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214 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS
end Plato's true audience will remain detached and critical. while "Socrates"
can scarcely fail to remain inimitably unique.
We now move on to four chapters devoted to specific dialogues.
Hippias Minor. Republic. Theaetetus. and the sequence Sophist­
Statesman. It may seem a strange choice given the title of the work.
since it omits the most character-rich dialogues. including Protagoras.
Gorgias. Euthydemus. and Symposium. But it is appropriate to the real
contribution of this book. moving from a time when Plato fearlessly
imitated all kinds of characters and represe ted Socrates without censorship
of his elenctic image. towards a time of sanitized characters devoid
of personality (though not of character). Republic and Theaetetus
are works that seem to offer some philosophic reasons for this movement.
I may be talking developmentally. but Blondell. while seemingly
happy to assume a fairly traditional order of the dialogues. holds antidevelopmentalist
views. at least insofar as they are "attempting to recover
Plato's own intellectual and/or psychological biography. in other
words trying to capture his personal ethos" (1 I I).
There are more respectable strands of developmentalism that see the
argument moving forward. with confusion receding and successive degrees
of clarity replacing it. Such clarity in the mouth of a Platonic protagonist
is virtually a guarantee of clarity on the author's part. While
the converse is not necessary. those who wish to argue that any persistent
confusion in "Socrates" is not Plato's own should explain why it is
being employed. Literary developmentalism is employed in this book.
and this development is taking place for mainly philosophic and pedagogic
reasons. One should not shy from the thesis that Plato's thought
and literary approach developed. The real -enemies are inflexible theories
of development built on one side of the evidence. usually coupled
with the postulation of the author's spokespersons and the failure to see
how different purposes and different audiences require different communicativestrategies.
The literary development postulated here involves Plato becoming
dissatisfied at Socrates' failure to improve the Athenians. frequently
making them fiercer. leading to "reconsideration of the elenctic Sokrates"
(125-127). The examination of Hippias Minor concludes that "[ilf
Plato intended to provoke criticism of Sokr-ates in this dialogue. he has
succeeded." One might have mentioned that it must have been such
criticism that necessitated the writing of Euthydemus. with its nonelenctic
Socrates shadow-boxing the Eristics. Even that Socrates. however.
failed to satisfy some (the "Isocrates" figure and even Crito himself.
305a). and the dialogue that most clearly observes the inadequacies
of the elenctic Socrates. even while acknowledging his protreptic value.
is the Clitophon. Whether or not Plato wrote it himself. it is so relevant