Plato's unwritten doctrines

In the middle of the twentieth century, historians of philosophy initiated a wide-ranging project aiming at systematically reconstructing the foundations of the unwritten doctrines.

The group of researchers who led this investigation, which became well-known among classicists and historians, came to be called the 'Tübingen School' (in German: Tübinger Platonschule), because some of its leading members were based at the University of Tübingen in southern Germany.

For scholars, 'esoteric' indicates only that the unwritten doctrines were intended for a circle of philosophy students inside Plato's school (in Greek, 'esoteric' literally means 'inside the walls').

They see in these teachings the core of Plato's philosophy and have reached a fairly settled picture of their fundamentals, though many important details remain unknown or controversial.

[28] According to the Tübingen interpretation, the two opposing principles determine not only the ontology of Plato's system, but also its logic, ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, cosmology, and psychology.

In cosmology, the One is evidenced by rest, persistence, and the eternality of the world, as well as the presence of life in the cosmos and the pre-determined activity of the Demiurge Plato mentions in his Timaeus.

[34] Most favor resolving the dispute by concluding that, although Plato indeed considered the Indefinite Dyad as the indispensable and fundamental element of our ordered world, he nonetheless posited the One as some higher, overarching principle of unity.

[37] Two leading figures of the Tübingen School, Hans Joachim Krämer[38] and Konrad Gaiser[30] conclude that Plato has a single system with both monistic and dualistic aspects.

'[24] Heinz Happ,[40] Marie-Dominique Richard,[41] and Paul Wilpert[42] argued against every derivation of the Dyad from a superior principle of unity, and consequently contended that Plato's system was dualistic.

Jens Halfwassen believes that knowledge of the realm of the Forms rests centrally upon direct intuition, which he understands as unmediated comprehension by some non-sensory, 'inner perception' (Ger., Anschauung).

[59] Konrad Gaiser argues that Plato formulated the unwritten doctrines as a coherent and complete philosophical system but not as a 'Summa of fixed dogmas preached in a doctrinaire way and announced as authoritative.'

According to Plato, knowledge is not won simply by grasping things with the intellect; instead, it is achieved as the fruit of prolonged efforts made by the entire soul.

The lecture on the Good and the ensuing discussions formed part of an ongoing series of talks, in which Plato regularly over the period of several decades made his students familiar with the unwritten doctrines.

Gaiser supposes that he opened the lectures to the public in order to confront distorted reports of the unwritten doctrines and thereby to deflate the circulating rumors that the Academy was a hive of subversive activity.

In the nineteenth century a scholarly debate began that continues to this day over the question of whether unwritten doctrines must be considered and over whether they constitute a philosophical inheritance that adds something new to the dialogues.

In 1808, August Boeckh, who later became a well-known Greek scholar, stated in an edition of Schleiermacher's Plato translations that he did not find the arguments against the unwritten doctrines persuasive.

There was a great probability, he said, that Plato had an esoteric teaching never overtly expressed but only darkly hinted at: 'what he here [in the dialogues] did not carry out to the final point, he there in oral instruction placed the topmost capstone on.

These included John Burnet, Julius Stenzel, Alfred Edward Taylor, Léon Robin, Paul Wilpert, and Heinrich Gomperz.

Cherniss insisted that Plato had consistently championed the Theory of Forms and that there was no plausible argument for the assumption that he modified it according to the supposed principles of the unwritten doctrines.

The proponents of this anti-systematic approach at least agree that the essence of Plato's way of doing philosophy is not the establishment of individual doctrines but rather shared, 'dialogical' reflection and in particular the testing of various methods of inquiry.

[87] Further well-known proponents of the Tübingen paradigm include Thomas Alexander Szlezák, who also taught at Tübingen from 1990 to 2006 and worked especially on Plato's criticism of writing,[88] the historian of philosophy Jens Halfwassen, who taught at Heidelberg and especially investigated the history of Plato's two principles from the fourth century BCE through Neo-Platonism, and Vittorio Hösle, who teaches at the University of Notre Dame (USA).

[89] Supporters of the Tübinger approach to Plato include, for example, Michael Erler,[90] Jürgen Wippern,[91] Karl Albert,[92] Heinz Happ,[93] Willy Theiler,[94] Klaus Oehler,[95] Hermann Steinthal,[96] John Niemeyer Findlay,[36] Marie-Dominique Richard,[41] Herwig Görgemanns,[97] Walter Eder,[98] Josef Seifert,[99] Joachim Söder,[100] Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker,[101] Detlef Thiel,[102] and—with a new and far-reaching theory—Christina Schefer.

[103] Those who partially agree with the Tübingen approach but have reservations include Cornelia J. de Vogel,[104] Rafael Ferber,[105] John M. Dillon,[106] Jürgen Villers,[55] Christopher Gill,[107] Enrico Berti,[108] and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

[109] Since the important research of Giovanni Reale, an Italian historian of philosophy who extended the Tübingen paradigm in new directions, it is today also called the 'Tübingen and Milanese School.

[113] These critics include: in the USA, Gregory Vlastos and Reginald E. Allen;[114] in Italy, Franco Trabattoni[115] and Francesco Fronterotta;[116] in France, Luc Brisson;[117] and in Sweden, E. N.

[130] Wolfgang Wieland accepts the reconstruction of the unwritten dialogues but rates its philosophical relevance very low and thinks it cannot be the core of Plato's philosophy.

[131] Franz von Kutschera maintains that the existence of the unwritten doctrines cannot be seriously questioned but finds that the tradition of reports about them are of such low quality that any attempts at reconstruction must rely on the dialogues.

[132] Domenico Pesce affirms the existence of unwritten doctrines and that they concerned the Good but condemns the Tübingen reconstruction and in particular the claim that Plato's metaphysics was bipolar.

[133] There is a striking secondary aspect apparent in the sometimes sharp and vigorous controversies over the Tübingen School: the antagonists on both sides have tended to argue from within a presupposed worldview.

Konrad Gaiser remarked about this aspect of the debate: 'In this controversy, and probably on both sides, certain modern conceptions of what philosophy should be play an unconscious role and for this reason there is little hope of a resolution.