Since antiquity the Phaedo has been considered the source of "the twin pillars of Platonism" -- the theory of ideas and the immortality of the soul. Burger's attempt to trace the underlying argument of the work as a whole leads to a radical rethinking of the status of those doctrines.

This absorbing study of Plato's criticism of poetry offers a new interpretation based upon central features of both the pre-Platonic conception of poetry and previously neglected features of Plato's various discussions of poetry and the poets. Professor Mitscherling's analysis is unique in that he concentrates on the philosophical significance of Plato's distinction between dramatic and nondramatic sorts of poetry. Mitscherling shows that this distinction proves in fact to be central to the conception of poetry that Plato consistently elaborates throughout his (...) dialogues. Mitscherling also makes a unique contribution by outlining a possible Platonic aesthetics, which draws on current work in phenomenology and hermeneutics in such a way as to promise an entirely new direction for current work in continental aesthetics. The author employs Gadamer's analyses of the ontology of the work of art, in conjunction with a phenomenological analysis of the aesthetic experience, in the construction of a foundation for aesthetics that is consistently Platonic. Mitscherling concludes with the hypothesis that Plato's criticism of poetry did not apply to poetry itself, nor was it directed to art in general or the educational system, or the Sophists. Rather, Plato was specifically against the techn? of mim'sis, that is, the technique of persuading by appearing to be what one is not, or by merely appearing to speak the truth. (shrink)

My interpretation of Plato's criticism of poetry has its foundation two claims, deceptively innocuous in themselves. First, I maintain that Plato's overriding concern lay in the welfare of his polis. Athens was declining rapidly in his day, not only economically and politically, but also culturally. This observation has led some commentators to maintain that Plato's criticism was directed at the degenerate state of the art and poetry of his day. Other authors, concentrating on the political aspect, have maintained that it (...) was a disguised attack on the Sophists. Still others have claimed it to have been directed at the educational system, and several have taken Plato quite literally, assuming the criticism of poetry to have been neither more nor less than just that. What all these authors seem to have missed, however is that all of their interpretations rest upon one and the same feature of Plato's thought, and this is my second, more fundamental, claim: Plato attributed the decline of Athens to a tendency in popular thought to value the relative over the absolute. This tendency I recognize as the product of the activity and teachings of the Sophists, and I identify the distinguishing feature of Sophism as the techne of mimesis. This techne came to be employed in the interpretation and writing of poetry, in the practice of rhetoric in the courts and schoolrooms, and finally in the study of philosophy itself. It came, in short, to characterize all intellectual and cultural endeavor, and it brought with it the conception of virtue as relative, as something that could be taught and learned by means of the techne of mimesis, for it is the mastery of this techne which enables one to appear to be many things which one is not. And it is this techne of mimesis, along with the tendency toward ethical relativism which accompanied it, which is the true target of Plato's criticism of poetry. (shrink)