IS THERE METHOD IN THIS MADNESS?man Discourse, Eros, and Madness in Plato’s Republic,” Review of Metaphysics 55,
no. 2 (2001).
- The division of the dialogues into three periods—early, middle, and
late—is as well known as it is problematic. For a thorough discussion of the
trends of the last two hundred years of scholarship on Plato, including this de-
velopmentalist position, see Gerald A. Press, “The State of the Question in the
Study of Plato,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 34, no. 4 (1996). For an excellent,
convincing critique of all attempts to defi nitively establish the precise chronol-
ogy of the dialogues, see Jacob Howland, “Re-Reading Plato: The Problem of
Platonic Chronology,” Phoenix 45, no. 3 (1991). For a strong statement of the
position that the “middle” dialogues, including the Republic (books 2– 10) and
the Symposium, expresses truly Platonic as opposed to Socratic philosophical
doctrines, see Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1991). - See Charles L. Griswold Jr., “Plato’s Metaphilosophy: Why Plato Wrote
Dialogues,” in Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. Charles L. Griswold Jr.
(New York and London: Routledge, 1988). - Griswold, “Plato’s Metaphilosophy,” 149.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London and New
York: Routledge, 1981), prop. 4.1212. - The Theaetetus recovers something of its authority in the written word set
down by Euclides immediately after hearing the story from Socrates, and more,
when Euclides edits the text with corrections garnered from Socrates himself.
The Parmenides is more subject to the vagaries of human memory than the Sym-
posium, for not two, but three narrators stand between us and the original con-
versation. See Theaetetus 143a; Parmenides 126a– 127a; Symposium 172a – 174 a. - In the term “fanatic” resonates the Latin fanum, “temple.” It is used here
to evoke the degree to which both Aristodemus and Apollodorus are possessed
by a sort of deity or demon, indeed, the demonic character of Socrates. - R. G. Bury, Symposium of Plato (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1973),
xvi. For the position that the accounts of the two fanatics render the text less
reliable, see Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Symposium, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1987), 10– 11. - Republic 327b1; Symposium 172a3. The Greek text for the Republic is from
Plato, Platonis Opera, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). For the
Symposium, see Bury, The Symposium of Plato. While translations are my own, I
have consulted Bloom in translating passages from the Republic and Cobb and
Benardete in translating those from the Symposium: Plato, The Republic of Plato,
2nd ed., trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991); William S. Cobb,
The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1993); and Plato, Plato’s Symposium, trans. Seth Benardete,
with commentary by Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001). - There is some debate concerning the nature of this joke. For various
suggestions, see Bury, Symposium of Plato, 1– 2. Cobb suggests that it plays on the