Parmenides and Plato

Engaging with literary, in particular poetic tradition, revisiting it and adapting it to new contexts is a common occurrence in V-IV c. BCE Athens (Dalfen, Giuliano). Yet, few are the ancient authors who explore this practice either directly or indirectly in their work, offering a way to ‘meta-read’ their own production. This paper focuses on what I propose to call the ‘Odyssean meta-reading’ encoded in the work of Plato.

The Eternal Present in an Instant

—Plato’s Revision of Parmenidean Time in the Parmenides

Abstract

The isolated pronouncement traditionally known as fragment B3 of Parmenides has exercised outsized influence for its brevity: τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστί<ν> τε καὶ εἶναι. For some these words express the central insight of the entire poem: “auf diesem einen Satze beruht seine ganze Philosophie” (Reinhardt 1916, cf. Cassin 1998, Kimhi 2018). For others, they underpin the decisive opening argument of B2 (Diels 1897, Wedin 2014, cf. Laks and Most 2016). Yet their enigmatic phrasing has made this incomplete verse a site of continuing controversy.

The myth of Pandora in Hesiod’s Theogony (560-612) and Works and Days (47-105) is an etiology not only for women but also for the qualities that distinguish humans from the gods: fire, technology, sacrifice, and marriage exchange (Vernant 1990). The archetypal woman, as kalon kakon, is characterized by both her appetitive desires and the desire provoked for her (Zeitlin 1995). She is a stomach and a womb.

This paper interprets Socrates’ defense speech in Plato’s Apology in the light of recent studies on the Athenian amnesty of 403BC and the rhetorical conventions to which the amnesty gave rise. Specifically, I establish parallels between Socrates’ rhetorical tactics and those in Lysias’ Against Eratosthenes. I argue that Socrates’ argument for the importance of philosophy appropriates and transforms the rhetoric characteristic of the post-amnesty era.

Antigone in Magnesia: Plato’s Revision of the Sophoclean Tragedy in the Laws

Plato’s Laws offers a treatment of the civic role of performance that radically departs from his previous views. Whereas much scholarly discussion on the Laws’ engagement with tragedy has centered on Book VII, I argue that, throughout Book VIII, Plato engages in a revisionist rewriting of Sophocles’s Antigone. This intertextual engagement, which encompasses issues of both gender and genre, allows Plato to articulate a normative theory of natural, unwritten law.