Plato at Syracuse: Essays on Plato in Western Greece with a new translation of the Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding (The Heritage of Western Greece Book 5) by Heather Lynne Reid

Plato at Syracuse: Essays on Plato in Western Greece with a new translation of the Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding (The Heritage of Western Greece Book 5) Reviews

• 
  Massimo Pigliucci

  This is an unusual collection focused on a relatively little known episode in the history of political philosophy: three visits that Plato, the philosopher, paid to Syracuse in Sicily, with the intent of influencing Sicilian politics and test out some of his ideas about how to run a just state. The volume is a collection of scholarly papers, most of which, however, are accessible to a general public interested in philosophy. It is divided into four major sections: historical context, philosophical concepts, political context, and philosophical reception. The centerpiece of all these reflections is the famous Seventh Letter, allegedly written by Plato to friends of his student Dion, who eventually briefly was in charge at Syracuse. The letter itself opens the volume, in a new translation by Jonah Radding. The whole thing is closed by an epilogue written by my City College colleague Nick Pappas. If you are interested in Plato, political philosophy, or history, this volume will delight you. I had the fortune of reading it while spending a month in Syracuse, checking out in person the places mentioned in the various chapters. Highly recommended.
• 
  Tony

  Some of the contributions herein strike me as banal, off-topic, or laughable, so I'll avoid those. Instead, this review will restrict itself to just three or four of the contributions in this collection.
  
  To start with, the two essays, "Friendship and Politics in Plato's Seventh Letter" by Tony Leyh and "What was Plato up to in Syracuse?" by Carolina Araujo, form a natural pairing. The epistle by Plato about his trips to Syracuse makes sense, according to these interpretive essays, as the story of :
  1) a friendship formed with Dion of Syracuse, during the peripatetic stage of Plato's career (perhaps he was looking to meet Pythagoreans), as part of his self-imposed exile from Athens, in 387 BC;
  2) a conjoined project between the two, two decades later, Plato (age 60) & Dion (age 38), in 367 BC, at the death of Dionysius I;
  3) the high commitment of Plato to his young friend, as a chance to show his quality, when the latter's fortunes were low under Dioniysius II aka under the younger Dionysius;
  4) the parting of the ways between the two, with the increasing militarization of Dion's plans against Syracuse, in 357 BC, motivated ignobly—at this point in his misfortunes—by vengeance or ressentiment against Dionysius II;
  5) ultimate disappointment in Dion as a friend of philosophy, after these 30+ years, with an elegiac account of his demise; but also
  6) hopes that the "friends of Dion", perhaps the next generation, can carry the project in Syracuse forward, while they are "biding their time in Leontini plotting to overthrow Dionysius II" (this volume, p.93—an allusion to Hicetas, a former friend of Dion).
  
  The whole sad story is placed within the context of the to and fro between Attica/Peloponnesus on one side of the sea and Magna Graecia on the other. The story summarized in this way can be construed as in keeping with
  Myles Burnyeat, who calls Letter VII 'a prose tragedy’ (in earlier publications 2006 & 2015, not in this collection) without denying, as he is wont to do, that we're hearing Plato's authentic voice throughout. Plato writes: "Αll this I have said for the purpose of advising Dion’s friends and relatives...their children, or their children’s children" [334d-e], or as the commentary here puts it, "the faction that supported Dion" (this volume, p.243, italics added). For the ethical import of this tragic arch to the story, see the concluding pages of the contribution by Marina Marren (this volume, pp.101-104).

