A letter to the Master of Balliol College, University of Oxford

 

Dear Master,

More than a month ago, on Feb. 28, I sent a mail to Professor William Allen, the Head of the Faculty of classics, entitled ‘An information and requests’. Concerning the information I wrote: ‘Apology 18a7 - b3 Socrates says: 'First then it is right for me to defend myself against the first false accusations brought against me, and the first accusers. For many accusers have risen up against me before you, who have been speaking for a long time, many years already, and saying nothing true; and I fear them more than Anytus and his associates, though these also are dangerous.'

This text provides the shortest and most potent proof for dating the Meno prior to the Apology.

The Meno ends with Socrates' address to Meno: 'It is now time for me to go my way, but do you persuade our friend Anytus of that of what you are now yourself persuaded, so as to put him in a gentler mood; for if you can persuade him, you will do a good turn to the people of Athens also.' 

How could Plato make Socrates say these words about Anytus after he made him point to him as his accuser in the court? In other words: How could have been the Meno written after the Apology?’

Concerning the requests I wrote: ‘Let me end with two requests. The first concerns the Internet. May the wrong information about the dating of the Meno be removed from the Internet?
The second request: May I present a paper on the Meno at the Faculty of Classics?’

On March 31 I wrote to Professor Allan: ‘On February 28 I sent you an email entitled ‘An information and requests’. I have not received any reply. I have therefore decided to protest again at Balliol with LET US DISCUSS PLATO.

A few years ago, I read your ‘Euripides Helen’; ever since, your edition had been engraved in my mind; it is excellent; written to be read and discussed. Whenever I turned to it in my memory, I just could not understand your ‘response’ (no response is a powerful response) to my proposal to present under your auspices a paper on Plato’s Meno. After my email of February 28, I decided to read your ‘Euripides Helen’ again, and I was even more impressed than in my first reading. This second reading was the last straw that compelled me to resort once again to protesting at Balliol.’

Dear Master, may I apply to you with a polite request? Because of my old age I intend to bring with me a collapsible chair, although it will be awkward to transport it by bus to railway station in Dursley, by trains from Dursley to Oxford, and from railway station in Oxford to Balliol; it would be great if Balliol could lend me a chair.

With best wishes,

Julius Tomin

5 A letter to Barron Trump

 Dear Barron,

The second bone of contention between me and Oxford philosophers has become my dating of Plato's Phaedrus. These two are circumstantially linked.

Dr Kenny with his wife visited us in April 1980, Dr Wilkes visited us in May 1980; she wanted to know what happened. At that time I knew only what happened in our flat. I gave her the gist of my short discussion with Dr Kenny about Socrates and Plato. I said:

'Kathy, you know that passage in Diogenes Laertius' Life of Plato, which informs us that the Phaedrus was Plato's first dialogue? In all my reading of Plato I have not come across anything that contradicts that story.'

Kathy exclaimed: 'It can't be!'

And so I asked Kathy to come to Prague for a month and read with me the Phaedrus. Dr Wilkes got a stipend from the British Academy. During that reading we came across a passage which indicates that the Phaedrus was written several years before the execution of Socrates.

Socrates' second speech on love ends with a prayer to Eros: 'This, dear god of love, is offered to you as the finest and best palinode of which I am capable... Forgive what went before and regard this with favour... If in our earlier speech Phaedrus and I said anything harsh against you, blame Lysias as the instigator of the speech, and make him cease from speeches of that kind, turning him instead, as his brother Polemarchus has been turned, to philosophy.' (Translation C.J. Rowe)

Polemarchus was killed by the Thirty Tyrants during the rule of aristocrats at the end of the Peloponnesian war. It was a sordid affair, as we learn from Lysias' speech Against Eratosthenes: 'Polemarchus received from the Thirty their accustomed order to drink hemlock, with no statement made as to the reason for his execution: so far did he come short of being tried and defending himself. And when he was being brought away dead from the prison, although we had three houses among us, they did not permit his funeral to be conducted from any of them, but they hired a small hut in which to lay him out... They had seven hundred shields of ours, they had all that silver and gold, with copper, jewellery, furniture and women's apparel... also a hundred and twenty slaves, of whom they took the ablest, delivering the rest to the Treasury; and yet to what extremes of insatiable greed for gain did they go... For some twisted gold earrings, which Polemarchus' wife chanced to have, were taken out of her ears by Melobius as soon as he entered the house... And not even in respect of the smallest fraction of our property did we find any mercy in their hands; but our wealth impelled them to act as injuriously towards us as others might from anger aroused by grievous wrongs. This was not the treatment that we deserved at the city's hands, when we had produced all our dramas for their festivals ["Referring to the expensive duty, imposed on wealthy citizens, of equipping a chorus for a dramatic performance" notes the translator.], and contributed to many special levies; when we showed ourselves men of orderly life, and performed every duty laid upon us... when we had ransomed many Athenians from the foe...' (Translation W.R.M Lamb)

