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Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue: an Overview from the First-Generation Socratics to Neoplatonism

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Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue: an Overview from the First-Generation Socratics to Neoplatonism Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue: An Overview from the First-Generation Socratics to Neoplatonism Christopher Moore Pennsylvania State University Alessandro Stavru Università Bocconi Milano 1 Scope and Organization of This Collection The last decade has featured a spawning of studies on Socrates and the Socratic literature that is unprecedented in both quantity and methodological variety. Nearly a dozen edited collections have appeared (among them three Compan- ions to Socrates),1 along with a great many editions, translations, monographs, and scholarly articles.2 Basic issues of Socratic scholarship that in the second half of the twentieth century had been bracketed or even rejected as unin- teresting or fruitless—such as those of the “historical Socrates,” the “Socratic question,” or the “Socratic schools”—have returned as urgent research direc- tions in this recent upsurge in Socratic studies. The hypotheses advanced to resolve these issues still need to be verified, and some of them remain highly problematic. It is difficult, in the first place, to establish the extent and the reliability of “Socratic literature” as such,3 and, consequently, to determine whether and to what degree such literature can yield a “Socratic personality” or a “Socratic philosophy.” One major feature of the “Socratic question” concerns the reliability of the extant sources’ apparent claims about the man named Socrates of Alopece. Granted, these are all and without question literary portraits of Socrates, that is, fictional representations of his personality and teaching. But it is also a fact 1 See Karasmanēs 2004; Ahbel-Rappe and Kamtekar 2006; Trapp 2007a and 2007b; Rossetti and Stavru 2008 and 2010; Morrison 2011a; de Luise and Stavru 2013; Bussanich and Smith 2013; Zilioli 2015; Danzig, Johnson, and Morrison (forthcoming). 2 For detailed surveys on the major trends of recent scholarship on Socrates and the Socratics see Stavru and Rossetti 2010; Stavru 2013; and Wolfsdorf (forthcoming). 3 Trapp 2007c; Dorion 2011; Wolfsdorf (forthcoming). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004341227_002 2 moore and stavru that these representations (i) contain a number of realistic—while perhaps not altogether historical—features that exceeds by far those we can find in other fictional genres of antiquity,4 and (ii) exerted, both through their fictional and their realistic features, a great influence on ancient philosophy and history.5 These considerations limit or even undermine whatever hopes one might have to make univocal claims about the “fictionality” or the “historical reliability” of Socratic literature. Many attempts have been made to solve the Socratic question by identi- fying and then studying those sources assumed to yield the “historical” or at least a “reliable” or a “realistic” Socrates. Scholars have often restricted their inquiry, accordingly, to specific texts, or to some range of texts, by a “quadriga” of authors, namely Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle.6 Such a selec- tion led to important scholarly work, but it often failed to account for the lit- erary and philosophical complexity to which these texts refer, and upon which they largely depend. In fact most scholars opted for a focus on Plato alone.7 This yielded a wide range of studies that while meant to deal with “Socrates” actually investi- gated problems particular to the Platonic corpus.8 But a similar treatment was applied to the other major Socratic authors. Calls to re-examine their presen- tations of Socrates led mostly to studies restricted to the works or the portions 4 What we argue here is not that Socratic literature should be considered historical, but that its historical elements (references to events, persons, etc.) are a clear hint to the fact that this literature claims to be realistic. It is a matter of fact that Socratic literature was considered historical throughout antiquity. This makes Socratic literature radically different from other fictional literature of Antiquity such as poetry or myth, where the claim to realism is much weaker if not altogether absent. 5 See Morrison 2011b, xviii. 6 The “quadriga” approach is championed by Guthrie 1971, 7, but is still observable among present-day studies. A useful account of the major interpretations of Socrates relying on a selection between these four authors, or on combinations of them, is in Trapp 2007c, xix. 7 Mostly in the wake of Gregory Vlastos’ distinction between a “Socratic” SocratesE and a “Platonic” SocratesM. 8 This way of dealing with Plato’s Socrates can be observed in many of the essays contained in the three recent Companions to Socrates (Ahbel-Rappe and Kamtekar 2006; Morrison 2011a; Bussanich and Smith 2013). Here, the common practice of labeling as “Socratic” what is actually “Platonic” often goes hand in hand with the claim that the historical Socrates is to be found in the Platonic dialogues and not in Socratic literature—i.e., within the broader context in which Plato’s dialogues were written and to which they constantly refer..
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