Volume 13, Number 8 · November 6, 1969
If Plato Only Knew
By Gilbert Ryle
The Republic of Plato
by Alan Bloom
Basic Books, 512 pp., $4.95 (paper)
Plato: The Dialogues, Second and Third Periods The Bollingen Series
by Paul Friedländer, translated by Hans Meyerhoff
Princeton, 634 pp., $7.50
Plato's Analytical Method
by Kenneth M. Sayre
Chicago, 250 pp., $9.75
It was Plato's own fault. His manifold magics had to attract to him the large tribe of unphilosophical interpreters who have been fascinated by the Platonic dialogue as literature, drama, biography, sermon, prophecy or jeremiad, or else as vignette of Athenian social and cultural life, but have been incompetent to appraise their arguments. There did, of course, exist that golden Plato of theirs who is now at his ease in Heaven in the company of Dante, Cervantes, Bunyan, Swift, Boswell, Blake, Burke, and Aristophanes. But there did also exist the steelier Plato who is now at his especial ease in Heaven in the company of their bêtenoire, Aristotle.
Review, 3140 words
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