Lysias allows us to see why Plato presented to Lysias Polemarchus - Lysias' older brother and the head of the family - as a model, prior to Polemarchus' death, but not after Polemarchus died in the hands of the Thirty.

4 A letter to Barron Trump

 Dear Barron Trump,

There are two bones of contention between me and the classicists:

1 When I read a Greek text, I understand it directly, in Greek; Classicist all around the world must translate the Greek into their mother tongue, and only thus they can understand the given text.

How do I know this? When I began to learn Ancient Greek I did so with the help of German, English, and French text books and dictionaries. Thus I learnt that students all around the world learnt their Greek by translating chosen texts from their mother tongue into Greek, from Greek into their mother tongue.

When Dr Wilkes from St Hilda's came to my seminar, she could not believe that I understood Greek Greek, without translating it into English; she believed that I was quick thinking and translated the chosen sentence so quickly into Czech or English that I could maintain that I understood it directly, in Greek. But of course, if that were the case, I could have done it with a chosen sentence or two, I could not possibly do it with a whole paragraph, let alone a whole page. This is where Kenny's attempt to expose me as a fibber comes to the fore.

As I mentioned in the quotation from the 'Pursuit of Philosophy', Kenny's visit was expected with great expectations. Everybody in Prague and in Oxford expected that Kenny would put me to my place and  liberate the seminar from Tomin. Kenny was going to Prague with his wife, and to make his visit secure, he discussed it (on March 19th) with Minister-Counsellor Dr Telička, the second in command in Czechoslovak Embassy in London. (See Barbara Day The Velvet Philosophers, London, 1999)

Nobody expected that instead of exposing me as a fibber Kenny would provide me with an opportunity to excel in the last meeting with my students. Interestingly, the secret police who bugged my seminar did not interfere during my translation of the two pages from Aristotle's 2 Ethics. The police burst into my room only after I finished my translation and opened the discussion with a remark in support of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethic:

'Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics views philosophy as a key to good life, for it is independent of external circumstances, whereas the other virtues need something extra, e.g. generosity, justice... I believe that when Aristotle wrote that Nicomachean passage he had Socrates in mind.'

Kenny did not dispute my Socratic view of the passage; instead, he asked: 'Julius, Don't you agree that Socrates was a man of high moral principles, but a poor philosopher, whereas Plato was a morally dubious character, but a great philosopher?' I replied:

'Tony, you obviously make such a cut through Plato's dialogues, that you view as Socratic everything that falls below the line thus determined, and all that is above that line is genuinely Plato's. I do not draw any such dividing line through Plato's works.' 

At that point the police marched in.

***

Barbara Day wrote in The Velvet Philosophers:

'Anthony Kenny and his American-born wife had been the fist to be driven to Bartolomějská [the police headquarters], were held until three in the morning and interrogated in separate rooms... The Kennys were delivered to the border-crossing with West Germany, and, carrying their luggage, walked through the woods of Rozvadov in the frosty dawn of an April morning.

Tomin and his students remained locked  up for something over the statutory 48 hours.'

3 A letter to Barron Trump

2 continued

The Phaedrus opens with Socrates' 'My dear Phaedrus, where are you going, and from where do you come?' Phaedrus replies that he comes from Lysias and that he goes for a walk. With Lysias he spent the whole morning, for Lysias presented to his friends a talk in which he argued that favours should be presented to a man who is not in love rather than to one who is. Socrates wants to hear it, so Phaedrus finds a place under a plane-tree where he reads it to him. 

Having read Lysias' speech, Phaedrus maintained that Lysias left out nothing important that could be said on that subject, so that no one could make a better speech on it. Socrates disagrees and embarks on a rival speech, which he directs to a boy, imagining the boy in front of himself. He ends the denunciation of a lover by comparing him to a wolf: 'So these, boy, are the things you must bear in mind; the attentions of a lover do not come with good will; as wolf to lamb, so lover to the lad.'

