Sean
GURD Punctuating Plato, Embodied Philosophy
Ancient texts of Plato's dialogues contained either no
indication of speaker-change
or a minimal system of punctuation (usually dicolon
accompanied by a paragraphos) to indicate when one speech
ended and another began. It is unlikely that lists of
characters were given at the top of scrolls. In some
papyri there are signs of individual readers marking
their texts where they believed a speaker-change
occurred; in other papyri divergent opinions on the
question of what lines should be attributed to what
character led to substantial changes in the wording of
the dialogues. These clues, together with evidence
gathered from later MSS and the history of
dialogue-writing, allow us to construct a detailed
picture of the kinds of activities and thought-processes
a serious and scholarly reader might have been engaged in
when s/he sat down to read a Platonic text.
There were two distinct but interrelated forms of reading
throughout much of antiquity: the first was a communal,
public and oral form of reading in which members of the
cultured elite shared and discussed literary and
philosophical works, in the process forging and
reinforcing their sense of community; and the second was
a solitary, concentrated form of reading (this kind of
reading Philo of Alexandria referred to as an
askesis
or contemplative practise). The former is well-attested
from literary sources such as Plutarch and Pliny the
Younger. The latter, while not unattested in such
sources, has left significant traces on papyri, in the
form of reader's indications of speaker-change. These
remains are well-documented, but their philosophical
significance, and their importance for what Stock ("La
connaisance de soi," Collège de France,
1998) called the history of self-consciousness, have not
been extensively explored.
I contend that, in the process of analysing the Platonic
logos
in order to approve a previous scholar's division of the
text into speakers, or (in those cases where there was no
scribal indication of speaker-change) to determine who
said what, ancient
readers were compelled to engage in an activity that
corresponded precisely to what Plato referred to as
dialectics. In effect, the reader was required to engage
in a dialectical analysis and synthesis of the Platonic
logos.
Reading Plato was a form of embodied philosophy,
in which the literary text provoked an initial exercise
in dialectical thought. It seems likely that Plato may
have been aware of this implication, as an analysis of a
number of passages (most notably in the Sophist
and the Republic)
makes clear. In addition to elucidating a number of
passages in the Platonic corpus, the thesis that
scholarly preparation of a Platonic MS was a form of
embodied philosophy illuminates a number of later
practises in neo-Platonism, for example Proclus' concern
with correct punctuation and pronunciation of the
Timaeus.
My position distinguishes itself from other arguments about
the pedagogical role of Plato's dialogues (for example
that Plato's dialogues enact oral modes of argumentation
in order to foster similar ones in his readers) by
emphasizing, not the reader's imitation of characters and
their actions, but the reader's embodiment of a
philosophical process s/he may not have recognised until
s/he had made considerable progress in it. In other
words: before
a reader could discern individual characters well enough
to contemplate imitating them, s/he would already have
been involved in extensive dialectical activity.
The activities involved in carefully reading a Platonic
dialogue forced on the reader a strong ergonomic
prejudice in favour of the positive doctrines outlined in
the "later dialogues." This argument strongly suggests
that the relationship between the dialogues as "drama"
and the dialogues as containers of a positive
philosophical program needs to be reassessed.