The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3: Ion, Hippias Minor, Laches, Protagoras

by Plato, Reginald E. Allen (Translator)

R.E. Allen's superb new translations of four Socratic dialogues—Ion, Hippias Minor, Laches, and Protagoras—bring these classic texts to life for modern readers. Allen introduces and comments on the dialogues in an accessible way, inviting the reader to reexamine the issues continually raised in Plato's works.

In his detailed commentary, Allen closely examines the major themes and central arguments of each dialogue, with particular emphasis on Protagoras. He clarifies each of Plato's arguments and its refutation; places the themes in historical perspective; ties each theme to interpretations of rival translations; and links the philosopher's thought to trends in late modern philosophy. Topics discussed include: whether virtue is an art, whether wisdom and courage are logically equivalent, whether virtue is knowledge, and whether to know the good is to do it. Allen connects his discussion of these issues to the Benthamite tradition of hedonism and utilitarianism and to the ethical theories of Mill, Sidgwick, Moore, and Freud.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Ancient, Nonfiction

249 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Plato (Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy. Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had intended to make my way through the Dialogues ages ago and so put them on my ‘currently reading’ list – and that is fatal, because as soon as anything goes on that list I become the ‘you’ character in ‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller’ and simply never finish the damn thing. I can’t explain this – it just happens. Anyway, these four dialogues have a run of similar themes, but I’ll go over them one at a time.

The Ion

I liked this one, perhaps the most of the four in some ways – although, I think the Protagoras is the best and most important of the four (if that makes sense). Ion is a rhapsodist – basically a guy who goes from town to town reciting his favourite poems and then explaining them to people. Yep, that was a job in Ancient Greece. Now, some things you need to know. Firstly, Plato and Socrates weren’t all that keen on artists or poets. In fact, in The Republic Socrates says that in the ideal republic both would be banned and exiled. Secondly, Plato (as you might guess from this book) is a writer – I mean, he is considered one of the great writers of all time. And these dialogues are basically plays and they contain LOTS of drama – not just in the philosophical arguments themselves, the Socratic method of question and answer can build tension like a good mystery play. But you know the hammer is going to come down hard on someone’s head, but just when… Perhaps most importantly, ‘knowledge’ is a key good for Socrates – in fact, his life’s calling could be said to be to work out just what knowledge other people possess. This last one is particularly important with the Ion, I think.

So, we have Ion and he is pretty keen to show Socrates just how good he is at reciting and then explaining his favourite poet – who happens to be Homer. Not only does he know all of Homer, but he can explain every line and so on. But before Socrates will let him do his thing he says he needs to ask him some questions. Now, if you are ever zapped back in time to Athens and bump into Socrates and he says he just wants to ask you some questions…well, you’d better make sure you have some time up your sleeve. Also, don’t expect to ever get around to doing what you had planned to do for him.

It turns out that despite Ion being an award-winning rhapsodist when it comes to Homer, he is hopeless when it comes to either reciting the works of other poet. This is something he even admits about himself (in fact, he seems a bit proud of the fact). Socrates asks all of the obvious questions here – you know, given that other poets write about many very same themes to what Homer does, you know, how hard could it be??? But Ion is certain he can only do Homer and no one else. Socrates says that this is because Ion doesn’t have an art, as such, but that he is effectively possessed by the same muse that possessed Homer. The metaphor Socrates uses is a magnet and iron rings – a magnet can attract and hold up an iron ring, but it can also transmit its attraction through the iron ring so that the ring also becomes magnetic and can pick up other iron rings. The magnet in this metaphor is the muse or god that inspired Homer – Homer then becomes the iron ring and as iron ring he has transmitted the same inspiration through to Ion. The point being that this isn’t a form of ‘knowledge’ as such, but rather a kind of divine insanity/possession.

The Hippias Minor

This one is an odd little dialogue, or at least, I thought so. Not least since it comes to a conclusion I wouldn’t have expected. Hippias is a bit stuck up – considers himself to be very clever and has lots of proof for the fact, but here we are shown he struggles to follow a Socratic argument or where logic might lead one. This is, in a sense, a work of literary criticism, as they are arguing about who should be considered the best man – Odysseus or Achilles. Pity they didn’t have Ion sitting around, or he might have been able to tell them from his divine possession. Anyway, Ion was obviously otherwise engaged and so they are left to figure it all out for themselves. Hippias argues that Achilles is the better man, since Odysseus is cunning and consciously lies. When Socrates points out that Achilles also lies, but Hippias counters by saying that Achilles does so unwillingly.

