3b C. J. Rowe’s arguments for a late dating of the Phaedrus – ‘Joining the Beginning to the End’

The international symposium ‘The Significance of the Republic and the Laws in Plato’s Thought’ was held in Prague on April 4-5^th, 1997, on the occasion of the founding of the ‘Czech Plato Society’. On that occasion I gave a paper on ‘Joining the Beginning to the End’, which was then published in the ‘Proceedings of the First Symposium Platonicum Pragense’. I republished it on my website with permission of the publishing house OIKOYMENH.  I bring here an extract from it, which is directly relevant to Rowe’s argument ‘4. Other clear connections with Laws 10, as has long been noticed, are to be found in the arguments for immortality (245c-246a)’. I lived still in Oxford, and so I had access to relevant secondary literature.

Let me start with the beginning and the end of the paper:

‘A Stranger from Athens, Cleinias from Crete, and Megillus from Sparta walk along the road from Cretan City of Cnossus to the cave and temple of Zeus. The Athenian asks about the divine provenance of the laws in Crete and in Sparta, and his fellow travellers are happy to answer his queries. The journey promises to be agreeable, for along the road there will be convenient shady places under the lofty trees where they can relax; this is important, for they are old, all three of them, and the heat of the day is upon them (pnigous ontos ta nun, 625b3).

This is the opening scene of the Laws. It reminds the reader of the Phaedrus; there too the discussion takes place in the countryside, Socrates feels himself a stranger (230c), he and Phaedrus enjoy the shade of a lofty tree (230b), and the heat of the day is upon them (en tȏi pnigei, 258e7). Thesleff noticed the similarity and inferred from it that Plato began to write the Laws shortly after the Phaedrus. (H.Thesleff, Studies in Platonic Chronology, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki, 1982, p. 187) The ancient tradition according to which the Phaedrus was Plato’s first dialogue invites a different explanation: when Plato in his old age embarked on writing the Laws he returned in his thought to his first work.’

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‘The Phaedrus ends with Phaedrus’ wish to partake of Socrates’ philosophy: “For friends share all things in common” (koina gar ta tȏn philȏn, 279c2-3). When the Athenian Stranger decides to join the foundation of the proposed city, he declares it to be “a common task for friends” (ȏ philoi, en koinȏi kai mesȏi eoiken hȇmin keisthai, 968e7-8).’

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‘The similarities concerning the notion of the soul in the Phaedrus and in the Laws have led a number of scholars to believe that the two share the same proof of the immortality of the soul, from which they derived a strong argument for the late dating of the former dialogue. But this is wrong, for although the soul is defined in both as the principle of motion, there is a fundamental difference between the two. In the Phaedrus the soul is proved to be immortal because it is declared to be the ungenerated first principle (archȇ de agenȇton, 245d1); in the Laws it is emphasized that the soul is the generated principle of motion (archȇn ara kinȇseȏs … genomenȇn, 895b4, cf. 892a-c). What is proved in the Laws is not the immortality of the soul, but only its priority to all bodily matter, to which the soul imparts motion (dedeiktai psuchȇ tȏn pantȏn presbutatȇ, genomenȇ ge archȇ kinȇseȏs, 896b2-3). In other words, Plato is arguing that the soul was generated before the body (psuchȇn proteran gegonenai sȏmatos, 896c1-2). What stands between the Phaedrus and the Laws is the creation of the soul by the demiurge, which Plato described in the Timaeus. In order to introduce the Phaedran notion of soul in the Laws, Plato had to revise it.’

In the note accompanying the opening sentence of this paragraph I wrote: ‘See e.g. H. Thesleff, Studies in Platonic Chronology, op. cit. p. 177 (n. 56): “… the proof of immortality in Phdr. 245c-246a is much more sophisticated than R X 617dff., and is adopted again in Leg.X 894b ff, cf. de Vries 1969. 9.” G.J. de Vries, A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato, Amsterdam 1969, p. 9: “A stronger argument [for the post-Republic dating of the Phaedrus] may be found in the proof of the soul’s immortality, offered in the Phaedrus; it is hardly conceivable that Plato would have published the rather clumsy argumentation of Rep. X if the better argument of Phdr. (used in Laws too), based on the soul’s motion, had been at his disposal.” See further L. Robin, La Théorie Platonicienne de l’amour, Paris 1908 (repr. 1964), pp. 70 and 97.'