‘After
nearly a year, the message he had cast into the waters had brought results …
Wilkes’s first seminar, on Aristotle, took place on Wednesday evening at the
flat in Keramická Street; starting at the usual time of 6.00 p.m., it lasted until
midnight. Wilkes subsequently observed that: “… the discussions were the most
stimulating that I have experienced. It was impossible to receive a ‘standard
counter’ to a familiar argument, because they have had no chance to learn of
the ‘standard’ arguments; all comments were first-hand; absolute concentration
was sustained throughout the session – not surprisingly, given that they were
willing to take risks to attend.” (p. 35) … The chief focus of Tomin’s work was
Plato; Wilkes subsequently observed that “Tomin’s views, formed in unavoidable
isolation from secondary literature, were based on in-side-out familiarity with
the entire Greek corpus. Persecuted though they are, he and his colleagues are
free to ignore as faintly comic the intellectual demarcation lines of the West
…” Very often Tomin and Wilkes held opposing opinions, but part of the joy of
this visit was the discovery that differences helped to deepen the
relationship.’ (p.38)
The second
letter I wrote on May 7, 2018:
Dear Vice-Chancellor,
In 1977 I organized in
Prague a philosophy seminar for young men and women barred from higher
education by the Czechoslovak regime because of the involvement of their
parents in an attempt to combine socialism with basic human freedoms during the
Prague Spring of 1968. I was studying Plato and the best I could do for my
students was to present to them Plato’s dialogues. Each week I chose a
dialogue, worked on the Greek text, then with it in my hands I communicated
Plato’s thoughts to my students. It kept both me and my students interested.
In May 1978 I invited
Oxford academics to my seminar. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of
this event I wrote ‘Plato’s first dialogue – the Phaedrus in the light
of its dating’. In a letter of 27th February 2018, I offered it to
the director of the Institute for Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Arts
Faculty of Charles University; I am still waiting for a reply. If I do not get
permission to present the paper at the Faculty, on Wednesday May 16 2018 I
shall be presenting it at the entrance to the Arts Faculty on Jan Palach’s
square from 12.00-13.00. It will be celebration with protest. I will be
celebrating the possibility to go to Prague and to give the paper in front of
the Faculty and protesting against my having been refused to give it at the
Faculty.
Here I must say in defence
of Dr Jirsa, the director of the Institute: if he does not allow me to present
the paper at his Institute, he will simply follow the examples of Oxford and
Cambridge academics. How is it possible that I haven’t been allowed to present
the results of my work on Plato at Oxford University and that I am not to be
allowed to do so at Charles University?
At least a
part-explanation can be gleaned from the interview entitled ‘Philosophers in
knots over Dr Tomin’s Plato thesis’ published in The Daily Telegraph on
August 25, 1988: ‘A leading scholar responded yesterday to complaints by Dr
Julius Tomin, the Czech dissident philosopher, that he cannot get his
controversial work on Plato published in Britain. “He holds that the Phaedrus
is Plato’s first dialogue, which is contrary to the beliefs of pretty well all
scholars in the field in this century,” said Dr David Sedley, editor of the Classical
Quarterly, and director of studies in classics at Christ’s College,
Cambridge … If Dr Tomin were right, it would affect a great deal of Platonic
scholarship. “I think people just have great difficulty in seeing how it can be
right,” he said. “It means he is asking people, to give up nearly everything
else they believe about Plato’s development, but he is not telling us enough
about why we should give up all these other views … It is a scholarly
disagreement and I think he should try and present his views if he can, but
there is no obligation on journals to accept articles for publication.”’
Dr Sedley went on to say:
“He was simply picking up what Platonists of antiquity thought about the order
of Plato’s work, and assumed it to be true. His way of reading Plato has become
so much set around this particular view, that I think he feels an
extraordinarily strong commitment to preserving it. But from our point of view
we see this as a very old-fashioned view which was shared long ago and, to most
of us, does not seem to have these great merits.”
