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document.body.onload="BodyResized()"; } var tInit = SetBodyProps(); </script> <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="MainContent" --> <blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'> <p align="right" style='text-align:right'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt; font-family:&quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;'><a href="../index3.htm">  !!# $ &</a></span></b></p> </blockquote> <div style="text-align: center;"> <center> <table> <tr> <td> <img src="IMAGES/PPhS.png" border="0" alt="" /> </td> <td style="text-align: center; white-space: nowrap; vertical-align: middle;"> <span style="text-align: center; font: Georgia; font-size: 40px; font-weight: bold; font-variant: small-caps;">The Universe of Platonic Thought<br /> #=825@AC< ?;0B>=>2A:>9 <KA;8</span><br /> <span style="text-align: center; font: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; font-variant: small-caps;">26th International Conferecne&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;XXVI 564C=0@>4=0O :>=D5@5=F8O</span><br /> <span style="text-align: center; font: Georgia; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal">28&ndash;30 August 2018&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;St Petersburg, Russia&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;28&ndash;30 023CAB0&nbsp;2018&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;!0=:B-5B5@1C@3, >AA8O</span> </td> <td> <img src="IMAGES/pla150.png" border="0" alt="" /> </td> </tr> </table> </center> </div> <hr /> <div class="d1"> <table class="ovrBtn"> <tr> <td class="c1" style="vertical-align:bottom !important;"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_11.png" alt="" /> </td> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_12.png" alt="" /> </td> <td class="c7"> </td> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_15.png" alt="" /> </td> <td class="c1" style="vertical-align:bottom !important;"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_16.png" alt="" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_18.png" alt="" /> </td> <td colspan="3" class="c8" > <a href="upt26en.htm">Back to the Conference Program</a> </td> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_19.png" alt="" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_23.png" alt="" /> </td> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_24.png" alt="" /> </td> <td class="c9"> </td> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_26.png" alt="" /> </td> <td class="c1"> <img src="IMAGES/ovrbrd_27.png" alt="" /> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td><img src="tabs/tii_48.png" border="0" /></td> <td style="background:url(tabs/tii_45a.png) repeat-x"></td> <td><img src="tabs/tii_56.png" border="0" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background:url(tabs/tii_68.png) repeat-y"></td> <td width="100%" bgcolor="#F0FFF0"> <div style="text-align:right;font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><span style="color:#555">5B @CAA:>9 25@A88</span></div> <div style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><p class='pcAuthor'><span class='pcName'>Detlef von Daniels</span><span class='pcAffil'>, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Research Group International Justice and Institutional Responsibility</span><span class='pcPosition'>, Research Fellow and Academic Coordinator</span></p> <p class='pcTitleD'>What is the question Plato is answering to in the <i>Politeia</i>?</p><p class='tcSumma'>In this paper, I want to use the method of contextual interpretation as envisioned by the Cambridge School for a reading of Plato s Politeia. However, this attempt will change both, our understanding of Plato but also of the philosophical underpinnings of the Cambridge School. As a cautionary tale, I will start by giving a brief overview of political appropriations of the Politeia while focusing on three historical periods, 19th century Britain, early 20th century Germany, and the post-war United States. It will turn out that everyone has found in Plato what he needed or sought, mostly himself. The Cambridge School nevertheless claims to get beyond this  mythology of parochialism (Skinner) by inquiring into the historical and discursive situation ( the question ) an author is answering to. I will argue against the  mouthpiece of Socrates view that enough historical evidence can be given for considering Plato as a conscious political actor. For understanding his intervention it is therefore important to reconstruct the prevalent discourse of his (and not Socrates !) time. I will show that the sophists Plato is implicitly attacking can be characterized as  proto-cosmopolitan liberals who have a  pan-Hellenistic political agenda (both anachronistic terms can be fleshed out historically). Plato s intervention then turns out to be an indirect and double one, by inventing (or recognizing) a realm above petty politics and distinguishing the philosopher from the philodox he changes the focus of attention from immediate action to the world of practical guiding ideas. I will conclude by arguing that this contextual reading is apt neither for a  liberal nor an  authoritarian appropriation as Plato s concepts work in a different way, namely as a historical analysis of forms of practices.