Review Article: Myths, Errors, and Dreams: The Return of Plato

Plato the Myth Maker by Luc Brisson; Gerard Naddaf; Platonic Errors: Plato, a Kind of Poet
by Gene Fendt; David Rozema; Plato's Dream of Sophistry by Richard Marback
Review by: Ramona A. Naddaff
Classical Philology, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 173-187
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 REVIEW ARTICLE
MYTHS, ERRORS, AND DREAMS: THE RETURN OF PLATO*

In their preface to Platonic Errors, Gene Fendt and David Rozema boldly ask:
"Why publish anything more on Plato? After two thousandyears and more of com-
mentary,this becomes both a more and less: it is a more acute, pressing question, but
it is less often asked" (p. ix). But is it? The "acute, pressing" question is, in fact,
asked regularly,especially by book editors and publishers.This means that it takes a
very strong argument to justify publication of yet another book on Plato. White-
head's argumenthas, for the moment, lost its force: "The safest general characteriza-
tion of the Europeanphilosophical traditionis that it consists of a series of footnotes
to Plato." However that may be, the three books under review all provide successful
argumentsfor more studies on Plato. Brisson, Fendt and Rozema, and Marbackdo
not take for grantedthe following apparentlysimple questions: Who is Plato? Who
are the Platonists? What have they (and their enemies) done to Plato? The answers,
argued from extremely different perspectives and methodological interests, reveal
that for each readerthere is a Plato. To capturehis identity, to state once and for all
who this writer is, what he did when he wrote his dialogues, whether he told the
truth-literary, philosophical, historical-is to play a game of hide and seek where
one must avoid finding one and only one "Plato." Like a great Greek hero before
him, Plato is ... everyone and no one.
Alexander Nehamas has recently argued that two effects of Plato's early works
have guaranteedthe survival, mystery, and verisimilitude of Plato's characterSoc-
rates.1 First, Socrates' irony keeps him "particularly silent," in the sense that a
reader is not allowed to "see what made him a possible human being." His elusive-
ness on this front has "enabled Socrates to invite, and to survive, the most disparate
attempts to try to understandhim." Second, Plato has created a Socrates so mysteri-
ous that knowledge of his characterevades even the author himself. This mystery,
in turn, has produced a Socrates who "for almost two hundred years now... has
appearedto be not just a character, a reflection, but a direct duplicate of his origi-
nal." Socrates, until the middle and late dialogues, when Plato explicitly interprets
Socratic irony, is in Nehamas' words an "unexplained mystery and simply lives a
philosophic life."

*Plato the Myth Maker. By Luc BRISSON.Translated, edited, and with an introduction by GERARD
NADDAFChicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. [lv] + 188. $21.95.
Platonic Errors: Plato, a Kind of Poet. By GENEFENDTand DAVIDROZEMA. Westport, Conn. and Lon-
don: Greenwood Press, 1998. [xiv] + 176. $55.00.
Plato's Dream of Sophistry. By RICHARD MARBACK. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1999. [Ix] + 163. $24.95.
1. A. Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflectionsfrom Plato to Foucault (Berkeley, 1998), 69.

Permission to reprint this review article may be obtained only from the author.

