Plato. - Selected Myths

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

SELECTED MYTHS

PLATO (c. 427347 BCE), Athenian philosopher-dramatist, has had a profound and lasting influence upon Western intellectual tradition. Born into a wealthy and prominent family, he grew up during the conflict between Athens and the Peloponnesian states which engulfed the Greek world from 431 to 404 BCE. Following its turbulent aftermath, he was deeply affected by the condemnation and execution of his revered master Socrates (469399) on charges of irreligion and corrupting the young. In revulsion from political activity, Plato devoted his life to the pursuit of philosophy and to composing memoirs of Socratic enquiry cast in dialogue form. He was strongly influenced by the Pythagorean thinkers of southern Italy and Sicily, which he is said to have visited when he was about 40. Some time after returning to Athens, he founded the Academy, an early ancestor of the modern university, devoted to philosophical and mathematical enquiry, and to the education of future rulers or philosopher-kings. The Academys most celebrated member was the young Aristotle (384322), who studied there for the last twenty years of Platos life. Their works mark the highest peak of philosophical achievement in antiquity, and both continue to rank among the greatest philosophers of all time.

Plato is the earliest Western philosopher from whose output complete works have been preserved. At least twenty-five of his dialogues are extant, ranging from fewer than twenty to more than three hundred pages in length. For their combination of dramatic realism, poetic beauty, intellectual vitality, and emotional power they are unique in Western literature.

CATALIN PARTENIE is a Fellow of the University of Quebec at Montreal. He has also taught at Concordia University in Montreal and held visiting research positions at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hastings Center in New York, and the British School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he was an Onassis Fellow. He has translated into Romanian Platos Timaeus (in collaboration), Critias, and Menexenus, and is co-editor of Platos Complete Works in Romanian (Humanitas). He has also co-edited (with Tom Rockmore) Heidegger and Plato (Northwestern University Press).

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PLATO

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CATALIN PARTENIE

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Translations Robin Waterfield (Republic 1993, Gorgias 1994,
Symposium 1994, Phaedrus 2002, Timaeus 2004, Critias 2004);
C. C. W. Taylor (Protagoras 1996); David Gallop (Phaedo 1993)
Editorial matter Catalin Partenie 2004

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First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2004

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For Ioana and Luca

This volume brings together ten of the most celebrated Platonic myths. They belong to eight of Platos dialogues, ranging from the early Protagoras and Gorgias to the late Timaeus and Critias. The myths appear here in the most probable chronological order of their composition. Although some of them contain deities and adapted themes of traditional Greek mythologysuch as Phaethon, Zeus, the judgement after death, or the Isles of the Blessedthey may all be regarded as Platos own inventions.

These ten myths are self-contained stories. They have journeyed through more than two thousand years like ten strange pilgrims (to borrow the English title of one of Garca Mrquezs collections of short stories), each one being always ready to seduce the reader into its enigmatic realm. They were not supposed to be assembled in a greater, coherent whole, but they bear upon many Platonic philosophical questions, and, taken as a whole, they form an unusual introduction to Platos philosophy. The reader is invited both to contemplate their imagery and to meditate on the philosophical questions they hide in this very imagery.

Hegel claimed that the real value of Plato does not rest in his myths.to unfetter himself, and he realizes that what he believed to be real beings are mere shadows. Then a mysterious man guides him out of the cave, and the former prisoner sees that the real light is outside the cave, and that its origin is the sun. And the sun, Plato says, is an analogy for the ultimate principle of the entire existence, which he called in a previous section of Republic the good (for more on this see the prefatory note that accompanies The Cave). The myth, however, is said to be an analogy for education. Indeed, education, Plato claims, is not inserting vision into blind eyes. Rather, it is turning ones eyes from darkness to light, which involves a transformation of ones perspective on things.