</p><br /> <p class='hcAbstract'><B>I</B>. In my talk, I would like to discuss the answer to an apparently simple question, namely what is the question to which Plato gives an answer in <I>The Republic</i>? The apparently obvious answer is that Plato gives an answer to the question  what is justice , as this is the central question raised again and again by protagonists in the dialogue. Therefore the dialogue belongs, as one might continue to argue, to the long line of prestigious philosophers who give an answer to this question. This reading already presumes a lot: that there is a philosophical tradition of answering perennial questions, that Plato belongs to this tradition, maybe as a founder, and that our task as interpreters and maybe fellow philosophers is to make a contribution to this tradition by keeping it alive through hermeneutic understanding, criticisms, and extensions.<sup><a name='ret16_1' href='#ftn16_1' class='ftnLink'>1</a></sup> However, in certain times this straightforward answer feels strangely out of touch, maybe as a simply, everyday question:  Is this act, this person, or this judgment just? - or in a more dramatic tone   Do we live in a just state, in a just world? is transformed into  the perennial philosophical question  what is justice,  a question attainable apparently only to a class of people especially trained to do so (we philosophers) or  if attainable by everyone  only under special circumstances, in our  reflective moments throughout life as John Rawls wrote.<sup><a name='ret16_2' href='#ftn16_2' class='ftnLink'>2</a></sup> &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>Yet maybe the short notice that Plato is answering a perennial question isn t that strange after all. In contemporary political philosophy, thinking about justice in an abstract way is often called  ideal theory, thereby employing a Rawlsian framework.<sup><a name='ret16_3' href='#ftn16_3' class='ftnLink'>3</a></sup> This distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory presumes that ideal theory is bound up with the non-ideal circumstances of our society, i.e. of Western liberal societies. For this reason, thinking about justice along the lines of ideal theory also has consequences for real-world issues. So maybe Plato is simply doing what we do when engaging in  ideal theorizing. However, when subsuming Plato's answer under this notion of "ideal theory," as an instance of what we do when interpreting perennial philosophical questions, the fragility of assumptions underlying the distinction between  ideal and  non-ideal theory becomes obvious. Not only are the kind of questions Plato asks in the course of the Politeia and the proposals he considers far  off topic from the liberal tradition of ideal theory, the social reality he presumes is also incompatible with conditions in Western liberal societies. Sometimes, when considering Syracuse as an instance where Plato s philosophy could be applied, the regime Plato addresses (the regime of Dionysius I. of Syracuse) even seem to contradict in principle everything liberal societies stand for. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>An easy way out of this quandary is to place Plato firmly into the sub-discipline "history of philosophy thereby presuming that  we today have learned to ask  systematic question whereas previous generations of philosophers can either contribute to  our questions or are of  historical interest only; they are a pre-history of our times. The problem of this assumption, often implicit in analytical approaches to political philosophy, is that it cuts ourselves off the confrontation with the incompatible other and thus makes the whole process of hermeneutic understanding unnecessary. The history of philosophy then turns out, as Quentin Skinner once wrote, into  a means to fix one s own prejudices on to the most charismatic names ... [ðIt]ð becomes a pack of tricks we play on the dead. <sup><a name='ret16_4' href='#ftn16_4' class='ftnLink'>4</a></sup> As an alternative, Skinner proposes to read philosophical treatises as interventions in the politics of their time. Through historical contextualization, philosophers no longer appear lofty theorists cut off from the ordinary politics of their time, but as political actors, and philosophical treatises can be read like political pamphlets. This approach has been proven to be fruitful, however, mostly for the English Republican tradition.