in so many of his dialogues and whose trial and death he was to present so eloquently in his Apology and his Phaedo. In the dozen years or so following Socrates’ death in 399, Plato, then nearly thirty years old, may have spent considerable time away from Athens, for example, in Greek-inhabited southern Italy, where he seems to have met philosophers and scientists belonging to the indigenous “Pythagorean” philosophical school, some of whose ideas were taken up in several of his own dialogues, most notably, perhaps, in the Phaedo. In about 388 he visited Syracuse, in Sicily—the first of three visits to the court of the “tyrants” Dionysius I and II during his thirty-odd-year-long engagement in Syracusan politics. This involvement is reported on at length in the Platonic Letters, included in this edition. At some point, presumably in the ’eighties, Plato opened a school of higher education in the sacred grove of Academus, in the Attic countryside near Athens, apparently offering formal instruction in mathematical, philosophical, and political studies. He seems to have spent the rest of his life (except for the visits to Syracuse) teaching, researching, and writing there. Under his leadership, the Academy became a major center of research and intellectual exchange, gathering to itself philosophers and mathematicia
ns from all over the Greek world. Among its members was Aristotle, who came as a student in about 367 at the age of eighteen and remained there as teacher, researcher, and writer himself, right up to the time of Plato’s death twenty years later.

  I. The ‘Canon’ of Thrasyllus

  These Complete Works make available a single collection of all the works that have come down to us from antiquity under Plato’s name. We include all the texts published in the early first century A.D. in what became the definitive edition of Plato’s works, that by Thrasyllus, an astrologer and Platonist philosopher from the Greek city of Alexandria, in Egypt.4 From Thrasyllus’ edition derive all our medieval manuscripts of Plato—and so almost all our own knowledge of his texts. Apparently following earlier precedent, Thrasyllus arranged the works of Plato (thirty-five dialogues, plus a set of thirteen ‘Letters’ as a thirty-sixth entry) in nine ‘tetralogies’—groups of four works each—reminiscent of the ancient tragedies, which were presented in trilogies (such as the well-known Oresteia of Aeschylus) followed by a fourth, so-called satyr play, preserving a link to the origins of tragedy in rituals honoring the god Dionysus. In addition to these, he included in an appendix a group of ‘spurious’ works, presumably ones that had been circulating under Plato’s name, but that he judged were later accretions. We follow Thrasyllus in our own presentation: first the nine tetralogies, then the remaining works that he designated as spurious.5 With one exception, earlier translations into English of Plato’s collected works have actually been only selections from this traditional material:6 usually they have omitted all the Thrasyllan ‘spurious’ works, plus a certain number of others that were included in his tetralogies, since the editors of the collections judged them not in fact Plato’s work. In their widely used collection,7 Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns include none of the ‘spuria’ and only twenty-nine of the thirty-six other works.8 From Thrasyllus’ tetralogies they omit Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rival Lovers, Theages, Clitophon, and Minos. Even if these dialogues are not by Plato himself (and at least Clitophon and Alcibiades could very well be), they are all valuable works, casting interesting light on Socrates and the Socratic legacy. They also deserve attention as important documents in the history of Platonism: it is worthy of note that teachers of Platonist philosophy in later antiquity standardly organized their instruction through lectures on ten ‘major’ dialogues, beginning with Alcibiades—omitted by Hamilton and Cairns, presumably as not by Plato. The dialogues classified by Thrasyllus as spurious also deserve attention, even though in their case there are strong reasons for denying Plato’s authorship; and the Definitions are a valuable record of work being done in Plato’s Academy in his lifetime and the immediately following decades.9 (For further details see the respective introductory notes to each of the translations.)

  Especially given the often inevitably subjective character of judgments about authenticity, it is inappropriate to allow a modern editor’s judgment to determine what is included in a comprehensive collection of Plato’s work. The only viable policy is the one followed here, to include the whole corpus of materials handed down from antiquity. At the same time, it should be frankly emphasized that this corpus—both the works it includes as genuine and the text itself of the works—derives from the judgment of one ancient scholar, Thrasyllus. His edition of Plato’s work, prepared nearly four hundred years after Plato’s death, was derived from no doubt differing texts of the dialogues (and Letters) in libraries and perhaps in private hands, not at all from anything like a modern author’s ‘autograph’. No doubt also, both in its arrangement and in decisions taken as to the genuineness of items and the text to be inscribed, it may have reflected the editor’s own understanding of Plato’s philosophy (perhaps a tendentious one) and his views on how it ought to be organized for teaching purposes.10 So, since the present editor has exercised his own judgment only to the extent of deciding to follow the edition of Thrasyllus, we are thrown back on Thrasyllus’ judgment in the works included and in their order and arrangement. Since Thrasyllus included all the genuine works of Plato that any surviving ancient author refers to, plus some disputed ones, we apparently have the good fortune to possess intact all of Plato’s published writings.

