Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/431

HANS BAEDER, Platons Philosophische Entwickelung. 417 judgment, and he shows how neglect of the dramatic form has led to many absurd mistakes. 1 As indicated by the title, Raeder's treatment of the subject is " genetic," and that is quite as it should be. At the same time it must be said that this method has been much overdone of late, and has led to extreme views which are every bit as unacceptable as those of Schleiermacher and Grote. According to the former, Plato's system was already formed before the dialogues were written, and the appearance of development is due solely to peda- gogic considerations. Plato wished to lead his readers gradually on from the mythical to the scientific form of his teaching, and the- dialogues, read in a certain order, form a progressive course in which the doctrine, clearly present to Plato's mind from the first, is revealed to us step by step. According to Grote, there is no such thing as a Platonic system at all. Bach dialogue is an exer- cise in method which must be taken by itself, and we cannot say that any one of them shows a more or less developed philosophy than any other. The " genetic " method easily runs into similar extremes, and Plato is sometimes represented as throwing off a. number of successive systems in the manner of Schelling. 2 It is supposed that he has left us in his dialogues a complete record of his successive failures and changes of standpoint, and the result comes dangerously close to the view of Grote. Raeder does not go so far, and, in particular, he is quite clear that Plato never faltered in his adhesion to what is called the " doctrine of Ideas," which indeed is nowhere stated more emphatically than in the Tim&u-i. He does, however, in my opinion, go too far in allowing, a fundamental change in that doctrine a point which depends very much on our interpretation of the Parmenides though he has himself laid down a principle, which I do not remember to have seen stated so clearly before, and which contains in germ the solution of many puzzles. It is this. We all know that we must irefully distinguish between the historical and the Platonic Socrates, but that is insufficient. We must also distinguish between the Platonic Socrates and Plato himself. Most of the dialogues are 2w/<paTi/coi Aoyot and essentially dramatic ; and while 1 How easy it is to make such mistakes, is shown by the fact that laeder, who is quite clear about the general principle, makes a particularly bad one himself. He says (p. 123) that the Phsedo ia proved to be unhistorical by the circumstance that in the Apology Plato is said to have been present at the trial, while in the Phsedo he is said have been absent. To begin with, this is wrong ; for Socrates was put to death a month after the trial, and there is therefore no contradic- tion at all. When, however, Raeder goes on to say that the word olfj-cu in arwv 8e, ailfuu, rja-deixi (Phd. 59 B) shows the whole thing to be a fiction, since, if Plato had really been ill, he would have had no need to make such a reservation, he forgets that it is Phsedo of Elis who says this to- "Dchekrates of Phleious, not Plato who says it to us. This is as bad as nything in Ast. 2 Cf. Shorey, The Unity of Plato's Thought.