&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>Yet it can, and indeed already has, also been used to attain an understanding of Plato. The following programmatic statement might serve to introduce this perspective:  It must always be remembered that the writer Plato is only an <i>eidolon</i> (image) of the actual teacher Plato, an <i>anamnesis</i> (reminiscence) of the speeches in the gardens of the academy. ... For a literary time like ours, it is difficult to capture the memorial character of Platonic dialogues. It is not an imaginary, merely literary world, as in all modern dialogues. ... We must not regard him as a systematic thinker in <i>vita umbratica </i>(armchair life), but as an agitator-politician who wants to lift the whole world off its feet. <sup><a name='ret16_5' href='#ftn16_5' class='ftnLink'>5</a></sup> This quote, which sounds as if coming right out of the heartlands of the Cambridge School, is actually from Friedrich Nietzsche. So Nietzsche could be counted among the founding fathers of the Cambridge School. However, I will not directly discuss Nietzsche s take on Plato, as this would turn out to be as much a Nietzsche as well as a Plato interpretation, but instead focus on two traditions of a contextual reading of Plato that can at least partly be traced back to Nietzsche s influence. Thus, what might sound to be a cutting-edge research question, a Cambridge School reading of Plato, has already been done, and is in contemporary, English interpretations of Plato's philosophy practically forgotten. The question is therefore not simply how can a contextual interpretation of Plato be done, but also why has it been forgotten or left hardly any trace in current interpretations? &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><B>II</B>. All interpretations that assume Plato had some immediate political aims have to take the autobiographical account given in his letters, in particular the seventh letter, seriously.<sup><a name='ret16_6' href='#ftn16_6' class='ftnLink'>6</a></sup> However, starting already in antiquity the authenticity of some letters handed down under the name Plato has been questioned, and with the modern discovery of historical-critical interpretations of ancient texts, even the authenticity of the seventh letter has been questioned. This debate continues until today and tends to overshadow the question of Plato s political mission.<sup><a name='ret16_7' href='#ftn16_7' class='ftnLink'>7</a></sup> As I am not competent to give a judicious assessment of the evidence I will give the critics the benefit of the doubt. However, this does not mean that we can disregard the letters as a distraction from the  real" Plato. As far as I am aware, no one has ever questioned that Plato indeed went to Syracuse as a political advisor. Thus everyone concedes that the core events told in the seventh letter are true. Usually, critics merely point out that certain passages are not highly original, whereas others take offense that some claims differ from what Plato says in other dialogues, moreover there is an ongoing discussion whether the prose is original and imaginative or, as authenticity-critics typically claim, boring and cliché-ridden. So in the end, every argument can be used for the one or other side. However, if the seventh letter is not written by Plato then we have to acknowledge a new philosopher in antiquity, the writer of the seventh letter who not only has a profound knowledge of Plato s life and the political events in Syracuse but also an extraordinary ability to emphasize with the protagonist of his novel and to invent a resonance space for Plato s philosophy. He (or maybe she?) has given in this way one of the most far-reaching and influential interpretations of Plato s philosophy and its relation to real political events in the ancient world. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><B>III</B>. I have already indicated that the reading of Plato as an agitator-politician can be traced back to Nietzsche. It is found as a programmatic idea in a lecture Nietzsche gave as a professor of classics in Basel, thus at a time when he was still trying to comply with the standards of classical philology. Curiously, the one who carried out this line of reasoning was Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, who is known by Nietzsche Scholars for ending Nietzsche's career as a classicist through his devastating critique of  The Birth of Tragedy. In this critique, Wilamowitz articulates why Nietzsche failed as a classical philologist. Wilamowitz writes that Nietzsche s  imaginary genius and impudence in the presentation of his claims stands in direct relation to his ignorance and lack of love of the truth. ... [ðNietzsche s]ð solution is to belittle the historical-critical method, to scold any aesthetic insight which deviates from his own, and to ascribe a  complete misunderstanding of the study of antiquity, to the age in which philology in Germany ... was raised to an unprecedented height. <sup><a name='ret16_8' href='#ftn16_8' class='ftnLink'>8</a></sup> This quote entails not just a critique of Nietzsche but at the same time the principles Wilamowitz held dear, viz., the historical-critical method and the German tradition of philology, which is sensitive to the values expressed in the ancient texts, even though it proceeds itself in a scientific,<sup><a name='ret16_9' href='#ftn16_9' class='ftnLink'>9</a></sup> value-free way. Thus Wilamowitz subscribes to the credo of historicism that  every age is immediate to God. His classical studies culminated in a magisterial book on Plato, published in 1918, in which Wilamowitz uses the events told in the letters to contextualize Plato's philosophy in the cultural, social, and political history of ancient Greece.