Poetry and Philosophy. Poetical and Argumentative Elements in Plato´s Philosophy

The primary goal of the project has been to study the complex and seemingly incompatible relationship between philosohical argumentation and poetic, or literary, elements in Plato's dialogues.The insight that Plato's dialogues constitute a proper genre, where poetic and argumentative elements form a unity, has given rise to new ways of analyzing the texts. The project has been working within this perspective. In opposition to a traditional analytic approach our interpretations of selected dialogues have aimed at an integration of the literary content in the analysis of the philosophical discussions in the texts. We have thus been able to expose a richer register of meaning and to show how Plato's philosophy emerges through his critical use of other literary genres and other cultural expressions. Our approach has thus enabled us to interpret Plato's philosophy not as a form of purely abstract thinking, but as constant attempts to win philosophical insights within a cultural and social context. The project's core group has been the Research group for Ancient philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen. This group has consisted of about ten persons: advanced students, PhD scholars, as well as both young and well established scholars. The project has had a broad Nordic and American network of about ten persons, several of whom are internationally well known Plato scholars, who have contributed to one or more of the project's five joint publications (of which two are still under review). Two PhD scholars have been part of the project: Gro Rørstadbotten, with funding from the project, and Erlend Breidal, with other funding. Breidal presented his thesis, "The Intermediate Being of Socratic Philosophy and its Suppression in Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman", in 2015. Rørstadbotten is expected to present her thesis, on Plato's dramatic staging of thoughts about peace within his philosophical literary universe, during the spring 2017. The project has also had a post doctor, Olof Pettersson, who has examined the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in selected dialogues. During his two-year scholarship he has written a number of articles, mainly for international journals. The project has arranged yearly international symposia, each year with the focus on one dialogue: the Symposium (2012), the Sophist (2013), the Protagoras (2014), and the Apology (2015). These symposia have formed the basis of the project: our monthly reading groups as well as our yearly workshops have mainly been devoted to the above mentioned dialogues, and the papers at the symposia have been edited with a view to joint publications. The project's joint publications are: - Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift, nr.1, 2013 (7 articles on the Symposium). - The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, vol. 13, 2014. (5 articles on the Sophist). - "Plato's Protagoras. Essays on the Confrontation of Philosophy and Sophistry" (anthology, 13 chapters, about 235 pages), Springer 2017. - "Readings of Plato's Apology: Defending a Philosophical Life" (anthology, 13 chapters, about 260 manuscript pages), under review by Lexington Books. - "Dialogue in Context. Readings of Plato" (anthology, 15 chapters, of which 6 are new, while the rest are revised versions of earlier published texts in connection to the project, about 300 manuscript pages), under review by Brill.

The aim of the project is to investigate the relationship between the poetical and the philosophical in Plato, and the kind of unified philosophical discourse that results. The project as a whole will look at Plato´s conception of philosophy as a separate genre, in opposition to and cooperation with other ancient literary genres. The project thus operates along the intersection between literature and philosophy. We will investigate different ways of interpreting the very form that Plato perfected for the conduct of philosophy: the philosophical dialogue. Plato´s extensive use of poetical elements renders his concept of philosophy complex and potentially ambiguous. We assume that these elements - such as metaphorical imagery, myths, allegories and analogi es - are not used accidentally or only for ornamental reasons, but that they are chosen with great care and need to be taken into account in the interpretation of Plato´s texts. On the one hand, not only Plato´s arguments but also the poetical elements mu st somehow reflect Plato´s demand for truth, but on the other hand, these poetical elements are not easily harmonized with passages of a more straightforward expository style. The project will have three central paths of investigation: 1) The figure of t he philosopher. We will study and describe the complex figure of the philosopher presented in the dialogues, attempting to describe this new sort of figure in juxtaposition to the more traditional existing model of wisdom in Greek culture; 2) Plato´s phil osophical arguments. We will highlight the problematic nature of argumentation set in the context of a dialogue, focussing on two of Plato´s main argumentative strategies: the elenchus and the techne-analogy, which can both have ambiguous, even doubtful r esults; 3) Plato´s dialogues and imitative poetry. We will examine the complex relation between Plato´s dialogical dramas and imitative poetry. Obviously, these three paths overlap thematically.