Dating of the Phaedrus and Interpretation of Plato

Abstract

Two hundred years ago, at the very dawn of modern Platonic studies, W.G. Tennemann built his System of Platonic Philosophy around the assumption that the Phaedrus belongs to Plato’s later works. His name and his opus may have been forgotten, yet the shadow of his picture of Plato still hangs over current interpretations. For example, it was he who excised the historical Socrates from the dialogue and deprived of its Socratic character the discussion of the relative merits of the spoken and the written word. In the dialogue the spoken word is a proper vehicle for philosophy, for moral and intellectual growth and elevation, and the written word is its pale derivative with nothing truly positive to offer; stripped of its Socratic ‘veneer’, this view of the relative merits of language and writing had to be reinterpreted. Tennemann understands the criticism of the written word as an indication that Plato must already have published dialogues which had encountered a negative response: an important point for him, since he was the first to dismiss the ancient tradition that viewed the dialogue as Plato’s first. In the second half of the twentieth century G.E.L. Owen similarly deduces from it the dating of the dialogue, but he takes the disparagement of the written word as Plato’s self-criticism.