R. knows how to steer through turbulent waters. His previous book, Heidegger's Platonism (2009), went into controversial topics, and this new work directly focuses on a conflict linked to the very origin of philosophy as an autonomous field. The condemnation of Socrates not only gave rise to an incredibly prolific and controversial group in his times, but it extended his influence to the whole Western tradition, to the point that we continue wondering about his execution, its motives and how his followers interpreted them, serving as sources for our knowledge.
This work is part of a long list of investigations on this issue that keep up with the historiographical turns on classical thought. R. is well aware of this heritage and is dedicated to ordering and categorising the approaches on this topic that have emerged during recent decades. This careful task makes the book a valuable starting point for those who want to get involved in this field. R.’s undertaking is not limited to a tidy status quaestionis. It includes an exegetical proposal to make sense of very different positions weighing their advantages and disadvantages and to clear the way for R.’s own proposal. Far from an inventory, this study builds a solid ground for a long-term programme.
On this basis, R. proposes that the leading source amongst Plato's works about the accusations against Socrates goes far beyond the Apology and includes many other dialogues. This broadening provides elements to invert these accusations by turning them against Athens and its citizens. In this way, the true corrupters are the Athenians and not Socrates. Plato diagnoses a generalised spiritual ruin and explains its traits by developing psychological, sociological and politically-based categories that go hand in hand with the unfolding of a metaphysical framework. This study allows the creation of alternatives that point to a better city and include the detection of overall elements that could endanger any plan in this area. These reflections lead to an analysis of the relationship between politics and philosophy.
R. develops these general hypotheses throughout the book, carefully appealing to the appropriate methodological considerations about the priority of Plato's philosophical, and not historical, concerns and the consequent relevance of the dramatic aspect of the elements of Athenian history included in many works. This idea is reinforced by a large number of historical allusions in other Socratic figures, especially Aeschines, and it underpins R.’s perspective about the structure and periodisation of the Platonic corpus. In this view, R. prefers to highlight an overall unity without being explicitly ‘unitarist’, and he suggests the idea of a common purpose in the first and the middle dialogues. This is part of a programme of the defence of philosophy understood under objectivist parameters and linked to the possibility of constructing a political alternative based on actual knowledge of reality. This idea, which is not new, is well connected to its antecedents and allows a broader exploration that touches the very heart of the Platonic enterprise.
The work on the Platonic corpus is preceded by a study of the hindrances of previous interpretations and opens up the consideration of a broader spectrum of problems that invite reflection on other dialogues with relevant information on this topic because of their literary use of the figure of Socrates, especially Alcibiades I, Gorgias, Republic and Symposium. The following chapters constitute case studies that support this overall idea. Thus, the study of the Symposium is based on the question of the role of Alcibiades as a thwarted philosopher because of the perversion of the city. In the third chapter R. follows the traces of the Platonic treatment of this figure in Alcibiades I. It shows him before his misfortunes, yet looking forward to a philosophical life, although it also foretells the battle between Socrates and the city about his destiny. The description of this powerful force connects this horizon with the representation of Athens in the Gorgias. R. evinces this link pointing out that this dialogue constitutes an all-encompassing vision that includes a particular case of Alcibiades. It outlines a general theory about corruption and dysfunction of political power in the city, appealing to the example of Callicles as a product of this framework. R. examines the points of contact between two young men with the potential that, as described in the allegory of the plant in Republic 6.498e ff., they become victims of the social machinery. R. also appeals to the analysis of the other allegories and metaphors at the beginning of Republic 6 to reinforce this line of reading.
It was a good choice to complement this study with a chapter dedicated to the Atlantis myth in the Timaeus. Through an analysis of the readings that interpret it as a charter myth and as a cautionary tale on the risks of the ‘thalassocratic’ imperial policies, R. proposes to incorporate features of both perspectives in a protreptic view. The figure of Isocrates enters into this dialogue enabling an analysis of the debates in the fourth century. Isocrates also finds huge risks in the excessive growth of the city that unleashes ambition and destructive passions. In this framework R. includes an examination of Plato's nautical metaphors and allusions that entail a synthesis of the danger and corrupting influences in the human character due to pleonexia.
R. draws plausible links of these ideas with contemporary discussions on Athenian foreign policy. R.’s volume becomes an excellent path to assess the main goals of Platonic philosophy as a whole and the sense of his political thought in particular. It succeeds in its objective to suggest that the crime against Socrates results first in the Platonic task of the transformation of the legal charges against Socrates in an accusation against Athens, and then in the development of a complete theory about the corruptive force of the social bodies over the new generations and the consequent iteration of evils and calamities.
The bibliography is comprehensive and covers a representative number and kinds of positions. In some cases it would have been desirable to include more works beyond anglophone scholarship; the few items mentioned are essential works, but they are mainly written several decades ago, so that many new relevant lines of enquiry in the global academic dialogue are almost ignored.
Some points could have been strengthened by consideration of the material of the so-called ‘minor Socratics’, whose minority has been questioned in recent years, so that the studies produced in the last couple of decades enable eluding the criticisms of capricious speculation that led to the weakening of these interpretations in the early twentieth century. These testimonies and the epistolographic material that include references to the trial and condemnation of Socrates offer a broader image that complements the traditional sources. Indeed, R. appeals to these testimonies to analyse the figure of Alcibiades in a very accomplished chapter, showing that this type of analysis yields relevant results.
Having said that, this does not constitute a failing of R.’s text, which, on the contrary, presents a reflection on the scope of the notion of apology, in line with G. Danzig's outstanding Apologizing for Socrates (2010), with which this work has virtuous points of contact. In this sense, it is clear that the declared objective of the book is not so much the historiographical reconstruction of the reasons that led to the death of Socrates, but the impact and the theoretical-philosophical consequences that these events produced in the work of his best-known disciple, and this goal is more than achieved.
R.’s book is a substantial contribution to classical studies. It is written in a friendly and captivating style that allows readers who are not aware of philological discussions to enter into a topic that marked the destiny of the Western tradition, and it reserves for the scholar a good number of well-constructed arguments as well as original and creative ideas on numerous passages of the Platonic corpus. In the vast literature on Socrates, this work will surely earn its rightful place.