<sup><a name='ret16_10' href='#ftn16_10' class='ftnLink'>10</a></sup> Thus at the end of his career, Wilamowitz carried out the very task Nietzsche called for as a young classicist. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>The book, entitled  Plato. His life and his work is divided into three parts, youth, manhood, and old age, and explains how the various dialogues correspond to social, political, and biographical events in Plato's life. Hence Wilamowitz not only uses linguistic or philosophical evidence to bring the dialogues in a chronological order, but also uses psychological speculations and draws inferences from the life of the Academy and political events in the Greek word. Wilamowitz stresses that Plato's original motive was a political one but that the circumstances in Athens were not favorable to his ideals. Even so, Wilamowitz constructs parallels between political events and the dialogues only up to a specific point. After Plato wrote the Republic he receded according to Wilamowitz into scholarly life in the Academy and lost the feeling for political events taking place roughly after 370 BCE.<sup><a name='ret16_11' href='#ftn16_11' class='ftnLink'>11</a></sup> So in all his later works, Plato was  only a teacher , so to say the ancestor of a 19th-century German university professor. However, in the preface to the book written at Christmas 1917 and in the dedication to Herrmann Diels written in November 1918 Wilamowitz realized that his very own Platonic ideal, to establish an international association of all academies of sciences and letters around the world, to foster freedom and the unity of sciences, lay shattered along with the ruins of the old European order. The reception of his Plato interpretation confirmed that a certain style of scholarship, which Wilamowitz represented, was soon considered old-fashioned, remarkably for two very different reasons. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><B>IV</B>. In the Anglophone world, the narrative and empathetic style of Wilamowitz was rejected as mere psychological and historical speculation and abandoned in favor of more empirical, and analytical-minded interpretations that mostly disregarded historical context or treated them as a special topic for historians.<sup><a name='ret16_12' href='#ftn16_12' class='ftnLink'>12</a></sup> Thus as an example of an ironic turn, the very critique Wilamowitz had raised against Nietzsche was leveled against him 50 years later. To repeat Wilamowitz s judgment:  [ðHis]ð imaginary genius and impudence in the presentation of his claims stands in direct relation to his ignorance and lack of love of the truth. <sup><a name='ret16_13' href='#ftn16_13' class='ftnLink'>13</a></sup> &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>In Germany, the most influential line of criticism was raised by the opposite side. Kurt Hildebrandt, a Plato scholar who was strongly influenced by the circle around the poet and youth cult leader Stefan George, accused Wilamowitz of being too historically minded, failing to understand the Greek  ethos of tragedy, and neglecting Plato's ongoing political mission.<sup><a name='ret16_14' href='#ftn16_14' class='ftnLink'>14</a></sup> For Hildebrandt Plato remained throughout his life the spiritual leader of a transformative intellectual movement aiming at ruling the ancient world and defending it against barbaric forces coming from the West and the East.<sup><a name='ret16_15' href='#ftn16_15' class='ftnLink'>15</a></sup> In the words of Hildebrandt: &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><p class='hcQuote'> Plato was the incarnate desire to become the supreme philosophical legislator and state founder and thus Hildebrandt explains  Whoever wants to destroy Syracuse out of idealism of freedom destroys the freedom of the nation. ... The academy is the center of the nation .... [ð(secret Hellas is a term modeled after  geheimes Deutschland the shibboleth of Stefan George s disciples.)</p>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>The influence of the mood of the 1920s and 30s in Germany on this interpretation is obvious, and can also be traced back to other writings of Hildebrandt in which he stressed the idea of leadership in Plato, and praised him for supporting racial selection and eugenic breeding. These few remarks might suffice to characterize this line of interpretation. At the same time, it might suggest considering it as a dead end or as a confirmation that the analytical mode of reasoning and interpreting Plato is for good reasons the dominant one. So are we back at the beginning? Is the best way of reading Plato to conceive him as someone who tries to give answers to specific perennial questions such as  What is justice ? &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><B>V</B>. There is a final episode in the reception of Plato and in particular his political activities that might cause at least some irritation for this line of interpretation. The Anglophone perception of Plato s political philosophy since