[47] See Schleiermacher’s Einleitung to the Phædrus: “Der Phaidros, der erste Ausbruch seiner Begeisterung vom Sokrates”.
[48] If we read Dionysius of Halikarnassus (De Admirab. Vi Dic. in Demosth. pp. 968-971, Reiske), we shall find that rhetor pointing out the Phædrus as a signal example of Plato’s departure from the manner and character of Sokrates, and as a specimen of misplaced poetical exaggeration. Dikæarchus formed the same opinion about the Phædrus (Diog. L. iii. 38).
Neither Schleiermacher, nor any other critic, has as yet produced any tolerable proof for an internal theory of the Platonic dialogues.
Against such improbabilities (partly external partly internal) Schleiermacher has nothing to set except internal reasons: that is, when he shall have arranged the dialogues and explained the interdependence as well as the special place of each, the arrangement will impress itself upon all as being the intentional work of Plato himself.[49] But these “internal reasons” (innere Gründe), which are to serve as constructive evidence (in the absence of positive declarations) of Plato’s purpose, fail to produce upon other minds the effect which Schleiermacher demands. If we follow them as stated in his Introductions (prefixed to the successive Platonic dialogues), we find a number of approximations and comparisons, often just and ingenious, but always inconclusive for his point: proving, at the very best, what Plato’s intention may possibly have been — yet subject to be countervailed by other “internal reasons” equally specious, tending to different conclusions. And the various opponents of Schleiermacher prove just as much and no more, each on behalf of his own mode of arrangement, by the like constructive evidence — appeal to “internal reasons”. But the insufficient character of these “internal reasons” is more fatal to Schleiermacher than to any of his opponents: because his fundamental hypothesis — while it is the most ambitious of all and would be the most important, if it could be proved — is at the same time burdened with the strongest antecedent improbability, and requires the amplest proof to make it at all admissible.
[49] See the general Einleitung, p. 11.
Munk’s theory is the most ambitious, and the most gratuitous, next to Schleiermacher’s.
Dr. Munk undertakes the same large problem as Schleiermacher. He assumes the Platonic dialogues to have been composed upon a preconceived system, beginning when Plato opened his school, about 41 years of age. This has somewhat less antecedent improbability than the supposition that Plato conceived his system at 21 or 23 years of age. But it is just as much destitute of positive support. That Plato intended his dialogues to form a fixed series, exhibiting the successive gradations of his philosophical system — that he farther intended this series to coincide with a string of artistic portraits, representing Sokrates in the ascending march from youth to old age, so that the characteristic feature which marks the place and time of each dialogue, is to be found in the age which it assigns to Sokrates — these are positions for the proof of which we are referred to “internal reasons”; but which the dialogues do not even suggest, much less sanction.
The age assigned to Sokrates in any dialogue is a circumstance of little moment.
In many dialogues, the age assigned to Sokrates is a circumstance neither distinctly brought out, nor telling on the debate. It is true that in the Parmenidês he is noted as young, and is made to conduct himself with the deference of youth, receiving hints and admonitions from the respected veteran of Elea. So too in the Protagoras, he is characterised as young, but chiefly in contrast with the extreme and pronounced old age of the Sophist Protagoras: he does not conduct himself like a youth, nor exhibit any of that really youthful or deferential spirit which we find in the Parmenidês; on the contrary, he stands forward as the rival, cross-examiner, and conqueror of the ancient Sophist. On the contrary, in the Euthydêmus,[50] Sokrates is announced as old; though that dialogue is indisputably very analogous to the Protagoras, both of them being placed by Munk in the earliest of his three groups. Moreover in the Lysis also, Sokrates appears as old; — here Munk escapes from the difficulty by setting aside the dialogue as a youthful composition, not included in the consecutive Sokratic Cycle.[51] What is there to justify the belief, that the Sokrates depicted in the Phædrus (which dialogue has been affirmed by Schieiermacher and Ast, besides some ancient critics, to exhibit decided marks of juvenility) is older than the Sokrates of the Symposion? or that Sokrates in the Philêbus and Republic is older than in the Kratylus or Gorgias? It is true that the dialogues Theætêtus and Euthyphron are both represented as held a little before the death of Sokrates, after the indictment of Melêtus against him had already been preferred. This is a part of the hypothetical situation, in which the dialogists are brought into company. But there is nothing in the two dialogues themselves (or in the Menon, which Munk places in the same category) to betoken that Sokrates is old. Holiness, in the Euthyphron — Knowledge, in the Theætêtus — is canvassed and debated just as Temperance and Courage are debated in the Charmidês and Lachês. Munk lays it down that Sokrates appears as a Martyr for Truth in the Euthyphron, Menon, and Theætêtus and as a Combatant for Truth in the Lachês, Charmidês, Euthydêmus, &c. But the two groups of dialogues, when compared with each other, will not be found to warrant this distinctive appellation. In the Apologia, Kriton, and Phædon, it may be said with propriety that Sokrates is represented as a martyr for truth: in all three he appears not merely as a talker, but as a personal agent: but this is not true of the other dialogues which Munk places in his third group.
[50] Euthydêmus, c. 4, p. 272.