Now, that looks like a good argument, and as is made clear we use mitigation for people that do bad things involuntarily. Which makes Socrates’ argument here seem particularly surprising – because he argues that the person who lies voluntarily is the better person. How is that for a turn around?

The logic is clever. If I’m running in a race against you and I lose that might be for two reasons. The first is that you are a faster runner than I am – the second might be that I intentionally ran slowly so you could win. Clearly, we have to say the ‘better runner’ is the one who lost because they ran slowly intentionally, over the one who ran slowly because they were just a slow runner. The same goes for a wrestler that allows themselves to be thrown, rather than one that gets thrown without a choice in the matter.

To tell a lie isn’t as easy as you might think. To tell a lie involves knowing the truth – just in case you try to ‘lie’ and mistakenly say the truth instead. To lie implies you need to be smart enough to know what is true and what sounds true. The example given is also interesting to us today, I think. Because Hippias is a mathematician Socrates asks him if he would be able to multiply seven hundred by three. This might seem mindlessly simple – but you need to remember that it is only relatively recently that we developed a place system of numbers – so, calculations we can do in our heads today needed an abacus back then. The point being that most people wouldn’t be able to do this calculation in their head – but since Hippias could he would be better able to lie about it – and to not, inadvertently, say 2,100 by mistake, as a worse mathematician might. The point being, the better person is better able to lie than the worse person – so intentional lying is indicative of a better person. In fact, Socrates’ conclusion is that only the good man errs voluntarily. Not a conclusion either Hippias nor Socrates are particularly happy with – although, I think Socrates is actually happier with it than Hippias, as it shows he is able to follow the path of an argument to wherever it leads, whereas Hippias wants it to fit with common sense, rather than be ‘logical’.

The Laches

So, in this one you’ve got a son and you want to know if it is a good idea for him to learn to fight in armour or not. You ask a couple of your friends and they give you opposing advice. What to do? I guess one thing you could do is toss a coin – but Socrates is around so why not ask him instead?

Socrates isn’t terribly happy about this all coming down to a kind of vote. And he is right here, I think. If you wanted to know the best way to drive a car on ice, you could ask the first ten people you bump into and hope a clear majority of them come up with the one conclusion and it also happens to be the right one (a kind of wisdom of crowds) – or you could find some sort of driving expert and ask them what to do. The expert here sounds like the best bet. Which is pretty much Socrates’ point.

But this leads to questioning what the point of teaching them to fight in armour actually is. I mean, it isn’t just so they will be good at fighting in armour, per se – the point of the exercise is to help them become courageous. So, the conversation turns to the nature of courage. And it doesn’t come to an answer. Now, this is really interesting. We are given a series of possible answers – courage is standing at your post, being fearless, or a kind of virtue – but Socrates shows that each of these is not enough or not good enough. As the author of the introduction to this dialogue says, “the reader is not asked to construct from the dialogue a definition of courage any more than he is asked in the Euthyphro to construct a definition of holiness. He is asked to follow an argument, stick to a point, and undertake to provide an answer to the question What is courage? for himself, and to do so for the good of his soul.”

The Protagoras

This is the main dialogue in this collection – and not just because the discussion and text of this takes up about two-thirds of the book. But this dialogue covers a lot more ground and I get the feeling it was felt, by Plato, to be important for ‘propaganda’ purposes too. Protagoras is a Sophist. Now, a Sophist is a sort of paid teacher – one who teaches you to be wise (Sophia being Greek for ‘wisdom’), but mostly someone who teaches you to mount a good argument, as much for the sake of it as anything else. That is, Sophists aren’t interested in the truth of an argument, so much, as they are interested in winning the argument. You need to know that Socrates spends his life trying to find out what wisdom actually is (philosopher means ‘lover of wisdom’), but refuses to be paid for his teaching and never writes anything down – and as it is explained in the introduction here, this is part of a general Greek view that you don’t write books in case you are accused of having been a Sophist after you are dead.

Protagoras is not a simpleminded Sophist, as others are made out to be. Rather, he sees where some of the dangers lie in Socrates’ arguments and does his best to avoid the traps. This is the most like a play, if you like, of any of the four dialogues here, but it is formally also the most complex and would be the hardest to ‘perform’ as almost all of this is Socrates talking to an unnamed companion about a conversation he has just had with Protagoras. This is odd too, as it is introduced by what today might be called ‘locker-room talk’ – with this unnamed person teasing Socrates about a pretty young man he presumably fancies and Socrates saying he was just with him but was more interested in Protagoras, who he thought was handsomer, given he was also more intelligent.