the second half of the 20th century is not  historicist (presuming that human thought rests on premises that change with each epoch but cannot be validated by trans-historical human reason) but proceeds at least implicitly from the background of liberal premises. Even if they are not explicitly mentioned or bracketed, the philosophical framework used to interpret Plato is in any case informed by them. Moreover, the liberal mindset also appeared to be, at least for a short time after the end of the cold war, unchallengeable in political, social, and economic terms. This Western self-assurance has increasingly come under attack in the last 20 years or so both from the inside, since the liberal mindset has been questioned from neoconservative and populist movements, as well as from the outside, since the force of Western globalization is for political, social, and economic reasons no longer unmatched. One might think that this rough sketch of our current age is an unprecedented situation so that one can only speculate about future philosophical consequences. However, the situation we are experiencing is arguably not so new after all, in any case, it recalls in some aspect a previous time, and it also recalls a previous challenge of the liberal tradition through the lens of Plato. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>In 1795 Johann Georg Schlosser, a German public official, and amateur scholar, published the first German translation of Plato's letters.<sup><a name='ret16_16' href='#ftn16_16' class='ftnLink'>16</a></sup> He used the comment section of the translation to launch a full-blown critique of all liberal philosophers, Immanuel Kant in particular, and accused of destroying Christian belief and tradition. As an alternative, he recommended the wise Plato who praised the secluded life of the private man. In the dedication Schlosser writes:&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><p class='hcQuote'> For since the wise Greek advises us to be satisfied with our Superiors as God gives them, even if they do not want to be counseled at all, and since it is also not so easy to be satisfied with them, as he says, and as the newspapers from the West tell us daily; it is to be hoped that our good countrymen, when they read these letters, will be inclined to give their farewell to the freedom preachers; and hopefully they won't wish to spread their faith with fire and sword as the Spanish did in America. So I guess we can sit under our grapevine again soon, hoping that we can leave the seat, we have retained as best we could, to our children. <sup><a name='ret16_17' href='#ftn16_17' class='ftnLink'>17</a></sup></p>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>Schlosser got more or less everything wrong, both in his way of reading Kant and also in this invocation of Plato. Nevertheless, the episode is noteworthy as Kant responded to the unfounded accusations of Schlosser. Thus Kant had probably read Plato's letter for the first time and realized that something in Plato and his relation to politics was such that the liberal tradition he stood for needs to reassure itself. Kant reacted to the accusations of Schlosser by drawing a distinction between the philosopher who has to achieve his results through strenuous work, and the naïve enthusiast (Schwärmer) who thinks he has a direct access to being itself. By enjoying the fruits of philosophical labor without having to work for it enthusiasts behave like noble people and betray their lack of philosophical rigor simply by using a noble tone. In something of a short psychograph, Kant characterizes Schlosser as a  monarchist out of envy: &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><p class='hcQuote'> Elevating now Plato, and now Aristotle to the throne, so that, being conscious of their own incapacity for personal thought, they do not have to endure the hateful comparison with others still living. And thus (principally by the latter judgment) the superior person shows off as a philosopher, whereas in fact through obscuration he puts an end to any real philosophizing. <sup><a name='ret16_18' href='#ftn16_18' class='ftnLink'>18</a></sup></p>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>This distinction between  showing off as a philosopher ( den Philosophen machen ) and the real philosopher settles the dispute with Schlosser, but not with Plato. To respond to this challenge Kant distinguishes between Plato the letter writer and Plato the academic. With the latter, he agrees on many points in principle, such as with the dialectical method, with conceiving mathematics as an a priori realm, and with having an overall practical agenda. But he criticizes Plato the letter-writer for extending the realm of a priori knowledge into the mystical and in particular for his critique of writing, thus for holding back important insights in the manner of a  clubbist .