On Beauty and Measure: Plato's Symposium and Statesman PDF
Preview On Beauty and Measure: Plato's Symposium and Statesman
on BEAUTY and MEASURE THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF JOHN SALLIS Volume III/2 on BEAUT Y and MEASUR E Plato’s Symposium and Statesman John Sallis Edited by S. Montgomery Ewegen Indiana University Press This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA iupress.org © 2021 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2021 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sallis, John, 1938- author. | Ewegen, S. Montgomery, editor. Title: On beauty and measure : Plato’s Symposium and Statesman / John Sallis ; edited by S. Montgomery Ewegen. Description: Bloomington, Indiana, USA : Indiana University Press, 2021. | Series: The collected writings of John Sallis | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021008040 (print) | LCCN 2021008041 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253057952 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253057969 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253057983 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Plato. Symposium. | Plato. Statesman. Classification: LCC B395 .S238 2021 (print) | LCC B395 (ebook) | DDC 184—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008040 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008041 Contents Part I. Plato’s Symposium 1 Introduction (172a–173e) 3 2 Phaedrus / Pausanias / Eryximachus (174a–188e) 17 3 Aristophanes / Agathon (189a–197e) 29 4 Socrates (Diotima) (198a–212a) 42 5 Alcibiades (212b–223d) 59 Part II. Plato’s Statesman 1 Introduction 71 2 Initial Divisions (257a–259d) 84 3 The Mathematical Comedy of Animals (259e–268e) 95 4 The Myth of Cosmic Revolutions (269a–276e) 110 5 Paradigms (277a–291c) 120 6 The Weaver of the Πόλις (291d–311c) 131 Editor’s Afterword 141 Bibliography 143 Index 145 Index of Greek Terms 149 on BEAUTY and MEASURE Part I. Plato’s Symposium Lecture course presented at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Fall 2011 1. Introduction (172a–173e) T he concern of the present inquiry is Plato’s dialogue the Symposium.1 Our goal is to read this text—or, perhaps better, to begin to learn how to read this text. For reading such a text is no simple matter at all, if indeed, rather than simply assimilating it to our ready-made preconceptions, we want to open ourselves to it such that it can engage us and evoke our wonder—which, for the Greeks, was the very beginning of philosophy.2 We will need to read slowly and carefully. Like Nietzsche—and, indeed, per- haps even more so—Plato is a teacher of slow reading.3 We will need to read care- fully, with utmost attentiveness, to every turn in the text, to every theoretical, mythical, and dramatic nuance. This dialogue, above all, will force us to give up thinking that Plato’s texts consist primarily of so-called logical arguments, and to abandon the belief that whatever does not belong to these arguments can safely be ignored, or at least be passed quickly by as if it were a mere ornament. For not only is there, strictly speaking, no logic in Plato’s Symposium—nor, for that matter, in any other Pla- tonic dialogue, since it was Aristotle who first invented logic4—but there are also mythical elements that inform the discourse, that give it added, or even different, sense. For example, there are the various myths, such as those about lovers who endure the descent into Hades in search of their beloveds (Symp. 179d). Addition- ally, there are deeds (ἔργα) that contribute to what a dialogue makes manifest: for example, when drunken Alcibiades puts a wreath around the head of Socrates (Symp. 213e), or when Aristophanes gets the hiccups (Symp. 185c).5 Owing to all of this, we as slow readers must—insofar as we can—weigh ev- ery nuance, every turn, no matter how subtle, for in the Platonic dialogues there are virtually no insignificant details. These are texts in which everything counts, wherein everything contributes to the manifestation that the dialogue as a whole accomplishes.6 1. The translation consulted and sometimes quoted is by Benardete (2001). However, many translated passages are the author’s own. 2. [Editor’s Note: See Theat., 155d; see also Met. 982b12.] 3. [Editor’s Note: See sec. 5 of the preface to Nietzsche’s Morgenröthe.] 4. [Editor’s Note: See Sallis (2012), 26.] 5. [Editor’s Note: The significance of these textual moments is explored in later chapters.] 6. [Editor’s Note: See Sallis (1975), 1–5.]
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