International Relations
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Abstract
Following on from her Postmodern Platos (1996), which dealt with postmodern interpreters of Plato (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss and Derrida), Catherine Zuckert has now turned her interest in Plato to an attempt to understand the whole of Plato’s dialogues. Very few scholars have dared to grapple with the whole corpus of Platonic dialogues in a single volume, and none before has made an attempt in one volume to understand the whole of the 35 dialogues by the ordering of their dramatic dates. Starting with the pre-philosophic foundation of the city per se and that which comes from the city – the laws – Zuckert begins with Plato’s Laws. She argues that that which is commonly viewed as later work has a dramatic date prior to the other Platonic dialogues, and as such it represents the pre-philosophic ground on which early philosophy emerges. In seeing how Socrates became Socrates we then come to see Socrates address the fundamental human questions.Through the drama of Socrates’ life and death we come face to face with philosophy as a lived and fundamentally overpowering experience. Doing all of this in a single volume is a very risky move, as many readers will be left wanting more since, in order to grasp the 35 dialogues as a whole, much has to be left unsaid. Also, there is a great body of Platonic scholars who refuse to see the critical importance that the dramatic form plays in understanding the arguments being made. Many of these scholars will refuse to take seriously others who suggest that the dramatic form is the critical lens for guiding the reader to access the dialogues. Another reason why a good number of scholars will ignore this book is that it is a work by a student of Leo Strauss, and at present an intense and widespread Straussophobia runs through many AngloAmerican philosophy and classics circles. Regardless of such matters, Zuckert’s book remains a remarkable accomplishment of Platonic and classical scholarship, and the reader of this hefty volume is left with a convincing interpretation of Plato. The book is thorough, detailed, resourceful and rigorous. In reading this book one is confronted with a piece of Plato scholarship which clearly shows a pondering of the dialogues with such seriousness and such a fresh eye that others scholars will be forced to address various arguments made in this book many years from now.