So, this entire dialogue is a reported conversation by Socrates – and given at one point Socrates tells off Protagoras for talking for too long, and he does this because Socrates says he has a poor memory… Yeah, irony is pretty thick on the ground here. This one is also about the nature of courage and the unity of the virtues as well. The question is, given Protagoras is a paid teacher, what is it that he teaches and does he deserve to be paid for what he teaches. Protagoras is pretty much is saying he teaches virtue, so the question then is, can virtue be taught. Socrates starts off by saying it can’t be. Protagoras (from economic necessity, if nothing else) has to take the other side of this argument.

As I said, this is a much longer dialogue, so I’m only going to skim over it and look at the bits I think I’m likely to remember (or want to remember) in a year or so. Socrates argues that people are mostly motivated by hedonism – that is, seeking pleasure over pain. There are objections to this, of course – mostly to do ‘the delay of gratification’ – but Socrates makes the point that you delay gratification because you are fairly confident of getting more and better quality pleasures later by accepting less now – or even of accepting pain now. So, hedonism still stands. I might have missed this, but it isn’t totally clear if pleasure and pain are actually opposites. I had never particularly thought of this before – but is the absence of pain, pleasure? Clearly not. So, whatever relationship pleasure and pain enter into isn’t necessarily all that obvious or simple.

This interest in hedonism leads to some sort of notion of utilitarianism. Greatest goods, where goods and pleasure are asserted to be similar, and possibly even the same. But this then turns to a pretty standard Socratic fascination – can you choose evil? Socrates asserts that you can’t – that whatever you choose must be because you see that as more pleasant than the alternatives and therefore if you do choose something evil that means you have done so out of ignorance. Since it is in human nature to pursue the good rather than evil (since it is human nature to pursue pleasure rather than pain, and evil leads to pain…) then it is not possible to will to choose evil.

Courage – we need to say something about courage. Protagoras had started by saying the virtues were all similar, but courage was a bit of an outlier as you can be courageous due to being too stupid to know better, for example. In the end Socrates comes to the conclusion that courage needs to be a kind of knowledge – or rather a wisdom (basically the opposite of where he started – if it is knowledge, then it can be taught). The argument here is interesting, because there is a problem with ‘courage’ in that to be courageous implies you are putting yourself in a position that ought to cause you fear – and fear is an evil because it is a fear of pain, ultimately – so it looks like you are choosing an evil. This makes courage is an odd case – if courage is a good, it is a good because it is an extreme case of going for the greater good over current pleasure. Does that make sense? Running into the fire to save the child risks being burnt and horribly hurt (pain), but not doing so means having to live with the idea of having stood by and watching a child burn to death (more pain). Both a coward and a brave person is interested in their own vision of what is pleasant, but in this case the coward must be ignorant of the greater good – because we have already established people wouldn’t choose evil over good – and so, courage is, as we said, a kind of knowledge.

This is a seriously interesting dialogue, not so much for the arguments as for all the mirrors involved here. Socrates at one point nearly breaks off the discussion entirely. He wants to do his standard Q&A thing and Protagoras wants to make a long speech. But the Socratic method is to ensure that each step on the path is firm before moving on – so, long speeches (much like watching politicians talking on television) are avoided as they cover as much as they uncover. Then he gets Protagoras to ask him questions, the opposite of what normally happens – and what does Socrates do? He gives a long speech… Did we mention irony yet? In the end Protagoras is left silent, which given how this dialogue began with Socrates talking about how beautiful and clever Protagoras was is also clearly twisted too.

This book is really useful, I must get hold of the other volumes – you get an introduction to each of the dialogues prior to the translated text. These are very comprehensive. The Protagoras one is particularly good since it goes into how this text relates to utilitarianism and Freudian psychology.

[Serhii Povísenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Коментар до Протагораса містить колосальну кількість кроспосилань на роботи інших філософів, зокрема Джеремі Бентхама та його сина Джон Мілля, котрі працював над ідеями утилітаризму, гедонізму та лібералізму.

Аналіз та інтерпретація Аллена є прикладом мистецтва роботи з текстом, а саме його пояснення та розширення сенсу. Це просто неперевершено!

Третій том продовжує задані тон та міру якості інтерпретації робіт Платона у сучасному світі. Питання які не полишали Платона до кінця його життя досі залишаються актуальними: чи доброчесність це мистецтво? Чи мудрість та сміливість логічно повʼязані? Чи чеснота це знання? Ці питання постають заново перед очима сьогоднішнього читача, котрому Аллен асистує у розумінні архитексту, прокладаючи інтелектуальний міст.

Це неперевершена серія.

[ruxi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just Protagoras. What a fantastic find

[Guy M · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition itself is excellent, I'm just not entirely moved by these dialogues like I am with others. The Protagoras is pretty great though.