I haven’t come across any
views of Platonists of antiquity about the order of Plato’s work. Diogenes
Laertius says in his ‘Life of Plato’ that there is an ancient story according
to which the Phaedrus was Plato’s first dialogue, and in what he says about
the Lysis implies that Plato began to write dialogues while Socrates was
still living: ‘They say that, on hearing Plato read the Lysis, Socrates
exclaimed: “By Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is telling about
me!” For he has included in the dialogue much that Socrates never said.’ My
view was then and has been ever since that these two indications, meagre as
they are, ought not be thrown away without proper investigation. This set me on
a collision course with Platonic scholars who view the Phaedrus as
Plato’s late dialogue and all Plato’s dialogues as written after the death of
Socrates. I can point to four articles in which I expressed my views: ‘Dating
of the Phaedrus and Interpretation of Plato’ published in Antichthon
in 1988, ‘A Preliminary to the Study of Plato’ published in Symbolae
Osloenses in 1992, ‘Plato’s First Dialogue’ published in Ancient
Philosophy in 1997, and ‘Plato’s disappointment with his Phaedran
characters’ published in The Classical Quarterly in 2000.
Since none of these
articles had the desired effect – I remained excluded from academic contacts
and activities in the field – I began to write a book on Plato. Ten years ago,
I published the first volume, The Lost Plato, on my website. Years
followed when I got stuck; during those years I devoted myself to recording
Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Alcidamas, Xenophon, Aristophanes, Pindar and
Homer in the original; some of these recordings I put on my website. Then my
recorder got broken and I had no money to buy a new one. This proved to be a
godsend. If I had had a recorder, I would have spent the rest of my days
recording the Greeks, for I enjoyed it so much and it made the Greeks so much
more alive to me than just reading them in silence. With no digital recorder, I
had to discover a different way of intensive engagement with the Greeks. I
started a blog where I began to confide my thoughts as they came to me in
course of my studies. And so I began to make progress again in understanding
Plato.
I am still hoping that I
will be allowed to present ‘Plato’s first dialogue’ at Charles University. I
published it on my website and informed the Heads of the departments and
institutes about it, and I am sure they all would wish for it to be presented
at the Faculty and discussed. There are three experts on Plato at the Institute
of Philosophy and Religious Studies: Professor Karel Thein who studied Plato in
Paris under the tutelage of Jacques Derrida and worked as a Visiting Professor
at Corpus Christi at Oxford in 2003; Dr Jirsa, the director of the Institute,
who studied Plato under the tutelage of David Sedley and Gábor Betheg in
Cambridge; Dr Jakub Jínek who studied philosophy in Germany under the tutelage
of Professors Giovanni Reale and Fransisco Lisi. Furthermore, in this year the
Czech Republic celebrates the centenary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia. T.
G. Masaryk, the first president, was a philosopher, considered himself a
Platonist, and wanted the Czechs to make a contribution to mankind as a whole;
his motto was ‘Truth prevails’. It would be great if Charles University was the
first university at which the importance of viewing the Phaedrus as
Plato’s first dialogue for our understanding of Plato could be discussed. After
all, Plato is a cultural treasure that we all can share.
In any case, after
returning to England I shall translate the paper into English, put it on my
website and ask for permission to present it at Oxford University in April
2019, to mark the 40th anniversary of the first Oxford visit to my
philosophy seminar in Prague. In preparation, let me translate the first page
of ‘Plato’s first dialogue – the Phaedrus in the light of its dating’:
“Diogenes Laertius in his
‘Life of Plato’ preserved an ancient tradition that the Phaedrus was
Plato’s first dialogue. Platonic scholars rejected this tradition without
enquiring what the Phaedrus and Plato’s other dialogues would look like
if we took the ancient tradition as a hypothesis.
The first question is
whether the date of the dialogue can be determined on this hypothesis. The Charmides
will be of help, for the discussion with which it ends indicates that it was
written in the early days of the Thirty Tyrants, that is in 404 B.C. Socrates’
partners in the dialogue are Critias and Charmides who took part in the reign
of the Thirty. At the end of the dialogue the young Charmides decides to let
himself be educated by Socrates in the virtue of prudence, self-control and
temperance. Critias approves his decision and commands him to stick to Socrates.
When Socrates asks what they are conspiring about, Charmides answers that they
have done their conspiring. Socrates asks whether Charmides is going to resort
to force. Charmides replies: ‘I’ll resort to force since Critias orders me, and
therefore you had better consider well.’ – Socrates: ‘But there is nothing left
for consideration. When you’re intent on doing something and use force, no men
can resist you.’ – Charmides: ‘Do not resist me then.’ Socrates ends the
discussion and thus the whole dialogue with the words: ‘I won’t resist you.’
