Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T19:01:22.042Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Socrates' Aspasian Oration: The Play of Philosophy and Politics in Plato's Menexenus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Stephen G. Salkever
Stephen G. Salkever
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Plato's Menexenus is overlooked, perhaps because of the difficulty of gauging its irony. In it, Socrates recites a funeral oration he says he learned from Aspasia, describing events that occurred after the deaths of both Socrates and Pericles' mistress. But the dialogue's ironic complexity is one reason it is a central part of Plato's political philosophy. In both style and substance, Menexenus rejects the heroic account of Athenian democracy proposed by Thucydides' Pericles, separating Athenian citizenship from the quest for immortal glory; its picture of the relationship of philosopher to polis illustrates Plato's conception of the true politikos in the Statesman. In both dialogues, philosophic response to politics is neither direct rule nor apolitical withdrawal. Menexenus presents a Socrates who influences politics indirectly, by recasting Athenian history and thus transforming the terms in which its political alternatives are conceived.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 87 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 133 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Clavaud, Robert. 1980. Le “Menexène” de Platon et al rhétorique de son temps. Paris: Belles Lettres.Google Scholar
Coventry, Lucinda. 1989. “Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Menexenus.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 109:1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desjardins, Rosemary. 1990. The Rational Enterprise: Logos in Plato's “Theaetctus.” Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Dodds, E. R. 1959. Plato: Gorgias. London: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Euben, J. Peter. 1990. The Tragedy of Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halperin, David M. 1990. “Why Is Diotima a Woman? Platonic Eros and the Figuration of Gender.” In One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Henderson, M. M. 1975. “Plato's Menexenus and the Distortion of History.” Acta Classica 18:25–46.Google Scholar
Kahn, Charles. 1963. “Plato's Funeral Oration: the Motive of the Menexenus.” Classical Philology 220–34.Google Scholar
Loraux, Nicole. 1974. “Socrate contrepoison de l'oraison de funèbre.” L'antiquité classiaue 43:172–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loraux, Nicole. 1986. The Invention of Athens: the Funeral Oration in the Classical City. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Manville, Philip. 1990. The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Méridier, Louis, ed. 1931. Plato: Oeuvres Complètes. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.Google Scholar
Ober, Josiah 1989. Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, Stanley. 1991. “Leo Strauss and the Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns.” In Leo Strauss's Thought, ed. Udoff, Alan. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Stern, H. S. 1974. “Plato's Funeral Oration.” New Scholasticism 48:503–08.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strauss, Leo. 1968. On Tyranny. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Vlastos, Gregory. 1973. Platonic Studies. Princeton: Princetion University Press.Google Scholar
Ziolkowski, J. E. 1981. Thucydides and the Tradition of Funeral Speeches at Athens. Salem: Arno.Google Scholar