173

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174 RAMONAA. NADDAFF

Plato's own effect on generations of scholars and commentators can be under-

stood in a similar way. As Plato approaches his Socrates in the middle to late
dialogues, so too Platonic scholars approach their Plato: they aim, as Plato did, to
"take off the mask [he] had been wearing and to bring to light what is concealed."2
But the "particularly,"if not peculiarly, silent author Plato rarely if ever discloses
himself, his motives and interests, to the reader.He is always hiding, as it were, be-
hind Socrates in ambiguous, if not ambivalent, philosophic and literary strategies.
Metaphysician, epistemologist, mythologist, disciple, poet-these are but the most
obvious of his simultaneously held multiple identities. Like Socrates, Plato has "in-
vited and survived the most disparate attempts to understandhim." Many are the
theories that attempt and fail to identify the moment when Plato emerges from
his "self-imposed tutelage,"using Socrates as a more and more transparentcover to
announce himself as a thinker, a writer, in his own right.
However, the more Plato becomes himself, a writer and theoretician developing
his own individual signature, the more mysterious he becomes, perhaps to himself,
but most definitely to readers. In other words, the moment Plato is understood as an
author he begins to live for readers who attemptto discover and uncover his mean-
ings, his identities, his original (never transparent)authorialmotives and intentions.
Plato's silence, reproducingthat of his own Socrates, has been the very condition of
possibility for the invention of Platonic studies and of Platonists. Like his Socrates,
he "appear[s] to be not just a characterbut a direct duplicate" of readers'disparate
and differing projections onto his text.3
Luc Brisson, of all the authorshere discussed, presents a clear and precise defini-
tion of Plato's identity. While GerardNaddaf's translationof Brisson's title does not
exactly reproduce the question in Brisson's original French subtitle-Comment et
pourquoi Platon nomma le mythe?-it certainly captures the image Brisson con-
structs of and for Plato: Plato the Myth Maker. Brisson focuses on the crucial
position Plato occupies in forging the definition of "myth" as both the traditional
legendary tales identified with ancient Greece (the primary sense) and as unfal-
sifiable information opposed to the philosophical logos (the derivative sense). Prior
to Plato, as Naddaf explains in his long and well-researched introduction, "[t]he
basic meaning of the word muthos (the Greek word from which the word 'myth' is
derived) seems to have been 'something one says,' whence muthos has the sense of
'word,''saying,' 'advice,' or 'story' in Homer" (p. vii). Plato's contribution to, even
invention of, the problem of myth resides in his reorganizationof the vocabulary of
"speech" in ancient Greece (p. 90). Contrasting the non-argumentativemuthos to
the argumentativediscourse of philosophical logos and negatively valorizing myth
as a false, fictive, and unbelievable story, Plato displaces myth from its central posi-
tion in an oral culture. Traditionalmyths and the mythmakers,especially poets, no
longer maintain their privileged position as intermediaries between a community
and its values, as the vehicles through which memory and ethical paradigms are
shaped and transmitted.Yet Plato preserves and reproduces in his dialogues "myth

2. Nehamas, Art of Living, 69.

3. A. C. Bowen ("On Interpreting Plato," in Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, ed. C. L. Gris-
wold [New York, 1988], 49-65) discusses, through his reading of E. Tigerstedt's Interpreting Plato
(Upp-
sala, 1977), some of the more important arguments and methodologies of competing schools of
Platonic interpretations.

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 THE RETURNOF PLATO 175

in the true sense of the word ... a form of discourse which transmitsall information
that a community conserves in memory of its distant past and passes on orally from
one generation to the next" (p. 9).
Brisson views Plato's work on the structureand functioning of myth as providing
exceptional testimony about the mythic tradition,despite Plato's effort to dismantle
and redefine that tradition single-handedly (pp. 38-39):

Plato'stestimonyon mythis ... balancedon a razor'sedge.At theturningpointbetween

two civilizations,one foundedon oralityandtheotheron writing,Platoin factdescribes
the twilightof myths.In otherwords,Plato describesthe momentwhen, in Ancient
Greecein generalandin Athensin particular, memorychanges;if notin its nature,then
at leastin its meansof functioning.... Plato[is] thefirstGreekphilosopher
whoseentire
writtenproductionhas come downto us ... aboutan oralcivilizationwhosedownfall
he, by describingandcriticizingit, contributed to ensure.

Brisson's interpretationof Plato's process of mythmakingas involving both descrip-

tion and critique provides the book's structure. Part 1, "Plato's Testimony: The
Communication of the Memorable,"surveys Plato's descriptive work. Brisson uses
Plato as a cultural, if not historical, sourcebook. Plato's texts on muthos are "refer-
ence texts" (Brisson provides a complete and useful inventory in appendix 1 of the
101 such texts in Plato's dialogues) and Brisson analyzes, as well as contextualizes,
these documents with a view to explicating the specific discursive practices that
govern the fabrication and transmission of the traditional myths told by profes-
sionals (poets, rhapsodists, actors, and choral dancers) and nonprofessionals (the
elderly and/or women) alike. In part 2, "Plato's Critique:The Discourse of and for
the Other,"Brisson turns to Plato's critique of myth, analyzing Plato's own descrip-
tions. His interested descriptive testimony sets up his critique of myth as a deficient
discourse whose illegitimacy and inferiority the philosophical logos asserts and
contests. The philosopher constructs myth as the "other," the "opposite" of the
philosophical logos. This does not mean, as Brisson insists in this second part, that
myth, in its derivative sense, is entirely dismissed by the philosopher, nor that the
mythical and philosophical logoi do not share certain powerful similarities. Plato,
Brisson argues, assimilates muthos to logos, thus allowing myth to repossess its
ancient meaning of "opinion."
Part 1 is divided into seven chapters-"Information," "Means of Transmission,"
"Fabrication,""Narration,""Reception,""Imitation,""Persuasion"-which system-
atically explore, from the perspective of an ethnologist, Plato's definition of muthos
as an orally transmittedmessage transgenerationallyrememberedand received. In
his introduction,Naddaf explains both the theories of communication(the formulaic
school of Milman Parryand Albert Lord, as well as the work of Eric Havelock, Jack
Goody, and Gregory Nagy) and the historical, social, philosophical, and political
contexts and problematics, especially those of orality and literacy, that have cru-
cially, though sometimes not explicitly, informed Brisson's analysis of Plato. (It
is regrettable that Naddaf does not recount the use Brisson makes of Genevieve
Calame-Grimaule'sethnolinguistic schema, which Brisson himself underscores as
particularlyinspirationalin his analysis of Plato.) In Plato the Myth Maker, Brisson
intelligently appropriates and deploys these various theoretical models and this,
without doubt, is the most innovative dimension of the work and its difference from

