HPhil Seminar: 4 May 2017

4 May 2017, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, Sala Mattos Romão

Medicines Drenched in Honey: Olympiodorus on the Method of Platonic Philosophy

Pauliina Remes
(Uppsala University)

In recent decades, Plato scholarship has seen a development, one that has also lead to a dangerous divide. The so-called literary reading of Plato has, rightly, highlighted the way in which the dialogues are complex literary compositions that have to be treated as unitary holes. In the case of Plato, one cannot merely extract an argument. The interlocutor’s person, the dialogical situation and other literary devices in use have to be taken into account. This has often led into opposition of the so-called argumentative-philosophical reading and literary reading. This presentation will show how an early Platonic interpreter, Olympiodorus, conceives of Platonic methodology of doing philosophy. He argues, in a surprisingly contemporary fashion, that the distinctiveness of his method lies in context- and person-sensitivity. But in Olympiodorus’ view there are epistemological-metaphysical foundations behind this methodology. In his eyes, argumentative-philosophical and literary are parts of the same project, parts that cannot be studied nor understood in separation.