Charmides is dramatically
staged in 429 B.C., the year in which Plato was born. Socrates has just
returned from the siege of Potidaea where he spent a few years. The last time
he saw Charmides as a boy, and now he meets him as a young man in all the power
of his beauty. Charmides is well aware that Socrates is deeply taken with him,
makes the best of it, commands him, with a youthful playfulness threatens him
with force – and Socrates lets himself be commanded. But Plato could conceive
the dialogue in this manner only before the Thirty summoned Socrates and four
others to Tholos and ordered them to bring Leon from Salamis, as they wanted to
put him to death. Socrates said about it at his trial: ‘This was a specimen of
the sort of commands which they were always giving with the view of implicating
as many as possible in their crimes; and then I showed again, not in word only
but in deed, that, if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I care not a
straw for death, and that my great and only care is lest I should do an
unrighteous and unholy thing. For the strong arm of that oppressive power did
not frighten me into doing wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the other
four went to Salamis and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For which I
might have lost my life, had not the power of the Thirty shortly afterwards
come to an end.’ (Plato, The Apology 32c-d, translated by B. Jowett)
If we consider the Phaedrus
as Plato’s first dialogue, and if the Charmides was written in the early
days of the Thirty, that is in 404 B.C., then we may suppose that the Phaedrus
was written in 405 B.C. This means that it was written in the same year as
Aristophanes’ Frogs, which allows us to determine the dating of the Phaedrus
with precision. For towards the end of the comedy the chorus of the Frogs
is elated that Aeschylus returns to Athens from the underworld, and so he
won’t have to sit any more around Socrates having thrown away mousikê,
the greatest art. Had Plato written the Phaedrus prior to the Frogs,
Aristophanes could hardly have lampooned Socrates because of his unnamed
follower’s abandoning mousikê.”
In the paper I go on to
view the Phaedrus as Plato’s response to Aristophanes’ caricature of
Socrates, for in it he shows that philosophy is the greatest mousikê,
to which he has found his way because of Socrates. Viewed in this way the Phaedrus
becomes a document of great historical value and significance, shedding light
on the closing months of the Peloponnesian war. There is thus much to be
discussed both with the Czech and with the Oxford Platonic experts.
The 40th
anniversary of my invitation to Oxford dons deserves to be commemorated, for it
profoundly affected the fate of my country, as can be seen in Roger Scruton’s
‘A catacomb culture’ (TLS February 16-22, 1990): ‘Tomin then emigrated
and, so far as the Western press were concerned, that was the end of the
matter. However, a small sum of money had been given for the relief of our
Czechoslovak colleagues. Four of the philosophers who had visited Dr Tomin’s
seminar – Kathleen Wilkes, Alan Montefiore, Bill Newton-Smith and myself – used
this money to establish an educational trust. We decided that, although our
purpose was charitable, and in violation of neither English nor Czechoslovak
law, it should not be openly pursued, and that we could henceforth best help
our Czechoslovak colleagues by working secretly … we won the confidence of a
large network of people, none of whom knew the full extent of our operations …
Many of our visitors were extremely well known in their own countries … We also
encouraged our French, German, American and Canadian colleagues to establish
sister trusts, thereby acquiring an international dimension which was to prove
invaluable in the hard years to come … We therefore began to establish other,
purely nominal organizations through which to pay official stipends, so that
the names of our beneficiaries could not be linked either to us or to each
other …. In the mid-1980’s, thanks to a generous grant from George Soros (who
will surely be commemorated in future years, not only as a great Hungarian
patriot, but also as one of the saviours of Central Europe), we had expanded
into Moravia … Last summer, however, the organizer of our work in Slovakia, Ján
Čarnogurský was arrested … But the blessed Agnes of Bohemia had just been
canonized, and it was time of miracles. Two weeks later Čarnogurský was
released and made Deputy Prime Minister of his country, entrusted with amending
(or rather, re-creating) its law. By then another of our beneficiaries was
President [Václav Havel], and within weeks we were to see our friends occupying
the highest offices in the land … Among those who had worked with us we could
count the new rectors of the Charles University, of the Masaryk University (as
it is once again called) in Brno, and of the Palacký University in Olomouc.’ –
The full text is available on my website.
I hope I will be allowed
to present my paper on Plato at Oxford University in the near future.
Best wishes,
Julius Tomin
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