Plato and Thucydides

Abstract

For a long time the heritage of Plato was considered mainly from the point of view that his dialogues are an expression of a reflection about the preceding and contemporary philosophical tradition, but in modern times more and more attention is drawn to other intertextual and ideological parallels. Despite a dislike for the written fixation of philosophical texts (for example, the words of Socrates in the “Phaedrus”), Plato himself was certainly well acquainted with ancient poetry — epic, elegiac, “tragic”, with the oratory, and as we believe, with the works of great historians of the fifth century. Dramatic basis of the text of Plato includes not only the explication of some dialectic ideas, learning “method of logos”, stories about the fate of Socrates. It is also a direct response to the views and texts that have authority among readers of his dialogues. Many of them were used by Plato for his ironic parody of literary games. Others became the subject of open debate. The article aims at comparing of the historical, social, political and anthropological ideas of Plato and Thucydides. This comparison is a very serious problem and is related to a broad range of issues. As a first step, we limit ourselves to a few stories associated with the topic. The first theme is the comparison of the words of Pericles about the Athens as “the educator of Hellas” and beginning of the Socrates’s “cave” narrative from the Republic. The second issue is to compare the ideas of Thucydides about sociogenesis with relevant Plato’s conceptions: 1) stages of the formation of society and 2) the “century of Kronos”. Plato’s Reactions to the ideas of Thucydides also helps us to understand his evaluation of imperialistic Athenian policy. Refs 16.