The Record 2009 - Keble College - University of Oxford

The Life of the College
to make the most out of Plutarch’s testimony and be able to rely
on the information conveyed through his writings, it is essential
to have a view about how reliable a reader of past philosophy
Plutarch was. Therefore, we have to examine more closely
how he perceived and understood the theses he transmitted,
how these theses fitted in (or not) with his own philosophical
interests and beliefs and, eventually, how far his presentation of
them was plausible or distorted out of bias or lack of knowledge.
The results of such an examination can be positively surprising
and a personal anecdote may illustrate this well.
When I finished reading for the first time Plutarch’s writing
Against Colotes — a libel against an Epicurean devotee in
which Plutarch literally demolishes Epicurean philosophy
of nature and epistemology — my sympathies clearly lay
with the Epicureans. Plutarch’s arguments seemed to me to
be far too heated and rhetorical to be taken very seriously;
obviously, I thought, Plutarch for whatever reasons despised
Epicureanism and wished to give a biased presentation of
Epicurean philosophy that served his purpose of showing how
utterly and dangerously mistaken Epicurus was. So I set out
to expose Plutarch’s bias and vindicate Colotes, the Epicurean
spokesman harshly criticized by Plutarch. Then a ‘turnaround’
happened: the more I read Plutarch, trying to understand
his arguments, the less confident I became of my sympathies
with Epicureanism. The suspicion that Plutarch may have
more to say through his arguments than what his apparently
polemical rhetoric allowed us to think started creeping in and
eventually turned into the conclusion of my doctoral thesis:
Plutarch’s presentation of Epicureanism, despite the appearance
of hostility and bias, offers insightful readings of the Epicurean
theories that may help us better understand Epicureanism and
its place within the intellectual history of ancient Greece.
In my postdoctoral research I have attempted to consolidate
this initial inkling about the value of Plutarch’s readings of
past philosophical theories by examining more closely certain
key passages from his work. This involves analysis of the
main line of thought underlying Plutarch’s interpretation of an
ancient philosopher’s theory (for example, Democritus’ view
that all there really is in the world are atoms and the void);
comparisons with other ancient interpretations of the same
theory (for example, by Aristotle), when possible, are also
particularly illuminating and rewarding. The results of such
examination, while not always ‘breath-taking’, show Plutarch
to have produced philosophically interesting and plausible
readings that can often be seen to anticipate the interpretations
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