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INTRODUCTIONword “method” must not be construed in a modern, “proto-scientifi c”
sense, where “method” refers to “objective” and uniform procedures for
testing hypotheses or theories. Instead, “method” must be understood
here in its original Greek sense of methodos, a mode of expression that
foregrounds the connotation of being on a road or pathway. When this
original meaning of methodos becomes “scientifi c method,” it ceases to
be applicable to Plato without violence or anachronism.
A similar and related problem concerns the meaning of the term
“philosophy” (philosophia). Pierre Hadot and Monique Dixsaut have
shown that this word arises only in the fi fth century b.c.e., probably
fi rst in Herodotus, but that the noun philosophia is distinctively defi ned
by Plato, in whose hands it means “the love of wisdom” (as opposed to
the possession of such wisdom). Hadot also shows that the term philoso-
phia was broad enough to cover both the connotation of “wisdom” and
the connotation of “knowledge,” more specifi cally “know-how” of one
type or another. Modern readers must remain mindful of the fact that
Plato’s conception of philosophy would not have resembled our own aca-
demic, “professional sense” of the term. It seems rather more likely that
Plato believed that philosophy consisted of a set of discourses and a set
of practices that aimed primarily at transforming one’s entire way of
life. Hadot thinks that for Plato the most important thing was choosing
a philosophical way of life, or as Luc Brisson puts it, “learning to live
philosophically.”^24 To paraphrase Viktor Goldschmidt’s hyperbolic pro-
nouncement that Plato’s dialogues aim to “form rather than to inform,”
I would say that they aim to form one as a person every bit as much as
they aim to inform one about the author’s approach to philosophy.^25
This way of formulating the point preserves the equilibrium of content
and form, theory and practice, information and transformation.
Whereas a “school” today is determined by one’s intellectual affi li-
ation to some doctrine or approach to a set of problems, in antiquity,
by contrast, philosophy was fi rst and foremost a way of life constructed
around the pleasure and interest one took in wisdom, and no fewer than
six distinct “schools”—each with its own emphases, its own spiritual ex-
ercises, and its own model of self-transformation—have been identifi ed
and characterized by Hadot.^26 This reminder is necessary because I sus-
pect that many modern readers as well as commentators assume that
Plato’s objectives in composing his philosophical works would have been
the same as those of a modern philosopher who writes an argumenta-
tive essay to convince readers that his or her view is right and true. (Who
knows, after all, what Plato imagined himself to be doing, or how he
might have understood the process of composing and “publishing”?)
But we may be able to determine his conception of philosophy from the