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 176 RAMONAA. NADDAFF

the vast majority of Platonic scholarship. Here, Plato's theories are historized;
they are understood as enormously influential but also as the product of diverse
influences.
Given Brisson's attention to context, it is disappointing that he does not address
more fully the religious context of Platonic and pre-Platonicmythmaking.More dis-
appointing, even disturbing, is the superficial treatmentof Marcel Detienne's con-
troversial work, especially his Creation of Mythology. In his conclusion, Brisson
offers his book as testimony against what he reads as Detienne's "inexistentialism,"
his claim that myth does not exist. Brisson argues that Detienne rejects the correla-
tion of myth and story and, by dissolving myth into mythology, strips myth of its
particularity:"Marcel Detienne's argumentationis based, in the final analysis, on
this negation: myth is not a story. Since myth is not a story, it loses the order which
assures its specificity as a memory transmittedfrom generation to generation, and
on which analysis can be based" (pp. 135-36). The interpretationdoes not do jus-
tice to Detienne's careful and distinctive readings of texts; instead, it reactivates a
more traditionalnotion of myth. Diverse may be the reasons why Brisson (or Nad-
daf, for that matter) chose not to engage in a more lengthy and discursive con-
frontation with Detienne's text.4 However, in terms of Brisson's own argumentand
conclusions, this polemical attack sheds importantlight on what is at stake for Bris-
son in analyzing myth as a cultural object specific to ancient Greece and to the
philosopher Plato. In Plato the MythMaker, Brisson strives above all to reject "any
spontaneousconfidencevouchsafedto obviousness, intuitionand language"(p. 139).
Brisson's analysis of Plato's written transmissionof the myth of the war between
primeval Athens and Atlantis in the Timaeus illustrates well Brisson's commitment
to a more ethnographicand historical reading of Platonic myths. According to Bris-
son, the Atlantis myth is a pastiche, or "more precisely a pseudo-historicalaccount":
he refuses to take this myth simply as a true story. More importantly,however, Bris-
son explores how Plato's myth, frozen and well preserved in time, serves, paradoxi-
cally, as a historically informative model for understandingthe making of myth in
the oral traditionas well as a "shadowy"reminderof the historical Critiasthe tyrant:
"Critiasthe Younger'seffort to rememberwhat his grandfatherrelated to him a long
time ago constitutes an individual act. Yet this individual act is the meticulous mani-
festation of a vaster effort on the part of the entire community: in this case, Greece"
(p. 18). The community's remembering, Brisson argues, especially in an oral cul-
ture wherein memory and forgetting are inextricablybound, is selective. Information
retained in a myth such as that of Atlantis testifies both to the exceptional case
and to the governing culturalnorm.
To illustrate this point, Brisson organizes two five-point lists of information re-
membered and value judgments conferred in the myth of Atlantis as recounted in
both the Timaeus and the Critias (pp. 19-20). The Atlantis myth, like all myths in
ancient Greece, lacks precise dating. This fact reveals, for Brisson, one of the most

4. The French edition includes this account in its acknowledgments: "A l'origine, ce travail,
qui a pour
base une enquete lexicologique sur muthos ... devait faire partie d'une publication commune avec Marcel
Detienne. Pour des raisons diverses, cette enterprise ne put voir le jour et, en 1981, Marcel Detienne
publi-
ait un livre intitule: L'inventionde la mythologie (Gallimard, Paris), dont le chapitre V r6sume bon nombre
de mes analyses, les conclusions generales de Marcel Detienne 6tant cependant radicalement diff6rentes
des miennes, comme on pourrale constater en lisant les pages qui suivent."

