B.'s claim is that ancient ‘dramatic texts are themselves developments in philosophical thought, and should be recognized as part of the canon of early Greek philosophical writing’ (p. 2) and, specifically, that the dramatic texts’ philosophical project ‘involv[ed] consideration of the way that intellectual novelty bears on traditional stories’ (p. 4). Drama, which employed specific scenic forms, constitutes a ‘structured investigation of conceptual questions’ (pp. 7–8), i.e. philosophy.
Because much writing in the fifth century was ‘pre-disciplinary’, i.e. ‘substantially open and engaged with one another’, in discussing ‘the questions of wisdom’ (p. 5) B. uses a synchronic approach to the material and avoids the speculation and doubt that accompanies diachronic methods of influence. Consequently, B. reads drama not as a source for the history of philosophy but rather as intellectual history (p. 10) that ‘makes a plurality of viewpoints available without hierarchy or conclusion’ (p. 12). B. situates his work within the on-going project of ‘understand[ing] Greek thought without disciplinary divisions or teleological assumptions’ (p. 22).
B. points out two modes of discourse distinctive to philosophical thought ‘characteristic of drama’ (pp. 16–17): antilogy and prosopopoeia. Drama and philosophical writing have in common dialectic in which the authority of characters, situations and opposing positions is worked out. In addition, B. has in mind three scenic forms where philosophical ideas are interrogated: the monologic form of the catalogue, the dialogic form of the intrigue scene in which the hierarchy between instructor and pupil is called into question, and the debate or agon. B. notes that these three forms represent ‘a democratizing of authority, as monologue gives way to dialogue and debate’ (p. 21). B. sets off comedy, which has less to contribute philosophically in terms of these three scenic forms and rather does its philosophical work through parody and critique.
B.'s first chapter productively revisits the interaction of theological and philosophical discourses, reflecting a negotiation of intellectual authority between the divine and the human. In tragedy the scenic form of the cultural catalogue enacts this negotiation, focusing on ‘an account of the distinctiveness of human life, the extent of human capacities, and the conditions of human autonomy’ (p. 35). Examples of Palamedes’ catalogue of inventions from fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Gorgias’ Defence of Palamedes suggest progress but, more importantly, an ambivalence towards ‘technology and intellectual accomplishment in general’ (p. 49). The catalogue of Aeschylus’ Prometheus parallels Palamedes’ in that both, though full of knowledge about human culture and inventions, are caught in futile situations. Moreover, the rosy picture Prometheus paints of human progress is undermined by the words and events of the rest of the play. For B. this reveals a deep theological and cultural anxiety in Athenian culture about human action and its relation to divinity, and it acts as a philosophical counterargument to the mainly progressivist story about the origin and nature of human beings found, for instance, in Plato's Protagoras; the ‘Ode to Man’ and the second stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone also reflect an ambivalence and anxiety regarding human efficacy, especially in the face of divine authority.
In Chapter 2 B. pivots from drama's dialectical exploration of human nature, achievement and position in the cosmos to its engagement with epistemic and ontological ideas of the fifth-century philosophical thinkers Parmenides, Empedocles and Gorgias. For instance, B. argues that tragic drama engages in dialectic and meditation on Gorgias’ three propositions: (1) nothing is; (2) even if something exists, it would be unknowable; and (3) even if something is knowable, it cannot be communicated in language. Such epistemic uncertainty leads B. to ‘questions untouched by the philosophical tradition’, such as ‘how to live, day by day, when deception is inescapable and truth is obscure’ (p. 108). B. uses tragedy's ‘intrigue form’, a scenic convention in which two characters conspire to deceive, with one instructing the other to carry out the deception (p. 110). The ethical issues connected to deception are foregrounded in the intrigue scenes of Sophocles’ Electra and Philoctetes. In the former B. shows that Orestes’ rhetoric produces falsehoods that have effects on the actions and beliefs of other characters, enemies and friends. The necessity of rhetoric for human community and humanity's concomitant vulnerability to rhetoric, especially at the level of immediate philoi, infuse Sophocles’ play. The originality of this section, like much of the book, lies not in the presence in drama of such intellectual historical ideas, but rather in the reframing of drama and its forms as integral to the development of these ideas.
