Un enigma ricomposto? Personaggi, anonimato e coerenza dei dialoghi nel Platone di Catherine Zuckert e Leo Strauss

The limits of a systematic approach in the study of Plato are due not only to the\r\ndifficulties arousing from the effort to reconstruct a chronology of composition of the dialogues but still more to the fact that in none of them does Plato speak, either directly\r\nnor through a spokesman. The realization of this evidence is shared nowadays by\r\nincreasingly many scholars, who deeply differ in the way to solve the hermeneutical\r\nproblems it engenders, as the present article seeks to show. In this context, the great\r\nbook of C. H. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers. The Coherence of the Dialogues, displays a\r\nconsiderable effort to offer a coherent new reading of the dialogues. Her method, based\r\non the conjunction of contextualization and overarching narrative, develops some\r\nfundamental insights of Leo Strauss and takes a remarkable position in contemporary\r\nPlatonic research based on anonymity. Among the major novelties of her analysis lies\r\nthe relevance attributed to Plato’s philosophers, that is, to all the characters who, besides\r\nSocrates, take charge of the conversation. If considered inside the overarching narrative\r\nof all the dialogues of the corpus platonicum, they exemplify and articulate different\r\nunderstandings of philosophy and let Socrates’ own position better emerge, as can be\r\nshown in the case of the Eleatic philosophers.