<sup><a name='ret16_19' href='#ftn16_19' class='ftnLink'>19</a></sup> &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>After quoting from the philosophical digression in the seventh letter on the different grades of knowledge and the impossibility of explaining it in writing for everyone Kant writes:  Who can fail to see here the mystagogue, who not only raves on his own behalf, but is simultaneously the founder of a club, and in speaking to his adepts, rather than to the people (meaning all the uninitiated), plays the superior with his alleged philosophy! <sup><a name='ret16_20' href='#ftn16_20' class='ftnLink'>20</a></sup> Thus Plato's so-called "unwritten teaching in particular goes against Kant's core conviction of fostering universal enlightenment through public discourse. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>However, the reason Kant replies extends extensively to Schlosser's (and indirectly Plato's) criticism is arguably that he detected a similarity in the underlying social and intellectual situation. For Plato (the letter writer) the problem was to find suitable people or to build like-minded fellowship in order to realize his all-encompassing ideas in a world that was torn by civil strife among the Greeks and threatened by outside invasions. Even though Kant thought that he had brought about the decisive philosophical revolution he had to realize towards the end of his life that in real life the French Revolution had failed the aspirations connected with it. In 1796 when Kant wrote the reply to Schlosser, counterrevolutionary forces and opinions in Germany were on the rise. On the other hand, Kant s own intellectual legacy was in danger, since the very medium Kant puts his hopes in  the free and open public discourse  was threatened by external interventions (censorship) as well as by ideological fragmentation. Against this background, Kant s late teleologico-historical (<I>Perpetual Peace</i>), religio-philosophical (Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason), and institutional-reformatory writings (<I>Dispute between the Faculties</i>) can be seen as almost desperate attempts to give a different answer to the very same question Plato the letter writer was concerned with: the struggle of spirit for and with power, in which nothing is external, especially in times of crisis. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>&nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'><B>VI</B>. The excursion into Kant thus provides in passing an answer to Plato's question. Kant responded to Plato because he had the same question: The struggle of spirit for power. It is not uncommon that a fundamental philosophical problem becomes clearer through the eyes of later generations. This perspective finally also explains why Plato s question might be relevant for us today, which brings me to my final reflection. &nbsp;</p> <p class='hcAbstract'>Usually when political philosophers speak about  we and  us they have a rather narrow audience in mind, like-minded people in Western liberal democracies who take their life experiences for granted and use philosophy to bolster their common-sense prejudices. However, when I now use the word  we I have a task in mind, which I can present to you, this very audience in St. Petersburg, only as a number of questions, questions that start with Plato but in the end involve us: Philosophers and intellectuals acquainted with different intellectual traditions coming from countries with diverse regimes and trying to come to an understanding of our age. So let me ask you, is the question Plato asks in <I>The Republic</i> just a philosophical question, or at the same time a political project for in times of crisis? What forces are available to the philosopher, can he simply wait, as in Kant, for the  providences of nature while relying on the public sphere, or can she wait and hope to educate future leaders? Can tyrants and their followers have a role in bringing about a just state of affairs? And how can we speak to tyrants and at the same time keep ideals that are dear to us clear from corruption through power? Do we still believe in the  long arc of an all-encompassing enlightenment or are we already, like in the myth told in the <I>Statesman</i>, in the second turn of the world, when the gods abandoned their reign, and only islands of rationality and order can be saved within the oceans or irrationality? <p class='pcEndnotesSection'>&nbsp;</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_1' href='#ret16_1' class='ftnLink'>1</a></sup>&nbsp; This is the implicit understanding of the task of philosophy in Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, <I>The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter</i>, ed. Dominic Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015).</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_2' href='#ret16_2' class='ftnLink'>2</a></sup>&nbsp; John Rawls, <I>Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy</i>, ed. Barbara Herman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 7. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_3' href='#ret16_3' class='ftnLink'>3</a></sup>&nbsp; John Rawls, <I>A Theory of Justice</i>, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), § 2. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_4' href='#ret16_4' class='ftnLink'>4</a></sup>&nbsp; Quentin Skinner,  Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, <I>History and Theory </i>8 (1969): 14. