A Trace That Plato Read His Own Writings──Focusing on “Sokratous estin kalou kai neou gegonotos”

Abstract

In Plato’s second letter, Plato left a mysterious expression: that his writings did not exist, and writings of his that were thought to exist, now were “those of Socrates become new and beautiful”. Previous studies said that theses expressions were based on Plato’s assertion from Plato’s seventh letter, and Phaedrus. That is to say, Plato insisted that writing books was not important but a diversion. But they can’t explain why the expression “Socrates become new and beautiful" seems to praise Plato’s writings. In this paper, we tried to get over this aporia by referring to an opinion of Roland Barthes. Through this method, we can understand that this expression was an evaluation of Plato as a reader. And, strictly speaking, Plato didn’t think writing books was a diversion. Plato thought that books were a diversion for everybody but himself. On the other hand, Plato thought however excellent his writings were, he couldn’t help that his reputation would fall because of shallow people who misread them. Through the denial of Plato as an author, we can interpret that Plato wished to remove himself for writing that may have been misinterpreted.