have long acknowledged the protreptic and paideutic functions of the dialogues.

They
may also consider the Plato who emerges here a more designing and demanding but
more impoverished writer than the author of the dialogues. Like Schleiermacher and
Kahn (1996), R. thinks that the corpus has an overall plan, that Plato means us to
read all the dialogues and connect them. On this view the dialogues become texts for
academic seminar analysis, but their literary brilliance and dramatic subtlety become
puzzling interpretative impediments. Thus some interpreters will consider Platos art
of philosophic writing far richer than R. does here, including not only characters
thoughts and words, but also their actions and passions, the temporal and physical
settings of their encounters, the jokes and stage-business, the verbal and structural
ironies.
R.s book should challenge and enrich discussions among analytical interpreters as
its many insights will reward all who read it carefully. The arguments depend on close
readings of specic passages that are marvels of subtlety. His thorough criticism
oers a plausible alternative to the long-running story of Platos development. R.s
use of literary aspects of Platos dialogues as part of his argument and his
recognition of Platos rhetorical aims may provide a useful bridge between older and
newer modes of interpretation.
Hunter College & CUNY Graduate Center GERALD A. PRESS
gerald.press@hunter.cuny.edu
ANCIENT INTERPRETATIONS OF PLATO
T::N1 ( H. ) , B:i1zix ( D. ) (edd.) Reading Plato in Antiquity.
Pp. x + 268, gs. London: Duckworth, 2006. Cased, 50. ISBN:
0-7156-3455-0.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X08001820
This collection of essays builds on the ndings of several relatively recent
scholarly works which focus on the ancient Platonist tradition of interpreting
Plato
1
and have demonstrated the historical and philosophical importance of this
tradition. The historical importance lies in what it teaches us about the practice
of ancient philosophers; to a large extent, we learn, ancient Platonists, like us
today, were often guided in their interpretation of Plato by their own philosophical
preferences. As for the philosophical signicance of the Platonist tradition, we
learn from the recent studies how many dierent positions can be justied with
reference to Plato.
Ancient Platonists were in disagreement in two ways. First was the question of
how Platos philosophy as a whole should be interpreted, namely as sceptical,
dogmatic, or perhaps a blend of both. Second, within each of those currents there
were dierences regarding the sense in which Plato was sceptical or dogmatic, and
especially within the so-called dogmatic tradition of interpretation there was strong
disagreement as to how certain views expressed in Platos dialogues, taken to
The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 1 The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved
56 1nr ci:ssi c:i rvi rv
1
J. Annas, Platonism Old and New (Ithaca NY, 1999), H. Tarrant, Platos First Interpreters
(London, 2000), J. Dillon, The Heirs of Plato (Oxford, 2003) and L. Gerson, Aristotle and Other
Platonists (Ithaca NY, 2005), to mention some of the most prominent.
represent Platos own view, should be construed. This collection of essays focusses
on the variations of interpretation within the dogmatic tradition of interpreting
Platos philosophy.
The volume contains an introduction by the Editors and fteen essays. Some of
them discuss methodological issues about the use and interpretation of Plato, others
examine the interpretation of specic passages or topics in Platonic dialogues, while
others deal with the history of Platonism. Harold Tarrants essay Platonic Interpre-
tation and Eclectic Theory, which opens the collection, falls in the latter category.
Tarrant argues that the changes of direction within the Academy were not as
dramatic as claimed by some Platonists and Pyrrhonists. He maintains that
Arcesilaus may well have represented the spirit of inquiry and self-examination,
practised also by Polemo and Crates, without being obsessed with the status of
beliefs, as is often presented by later sources. This may be plausible, yet the same
thesis becomes much less conceivable when we move to Carneades, Cleitomachus
and Philo of Larissa. Tarrant is right to focus on Antiochus, who rst argued for a
substantial change of direction in the Academy. Tarrants suggestion, as I
understand it, is that Antiochus interprets Plato, especially Platos theory of
recollection, from a Stoic point of view (pp. 1215), which means that Antiochus
understands Platos innate ideas as equivalent to Stoic common notions. This seems
to be right. The question, though, is how this explains why Antiochus should not be
taken seriously in his suggestion that the Academy underwent a dramatic change of
direction with the Academic sceptics. Tarrant appears to maintain that Antiochus,
like the Academic sceptics, viewed Plato as a whole and assumed consistency, and
that he disagreed with the sceptics about the deeper understanding (p. 16) of Plato.
Again this seems right, yet one is left wondering why Antiochus view about the
proper understanding of Plato should not be considered as one that makes plausible
Antiochus view that the philosophical prole of the sceptical Academy had been
substantially dierent from that of the early Academy.
John Dillons paper examines the Middle Platonic commentary tradition
and performs two services: rst, it reviews the existing evidence of the
Middle Platonic commentaries and discusses their status; second, it compares this
evidence with Neoplatonic exegesis, arguing that the two are much closer than
was previously assumed in terms of methods and substance, which once again
shows that there are no divisions in the history of Platonism as sharp as the
nomenclature suggests.
John Finamores paper on Apuleius conception of God argues that for him, the
Platonic God is both transcendent, in the capacity of the demiurge, and immanent,
in the capacity of the intermediary divinities, which may be visible (e.g. stars,
planets) or invisible, through which the highest God acts. Apuleius view results
from a reading of Plato motivated by the common assumption of Platonists in late
antiquity that there is a hidden philosophical system in Platos dialogues that needs
to be unveiled. Julius Roccas paper, which deals with Galens use of the Phaedrus in
De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 9, shows convincingly that Galen takes Plato
to be an authoritative teacher who makes his doctrine unambiguously clear in
his work.
The next four papers deal with positions that Platonists take towards philosophical
topics discussed in Platos work. John Phillips writes on the treatment of the origin of
evil, Atsushi Shumi focusses on Plotinus interpretation of inma species, Luc Brisson
discusses the origin of the doctrine of the degrees of virtue, and Hayden Ausland
1nr ci:ssi c:i rvi rv 57
examines the mathematical understanding of justice, as discussed in the Republic, for
instance, by Pythagoreans like Archytas and Iamblichus.
For his part, Phillips shows succinctly that Plotinus interpretation of Phaedrus
regarding the origin of evil is ambivalent (and thus exposed to criticism later by
Proclus), but also challenging and original. Sumis paper is rich, but has suered from
the Editors demands for brevity and compactness; only in Section 4 does it become
clear that the question is that of the innite species, which in turn raises the vexed
question of individuals in Plotinus. Nevertheless, the paper succeeds in highlighting
Plotinus philosophical resourcefulness in interpreting Plato.
Brissons paper should be read together with Dirk Baltzlys contribution. Brisson
reviews briey the ancient philosophical tradition in ethics before moving to Plotinus
and then to Porphyry, arguing that with Plotinus everything changes, because his
purpose was to create a synthesis of all ethical views suggested by his time, which
brings him to propose the doctrine of the degrees of virtue. This does not seem to be
right. Plotinus and Porphyry, at least from their own point of view, do not try to make
a synthesis of dierent views, but, as Brisson himself admits, to systematise dierent
elements found in Platos dialogues, which is why they claim that this is a Platonic
doctrine. This is what Dirk Baltzly rightly emphasises, treating more fully the
development of the doctrine of degrees of virtue by later Neoplatonists like
Iamblichus, Marinus and Proclus. Baltzly advances the interesting thesis that the
cathartic virtues are achieved not only through the purgation of false opinion but also
through ritual acts which purify ones soul.
Three of the remaining papers deal with Proclus interpretation of Plato. Tim
Buckley discusses Proclus Platonic Theology, focussing on the question how Proclus
exegetical programme guides him to make selective use of the earlier Platonist
tradition. John Cleary does a brilliant job in trying to identify Proclus exegetical
assumptions of the Timaeus. And Marije Martin examines thoroughly one central
aspect of Proclus exegesis of the Timaeus, his understanding of eiks mythos, which is
revealing about his assumptions regarding the epistemological and, especially, the
ontological position of the Timaeus.
Another pair of complementary papers, those of Richard Sorabji and of Lloyd
Gerson, centre on the question how Aristotle was used to understand Plato. Sorabji
maps out the territory by listing the various tendencies of dealing with Aristotle in
ancient Platonism, while Gerson is more specic, taking up some of the most
important philosophical issues discussed by the Platonists who tried to bring Aristotle
into agreement with Plato. The volume ends with Ken Parrys paper on how Proclus
was read in Byzantium, which is very learned and interesting but outside the scope of
this collection of essays.
This volume contains good scholarship on a vast, complex and philosophically
signicant eld. However, the eld is explored quite unevenly. We count three entire
papers on Proclus, but nothing (except for a few references) on the sceptical
Academics, on Antiochus or Plutarch. This lack of comprehensive coverage is
inevitable in collections of this kind, yet it is unfortunate that papers so clearly
complementary (BrissonBaltzly, ClearyMartijn) do not refer to one another.
Nevertheless, the Editors must be thanked for editing a volume with papers of
generally high quality, and for careful proofreading and indexing.
University of Crete GEORGE KARAMANOLIS
gkaramanolis@fks.uoc.gr
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