Philosophy in Dialogue : Plato's Many Devices

xxix

INTRODUCTION

The author concludes by showing that Socrates is a curious Theseus who
often changes ways into non-ways, and non-ways into ways.
Plato’s vivid use of images—whether through myth, metaphor,
simile, or allegory—has traditionally been thought to belie a contempt
for images and vision which is typically imputed to him. Contrary to a
traditional view that for Plato, philosophy comprises pure reason which
transcends the realm of human sense perception and denigrates vision
and image, Jill Gordon returns in the concluding chapter of the volume
to the theme with which the collection began. Arguing in chapter 10,
“In Plato’s Image,” that philosophy is a distinctly human enterprise that
works with and through images, Gordon examines several dialogues,
including those that seem to contain critiques of vision and image, in
order to demonstrate that images are consistently shown to be a part of
philosophical discourse and vision a part of philosophical activity, and
that human limitation necessitates this. Plato’s method, his masterful
use of images and appeals to vision, is therefore a necessary constitu-
ent of philosophy and serves protreptically to cast his audience’s vision
toward the Forms and toward the philosophical life.

Notes

1. For a historical analysis of the distinction between philosophy and lit-
   erature, see Louis Mackey, “The Philosophy of Genre and the Genre of Phi-
   losophy,” in An Ancient Quarrel Continued (Lanham: University Press of America,
   2000); and Jill Gordon, Tu r n i n g To w a rd Ph i l o s o p h y (University Park: Pennsylva-
   nia State University Press, 1999).


2. One need only consider the way in which Homer’s Odyssey is reprised and
   refashioned by later authors, from Virgil’s Aeneid to Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s
   Paradise Lost, and Joyce’s Ulysses.


3. For the most sensible recent discussion of Platonic method, see Ruby
   Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
   versity Press, 2002), 1– 52. For the claim that Plato “invents” philosophy, see
   Andrea Nightingale, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy (Cam-
   bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14; see also 67, 73, 133. See also
   Alexander Nehamas, “Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato’s Demarca-
   tion of Philosophy from Sophistr y,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (1990): 3– 16;
   and Gerald A. Press, “Plato’s Dialogues as Enactments,” in The Third Way: New
   Directions in Platonic Studies, ed. Francisco J. Gonzalez (Lanham: Rowman and
   Littlefi eld, 1995), 133– 52.


4. The list of topics broached includes several key places where Socrates
   refl ects on his or another’s method. For an argument against Vlastos’ claim that
   Socrates is an ethical philosopher pure and simple who is concerned only with
   moral matters, see Michelle Carpenter and Ronald M. Polansky, “Variety of