Publication: The Review of Metaphysics
Author: Miller, Clyde Lee
Date published: December 1, 2010

CORLETT, J. Angelo. Interpreting Plato's Dialogues. Las Vegas, Nevada: Parmenides Publishing, 2005. xii + 138 pp. Cloth, $28.00- Attempting to discern Plato's own intentions, doctrines, or ideas from the extant Platonic dialogues is similar to trying to figure out the intents and beliefs of Shakespeare from his plays. Yet the most prestigious Englishlanguage Plato scholars and their students of the past fifty years have often written as if what Plato meant could be discerned from his dialogues. Even if everyone might ultimately agree that Plato never speaks in his own voice, this has not stopped a myriad of scholarly publications that attribute to Plato the opinions and the arguments advanced for them in his dialogues. It is this practice, the "mouthpiece interpretation," that J. Angelo Corlett is attempting to put to rest in his vigorously written Interpreting Plato's Dialogues.

Corlett opens by proposing that it is crucial to read the dialogues as dialogues, not as treatises. This means we need some warrant for ascribing what any character in them says to Plato - but there is no such warrant. What he calls the "mainsteam mouthpiece interpretation" is thus bankrupt as an interpretive strategy from the start. He parallels the "anti-mouthpiece" reading of the dialogues, paying particular attention to "the dramatic interpretation" and his favored "Socratic interpretation." Chapter two of his book points out that there is no internal or primary evidence from Plato to accept any reading of his dialogues such as Aristotle's. He lays bare in detail the question-begging, if not embarrassing, approaches to the question of such scholars as Julia Annas and Michael Frede.

In chapter three, Corlett rejects "the dramatic interpretation" (as propounded, for example, by Gerald Press) as too literary in its unwillingness to separate argument from literary and historical context and to examine the argument as such, even if one does not attribute it to Plato. He prefers "the Socratic interpretation," agreeing that no character speaks for Plato himself in the dialogues, but allowing that literary and historical analysis need not overwhelm analysis of the arguments. His point is that such reading "means that we engage in the dialectical process of doing philosophy right along with the characters in the dialogue." Here he cites Socrates's open-mindedness, courage, and persistence at inquiry, plus his sincerity and epistemic humility, as features of "a common search for knowledge and wisdom" that reads nothing in the dialogues as Plato's own beliefs, but everything as an invitation to dialogue and philosophic thought.

Chapter four is a brief exemplary discussion of the concept of art as mimesis that focuses primarily on the Republic, opposing "mouthpiece" and "Socratic" interpretations and featuring the latter. Corlett finds no Platonic theory of mimetic art in the Republic, pace mouthpiece interpreters. Rather, a Socratic reading can propose and entertain alternate ways of reading what Socrates does say about mimesis in that dialogue. This reader was not entirely reassured by this instance of "Socratic" reading, perhaps because it was too minimal in argument and outcome. It might be more telling to see if the "Socratic" interpretation had something illuminating to show us about the famed Platonic Forms.

Everyone reading or teaching Plato should doubtless read this book, both for what it does and for what it does not do. One important thing the book does not do is place scholarly interpretation of Plato in the social context of academic philosophy and philosophical training in the U.S. and Britain. So long as the leading "mouthpiece" interpreters and scholars of Plato occupy the most desirable academic positions and train the best students who (surprise!) follow their teachers' ways, false assumptions about Platonic interpretation will continue to rule. The irony is that contemporary mouthpiece readers follow, in this respect, the Neoplatonic interpreters of old, even while they mostly reject all Neoplatonism.

In the larger scheme of things, readers of all sorts can continue to learn from every intelligent discussion of Plato's texts whether interpreters believe in the mouthpiece view or not (there are smart people and illuminating readings in all of Corlett's overlapping camps). We all remain free to reject those interpretive assumptions about who speaks or does not speak for Plato, about which Corlett so reasonably argues. Sometimes the assumption that Socrates speaks for Plato interferes with understanding the text, sometimes it does not. What is important is to understand how and why. We would be poorer interpreters of the Platonic text, however, were we not to read Annas or Frede on Plato, even if Corlett is correct about the mouthpiece view being bankrupt. Being careful not to attribute it to Plato, we might find, for instance, a systematic philosophic view proposed in the so-called "middle dialogues" that is then criticized in the "later dialogues."

Corlett's book makes for stimulating and thoughtful reappraisal of how one approaches Plato, whatever one's favorite schemes and assumptions. One could wish his arguments would put the "mouthpiece" view to rest, but good arguments only win intellectual battles. When it comes to changing bastions of academic privilege and their practices, Corlett is tilting at windmills. - Clyde Lee Miller, State University of New York at Stonybrook.

Author affiliation:

Clyde Lee Miller, State University of New York at Stonybrook