Thread by @EveKeneinan

@1SonuvaGunn Exactly. I came to simply dismiss the whole field after understanding the core assumptions baked into it (early 19th century German philosophical ones). Since I was a Plato scholar I took a deep dive into the problem of Platonic chronology. It’s a worthless enterprise.

@1SonuvaGunn The problem of Platonic Chronology is to figure out the proper order in which Plato’s dialogues were written.

The field is junk scholarship, although it has dominated Plato scholarship for around 200 years.

@1SonuvaGunn It is junk scholarship because

1 To even have a chance of order the dialogues we’d need AT LEAST ONE fixed point. And we don’t have that.

Try ordering:

J brushed his teeth
J had a drink
J took a shower
J turn on the radio
J looked at the clock
J petted his cat
J changed rooms

@1SonuvaGunn 2 We do know from Ancient sources that Plato edited and re-wrong all his works throughout his life. Ancient writings are not like modern books that get “published” in editions.

@1SonuvaGunn 3 The order of the Platonic dialogues is supposed to be important because it supposedly maps onto Plato’s “development” as a thinker, so we can follow Plato’s “evolution.” But we don’t know he had one, and if he did Old Plato rewrote his Young dialogues anyway, so bad assumption.

@1SonuvaGunn So

A Platonic Chronology cannot be established. We lack sufficient information.

Even if it could be the order of the Dialogues doesn’t reflect what they say as we have them.

Even if we knew the order, it wouldn’t prove anything, really, about Plato’s philosophy.

Useless.

@1SonuvaGunn All you end up with is dozens of scholars over 200 years producing their proposed “lists” where they conjecture about the order of the Dialogues. None can be falsified or shown to be likely with unfounded assumptions. No two lists are the same.

@1SonuvaGunn I used to keep a “meta-list”, a list of all the lists of Platonic Chronologies on my office door at work, so people could read how pointless the thing is.

All based on a bunch of idiotic 19th century German assumptions that “HISTORY” is the key to EVERYTHING.

@1SonuvaGunn But of course if “history” and “development” is the key to EVERYTHING—why would you even bother with PLATO?

Platonism depends on the idea that forms are beyond time. Which they are. So why would a historicist CARE?

@1SonuvaGunn Closely related to the Platonic Chronology idea is the idea of declaring certain Platonic dialogues traditionally attributed to Plato, as “spurious.”

Schliermacher started it. He declared certain dialogues spurious based on his “Platonisch Gefühle” his “Platonic Feeling.”

@1SonuvaGunn Yup. Your heard me. THAT was his criterion. “This dialogue doesn’t ‘feel’ like Plato to me.”

@1SonuvaGunn The Theages, for example, does seem WEIRD compared to most other Platonic dialogues.

“Plato didn’t write it” is an explanation for this.

But “It’s a parody of Aristophanes’ Clouds” is actual explanation. If you know THAT, it makes PERFECT sense.

@1SonuvaGunn This idea of course is like saying “Shakespeare couldn’t have written As You Like It. AYLI doesn’t *sound like* King Lear!”

@1SonuvaGunn It is based on the view that the best writers do not have sufficient range to vary their writing styles enough to make it non-obvious who the author is.

@1SonuvaGunn Schliermacher’s student Ott REALLY took this product to heart! He pared the list of Plato’s 34 Dialogues down to ONLY 7 REAL ONES?

And you thought the Apology was real, am I right?

@1SonuvaGunn Still not at home, so I can’t give you Ott’s list of 7 “real” Platonic dialogues, but suffice it to say that every dialogue he rejected has been re-added to the canon one by one. Today we still have some dialogues that are regarded as “dubious” but for no good reason.

@1SonuvaGunn The Theages being a case in point. It doesn’t SOUND LIKE other Platonic dialogues.

When you GET that Plato is riffing on Aristophanes, however, it all falls into place.

@1SonuvaGunn I can’t remember of Ott declared the Republic as not Plato’s.

@1SonuvaGunn So—and I can’t emphasizes this enough—THE ENTIRE PROJECT of Platonic chronology AND of separating “real” from “spurious” Platonic dialogues (given the information we have) IS WORTHLESS, USELESS, JUNK SCHOLARSHIP THAT CANNOT GO ANYWHERE.

@1SonuvaGunn Imagine hundreds of scholars for more than two centuries arguing about the order of J’s day in my list here:

J brushed his teeth
J had a drink
J took a shower
J turn on the radio
J looked at the clock
J petted his cat
J changed rooms

@1SonuvaGunn "He must have turned on the radio before taking a shower, because it might have wanted to listen to music in the shower.”

“He must have turned on the radio after taking a shower, because he would want to risk getting his radio wet.”

@1SonuvaGunn The word “must” plays are role here that the speaker isn’t really entitled to.

@1SonuvaGunn Anyway, EVERYTHING I’ve said about the utter WORTHLESSNESS of this sector of Platonic “scholarship” applies MUTATIS MUTANDIS to “Higher” Biblical Criticism, which was LITERALLY STARTED by the SAME PEOPLE, AT THE SAME TIME, FOR THE SAME REASONS.

@1SonuvaGunn Q: “How can the consensus of Bible scholars be wrong?”

A: “Because the field as it exists today has a fairly long list of erroneous assumptions BAKED INTO the field itself.”