the grouch reads

The Grouch Reads: John M. Cooper's Intro. to "Plato: Complete Works" (Hackett)

note/correction added below 30 November 2010

I have to admit that I'm puzzled by Cooper's hostility to attempts to find a chronology in the dialogues. I must also admit, though, that he seems reasonable in describing the idea that Plato's works fall into three distinct periods.

Apparently he is worried that it will limit the imagination or readers, and also that it is not based upon secure evidence. He speaks of the danger of presenting the hypothesis under the "guise of a presumably objective order of composition." (p. xiv)

Well, I just don't see it. At any rate, so far as the central philosophical differences among the dialogues, Cooper seems to end up recognizing many of the central components acknowledge by those he would criticize: e.g., the Socratic focus upon ethical questions and a lack of interest in metaphysics, contrasted with Plato's metaphysical concerns. ("those he would criticize"--he mentions Vlastos by name, and I am supposing that Penner's views about chronology would be sufficiently similar to elicit criticism from Cooper as well--though Penner is not mentioned.)

If Cooper's target is the attempt to present a precise chronology--first, second, etc....
Then, I agree with him. Yet, he mentions Vlastos as a target, and I find it hard to see that Vlastos made such an error. (Though I suppose to be confident in this claim I shall have to re-read Vlastos.)

I've not read all of Cooper's Introduction, but I didn't notice that he mentioned something Terry Penner was fond of mentioning: that stylographic analyses rely upon features of style which are beneath the level of a writer's conscious awareness.

Cooper insists upon the importance of philosophical content. But the chronological approach does seem to jibe well with a focus upon philosophical content in the following sense: the metaphysics in Plato does become more sophisticated. (Contrast the Sophist or Philebus with the Phaedo or Republic.) So, to some extent, it seems that the results of the attempt to find chronology don't depart from a concern with philosophy. That was a cautious sentence, but I am wondering about just what the problem is here.

One point Cooper seems to make is that a dialogue in what some would think of as an "early" style might have been composed late in Plato's life. (p. xvi) Well, perhaps if it is just about "style"....but probably not if what we are calling "style" is intrinsically connected with patterns of thinking.

One way to get a grasp on that point might be to find an example of a writer the order of whose works is known, and who changed his style. Could we imagine Wittgenstein late in life returning to the style of the "Tractatus"? I think not.

Certainly from what I recall of Terry Penner's remarks about these matters he certainly did not present them as "hard facts"--to borrow a phrase from Cooper.. On the other hand, I suspect that Cooper's thoughts about methodology and science may not be so sophisticated as they might. His willingness to use terms like "hard facts" suggests to me a view of knowledge or science that is, roughly, too empiricistic. A more liberal (less "empiricistic" view) would allow that philosophical interpretations can interact with stylometric findings, to provide mutual support for hypotheses about the order of composition. No not certain facts, but reasonable or plausible hypotheses--open to revision.

Note/Correction
I've just been looking at George Rudebusch's book about Socrates, and Rudebusch points out that stylometric ordering of the dialogues doesn't always agree with the ordering made according to philosophical content. If so, that means what I say above is confused. I don't have time to sort this out now, so I am just adding this note.