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Plato Journal DEZ 2013 ISSN 2079-7567 I3 eISSN 2183-4105 Established 1989 http://platosociety.org/ Papers William H.F. Altman “The Missing Speech of the Absent Fourth: Reader Response and Plato’s Timaeus-Critias” David Levy, “Socrates vs. Callicles: Examination and Ridicule in Plato’s Gorgias.” Nathalie Nercam, “En tout et pour tout (Théétète 204a-210b)” Matthew Robinson, “Competition, Imagery, and Pleasure in Plato’s Republic, 1-91” Scott J. Senn, “Ignorance or Irony in Plato’s Socrates?: A Look Beyond Avowals and Disavowals of Knowledge” INTERNATIONAL PLATO SOCIETY PLATO INTERNATIONAL PL ATO Société Platonicienne JOURNALInternationale Associazione Internazionale dei Platonisti Sociedad Internacional de Platonistas Internationale Platon-Gesellschaft Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra Coimbra Universiy Press 2 | Enicaper ficaed susta nondin is es nonim et dolore CREDITS EditOriAL BOARD INterNAtiONAL PLATO Francisco Gonzalez SOcietY EXecutiVE University of Ottawa COmmittee (2013-16) Irmgard Männlein-Robert President: Francisco Bravo Universität Tübingen Universidad Central de Venezuela Angela Ulacco President: Gabriele Cornelli Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Universidade de Brasília Vice President: Tom Robinson ScieNtific BOArd University of Toronto Luc Brisson Ex-President: Mauro Tulli CNRS – UPR76 Centre Jean-Pépin, Paris Università degli Studi di Pisa Tomás Calvo Next President: Luc Brisson Universidad Complutense, Madrid CNRS – UPR76 Centre Jean-Pépin, Paris John Dillon Next President: Olivier Renaut Trinity College, Dublin Université Paris Ouest – Nanterre-La Défense Thomas M. Robinson Next President: Arnaud Macé University of Toronto Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon Livio Rossetti Università di Perugia Representative for Europe: Christopher Rowe Francesco Fronterotta Durham University La Sapienza – Università di Roma Samuel Scolnicov † Representative for Europe: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mary Margaret McCabe Shinro Kato King’s College, London Tokyo Metropolitan University Representative for North America: Noburu Notomi Verity Harte Keio University, Tokyo Yale University, New Haven Representative for Latin America: INterNAtiONAL PLATO Raul Gutierrez SOcietY EditOriAL Universidad Católica del Peru COmmittee Representative for Asia, Australia, Franco Ferrari and Africa: Yuji Kurihara Salerno – Coordinator Tokyo Gagukei University Filip Karfìk Representative for the C. J. Fribourg de Vogel Foundation: Carlos Steel Dimitri El Murr Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven Paris Marcelo Boeri Santiago de Chile Lesley Brown Oxford 6 | Enicaper ficaed susta nondin is es nonim et dolore PAPERS William H. F. Altman | 7 Despite Diskin Clay’s claim that “the great The Missing Speech gaps in the universe of the Platonic dialogues… of the Absent Fourth: are beyond the reach of even speculation,”1 Mary Louise Gill has recently published a fas- Reader Response and cinating book on Plato’s missing Philosopher. Plato’s Timaeus-Critias In its Introduction she writes: Plato did not write the Philosopher becau- se he would have spoiled the exercise had For Stanley Fish he written it. In finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods, and thus the target of the exercise is inter- William H. F. Altman nally related to its pedagogical purpose.2 [email protected] At the heart of Gill’s attempt to fill in this “gap” is the three-fold claim that Plato delibe- rately created the puzzle of the missing Philoso- pher for a pedagogical purpose, and, moreover, that he created that puzzle for us: Plato uses the devious strategy I have at- tributed to him [sc. he ‘hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain AbstrAct PAPERS sight’] because, by making his audience work very hard to dig out his meaning, Recent Plato scholarship has grown increas- he fosters in them (and us, his modern ingly comfortable with the notion that Plato’s art readers) a skill in reading and a compe- of writing brings his readers into the dialogue, tence in using dialectical techniques and challenging them to respond to deliberate developing new ones.3 errors or lacunae in the text. Drawing inspiration from Stanley Fish’s seminal reading of Satan’s Not only by leaving Philosopher unwri- speeches in Paradise Lost, this paper considers tten, but also in any number of other ways, the narrative of Timaeus as deliberately unreli- Gill’s Plato both “provokes”4 and “tests”5 his able, and argues that the actively critical reader readers, i.e., us. Although Gill’s attempt to lo- is “the missing fourth” with which the dialogue cate Plato’s missing Philosopher in the astute famously begins. By continuing Timaeus with reader’s response to its absence is particularly Critias—a dialogue that ends with