In Plato's Timaeus and the Missing Fourth Guest, Donna M. Altimari Adler proposes a new Timaeus scale structure. She finds the harmonic cosmos, mathematically, at 35 A-36 D, regarding the text as a number generator. Plato's primary number sequence, she argues, yields a matrix defining a sophisticated harmony of the spheres. She stresses the Decad as the pattern governing both human perception and the generation of all things, in the Timaeus, including the World Soul and musical scale symbolizing it. She precisely identifies Plato's "fabric" and its locus of severance and solves other thorny problems of textual interpretation.
Two broad types of error might be attributed to Hermias' view on the unity of Plato's Phaedrus. First, you might object that Hermias misunderstands Socrates' principle of speech-composition (Phdr. 264a-e) and defends a single unitary theme at the expense of appreciating the thematic variety of the dialogue. The dialogue simply has no skopos in the Neoplatonic sense of the word. Second, you might grant that the Phaedrus has a single unifying theme but object that Hermias' identification of that theme is mistaken. The real unifying theme of Plato's dialogue is not, as Hermias supposes, 'beauty on every level'. It is something else. Recent scholarship on the Phaedrus reveals that both these criticisms would find supporters. An influential argument by Malcolm Heath backs the first ( and undermines the second): the kind of compositional unity discussed at Phdr. 264c (and presumably applicable to Plato's own text)l is a less-demanding classical concept of formal or dramatic unity which lacks the distinctly Neoplatonic requirement of a single theme that governs all elements of a work. Therefore, the search for a unifying skopos of the dialogue is, both then and now, anachronistic. A broader feature of the scholarship on the unity of the Phaedrus might validate Hermias' second error: while many commentators suggest a unifying theme of the dialogue, hardly any argue that it is 'beauty' (let alone 'beauty on every level'). For both these reasons contemporary literature on the Phaedrus tends to ignore Hermias. This essay attempts to make better sense of Hermias' position on the unity of the Phaedrus. In section 1 we argue that Heath has failed to show that the Neoplatonists over-interpret Socrates' insistence on the unity of discourses at Phdr 264c. In section 2 we discuss and defend the views of two modern commentators who agree with Hermias in accepting (at least) that there is a unifying theme for the Phaedrus and that it involves beauty. In section 3 we consider Hermias' defence of his more demanding notion of a skopos for the dialogue and the identification of that skopos with 'beauty at every level'. There may be many details of Hermias' interpretation of Plato's dialogue that we who are not Neoplatonists cannot find even vaguely plausible. But when it comes to general features of the Phaedrus, like its unifying theme, we think that Hermias deserves to be taken seriously.
Plato's Phaedrus is a dialogue of journeys, a tale of transitions. It begins with Socrates' question, 'Where to and from whence, my dear Phaedrus?' and concludes with the Socrates' decision, 'Let's go' (sc. back into the city from whence they've come). In the speech that forms its centre-piece Socrates narrates another famous journey-the descent of the soul into the body and its reascent to the realm of Forms through erotic madness. It is not too implausible to suppose that Plato himself saw fit to relate his powerful images of the human soul's fall and re-ascent by dramatic means that highlight the movement from one place to another. You don't have to be a Neoplatonist to think that this parallel between the movements of the teller in the drama and the psychic dynamics in the tale told is no coincidence. It is, however, characteristic of Neoplatonic readings of Plato's dialogues to take such a modest interpretive hypothesis and apply it to matters of detail in the text with relentless systematicity. Most-but by no means all-modern readers regard the resulting edifice as a kind of 'hermeneutic over-kill: While we all recognise that Plato was a very thoughtful writer who was capable of investing his dialogues with all manner of significant asides and revealing remarks, Neoplatonic readings often locate great significance in things seemingly very insignificant. They systematically connect elements within a dialogue, as well as across dialogues, or even read details of the dialogue in relation to texts like the Chaldean Oracles or against the backdrop of the accepted wisdom about the nature of daimones or astral bodies. Taken as a whole, the result strains credulity-at least for some of us.
ὄν is in many cases translated as ‘being’, but in one case it is translated as ‘extant’, which the OED defines as ‘still in existence’. Yet the passage is not concerned with the question of persisting across time, and thus ‘extant’ seems the wrong translation. One wonders why C. did not use ‘(a) being’ here. C. clearly strives to make the text available to readers with limited knowledge of Greek, as all Greek terms are transliterated, and the glossary and indexes help readers to cope with the Greek terminology. The ample notes are used to explain etymologies and homologies used by Ammonius, to give references to ancient texts and to provide clarifications of the translation. In addition, where Ammonius’ citations of Porphyry contain many extensive ellipses, C. provides the missing material from Porphyry in brackets; thus the volume contains a complete translation of the Isagoge (although having a copy of the Isagoge available is recommended). However, a few further resources should have been employed. First, C. does not add the headings found in Porphyry’s text, but only adds the very few found in Ammonius’ text. Second, a more extensive division into headings could easily have been included in the list of contents, instead of only giving ‘Translation’ without any subdivisions. Lastly, the numbering in the margins of the text should have been explained: for instance, ‘1,5’ (in normal type) refers to p. 1, line 5 of Busse 1891; while ‘1,8’ (in bold) refers to p. 1, line 8 of Busse’s 1887 edition of Porphyry’s Isagoge (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 4.1). The appendix of variant readings highlights interesting material that is found in only some of the extant manuscripts or the editio princeps (printed in 1500 in Venice) of the text, which are buried in Busse’s apparatus criticus (the last passage is, though, not from p. 127,5 of Busse’s edition, but from p. 128,5). In addition, C. makes 44 textual emendations to Busse’s edition and notes that ‘a new critical edition is a desideratum’ (p. 8). Given the poor state of the critical edition by Busse, it is difficult to judge the cogency of C.’s textual emendations. In any case, a stemma for the manuscripts, which neither Busse nor C. provides, would have been very useful for this purpose. C.’s translation is a welcome addition to the Commentators series, and it makes available in translation a valuable source for the history of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism in late antiquity.