The intrigue prologue of Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae establishes the play's main concern of the effects of deception on the polis, while philosophically foregrounding the Eleatic idea of appearance not corresponding to reality (p. 131). For B. Sophocles’ Philoctetes works on both personal-ethical and social-political levels. B. suggests that Odysseus vs Achilles (through Neoptolemus) recalls ‘sophistic syncrises’ of mythological heroes and other sophistic ethical exercises. B. has two excellent sections on the play (pp. 131–51) with dynamic close readings and thoughtful observations. B. shows how in drama deception does irrevocable damage to truth, i.e. the inability to discern it; to morality, i.e. the corruption of it when unmoored from truth; and to persuasion, i.e. the inevitability of its transformation into violence. Trust between allies and friends becomes impossible ‘once logos has been separated from truth’ (p. 151). Philosophical thinking is shaped into and by drama.
In the final chapter B. engages the fifth-century debate of what sophia is, who has it and how best to integrate it into society. Socrates understood sophia as not merely an area of expertise, but as a broader claim to authority of knowledge and experience (p. 163). Regarding form, it was the sophists, and especially Socrates, whose preference for dialogue and debate gave to dramatists the agon in which sophia is discussed. The debate comes down to the undecidable choice between the ‘possessors of traditional socio-cultural authority, and the practitioners of the novel, and suspect, intellectual trends’ (pp. 163–4). On this intellectual historical basis B. argues that there is a movement as reflected in drama ‘toward a recognition of the different ideas of sophia’ and that ‘drama itself can subsume [both] tradition and novelty’ (p. 164). B.'s analysis reveals this balancing act, which comes more naturally to drama than to philosophical discourse.
B. coins a term for another scenic form, the agon sophias, which is ‘a group of scenes that … stage an opposition between two understandings of sophia and debate what it is to be sophos’. B. argues that these scenes ‘demonstrate the need for a broader understanding of … the foundation of human politics and thought generally, and in particular, the role of divinity as a basis of human wisdom’ (p. 169). B. works through a series of Euripides agones sophias in the Medea, the fragmentary Antiope and Palamedes, Bacchae, as well as in the agon between Euripides and Aeschylus in Aristophanes’ Frogs. B.'s most interesting analyses of drama's role in the development of philosophical ideas include: the Antiope's ‘metadiscourse on musical and philosophical innovation in drama’ that suggests ‘the rift opening between traditional and novel conceptions of the sophos’ (pp. 174, 176); the Palamedes’ concern with what sort of sophia is praiseworthy and which of its characters possess it (pp. 184–5); the Frogs’ agon between Aeschylus and Euripides as endorsing a combination of ‘contemporary intellectualism with a respect for civic norms and common values’ (p. 187) by acknowledging the political utility of the latter and the limitations of the former (pp. 201–2); and, finally, the Bacchae's notion of sophia as a combination of the old and the new as reflecting the recognition of the limits of human sophia in the face of divine power (pp. 213–15).
Reading these plays and especially the Bacchae according to the discourse of sophia leads to B.'s important if ‘speculative conclusion’ that Euripides’ play ‘stages the relation of drama itself to the emerging discourse of philosophy’ (p. 222). In fact, B. convincingly asserts that, since drama ‘subsumes’ old and new thinking on sophia, dramatic thinking had priority over philosophical thinking in Athens concerning intellectual debates. B.'s work gives us license to imagine a fifth-century Athens when philosophy's form and consequent authority had not yet been established, when ‘a more public, performative, and mythological discourse’ of Gorgias and the dramatists vied for intellectual authority (p. 237). B. provides an unapologetic and compelling model of dramatic poetry's central place in Greek intellectual history.