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 THE RETURNOF PLATO 177

essential marks of mythic discourse as distinct from history, which Brisson quickly
identifies as a "true discourse about the past." Using Timaeus 22a4-b3 as a par-
ticular instance of a general mythic rule, Brisson announces what appears to be an
incontestable historical fact about myth (pp. 22-23):
Mythis distinguishedfromtruediscourseaboutthepastby its inabilityto preciselystate
whenthe eventswhichit mentionstook place.In this respect,the oppositionbetween
Solonandthe Egyptianpriestis exemplary.... Precisedatingis essentialto historyas
measureis to physics.Myth,however,relateseventswhosetemporalsituationpresents
an indeterminate
quality-indicatedby the indefinitetemporaladverbpote, "once,"and
by the expressionen pote, "onceupon a time"-which one findsat the beginningof
certainmythsrecountedby Plato.

According to Brisson, Plato's myths reflect the intricate process of transmitting

myths within an oral literature, namely the survival of a story and of a tradition
from "mouth to ear,"from one generation to the next within the same family-that
is from Dropides I until Plato. Furthermore,not only are Plato's written prose ver-
sions of the Atlantis myth in direct competition with the Homeric poetic tradition,
but when read in conjunction with the infamous story of the invention of writing
recounted in Phaedrus 247c-275b, they also serve to comment on the ambiguous
status of the written word at the time Plato himself was writing. This ambiguity is
heightened by Plato's own ambivalent relation to writing and by his own textual
introjection of a historically nonverifiable muthos. Plato, Brisson subtly concludes
this analysis, blurs the boundariesbetween fiction and reality, historian, sophist, and
philosopher: "Plato'sgenius in this matterresides in demonstratingto what degree it
is difficult in practice to distinguish fiction from reality, and the sophist from the
historian and the philosopher"(p. 14).
Plato's descriptions of the productionand transmission of myth do not, however,
lead to the same degree of ambiguity, according to Brisson. In chapter 3, "Fabrica-
tion," one of the most compelling chapters of the book, Brisson considers the Pla-
tonic verbs for "making"-platto, poieo, and suntithemi-in order to draw parallels
between divine and poetic creative activity. At the same time, Brisson offers a solid
semantic analysis of how in Plato's dialogues, notably in Symposium205b8-cl0,
poiesis signifies both productionin general and, more specifically, musical produc-
tion. Musical productionis, however, meant broadly.Brisson cites Gorgias 502c5-7
to show how Plato identifies this more narrow definition of poiesis with a "dis-
course-in verse in most cases-which is recited or sung, is accompaniedby music
and which sometimes includes elements of the dance" (p. 43). Brisson highlights
Plato's concern with how poetry (as opposed to philosophy and prose writing)
works. Brisson argues, invoking Timaeus, Critias, Phaedrus, and Laws, that for
Plato:
The poet makesthis "myth"not by creatingsomethingfromnothing,butby takingup
one or moreelement(s)of a specifictradition-whetheror nottheyhavealreadyunder-
gone poeticelaboration-inthe mannerof a story.Thisis doneto eitherpreserveor to
recallthememoryof theseelements,in accordancewitha specificcontext.(p. 45)
Thepoetcompleteshis workon contentthroughhis workon form.As a specialistin the
collectivecommunication of whatis memorable,he reorganizesan oraltraditionin or-
derto fabricatea storywhichadaptsto thecontextof its enunciation.
At thelevel of the