With these words Socrates was about to end his speech: 'Not a word more shall you have from me, let that be the end of my discourse.' But Phaedrus objected, reminding Socrates that he was not only to denounce the lover, but as well point out good things about the non-lover. Unwilling to embark on a praise of the non-lover's intercourse with the boy, Socrates says: 'In one short sentence, to each evil for which I have abused the one party there is a corresponding good belonging to the other.'

Phaedrus pointed out that it was midday, the hottest part of the day, and begged him to stay under the shade of the plan-tree, and spend their time by discussing the two speeches. Socrates agreed; he praised Phaedrus' love of discussion, adding that just as he was to cross Ilissus/ the little river, he heard his inner voice that told him 'NO!': 

'A dreadful speech it was, Phaedrus, dreadful, both the one you brought with you, and the one you compelled me to make. Suppose we were being listened to by a man of generous and humane character who loved another such as himself; wouldn't he utterly refuse to accept our vilification of love?

And so Socrates embarks on a Palinode (recantation), which he ends with a prayer to Eros: 'This, dear god of love, is offered you as the finest and best palinode (recantation) of which I am capable: If, in our earlier  speech Phaedrus and I said anything harsh against you, blame Lysias as the instigator of the speech, and make him cease from speeches of that kind, turning him instead, as his brother Polemarchus has been turned, to philosophy.''

Polemarchus was put to death by the Thirty during their short reign of terror, with which ended the Peloponnesian war, that is in 404 BC. The death to which Polemarchus was subjected by the Thirty was a despicable death, described by Lysias in his speech Against Eratosthenes, which he delivered shortly after the victory of the democrats against the rule of the aristocrats. I cannot see how Plato could have written the Phaedrus with the advice to Lysias to follow the example of his older brother Polemarchus.

Reading the Phaedrus with DR Wilkes, in Prague, shortly before embarking on our journey to Oxford, Dr Wilkes fully agreed with me. Plato had to write the Phaedrus prior to the end of Polemarchus in the hands of the Thirty, that is some four years prior to Socrates' trial and death.

2 A letter to Barron Trump

 2 The second bone of contention between me and classicists concerned the dating of Plato's  Phaedrus. Dr Wilkes visited me on May 16, eager to know what actually happened with Dr Kenny. At that time I knew nothing about the expulsion of Dr Kenny from Czechoslovakia; for all knew they could still be in prison. And so I concentrated on the moment that triggered the police disruption of our meeting.

I explained to Kathy how Kenny opened his talk by explaining that he would speak about Aristotle's Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics, focussing on a passage from each: 'He then asked me to translate those two passages in Czech. When I did so I opened the discussion with a few words in defence of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: "Tony, I think that when Aristotle wrote our Nicomachean passage he had in front of his mind Socrates' days in prison, before his execution." Kenny retorted: "But Julius, don't you agree that Socrates was a man of high moral principles, but a poor philosopher, whereas Plato was a great philosopher but a questionable character?"

***

The big bold letters is an unwanted intervention. Obviously, anything I write on my computer is closely watched, but this is the first time that my writing on my blog was interfered with.

***

I replied: "Tony, you appear to make such a cut through Plato's dialogues that you find Socrates below the line which you draw between poor philosophy and great philosophy. I don't make any such cut through Plato's dialogues." As I said this, the Czech police marched in.'

My response to Dr Kenny was abrupt, and so I said: 'You know, Kathy, that passage in Diogenes Laertius that there was a story (logos) that the Phaedrus was Plato's first dialogue? In all my reading of Plato I haven't come across anything that might contradict that logos.' Kathy exclaimed: 'But it can't be.' And so I suggested to Kathy to come to Prague in July, for a month, so that we could read the Phaedrus together and see. 

Kathy came in July, we read the dialogue; Kathy could not think of anything in Plato that might contradict the logos of the Phaedrus being Plato's first dialogue, but we came across a passage that suggests that the Phaedrus was written several years prior to Socrates' trial and execution. 

Since the point is important and involves references to Lysias' speech favouring sex unaccompanied by love and a quotation from the speech in which Socrates refutes Lysias, I shall leave the corroboration of the ancient dating of the Phaedrus to the next entry in my blog.

1 A letter to Barron Trump

 Dear Barron Trump,

I am 86; profoundly influenced by your speech at your father's first inauguration as U S A President, I've devoted the last 4 entries on my blog to 'On Hope, inspired by Barron Trump; on Trust, inspired by Ivanka Trump.' I need your inspiration, for during the last 44 years I lost hope, with which I arrived in Great Britain.

