a utopic studio, first series

Athens as Educator

Reflections on Ignorance and Formative Justice in Classical Experience

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Plato

Plato has engendered a vast interpretative literature, which is indicative of his pedagogical power. Some of his works, usually described as the early, Socratic dialogs, are dramatically inconclusive, leaving the reader to make up his mind on the question at issue. Others, including the Republic, are internally inconclusive in the sense that they include multiple explicit assertions that are clearly, on the surface of things, inconsistent with each other. These internal inconsistencies force readers to make a methodological choice. A reader can discount them and choose to attribute to Plato one or another consistent view reflected in that part of the text he deems to be indicative of what Plato really thought. This method produces closure suitable for preaching to the reader's choir, but by leaving out a lot it suggests that the particular message found in the work is really rather simple-minded. The alternative method strives for a reading of the text that encompasses the inconsistencies, seeing all the elements of it as intentional and potentially part of a reasoned whole. This method does not lead to closure, for it suggests that Plato tried to address through his work both things he, and his readers, might know, as well as the things he and we should know we do not know. This method leads, not to conviction, but to thoughtful commentary, different readers' thoughtful reflections on how they make sense of the work as a whole.