Rival Lovers
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The ''Lovers'' (; ) is a
Socratic dialogue Socratic dialogue () is a genre of literary prose developed in Greece at the turn of the fourth century BC. The earliest ones are preserved in the works of Plato and Xenophon and all involve Socrates as the protagonist. These dialogues, and subse ...
included in the traditional corpus of
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
's works, though its authenticity has been doubted.


Title

The Greek title ''Erastai'' is the plural form of the term ''erastēs'', which refers to the older partner in a pederastic relationship. Since in Classical Greek terms such a relationship consists of an ''erastēs'' and an ''erōmenos'', the title ''Lovers'', sometimes used for this dialogue, makes sense only if understood in the technical sense of "lover" versus "beloved" but is misleading if taken to refer to two people in a love relationship. Ancient manuscript marginalia suggest that the title might have been ''Anterastai'' (), which specifically means "Rival ''erastai''." This term, used in the dialogue itself (132c5, 133b3), is mentioned as the dialogue's title (together with a subtitle, ''On Philosophy'') in
Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; , ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving book ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek ph ...
' listing of the Thrasyllan tetralogies (3.59). The Latin translations ''Amatores'' and ''Rivales'' have also been used as the dialogue's title.


Synopsis

The rival lovers (''erastai'') of the title are an athlete, and a young man devoted to the humanities, ''mousikē'' (music) in the original text, a term that in ancient times included music, poetry, and philosophy. The dialogue opens with
Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
entering a grammar school, as a couple of young boys were quarrelling about something related to learning. Socrates asks the person next to him, who happened to be one of the boys lover, to tell him whether their quarrel was about an important issue in philosophy. Judging by his reply, Socrates gets the impression that this man is rather dismissive of philosophy altogether, a view that is immediately reinforced by the second interlocutor who interrupts to explain that his rival specialises in " chokeholds" (''τραχηλιζόμενος''), rather than philosophy. Socrates decides to interrogate both over the question whether philosophising is noble and admirable (''kalon''). The cultivated man replies that it is, and Socrates proceeds to ask him whether he actually knows what philosophy is in the first place (133c). He claims to know and answers that philosophy is essentially
polymath A polymath or polyhistor is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Polymaths often prefer a specific context in which to explain their knowledge, ...
y. With the help of his athletic rival, who knows that the good of exercise depends on being done in the right amount, not the maximum amount (134b-c), Socrates points out that the same is true of most good things, and turns to asking what kind of things the one who philosophizes (loves wisdom) ought to learn, if the object is not simply to know all or many things (135a). The cultivated rival suggests that the philosopher, while not needing to bother himself with the hands-on practicalities (''cheirourgia'', 135b), should aspire to a level of understanding in all the arts (''technai'') such that he is second only to the expert in that particular field—still a kind of polymathy. Socrates challenges this suggestion by forcing him to admit that, in any conceivable particular circumstance, the philosopher would be useless in comparison to a true expert on the matter. For example, a doctor would always be preferable to the philosopher in case of sickness, as would a pilot when in need to stir a ship. Socrates then proceeds by developing an alternative account of the philosopher's proper interest, based on the premise that goodness (which the interlocutors have agreed in ascribing to philosophy) depends critically on the knowledge of how to tell good men from bad, and train the bad to become better, which is also the knowledge needed to deal out punishments. This knowledge, the cultivated lover agrees, is the knowledge of the one who serves as judge (''hē dikastikē epistēmē'', 137d). Socrates goes on to argue that this knowledge can be identified with justice, self-control, and self-knowledge, and with the arts practiced by the statesman, the king (or tyrant), and the head of a household (or master). The conclusion is that these are all in fact just one art (138c), one of paramount importance, in which the philosopher must be supreme. When Socrates first met the rival lovers, he put little hope in conversation with the athletics enthusiast, who professed experience "in deeds (''erga'') and not in words (''logoi'')" (132d). But at the end he wins the crowd's applause by having shut up the "wiser" young man, so that it is the athletic rival who agrees with Socrates' conclusions (139a). The entire story of the discussion is told in the first person by Socrates, without any interruption or indication what audience he addresses. At just over seven Stephanus pages, ''Lovers'' is one of the shortest dialogues in the Thrasyllan canon of Plato's works (about the same length as ''
Hipparchus Hipparchus (; , ;  BC) was a Ancient Greek astronomy, Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Hippar ...
'', with only '' Clitophon'' being shorter).


Criticism


Question of authenticity

It is generally agreed that the dialogue was written in the second half of the fourth century BC and expresses the philosophical views, if not of Plato, then at least of an
Academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...
writer of this period. Stallbaum's verdict is typical of a long-held scholarly consensus: the language and style are irreproachable and worthy of Plato or
Xenophon Xenophon of Athens (; ; 355/354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian. At the age of 30, he was elected as one of the leaders of the retreating Ancient Greek mercenaries, Greek mercenaries, the Ten Thousand, who had been ...
, but the material is not developed in a way worthy of Plato's philosophical mind. Gerard Ledger's stylometric analysis of Plato's works did not find the expected statistical similarities between the Greek of ''Lovers'' and that of Plato's acknowledged works, instead showing a closer statistical match between this dialogue (as also '' Hippias Minor'') and the works of Xenophon. If the dialogue is post-Platonic, then perhaps it argues against
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
's insistence that the kinds of authority wielded by a king, a politician, and a master are multiple and essentially separate from each other. (On the other hand, it is possible that Aristotle refers in his works to ''Lovers'').


Rehabilitation

In a 1985 article, Julia Annas made a notable defense of the dialogue's possible value as an authentically Platonic production. Annas disagrees that the burden of proof need be on the proponent of the work's authenticity and proceeds from the premise that ''Lovers'' "contain no decisive indications either for or against authenticity" and that the most any investigation can accomplish is to "make it plausible that the ''Lovers'' is an early work by Plato."Annas, pp. 111–112. Her several arguments that this is plausible center on the claim that, if ''Lovers'' and '' First Alcibiades'' are genuine, they provide an otherwise missing background in Plato's thinking against which to understand his treatment of self-knowledge in '' Charmides''.


Notes


References

* Julia Annas, "Self-knowledge in Early Plato." In ''Platonic Investigations'', ed. Dominic J. O'Meara, pp. 111–138. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1985. * D.S. Hutchinson, introduction to ''Rival Lovers''. In ''Plato: Complete Works'', ed. John M. Cooper, pp. 618–619. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. * Gottfried Stallbaum, "Prolegomena in ''Rivales''." In ''Platonis opera omnia'', vol. 6, sect. 2, pp. 265–267. Gotha and Erfurt: Hennings, 1836.


External links


Plato, ''Rival Lovers''
at the
Perseus Project The Perseus Digital Library, formerly known as the Perseus Project, is a free-access digital library founded by Gregory Crane in 1987 and hosted by the Department of Classical Studies of Tufts University. One of the pioneers of digital libraries, ...
(Greek text in Burnet's 1901 Oxford Classical Text edition; English translation in W.R.M. Lamb's
Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a monographic series of books originally published by Heinemann and since 1934 by Harvard University Press. It has bilingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin literature, ...
version, revised edition of 1955)
Free public domain audiobook version of ''Rival Lovers''
translated by George Burges * . Collection includes Rival Lovers. George Burges, translator (1855). {{Authority control Dialogues of Plato