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 178 RAMONAA. NADDAFF

story'sform,moreover,thepoetcancall uponsuchmnemo-technical proceduresas met-

etc. Thismakesits effectivenesseven morepowerful.(p. 48)
ric, formularyrecurrence,
The following four chapters proceed to document consecutively how professional
and nonprofessional poets transmit (as distinct from make) myths (chap. 4); to
whom myths are addressed(children and hoi polloi) and how as auralperformances
they are received (chap. 5); and finally, the role of mimesis and persuasion in Plato's
elaborationof the definition of poetic fabrication(chaps. 6 and 7). Chapters4-6 are
especially illuminating in some of the more technical aspects of poetic transmission.
While chapters 6-7, on imitation and persuasion, certainly offer clear summaries
of two essential Platonic concepts, one wishes that Brisson had moved away from
cataloguing and close explications of Plato's texts in orderto develop his highly sug-
gestive conclusions on the pleasurableeffects of mimesis and on Plato's description
of myth as trivial and serious play. In his presentation of the psychic benefits de-
rived from myth, Brisson perhaps takes too literally Plato's notion that myth serves
essentially to "restorereason's control over the appetitive part of the soul" (p. 81).
Clearly, Brisson would be the first to agree: myth has more than one function; and
its functions vary according to context and rhetorical need. Furthermore,when-
ever Plato inserts an opposition into his text-between, for example, myth as medi-
cine (pharmakon) and incantation (epoide) in Charmides 156d3-157c6-the reader
should be warnedof the persuasive charmsof a seemingly logocentric philosophical
discourse. Brisson overlooks Plato's own philosophical strengthsand/orweaknesses,
his refusal to tell just one logos on myth from beginning to end such as would allow
a readerto returnsafely to port after a dangerousjourney.
This same complaint could be lodged against the second part of Brisson's study.
Brisson's interpretationof Plato's double critique of muthos as "unfalsifiable"and
"non-argumentative"is superbly clear and persuasive. Even further, Plato's defini-
tion, a contrario, of the philosophical logos has rarelybeen so succinctly and tightly
argued. Brisson concludes by turning his attention to how Plato repudiatesthis dis-
tinction and "does not imply the exclusion of myth even from a theoretical point of
view" (p. 87). Myth, on its own terms, must be used effectively and necessarily by
philosopher and legislator alike. Furthermore,the discourse of myth, on Plato's
own terms, is similar to that of the philosopher. While Brisson does indeed explore
Plato's own uses of myth and his own processes of poetic fabrication (chaps. 11-
12), he never seeks to explain why Plato uses myth. Brisson sets the stage for asking
the following questions but then leaves them unanswered:What is Plato's need for
myth to convince the nonphilosophical multitude?Why is myth needed to serve as a
paradigm?What does this need say about the limits of the philosophical logos, per-
haps even of philosophy itself? In chapter 13, "Plato's Derivative Use of the Term
'Muthos,"'an analysis of the eighteen occurrencesof muthos in its derivative, meta-
phorical usages, rhetorical and philosophical, Brisson might have answered these
questions by creating a more defined typology of how Plato's use of myth depends
upon the contexts and audiences he creates.
Brisson accuses Detienne of refusing to recognize the distinction between the
primary and derivative uses of the term muthos, "enabl[ing] him to conclude that
'myth' refers to objects that are so heterogeneous that, in the end, myth as such
ceases to exist" (p. 133). One might accuse Brisson, at least in the second part of his
book, of not paying sufficient attention to the extent to which Plato's own myths are

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 THE RETURNOF PLATO 179

heterogeneous and unclassifiable, so that when introduced into his text, the distinc-
tion between the mythical and philosophical logos-at least for Plato-"ceases to
exist," or, at least is so indistinct that it exists only as an eidolon, a shadowy and
phantasmic image of a clear and distinct discourse on myth.
If Brisson sometimes sacrifices the ambiguities and ambiguous consequences of
Plato's role as mythmaker,Fendt and Rozema might be accused of just the opposite
in Platonic Errors: Plato, a Kind of Poet. Everything solid, especially if one has re-
lied too heavily on the doctrines constructedby Platonic scholarship, melts into thin
air. Every path Plato opens up in his text is so circuitous and winding, his thought is
so full of contradictions and tensions, that it is all but impossible to interpret,with-
out error, what he means to say, especially when taken as literal, serious (i.e., non-
ironic), and historical truths. It is not even that Plato is a poet. He is, as the subtitle
states, "a kind of poet." His dialogues, as the authors announce at the very start of
their study, are "fully formed poetic works" (p. 1). Is this what makes him a kind of
poet and not totally and completely a poet? Further,following Aristotle, it is highly
plausible that the Platonic dialogue is a generic kind of "philosophical discussion"
and a "more specific kind of thing that would happen in a discussion with Socrates"
(p. 3; italics here and in other quotations are the authors').But how exactly do the
specific and the generic intertwine in Plato's work as a "kind of poet"? Fendt and
Rozema offer this response, redefining the central meaning of mimesis as the "third
possibility," a possibility whose definition is unclear since the effects of the "thing
itself" are notoriously evasive: "[A] mimesis does to the audience something like
what the thing itself would do. This sense could, but does not necessarily, imply one
or the other or some mixture of the previously mentioned two: the generic philo-
sophical kind and the specific Socratic kind of dialogue" (p. 5).
In all probability,such questions reveal something about the reader, as Fendt and
Rozema proclaim in their analysis of the Hippias Minor (pp. 5-6):

How readersrespondto thesepuzzlesandvexations- indeedwhatthey considerthe

puzzlesandvexationsto be-reveals somethingaboutthereader,just as whatmaywell
havebeenpeskyaboutSocrateswas thathe madehis interlocutors revealthingsabout
themselves.Sometimesthe reader/interlocutor noticeswhatis revealed;sometimeshe
or she doesn't.In this case, if one is readingalong,nothinghappensat all; nothingis
revealed,andphilosophyfails to get born.

