The Guardians on Trial

Download or read book The Guardians on Trial written by William H. F. Altman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-19 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.