What were the hopes with which I arrived to Britain in 1980? My main hopes were two; they both derived  from Dr Kenny's  - the Master of Balliol College, university of Oxford - visit in my seminar. 

Dr Kenny opened the seminar by announcing that he would talk about ethics in Aristotle's Eudemian  Ethics and in the Nicomachean Ethics. He informed us that these two works have three books in common, which have been in modern times commonly published only in the Nicomachean Ethics, which has been considered later of the two and viewed as Aristotle's mature ethics. Kenny with stylometric investigations proved that the three common books belonged originally to the Eudemian Ethics, which he consequently regarded as Aristotle's, while the Nicomachen Ethics he viewed as notes scribbled by Aristotle's students. Contrasting the difference between the two, Kenny said  'A person who organised his life entirely with a view to the promotion of philosophical speculation would not be wise but cunning, not phronimos but panourgos. The type of person whom many regard as the hero of the Nicomachean Ethics turns out, by the standards of the Eudemian Ethics, to be a vicious and ignoble character.' 

A thought went through my mind: 'Am I to be exposed by Kenny as a person who is not wise but cunning, not phronimos but panourgos?'

Kenny said that he wanted to focus his talk on a passage from the Eudemian Ethics and a passage from the Nicomachean Ethics. 

Then Kenny turned to me: 'Julius, would you translate these two passages for your students!'

I replied: 'I shall do so, reading each sentence aloud in Greek, then giving it in Czech.'

***

Translation is a laborious process; Kenny presented me with a task which no classicist and no classical philosopher could master. Why did he do so? What did he want to accomplish?

Toward 1970s the top men of the KGB realised that Communism was untenable and began to cooperate with the CIA and MI6 on its desmantling. By inviting western Academics to my seminar I unwittingly prepared a space within which this cooperation developed and thrived. Only one thing was wrong, my insistence on openness. I had to go.

In November 1979 Kenny invited me to Balliol, and .I was invited to Kings College Cambridge. I was honoured, but could not abandon my students. There was only one way to get me out, my philosophy seminar had to be destroyed. After the police intervention that destroyed Kenny's visit, I could not reopen my seminar. The police prevented it Wednesday by Wednesday.

4 On Hope, inspired by Barron Trump. On Trust, inspired by Ivanka Trump

Plato's dialogues are full of Socrates. The question is whether he wrote any dialogues during Socrates' life-time, or whether he began to write dialogues only after the death of Socrates. On this question the internet 'informs' his readers quite definitely: Plato began to write his dialogues after Socrates' death.

In Platonic Chronology and Writings the first period of Plato's writings begins in 399, the date of Socrates' death. The section on Meno is  introduced with the words 'Meno is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 385 BC., but set at an earlier date around 402 BC.'

This is wrong; Plato must have written the Meno before Socrates died.

There are few things or events, if any, that can be proved with as much certainty, as the fact that the Meno was written before Socrates died.

In the Meno there is a discussion between Socrates and Anytus - the man who will become Socrates' accuser at the trial - at which Socrates subjects Anytus, the leading politician of those days, to painful irony:

Meno reiterates the main subject of the discussion by asking Socrates: 'Do you think there are no teachers of virtue?' In his reply Socrates introduces Anytus into the discussion. 'But look, Meno: here, at the very moment when he was wanted, we have Anytus sitting down beside us, to take his share in our quest. And we may well ask his assistance; for Anytus is, firstly, the son of a wise and wealthy father, Anthemion, who became rich by his own skill and industry; and further, he gave his son a good upbringing and education, as the Athenian people think, for they chose him for the highest offices.'

This pained; some three years later, at the trial, 'Anytus and his associates' (hoi amphi Anyton, Plato Apology 17b3) stand behind Meletus' accusation of Socrates.

In the Apology Socrates points to 'Anytus and his associates' (tous amphi Anyton) as his present  accusers (18a-b). If Plato wrote the Meno after the death of Socrates, how could he possibly end it with the following words of Socrates: 'It is time now for me to go my way, but do you persuade our friend Anytus of that whereof you are now yourself persuaded, so as to put him in a gentler mood; for if you can persuade him, you will do a good turn to the people of Athens also'?

May I hope that now, in the reign of Donald Trump, the truth about the dating of the Meno will be put on the internet?