Or perhaps by seeking a more strict definition of "poet" or of "mimesis,"the reader

leans too heavily towards the noetic ratherthat the poetic element of the Platonic di-
alogues, a misdirection that Fendt and Rozema aim to set straight in this book by
correcting the false Aristotelian dichotomy: "[T]he philosophical and the poetic are
inseparable. Only in the case of music or abstractpainting does it become a believ-
able impossibility that the art could be approachedas pure poesis/no noesis, or pure
mimesis/no representation,but this is a romantic overexaggeration...." (p. 9).
Platonic Errors, to cite the book's epigraphfrom Symposium197e, certainly aims
to be "amusing and instructive."It is doubtful, however, if the authorsachieve their
central goal: "to redress the poetry of Plato and the poetic natureof philosophy, for
without doing so we practice philosophy unjustly" (p. 164). The authors' primary
concern, in fact, is to correct scholars who have failed to read Plato's dialogues
either noetically or poetically and so have "practicedphilosophy unjustly."In their

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180 RAMONAA. NADDAFF

"Polemical Introduction,"Fendt and Rozema describe their purpose and interpreta-

tive task thus (pp. 1-2):
This book is called Platonic Errors not because we think Plato made any, for so far as
we can tell he did not, but because the purpose of the book is to show that most so-called
Platonic doctrines are errors caused by ignorance, incapacity, or unwillingness to read
what Plato wrote: dialogues-fully formed poetic works. We will exhibit the error of
these doctrines not mainly by dogmatic or historical argument,but by careful reading of
the texts from which the supposed doctrines take their life.

To be a careful reader, the authors explain in a second introduction, which they

name the "Scholarly Introduction,"one must (p. 8):
considerthatthe dialogueslead to [the]rejectionof [thewell-knownthesesgenerally
attributedto Plato] and place somethingother than the acceptanceor rejectionof
theses... as the purposeof philosophicalinquiry.In this matterit is interestinghow
careful the postmodern writers can be-perhaps because their original training is gen-
erally in literature-at reading the dialogues as dialogues ratherthan for their erstwhile
philosophical content.

The model philosophical defense for and methodology of the "careful"reader can
be found in the "poetic or mimetic understandingof dialogue interpretation"prac-
ticed by, among others, Stanley Rosen, E. N. Tigerstedt, Alan Bowen, and Charles
Griswold, as well as by Kierkegaardand by Plato himself in his dialogue Ion (p. 11,
n. 6). Fendt and Rozema bracketthe traditionalquestions of whether Plato provides
an historically accurate account of Socrates, or whether a hard and fast distinction
can be made between Plato (here understoodideally as a "putative"author)and Soc-
rates, between Socratic and Platonic doctrines. Something much more, they argue,
is at stake-namely, an effect, or more precisely, the effect of mimesis wherein the
reader, in life, is led to self-examination and to the practice of philosophy (p. 4):
If the dialogue,when it comes into contactwith a reader,performsa mimesis of
Socrates coming into contact with a Greek in the agora, it may well be that the Socrates
in the dialogue is not necessarily saying what Socrates (much less Plato) believed or
said, for what is requiredin order to accomplish the effect of Socrates may be something
entirely differentfrom and indifferentto a record of the beliefs or dialogues-generic or
specific-of either Socrates or Plato.