a missing germane to the subject of this paper, it is worth speech—Plato points to the kind of reader he emphasizing that Gill’s is but the most recent expects: one who can answer Critias’ question addition to a growing body of literature re- (Critias 107a4-6): ὡς μὲν γὰρ οὐκ εὖ τὰ παρὰ σοῦ flecting a new trend in Plato’s reception: an λεχθέντα εἴρηται, τίς ἂν ἐπιχειρήσειεν ἔμφρων increasing concern with the central role of the λέγειν; http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/2183-4105_13_1 8 | The Missing Speech of the Absent Fourth: Reader Response and Plato’s Timaeus-Critias reader’s response in interpreting the dialogues. (3) that Plato intends us to read the discourse Two recent books on Plato’s Republic are good of Timaeus in much the same way that Fish examples;6 Francesco Ademollo’s magisterial claims we need to read the speeches of Satan. commentary on Cratylus can also be cited as To begin to substantiate this paradoxical evidence.7 In fact, Ademollo astutely points claim, it is noteworthy that Fish explicitly con- out that this trend can be traced at least as nects his reading of Paradise Lost to Plato: far back as the nineteenth century.8 Finally, as David Sedley has documented, the commentary Paradise Lost is a dialectical experience tradition on Theaetetus proves that this trend which has the advantage traditionally actually originated in antiquity.9 claimed for dialectic of involving the Although it is well beyond the scope of this respondent in his own edification. On paper to offer anything like a reception-study one level at least the poem has the form of this important aspect of Platonic herme- of a Platonic dialogue, with the epic voice neutics,10 I do need to introduce at the start taking the role of Socrates, and the reader a few distinctions relevant to my immediate in the position of a Phaedrus or a Cra- purpose. To begin with, there is Gill’s attempt tylus, continually forced to acknowledge to use the reader’s response to a particular his errors, and in this way moving toward kind of Platonic provocation: e.g., why didn’t a confirmation in the Truth.14 he write Philosopher, Hermocrates, and leave Critias unfinished? Leaving the problem of the But the Platonic parallel I see is not between Philosopher in Gill’s capable hands, I will here Milton’s “epic voice” and Socrates, but rather be applying a reader-response approach to Ti- between Timaeus and Fish’s Satan: maeus, and, more specifically, to the discourse of Timaeus. In doing so, I want to distinguish One begins by simultaneously admitting my approach both from that of Gill, and, on the the effectiveness of Satan’s rhetoric and other hand, from that of Ademollo, Grote, and discounting it because it is Satan’s, but at the ancient commentators discussed by Sedley: some point a reader trained to analyze as it is not to Socrates, but specifically to Timaeus, he reads will allow admiration for a te- another of “Plato’s Philosophers,”11 that I will chnical skill to push aside the imperative be applying a reader-response approach. And of Christian watchfulness.15 I am doing so deliberately in the context of the paradigmatic representative of what is called Rather than imagining an extra-textual “reader-response theory” 12 in literary criticism: dialogue between the reader and a benignly the great Milton scholar, Stanley Fish.13 Althou- provocative Socrates, my argument begins gh I will be directly addressing the question with the realization that Plato uses a variety of “the missing speech” of Zeus with which of characters other than Socrates—including Critias conspicuously does not conclude—and Timaeus, the Athenian, and Eleatic Stran- making some remarks at the start about the gers16—whose effective rhetoric, and admirable missing Hermocrates—my principal claim is “technical skill,” are sufficient to “push aside” a not that (1) we need to imagine for ourselves prior allegiance to Socrates, or rather to expose a missing dialogue, or (2) that we are being the weakness of that allegiance.17 According to asked to respond to a Socratic provocation, but Fish, Milton’s goal is not to make converts for William H. F. Altman | 9 Satan. Instead, the poet deliberately exposes speech functions as a test and achieves Plato’s the reader to what Fish calls “the good temp- end only because of the reader’s response to the tation”: a carefully created test “in a controlled dialectical text that contains it.23 But it could situation.” not test the reader unless the reader already had been exposed to what Plato regards as true: it is In the middle books (IV-IX) these same therefore also central to my argument not only choices are structured into a series of sce- that Critias follows Timaeus but that Timaeus nes which provide a continuing test of the follows Republic: the extra-textual
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