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PLATO and SOCRATES in THEPROTAGORAS I Want to Sketch Here an Interpretation of the Protagoras Against the Background of a Somewh

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PLATO and SOCRATES in THEPROTAGORAS I Want to Sketch Here an Interpretation of the Protagoras Against the Background of a Somewh kJethexis I (1988) p. 33-52 PLATO AND SOCRATES IN THEPROTAGORAS CHARLES H. KAHN I want to sketch here an interpretation of the Protagoras against the background of a somewhat unconventional view of the so-called Socratic dialogues. It is an essential feature of my approach that one cannot make philosophical sense of a dialogue like the Protagoras in isolation, but only as a member of a close-knit group among the so­ caUed Socratic dialogues: a group that includes the Laches, the Char­ mides, the Euthyphro and the Meno. I think these five dialogues should be seen together, as part of a carefully designed literary and philo­ sophical project on Plato's part, a project much more closely linked to the philosophical concerns of the middle dialogues than to the historical figure of Socrates. That is one reason for regarding the reference to "Socratic dialogues" as misleading. The approach to these dialogues which I propose stands in sharp contrast to two more familiar views, one or both of wh ich are suggested by the designation "Socratic dialogue". It will be best to begin by characterizing these two views and giving some reasons for thinking them mistaken. There could be no objection to the term "Socratic dialogue" if it meant simply to refer to dialogues in which Socrates is the principal speaker. In that case it would refer to the Phaedo and the Republic as weIl, in fact to a11 of Plato's writings before the Parmenides and the Sophist. But that is not how the term is used. It always refers to dia­ logues earlier than the Symposium-Phaedo, that is to a11 or most of the dialogues in which the metaphysical doctrine of Forms is not yet dis­ played. These 12 or 13 works (stretching from the Apology to the Meno) are what I will caU the early or pre-middle dialogues. In my view these works fall into two distinct groups: an earlier group (my Group I) of which the Gorgias is the principal member, and Group 11, centered on the Protagoras. For present purposes I need not defend my chrono­ logical claim about the priority of the Gorgias. 1 I shall largely ignore the Gorgias here and focus on dialogues in Group H. In order to explain why I object to the term "Socratic" in this connection, I must define the two riyal views. 1. See "On the Relative Date of the GorgÜls and the Protagoras", forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. 33 The first view implied by the tenn "Socratic dialogue" is an his­ torieist interpretation weIl represented by Guthrie in volumes 111 and IV of his History of Creek Philosophy. According to Guthrie, the tenn designates a group of dialogues in which "Plato is imaginatively re­ calling, in form and substance, the conversations of his master without as yet adding to them any distinctive doctrines of his own". 2 Guthrie traces this view back to K. F. Hennann in the early nineteenth century; I would trace it back to Aristotle, whose account of Socrates is largely if not entirely drawn from dialogues like the Protagoras. Despite the antiquity and authority of this view, I think it is clearly wrong, since it misconceives the essentia11y fictional nature of the Socratic literature. We can see this msre obviously from the work of Aeschines, whose dialogue Aspasia is full of fantastic anachronisms,3 and also from Xenophon who does not hesitate to say "I was present at the following conversation" or "as I once heard Socrates say", when it is clear that he is making it up as he goes along.4 Plato tends to be more lifelike and tl).us to avoid anachronisms. But the original freedom of the Socratic literature shows up in a fantasy piece like the Menexenus, where-Plato has Socrates recite a funeral oration "composed by Aspasia" which refers to events in 386 B.C. (more than a dozen years after Socrates' death), and again in a pseudo-historical fiction like the Parmenides, where Plato brings old Parmenides with his friend Zeno on an imaginary trip to Athens, so that the youthful Socrates can tell him a11 about Plato's theory of Forms and thus subject the theory to criticism by the Eleatic master, who died a century before this doctrine was fonnulated. (That the encounter between Socrates and Pannenides has been ac­ cepted by some historians as an actual event only goes to show the power of the historie ist misreading of Plato.) As Momigliano has pointed out, Socrates was from the beginning a figure to conjure with. 2. Guthrie, History IV, 67. 3. See H. Dittmar, Aeschines von Sphettos (= Philologische Untersuchungen 21) p. 275-283, with discussion in B. Ehlers, Eine vorplatonische Deutung des sokratischen Eros (= Zetemata 41), Munich, 1966. Although the scene where Aspasia carries out her Socratie examination of Xenophon and his wife is the most obvious anachronism in Aeschines' dialogue, it by no means stands alone. After referring to an imaginary Persian queen named Rhodogyne and a legendary Milesian hetaira named Thargelia (whose chronology is hopelessly confused: see Ehlers, p. 53, n. 66), Socrates teUs how Aspasia thought Gorgianic (sie) rhetoric to Pericles and made an orator and statesman out of Lysicles the sheepmerchant. LysicJes is an historical character (see Thucydides III 19,1), but his liaison with Aspasia (reported by Plutarch from Aeschines in Pericles 24) is chronologically impIausible to say the least, since he died within a year of Pericles' death. Hence the LysicJes-Aspasia story must also be Aeschines' invention. See Dittmar fr. 26 (p. 279) and Ehlers, p. 79, who seems unwilling to credit Aeschines with so much imagination. 4. Examples from Xenophon of "I heard him say ...": Mem. 14,2; 6,14; II 4,1; 5,1; IV 3,2. The most astonishing case is Oeconomicus I 1, where Xenophon claims to have heard Socrates speak the whole work. 34 .
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