Any reader of Platonic Errors is strongly advised to test this description of the
"effect of Socrates" by first reading (or rereading) the six dialogues that Fendt and
Rozema study-Ion, Republic, Meno, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, and Laws. Indeed, a
central virtue of this book is that it calls forth a desire to read and reread carefully
Plato's dialogues. At the same time, however, it produces the desire to read and re-
read Plato without the aid of secondary criticism, including without the aid of Fendt
and Rozema's book. Such criticism often-and this is the case with Platonic Er-
rors-overcomplicates and confuses by pushing the drugs of textual insight and lit-
erary and philosophical revelation, there where a solitary reader is most likely to
fall into error. Fendt and Rozema admit to being inspired in their roles as teachers
but their pedagogical fervor reaches an eerie, if not uncanny, ideological pitch.
They may be committed to identifying the mistakes engendered by Platonic schol-
arship and using them productively and polemically to their own, and sometimes

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 THE RETURNOF PLATO 181

their readers', advantage. But they are also committed to correcting dogmatically
the mistakes of their all too literalist predecessors, assuming that as literary readers
they possess the capacity to distinguish between the "false" and "true"problems and
dilemmas caused by the Socratic and/or Platonic effect. If it is true, as Fendt and
Rozema state, that "by Plato's indirections ... we find true directions" (p. 13), then
could it not also be true that these "true directions" are themselves impostures
falsely posing (perhaps indirectly) as true directions? For example, how does one
distinguish between the true and the false direction proposed by competing inter-
pretations of the Meno: "Far from being a dialogue in support of the metaphysi-
cally rich and epistemologically empty doctrine of recollection, the Meno is the
representation of a politically and morally dangerous education, a pedagogically
enlightening example of forgetfulness, a mimesis of philosophical discussion that
makes the reader sing along" (p. 89)?
Do Fendt and Rozema really believe, as they claim in their chapter "Forgetful-
ness in Meno; or, Plato Invents the Art of the Fugue" that Gregory Vlastos' interpre-
tation of the theory of recollection is false because he did not (and obviously could
not) "listen to the musical construction of Meno" (p. 93)?5 This, they assert,
is theonlyplacewherewe havethepossibilityof hearingthemindof Plato,whonever
speaksin the dialogue.Not only does Plato give every indicationin his construction
thatanamnesisis a purgativetheoryconstructedfor the particulardiseaseof Menon,
butSocratesbacksawayfromthe theoryimmediatelyafterMenobuysit. (p. 93)

If, further,Nehamas wrongly reads the story of recollection as a case where "some of
the mystery of Socrates gave way to the mysticism of Plato,"6why should one accept
that the authorsthemselves do not commit a "Platonic error"when they claim of the
same myth that "it's almost as if Socrates thinks the whole contraptionis likely to
blow up, whereas Plato compresses enough springs to make certain that it does" (p.
93)? Fendt and Rozema oftentimes awardthemselves an unjust advantagein practic-
ing philosophy "justly."They, unlike most Platonic scholars, know the "moralof the
story (i.e., the practice it requires)-to which [Socrates] will hold at all costs-that
we believe we must inquire into those things we do not know" (p. 93).
The authorsdesire that a readerengage in this form of Socratic inquiry and prac-
tice. Indeed, this is one of the crucial messages of the six dialogues they reinterpret
in the wake of the multiple "Platonic errors."But in their zeal to eliminate the errors
of centuries of misinterpretation,they too frequently-and mistakenly-believe
themselves to be the masters of Plato's universe. And in their zeal to revise radically
dry, oftentimes "unamusing,""uninstructive,""prosaic" scholarly prose, they, al-
though they have a commendable goal, instead turnthe enterpriseof Platonic studies
into a confusing blur of smoke and mirrors.Because of the authors'own tendency to
wax poetic, using metaphorsand analogies drawn from (American) football, classi-
cal music, mushroom growing-they even tell a myth in the preface on the origins
and meaning of their collaboration-it is equally difficult at times to know what one
is trying to understand.A footnote such as chapter7's number 10 makes one crave a
geometrical proof (p. 160):

5. G. Vlastos, Socratic Studies (Cambridge, 1994).

6. A. Nehamas, "Meno's Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher,"in Plato's "Meno" in Focus, ed. J. M.
Day (New York, 1994), 245.

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182 RAMONAA. NADDAFF

In poetryit is a sign of failureto use footnotes.In scholarshipthingsareotherwise.I

