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Plato and the Question of Beauty (Studies in Continental Thought)

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Plato and the Question of Beauty (Studies in Continental Thought) PHILOSOPHY | CLASSICS & ANTIQUITY HYLAND Reveals the intimate connection between beauty and the philosophical life Plato “A well-written and forcefully argued exposition PLATO of one of the most important themes in Plato’s philosophy.” and and the —Walter Brogan, Villanova University the Drew A. Hyland, one of Continental philosophy’s keenest interpreters of Plato, Question takes up the question of beauty in three Platonic dialogues, the Hippias Major, Symposium, and Phaedrus. What Plato meant by beauty is not easily character- Question ized, and Hyland’s close readings show that Plato ultimately gives up on the pos- of sibility of a defi nition. Plato’s failure, however, tells us something important about beauty—that it cannot be reduced to logos. Exploring questions surround- ing love, memory, and ideal form, Hyland draws out the connections between Beauty beauty, the possibility of philosophy, and philosophical living. This new reading of Plato provides a serious investigation into the meaning of beauty and places it of at the very heart of philosophy. Beauty DREW A. HYLAND is Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College. He is editor (with John Panteleimon Manoussakis) of Heidegger and the Greeks (Indiana University Press, 2006). Studies in Continental Thought, John Sallis, editor Cover illustration: © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum INDIANA INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis http://iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 DREW A. HYLAND PLATO and the Question of Beauty Studies in Continental Thought John Sallis, editor Consulting Editors Robert Bernasconi William L. McBride Rudolph Bernet J. N. Mohanty John D. Caputo Mary Rawlinson David Carr Tom Rockmore Edward S. Casey Calvin O. Schrag Hubert Dreyfus †Reiner Schürmann Don Ihde Charles E. Scott David Farrell Krell Thomas Sheehan Lenore Langsdorf Robert Sokolowski Alphonso Lingis Bruce W. Wilshire David Wood PLATO and the Question of Beauty DREW A. HYLAND Indiana University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] ∫ 2008 by Drew A. Hyland All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum re- quirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materi- als, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hyland, Drew A. Plato and the question of beauty / Drew A. Hyland. p. cm. — (Studies in continental thought) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-253-35138-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-253-21977-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Plato. 2. Aesthetics. 3. Plato. Phaedrus. I. Title. B398.A4H95 2008 111%.85092—dc22 2007045005 12345131211100908 A book on beauty, one that I would write, can have only one dedication: For Anne Walk in beauty. Navajo farewell Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. Wallace Stevens, ‘‘Peter Quince at the Clavier’’ But it’s a beautiful thing to strive after the beautiful, And to su√er whatever we have to su√er along the way. Plato, Phaedrus, 274b Contents Preface and Acknowledgments и xi Introduction и 1 1 The Question of Beauty in the Hippias Major и 7 2 The Question of Beauty in the Symposium и 27 3 The Question of Beauty in the Phaedrus и 64 4 The Second and Seventh Letters и 91 5 The Critique of Rhetoric and Writing in the Phaedrus и 115 Notes и 137 Bibliography и 145 Index и 147 Preface and Acknowledgments The question of beauty is the subject of lively discussion and debate today, particularly but not only as it pertains to the arts. Part of the intention of this book is to consider the extent to which Plato, as happens so often, was instru- mental in setting the terms of the discussion and debate about beauty as it plays out in the history of western philosophy. In a sense, then, this book sets the stage for other studies of the question of beauty as it manifests itself in various periods of our history, certainly including the present. In this sense, I hope that the book has a certain timeliness. When quoting Plato’s texts as well as those of various commentators in the following pages, I have often used available translations as indicated in notes. However, in the majority of those citations, I have found it necessary to alter the translations somewhat, usually in order to make them as literal as possible. When the translations are entirely my own, I indicate that as well. I have many people to thank for their help in the development of this book. First to be mentioned must be my students in seminars on Plato both at the New School for Social Research and at Trinity College. At both institutions I was privileged to be able to develop my ideas about the question of beauty in Plato in seminars full of engaged and engaging students. Their help in the development of my thoughts in this book is immeasurable. xii и preface and acknowledgments A number of people at Indiana University Press have been of enormous help in seeing the project through. First among them is Dee Mortensen, senior editor for philosophy. I also wish to thank Laura MacLeod, assistant editor, and Miki Bird, managing editor. All have been not only helpful but good-humored and enjoyable to work with. John Sallis, the series editor, has encouraged me in this project from the start, and I am grateful for that encouragement. He along with Dennis Schmidt invited me to give a course at the Collegium Phenomeno- logicum in the summer of 2005 on ‘‘Memory and Responsibility,’’ and the lectures I prepared for that course really formed the beginning of this project. I also want to especially thank my copy editor, David Dusenbury, for his very careful reading of and helpful improvements to my manuscript. In addition, my two anonymous referees o√ered astute comments that challenged me to im- prove the book as well. Finally and as always, my wife Anne has been a constant source of support and encouragement. Especially on questions such as beauty, she is a wealth of wisdom and insight, and I thank her for all of these gifts. PLATO and the Question of Beauty Introduction This will be a book about the question of beauty in the Platonic dialogues, but as Plato himself will make abundantly clear, the question of beauty cannot be adequately addressed except within a context of a whole host of other issues. Hegel may be the modern philosopher who best articulated the recognition that a consideration of any moderately rich issue as if it stood by itself, without a consideration of its connection to other issues that contribute to what it is, is the very meaning of ‘‘abstractness,’’ but it was Plato who first exhibited that recogni- tion in his dialogues. He did so in myriad ways, and certainly paradigmatically with the question of beauty. Indeed, we might begin our study with a reflection on one of the great mysteries of the dialogues: the question of what issues Plato decides to take up more or less explicitly, by contrast to those many other, no less crucial issues which are not addressed thematically, focally, but are allowed to arise in the context of other issues. Let us consider briefly some of the ways in which he does this. Begin with those many dialogues that do seem to address an issue focally. They are of at least two sorts. The first and most explicit are those dialogues often referred to as ‘‘definitional’’ dialogues, where a given topic—courage, friendship, piety, knowledge—is pursued apparently with the goal of arriving at an unim- peachable ‘‘definition’’ of the topic in question. Such dialogues—the Laches, Lysis, Euthyphro, and Theaetetus among others—can give the impression that Plato, or rather the Platonic Socrates, believed that such issues could indeed be 2 и plato and the question of beauty addressed atomically, by themselves, with minimal reference to other issues, and that such address could be literally definitive, resulting in an adequate definition. That these dialogues—and we shall have occasion to address one, the Hippias Major, in some detail—always fail of their apparent goal is by no means an unimportant consideration in this regard. And that failure, particularly in the case of the e√ort in the Hippias Major to adequately define auto to kalon, ‘‘beauty itself,’’ will prove crucial to our understanding of how this theme is addressed in the other dialogues we shall consider in detail, the Symposium and Phaedrus. There is a second way, however, in which issues such as eros, recollection, form, and beauty are addressed focally in dialogues. These issues are addressed in considerable depth and focally, each in several dialogues, but—and this is the crucial di√erence from the first set of focal issues—not (at least after the failure of the Hippias Major) with a goal of arriving at a definition. What is especially striking here is that one might argue that issues such as eros, recollection, form, and beauty are treated in even greater depth, in more dialogues, and in more ways than are the ‘‘definitional’’ issues—‘‘justice’’ in the Republic would be an obvious and complicated exception—yet without the apparent goal of ‘‘defin- ing’’ the issue in question in any strict sense.
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