The Guardians on Trial: The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues from Euthyphro to Phaedo
by William H. F. Altman /
2016 / English / PDF
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Based on a conception of Reading Order introduced and developed in his
Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the
Republic (Lexington; 2012) and
The Guardians in Action: Plato the Teacher and the Post-
Republic
Dialogues from
Timaeus
to
Theaetetus (Lexington; 2016), William H. F. Altman now completes his study of Plato’s so-called “late dialogues” by showing that they include those that depict the trial and death of Socrates. According to Altman, it is not Order of Composition but Reading Order that makes
Euthyphro
,
Apology of Socrates
,
Crito
, and
Phaedo
“late dialogues,” and he shows why Plato’s decision to interpolate the notoriously “late”
Sophist
and
Statesman
between
Euthyphro
and
Apology
deserves more respect from interpreters. Altman explains this interpolation—and another, that places
Laws
between
Crito
and
Phaedo
—as part of an ongoing test Plato has created for his readers that puts “the Guardians on Trial.” If we don’t recognize that Socrates himself is the missing
Philosopher
that the Eleatic Stranger never actually describes—and also the antithesis of the Athenian Stranger, who leaves Athens in order to create laws for Crete—we pronounce ourselves too sophisticated to be Plato’s Guardians, and unworthy of the Socratic inheritance.
