1. Lewis Nettleship, Richard, The Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato foreword by McClintock, Robert, Classics in Education No. 36 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1968), p. x.Google Scholar

2. Ryle, Gilbert, “If Plato Only Knew,” The New York Review of Books, XIII, No. 8 (November 6, 1969), p. 16.Google Scholar

3. Bloom, Allan, trans., The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968); Friedländer, Paul, Plato: The Dialogues, Second and Third Periods (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); Sayre, Kenneth M., Plato's Analytic Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).Google Scholar

4. Havelock, Eric A., Preface to Plato (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1967).Google Scholar

5. Versényi, Laszlo, Socratic Humanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963); Eckstein, Jerome, The Platonic Method: An Interpretation of the Dramatic-Philosophic Aspects of the Meno (New York: Greenwood, 1968); John Herman Randall Jr., Plato: Dramatist of the Life of Reason (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

6. In addition to Sayre, I presume it reasonable to include at least some of the following works in Ryle's second category: Zeller, Eduard, Plato and the Older Academy trans. Alleyne, S. F. and Goodwin, Alfred, 3rd ed. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962); Lutosawski, Wincenty, The Origin and Growth of Plato's Logic (London: Longman, Green, 1905); John Burnet, Greek Philosophy, Thales to Plato (London: Macmillan, 1950); Natorp, Paul, Platos Ideenlehre, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1921); Shorey, Paul, What Plato Said (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933); Cornford, F. M., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1935); Robin, Léon, Platon, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968); Stenzel, Julius, Plato's Method of Dialectic, trans. Allan, D. J. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1940); Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Platon, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1920); David Ross, Sir, Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1951); Taylor, A. E., Plato, the Man and his Works, 6th ed. (New York: Meridian Books, 1952); Robinson, Richard, Plato's Earlier Dialectic, 2nd ed. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1953); and literally a host of others. Ryle indicates his own proclivity when he asserts that the philosophical interpreters “try to do justice to Plato's reasonings by Aristotelianizing them” (Ibid.) What he fails to acknowledge is that this may be precisely the problem in understanding Plato. See Havelock's discussion as well as two excellent works cited by Havelock, : McDiarmid, J. B., “Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 61 (1953), 85–156, and Cherniss, H. F., Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1935).Google Scholar

7. Nettleship, op. cit. Google Scholar

8. On the studies of the history of thought and the history of ideas see Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), Chapter I; Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore: The Hopkins Press, Johns, 1948), Essay I; and “Reflections on the History of Ideas” in the first number of the Journal of the History of Ideas, I, No. 1 (Jan. 1942), 3–23. Also see Philip Wiener, P., “Some Problems and Methods in the History of Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXII, 4 (Oct.–Dec. 1961), 532–33.Google Scholar

9. It is with some trepidation I venture to identify the tradition we call philosophic. As evident in the statement, there is a strong Kantian, Hegelian, even Deweyan bias. Regardless, I am not attempting to define the tasks of philosophy, these change with time and philosophers. I only wish to identify, however loosely, the philosophic tradition, that is, the principal concerns for the history of philosophy. One is tempted to identify the philosophic tradition with that which historians of philosophy have dealt with and continue to deal with in their professional careers! While the tautology is obviously inadequate, it at least captures one aspect of the dynamic character of the philosophic tradition of which I will speak shortly.Google Scholar

10. See the Introduction to Windelband's, Wilhelm A History of Philosophy I, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1958) for a far more erudite consideration of these matters than I can muster in this brief paper.Google Scholar

11. See Wiener, , op. cit., pp. 531–32.Google Scholar

12. See Edel, Abraham, “Levels of Meaning in the History of Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas, VII, No. 3 (June 1946), 355–60. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Wiener, , op. cit., p. 532. Although Wiener's reference is to the history of ideas, the remarks apply equally to the history of philosophy.Google Scholar

14. The Edel paper which I cited earlier is part of a symposium of the history of thought published in Journal of the History of Ideas, VII, No. 3 (June 1946), 355–73, with additional contributions by Paul Oskar Kristeller and Wiener. The entire symposium may be profitably consulted on the topics I have briefly mentioned; on the distinction of history and philosophy, see especially the Kristeller paper. Windelband, incidently, believes the critical function is an integral part of the history of philosophy itself; he clearly distinguishes it from interpretation, however, so there is no dispute in conception.Google Scholar

15. Nettleship, op. cit., pp. 32–34.Google Scholar

16. See n. 6.Google Scholar

17. Nettleship, op. cit., pp. 99–101, 135 ff.Google Scholar

18. Gould, John, The Development of Plato's Ethics (Cambridge: The University Press, 1955), Part I. On Havelock and Randall, see below.Google Scholar

19. Nettleship, op. cit., p. 49.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., p. 50.Google Scholar

21. Grube, G. M. A., Plato's Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), pp. 189 ff.Google Scholar

22. Taylor, , op. cit., p. 280.Google Scholar

23. Barker, Ernest, Greek Political Theory: Plato and his Predecessors (London: Methuen, 1918), p. 432; see p. 222 ff.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., p. 225.Google Scholar

25. Havelock, op. cit., pp. 226–30.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 261.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p 270.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., p. 258.Google Scholar

29. See n. 2.Google Scholar

30. See n. 5.Google Scholar

31. Eckstein, op. cit., pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., p. 19.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 35.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., p. 75.Google Scholar

35. An especially brilliant paper in this genre is Bacon, H. H., “Socrates Crowned,” Virginia Quarterly Review, XXXV, No. 3 (Summer 1959), 415–30.Google Scholar

36. Woodbridge, Frederick J. E., The Son of Apollo (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969); for the Randall citation, see n. 5.Google Scholar

37. Randall, , op. cit., p. 120.Google Scholar

38. Untersteiner, Mario, The Sophists trans. Freeman, Kathleen (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954); see n. 5 for Versényi, n. 6 for Burnet.Google Scholar

39. For Havelock see n. 4, Cherniss n. 6.Google Scholar

40. Randall, op. cit., p. 40.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 136.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., pp. 138–39.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., p. 137.Google Scholar

44. Ibid., p. 144.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., p. 152.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., p. 156.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 198.Google Scholar