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_5' href='#ret16_5' class='ftnLink'>5</a></sup>&nbsp; Friedrich Nietzsche,  Einleitung in das Studium der platonischen Dialoge, in: <I>Nietzsches Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe</i>, eds. Fritz Bornmann and Mario Carpitella (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1995), II, 4, 9</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_6' href='#ret16_6' class='ftnLink'>6</a></sup>&nbsp; The historical assessment of the regime of Dionysius I. is since ancient times contested. For the latest, more nuanced view see Brian Caven, <I>Dionysius I. War-Lord of Sicily (</i>New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1990). </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_7' href='#ret16_7' class='ftnLink'>7</a></sup>&nbsp; For the latest turn interpreting the letters as a prose tragedy written by a philosophically incompetent author see Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, <I>The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter</i>. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_8' href='#ret16_8' class='ftnLink'>8</a></sup>&nbsp; Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, <I>Zukunftsphilologie! Eine Erwiderung auf Friedrich Nietzsches Geburt der Tragödie</i> (Berlin: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1872), 8. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_9' href='#ret16_9' class='ftnLink'>9</a></sup>&nbsp; The German term  Wissenschaft" is untranslatable into English as it comprises both the natural sciences and the spiritual sciences (humanities). </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_10' href='#ret16_10' class='ftnLink'>10</a></sup>&nbsp; Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, <I>Platon. Sein Leben und seine Werke</i> (Berlin 1918).</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_11' href='#ret16_11' class='ftnLink'>11</a></sup>&nbsp; Wilamowitz, <I>Platon</i>, 386.</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_12' href='#ret16_12' class='ftnLink'>12</a></sup>&nbsp; See the dismissive review of Ernst Howald s book  Platons Leben that has a similar focus by Paul Shorey in: <I>Classical Philology</i> 19 (1924): 379-381. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_13' href='#ret16_13' class='ftnLink'>13</a></sup>&nbsp; Wilamowitz, <I>Zukunftsphilologie</i>, 8.</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_14' href='#ret16_14' class='ftnLink'>14</a></sup>&nbsp; Hildebrandt's attack started already in 1910 as it was not just directed against the Platon book but against the whole historicist tradition Wilamowitz stood for. See Kurt Hildebrandt,  Hellas und Wilamowitz. Zum Ethos der Tragödie," <I>Jahrbuch für die geistige Bewegung</i> 1 (1919): 64-117. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_15' href='#ret16_15' class='ftnLink'>15</a></sup>&nbsp; Kurt Hildebrandt, <I>Platon. Der Kampf des Geistes um die Macht</i> (Berlin: Georg Bondi 1933).</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_16' href='#ret16_16' class='ftnLink'>16</a></sup>&nbsp; Johann Georg Schlosser, <I>Platons Briefe nebst einer historischen Einleitung und Anmerkungen</i> (Königsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius, 1795). </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_17' href='#ret16_17' class='ftnLink'>17</a></sup>&nbsp; Ibid., 2. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_18' href='#ret16_18' class='ftnLink'>18</a></sup>&nbsp; Immanuel Kant,  On a recently prominent tone of superiority in philosophy , in: Immanuel Kant, <I>Theoretical Philosophy after 1781</i>, ed. Henry Allison, Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 8: 395.</p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_19' href='#ret16_19' class='ftnLink'>19</a></sup>&nbsp; The term was often used to refer to the members or the supporters of the political clubs of the French Revolution. Kant here, however, probably has the pseudo-religious rituals of freemasonry in mind. </p> <p class='pcFootnote'><sup><a name='ftn16_20' href='#ret16_20' class='ftnLink'>20</a></sup>&nbsp; Kant,  On a recently prominent tone, 8: 398. </p></p> </div> </td> <td style="background:url(tabs/tii_69.png) repeat-y"></td> </tr> <tr> <td><img src="tabs/tii_72.png" alt="" /></td> <td style="background:url(tabs/tii_74.png) repeat-x"></td> <td><img src="tabs/tii_79.png" alt="" /></td> </tr> </table> <p class="MsoNormal" align="right" style='text-align:right'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:&quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;'>© ;0B>=>2A:>5 >1I5AB2>, 2018 3. </span></p> <p align="right" style='margin-top:0mm;margin-right:3pt;margin-bottom: 0mm;margin-left:-36.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:right'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:&quot;Tahoma&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;'><a href="../index3.htm">  !!# $ &</a></span></b></p> <!-- InstanceEndEditable --> </td> </tr> </tbody> </body> <!-- InstanceEnd --></html>