Journal of the History of Philosophy

Book Reviews Livio Rossetti, editor. Understanding the "Phaedrus." Proceedings of the II Symposium Platonicum. International Plato Studies, Vol. I. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag , 1992. Pp. 328. Cloth, NP. The International Plato Society, which sponsored this volume, was founded in August 1989 at Perugia, Italy, where Professor Rossetti was able to gather more than fifty speakers and a great number of other participants for a five-day symposium on the Phaedrus. This was the first truly international Plato Congress ever held--remarkably enough--and the theme was an excellent choice, since a discussion of this dialogue can be made to focus practically all the problems of today's debate about Plato. The book is very heterogeneous, unavoidably so since the Symposium favored pluralism at the cost of systematization. The forty-two contributions included here, are by senior and younger scholars from seventeen countries, writing in four languages (English, Italian, French, German) on a wide variety of points and aspects, with very different methods and apparatuses. The papers are arranged under twelve headings. In his well-balanced Preface (in English), Rossetti gives the appropriate descriptive conspectus of the contributions, with some additional references. He concludes on an optimistic note, seeing a "measure of commensurability of what sometimes seems at first sight to be widely divergent approaches" as "a good omen" (uo). The present reviewer is prepared to endorse this optimism, though--as was the case with the Third Symposium, on the Politicus, held at Bristol in *992--the commensurability is more a matter of hopeful extrapolation from the papers and the ensuing discussions than something manifest in the written texts. It was obviously out of the question in this case to have summaries of the discussion in the style of, say, the Fondation Hardt Entretiens. And it is understandable that the editors have abstained from even tentative concluding assessments. Perhaps there could and even should have been somewhat more initial coordination, and more cross-references between the papers. And an index of names would have been easy to add. As may be expected, the problems of orality versus written prose are treated in some detail (see Szlez~k and Erler; Ferber slightly modifying the Ti~bingen view; Isnardi Parente's antithesis--in fact several other papers touch on this subject). The question of rhetoric versus philosophy or dialectic is fairly well represented too (see Calvo's new interpretation of Socrates' First Speech), as is the theme of eros. Ontology, epistemology, psychology, and questions of setting and dialogue-technique are less prominent, but we see glimpses of political philosophy (Griswold) and we find some pertinent remarks on the dialogue as a "poetic drama" (Tejera). Many readers will [291] 992 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:2 APRIL 1994 surely miss their particular hobbyhorses. However, a lacuna perhaps worth pointing out is that the basic "meta-questions" of the methodology of our Plato interpretation, which will have to be fundamentally reconsidered sooner or later, are not really discussed in this book. Probably we are not yet ready to envisage this complex within the frame of a single dialogue (as can be seen, for instance, in the section on "Relative Chronology"). Taken together, the contributions may seem to illustrate the chaotic flux of present-day Platonic studies. However, as an attempt to bring together parts of a very dissonant chorus, to make scholars listen to what others have to say and, perhaps, to start a discussion on a much larger scale than before, the initiative of Livio Rossetti and his Advisory Committee (Julia Annas, Giuseppe Cambiano, Thomas A. Szlez;tk) deserves much praise. The book is well and solidly produced, thanks to the efforts of the Academia Verlag and the first editors of this new series (L. Brisson, L. Rossetti, C. J. Rowe). HOLGER THESLEFF University of Helsinki Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, editor. Essays on Aristotle's "Poetics." Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Pp. xii + 435. Cloth, $69.50. Paper, $19.95. Michael Davis. Aristotle's "'Poetics": The Poetry of Philosophy. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 199~. Pp. xviii + 183. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $19.95. What can Aristotle's Poetics teach us about the relationship between the beauty of Greek tragedy, its philosophical significance...