  
  With her focus on political party, it's odd that the essay by Araujo breaks off and does not carry the story forward to the career of Timoleon (c. 411–337 BC, of Corinth), who could be said to have picked up the baton in 345/4 BC where Dion (d.354 BC) left it a decade earlier, perhaps drawing together in Attica/Peloponnesus that same party loyal to Dion's memory & Plato's project of intervening in Syracuse. (At least one source, cited in this volume, p.100, n.24, views Timoleon as "an admirer of Plato" —citing
  Marta Sordi, Timoleonte, Palermo, 1961). The project Timoleon ultimately carries out at the head of an armed force of some 5,800, not only exiles Dionysius II, aka the bane of Dion, but also restores a democratic constitution, or a mixed constitution, or some sort of constitutional state in Syracuse; this result achieved without Plato's personal input, is perhaps superficially similar to Plato's project of the Laws (not of the Republic) to prevent democracy from running amuck (as it did in Athens, putting Socrates to death, or degenerating into ochlocracy). For "Timoleon’s surprising success in liberating Sicily" contrasted with "Dion’s illogical failure", see in this collection, the essay by Marion Theresa Schneider: "Success Against All Odds, Failure Against All Logic: Plutarch on Dion, Timoleon, and the Liberation of Sicily." After Syracuse, Timoleon would engage in a campaign of discomfiting tyrants across Sicily, liberating other Greek cities in 342/1 BC (e.g. Leontini, Catana, Messana on the east coast). According to one source, "when Hicetas fell, Timoleon became reconciled with the Syracusan oligarchs and adopted the programme of Dion and Plato." (Westlake, 1962 review of Sordi, emphasis added). Yet, despite that wonted reconciliation, he reformed the city in a democratic direction, rather than try to apply any Platonic theory; Timoleon's re-founding of Syracuse would hark back instead to the city's own legislator-founder, Diocles (floreat 413-408 BC), providing the irony that the homegrown 'rule of law' that Diocles laid down, at a democratic moment in Syracusan history c. 413 BC, is what formed the basis of Syracusan stability for the next two decades, c. 338-317 BC, if not the next three centuries, rather than any set of laws that Plato intended for his grand project of forming, as Nietzsche put it, a "united Mediterranean Greek State", or even more ambitiously, "the Platonization of Southern Europe" (See
  The Dawn of Day aka Morgenröthe], book V., section 496). With Nietzsche, we might ask of Plato—in the light of Letter VII in which the philosopher both claims some aptitude for practical politics and details his signal failing in bringing about any practical change in a city-state's constitution—some of the following questions (ibid. section 523):
  
  

  —When we are confronted with any manifestation which some one has permitted us to see, we may ask: what is it meant to conceal? What is it meant to draw our attention from? What prejudices does it seek to raise? and again, how far does the subtlety of the dissimulation go? and in what respect is the man mistaken?

  
  
  For answers to some of these questions, see the contribution herein by Karen Sieben, "Plato and Diogenes in Syracuse," addressing what a cynic might think of Plato's failed excursions into political practice (passim, pp. 233-246). "Plato's justification of himself led to some misrepresentations of his own." (p.244) We catch him in Letter VII making accusations of others like an irascible old man, in an attempt to distract from the culpability of the teachings of his own Platonic Academy for causing much of the trouble: it was precisely at that point in time that "Dion began to institute a political programme in keeping with Plato's theories" that Dion precipitated the formation of the Syracusan opposition to him, which led to his demise (p.245). The people of Syracuse wanted Heracleides not Dion, and they preferred the former's idea of elevating the Syracusan assembly as an authority sufficient to redistribute lands equally among the Syracusan citizenry (a programme that not only explains why Heracleides was Dion's most dangerous rival, but also why he was put to death by Dion). Much is omitted from the self-serving account Plato provides, intended to minimize criticisms from his fellow Athenians impugning his forays into Syracusan politics as meddling, or worse, and Sieben does an admirable job reconstructing just how far the man was mistaken, how far the dissimulation goes, in this ultimately misleading letter of his. Attempts by Dion to implement Plato's ideas only succeeded in causing the rise of factionalism (ibid., p.245) in the just-barely liberated city—almost the exact opposite of the peace and stability that Plato professed to be aiming at. One is forced to conlude that in Letter VII Plato was guilty of all manner of dissimulation, distraction, and deflection about the truth of his failed intervention in Syracuse.
  
  The entire volume is "open access", available online from the Journal Storage System (JSTOR), chapter by chapter (when logged in, either with a free account, or through your institution):
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcmxptk