Other Readings
Our focus
on Platonic baggage has mostly been on Christian editorial bias (leading to a
Plato without nuance who speaks through his characters in favor of
fallacious arguments). While there are clear examples of this historical trend
in modern Plato scholarship (Benjamin Jowett), it is also interesting to trace
these complications back to eras closer to Plato’s. The three most prominent readings
of Plato which arise from these literal direct-from-Plato interpretations are either
theistic, hardline like some passages from Laws
x, or in service of Presocratic-esque idealism. The turns taken by
Aristotle or the Neoplatonists in their respective readings, for example, might
be a place to find other inserted diversions into the literature of Plato in
order to return to the text-as-it-was.
If we were to structure an education around dialogue (as a pedagogy from the ground up), we might not find it so strange that there can be dramatic nuance or social undercurrent in a literary text like Plato's.
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting how much influence one's religion can have on interpretation. Human interpretation to me is a fragile and fluid thing and it so vastly different between interpretations that we end up with these frequent tendencies to misinterpret.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post, Devin. Could be the basis for a dissertation.
ReplyDeleteI wholly agree with Brett's comment.
I also agree with Rose about how difficult interpretation can be, though this is no reason to throw up our hands. Physical science is hard, too, but very worth the effort.