  Thrasyllus’ order appears to be determined by no single criterion but by several sometimes conflicting ones, though his arrangement may represent some more or less unified idea about the order in which the dialogues should be read and taught. For example, the first four works (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo) manifestly follow internal evidence establishing a chronological order for the events related in them—the ‘Last Days of Socrates’. The conversation in Euthyphro is marked as taking place shortly before Socrates’ trial; his speech at his trial is then given in the Apology, while Crito presents a visit to Socrates in prison, three days before his execution, which is the culminating event of the Phaedo. Somewhat similar internal linkages explain the groups Republic-Timaeus-Critias and Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman (although the conversation in Theaetetus seems to present itself as taking place earlier on the same day as that of Euthyphro—a key to grouping that Thrasyllus quite reasonably opted to ignore). But topical and other, more superficial connections play a role as well. Clitophon is placed before Republic, and Minos before Laws to serve as brief introductions to the central themes of these two major works, justice and legislation respectively, and the two Alcibiades dialogues are grouped together, as are the Greater and Lesser Hippias. Even the presumed order of composition seems responsible for the last tetralogy’s bringing the series to a conclusion with Laws and its appendix Epinomis (followed by Letters): we have evidence that Laws was left unpublished at Plato’s death, presumably because he had not finished working on it.

  Most readers will have little need to attend to such details of Thrasyllus’ arrangement, but one point is important. Except for Laws, as just noted, Thrasyllus’ tetralogies do not claim to present the dialogues in any supposed order of their composition by Plato. Indeed, given the enormous bulk of Laws, different parts of it could well have been written before or contemporaneously with other dialogues—so Thrasyllus’ order need not indicate even there that Laws was the last work Plato composed. Thrasyllus’ lack of bias as regards the order of composition is one great advantage that accrues to us in following his presentation of the dialogues. Previous editors (for example, both Hamilton and Cairns and Benjamin Jowett11) imposed their own view of the likely order of composition upon their arrangement of the dialogues. But judgments about the order of composition are often as subjective as judgments about Platonic authorship itself. In modern times, moreover, the chronology of composition has been a perennial subject of scholarly debate, and sometimes violent disagreement, in connection with efforts to establish the outline of Plato’s philosophical ‘development’, or the lack of any. We have solid scholarly arguments and a consensus about some aspects of the chronology of Plato’s writings (I return to this below), but this is much too slight a basis on which conscientiously to fix even an approximate ordering of all the dialogues. Speaking generally, issues of chronology should be left to readers to pursue or not, as they see fit, and it would be wrong to bias the presentation of Plato’s works in a translation intended for general use by imposing on it one’s own favorite chronological hypotheses. Thrasyllus’ order does not do that, and it has the additional advantage of being for us the traditional one, common ground for all contemporary interpreters.12 Such interpretative biases as it may contain do not concern any writer nowadays, so it can reasonably be considered a neutral basis on which to present these works to contemporary readers.

  II. Chronological vs. Thematic Groupings of the Platonic Dialogues

  In teaching and writing about Plato, it is almost customary nowadays (in my view unfortunately so: see below) to divide the dialogues into groups on the basis of a presumed rough order of their composition: People constantly speak of Plato’s ‘early’, ‘middle’ (or ‘middle-period’), and ‘late’ dialogues�
��though there is no perfect unanimity as to the membership of the three groups, and finer distinctions are sometimes marked, of ‘early-middle’ dialogues or ‘transitional’ ones at either end of the intermediate group.13 Although this terminology announces itself as marking chronologically distinct groups, it is in reality based only in small part on anything like hard facts about when Plato composed given dialogues. (For these facts, see the next paragraph.) For the most part, the terminology encapsulates a certain interpretative thesis about the evolving character of Plato’s authorship, linked to the development of his philosophical thought. This authorship began, it is assumed, sometime after 399 B.C., the year of Socrates’ death, and continued until his own death some fifty years later. According to this thesis, Plato began as the author of dialogues setting forth his ‘teacher’ conversing much as we presume he typically actually did when discussing his favorite philosophical topics—morality, virtue, the best human life—with the young men who congregated round him and other intellectuals in Athens, where he spent his entire life. These, then, would constitute the ‘early’ dialogues, sometimes also thematically described as the ‘Socratic’ dialogues; they are all relatively short works. Only gradually, on this view, did Plato grow into a fully independent philosopher, with new ideas and interests of his own, as outgrowths from and supplements to his ‘Socratic heritage’. In his writings presumed to postdate the founding of the Academy, we see new ideas and interests first and primarily in the introduction of his celebrated theory of ‘Forms’—eternal, nonphysical, quintessentially unitary entities, knowledge of which is attainable by abstract and theoretical thought, standing immutably in the nature of things as standards on which the physical world and the world of moral relationships among human beings are themselves grounded. This happens in the ‘middle’ dialogues: Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic, most notably—much longer and philosophically more challenging works. The ‘middle’ dialogues are usually construed to include also Parmenides, with its critical reflections on the theory of Forms, and Theaetetus. Finally—still according to this interpretative thesis—the ‘late’ period comprises a new series of investigations into logic, metaphysics, the philosophy of physics, and ethics and political theory, from which these ‘Forms’ either are absent altogether or else at least the principal theoretical work is accomplished without direct and simple appeal to their authoritative status. These include Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws. Along with these philosophical developments, Plato’s manner of writing dialogues was evolving, too. In the ‘middle’ dialogues, where Socrates continues to be the principal speaker, he is no longer limited to questioning and commenting upon the views of his fellow discussants, as in the ‘early’ dialogues, but branches out into the development of elaborate, positive philosophical theses of his own. In the ‘late’ dialogues, however (with the understandable exception of Philebus—see the introductory note to that work), Socrates ceases altogether to be an active participant in the discussion. Moreover, the conversation takes on the character of a dogmatic exposition of doctrine by the main speaker to an audience. One of these may play virtually the sole role of nodding assent from time to time or requesting further explanations, so as to register acceptance and provide an easy means of noting and dividing—and highlighting the importance of—the principal topics as they successively arise.