The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation

Rutherford's collection of ten essays demonstrates with arguments and ex-amples why Plato's dialogues should be read as dialogues, and what it means to read Plato's dialogues as dialogues. Students of literary theory, drama, and rhetoric will find much of interest here. Philosophers, who should have found much of interest here, will (with some exceptions) continue to ignore an approach which in their view concentrates too much on the text and not enough on" philosophy." Were these philosophers to read but one chapter, I would recommend that they join the rest of us in studying chapter 1," Problems and Approaches"(1-38). The chapter is divided into sections dealing briefly but pertinently with various methodological issues, beginning with" Corpus and Chronology," including problems of historical transmission, authen-ticity, and arrangement of the dialogues;" The Dialogues as a Critical Problem," emphasizing …