Posts Tagged by Platonic scholarship

As my title suggests, this is a postscript to my last post, after three scholars (Danielle Allen, Barbara Graziosi, Stephen Halliwell) left a reply. My own reply to them is attached to that post, so let me just thank them warmly and point out the following. Halliwell registers a protest: a casual reader of my post – he says – might think he is unable or unwilling to cite work written in languages other than English. This is of course not the case, and although I disagree with some of his claims (as I explain in my reply), I did not mean to suggest anything like that. Yet my post – as I now see – lends itself to be read that way, so let me apologise by quoting a statement from Halliwell’s very recent book Between Ecstasy and Truth. Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus (OUP 2011):… more

“Why Plato wrote”: this startling title caught my eye as I was walking by the new books on display at the CHS. I immediately grabbed the book and brought it to my office, then I switched off my cellphone, closed the door. In sum: I disconnected myself from the world to devote all my attention to a question that has been haunting me ever since I have started reading Plato. Who is the author of the book? Hardly a minor figure: Danielle Allen (2010), Princeton, Cambridge background. When I asked my friends at the CHS, the answer was unanimous: not only is she a very clever scholar (I could see this much by myself), but she has developed into an influential public figure. What was the outcome of my greedy reading? Mixed feelings. At first – I must confess – irritation. Why? Well, the Prologue sounded very promising to me:… more