Plato: Clitophon

The Clitophon, a dialogue generally ascribed to Plato, is significant for focusing on Socrates’ role as an exhorter of other people to engage in philosophy. It was almost certainly intended to bear closely on Plato’s Republic and is a fascinating specimen of the philosophical protreptic, an important genre very fashionable at the time. This is the first critical edition of this dialogue to be published in nearly seventy years. Professor Slings here provides a text based on new examination of all relevant manuscripts and accompanies it with a translation. His extensive introduction studies philosophical exhortation in the classical era, and tries to account for Plato’s dialogues in general as a special type of exhortation. The Clitophon is seen as a defence of the Platonic dialogue. The commentary, the first ever to be published in English, elucidates the Greek and discusses many passages where the meaning is not entirely clear.

• First edition for more than sixty years, and the first ever commentary in English when published • The very extensive introduction sheds light on several important works of Plato • Contains full discussion of the dialogue’s authenticity

Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Prolegomena to the Dialogue: 1. Introduction; 2. Summary and analysis of composition; 3. Is the Clitophon unfinished?; 4. The Clitophon as a Short Dialogue; 5. The characters of the dialogue; Part II. Meaning and Authenticity: 6. Philosophical protreptic in the fourth century BCE; 7. Protreptic in the Clitophon; 8. Protreptic in Plato; 9. Elenchos in the Clitophon; 10. Justice in the Clitophon; 11. The meaning of the Clitophon; 12. Date and authenticity; Text and translation; Commentary; Appendices: I. The ending of Aristotle’s Protrepticus; II. Note on the text; Bibliography; Indexes.