wish the readerto hearin this emptyspacethe threatening musicof the openingof the
last movementof Beethoven'sNinth.Thatis a mimesisof the discussionhere.Thenit
breaks:here,now:"O Freunde,nichtdiese Tone!/ SondernlaBtuns angenehmere an-
stimmenundfreudenvollere!" This musicis a mimesisof the argumentwith whichI
will now proceed.
This is not to say that the authorsdo not present solid interpretationsof certain di-
alogues whose thematics standardPlatonic orthodoxy has either completely missed
or severely distorted. For example, in their two chapters on the Republic (chaps. 2
and 3), Fendt and Rozema establish how the debate of the Republic is "perfectly
misread"when it is taken as a "matterof course" to be "whetherthis city, properly
understood, is a closed society, or one open to philosophy, to free thought, and
to personal activity directed by that thought" (p. 39). For the authors,in the Re-
public Socrates and Plato are moving in different directions and thus themselves
conjure up this erroneous vision. However, once the dialogue is seen as a single
piece whose "greatest portion is, dramatically,an aside" (p. 41) but nonetheless a
relevant digression, the Republic can be interpretedas a defense of anarchismand of
self-government (p. 40):
The usual authoritarian interpretationsof Republiccompletelydisregardthe literary
cues,pedagogicaltechnique,poeticeffectandethicalimportof Socrates'discussionand
so are perfectmisreadings.Most of Republic(2.372d5-10.608b5)is, dramatically an
aside,literallya lie, andfigurativelya drugusedto curethefeverishcity andrecoverits
health.The healthycity is describedearlierin the dialogue(369a-72d)andpraisedby
Socrates;thatcity is anarchic.
Glaucon is the first and last (until Fendt and Rozema) to see this (p. 55):
As book 9 closes (andbook 10 is a coda, parallelingbook l's prelude),Glauconex-
claimsthatthe healthyandgoodmanwill not go intopolitics.In theusual(moreliteral
andlectural,less poeticandeducative)interpretation of Republic(in whichthe tripar-
tite city is the ideal)thatis a very strangethingfor Glauconto say, for it is clearthat
the philosopher must be in politics.... Glaucon must be seeing that no form of govern-
ment,from aristocratic to tyrannic, is really going to workfor the soul that Socrates'
education would actually produce.

While one might beg to differ with Fendt and Rozema's particularreadings of par-
ticular sections of the Republic-especially the passages on the "noble lie" or their
claim, without argument,that the "theory of forms" is a fable-it is hard not to take
seriously their interpretativeefforts and the very effect their interpretationscause,
namely to think about the Republic differently,perhaps even poetically, as an enco-
mium of anarchy.
The chapter "The Sins and Confusions of Euthyphro,"one of the best in the
book, draws on the work of Wittgenstein to display the intimate connections be-
tween Euthyphro'smisunderstanding "of the language of piety [as] a correlative
misunderstandingof what it means to live a pious life" (p. 141). As such, because
the supposedly dim-witted Euthyphro, whose departureat the end of the dialogue
usually appears as the sign of his intractablethickheadedness (p. 143),
tak[es]Socrates'question. .. "Whatis piety?"-to be a question,Euthyphro
cannever
answer.... Thatis, by tryingto "answer"it he demonstratesthathe does not know

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 THE RETURNOF PLATO 183

whatpietymeans.What,then,is the pointof "asking"him?Perhapsjust to get himto

see the sense of the so-calledquestion,to get him to see thatit's morea taskthana
question.... Euthyphroshutsup and gets to work.Only then will he be pious;only
thenwill he haveunderstoodthe god;only thenwill he haveknowledgeof piety.And
he will neversee himself as any sortof expertin pietyagain.
The question whether Fendt and Rozema's interpretationof the Euthyphrois "true,"
the response to the "perfect misreadings"of generations of errantPlatonists, is ulti-
mately undecidable and perhaps even negligible. Certainly,Fendt and Rozema can-
not favor opposing others' errors to their own truths. Would it not be something
more like an endless agon of two, if not more, imperfectly "perfect misreadings"?
Plato, as the authors state from the start, may not have made any errors.But he, for-
tunately, is the first and last "Platonist"to have perfected such a virtuous work or at
least its perfect poetic illusion.
While Fendt and Rozema are intent to demonstratethe errorsof Platonic scholars'
textually misguided readings of Platonic doctrines, Richard Marback'sambitious
Plato's Dream of Sophistry aims to chart the historical reception and interpretations
of Plato's conception of sophistry and rhetoric from late antiquity to the eighteenth
century. Marbackhas little interest in evaluating the validity of the constantly his-
torically and culturally contingent interpretationsof the keywords "Plato," "Pla-
tonism," "sophist," "sophistry."Rather, he takes seriously the values accorded to
Platonism and sophistry by thinkersas diverse as Philostratusand Eunapius,Proclus
and Plotinus, and Augustine (chap. 1), the Renaissance humanist Ficino (chap. 2),
the seventeenth-centurythinkers Parker,Sprat, Bacon, and Locke (chap. 3), and the
eighteenth-centuryphilosophers Brucker, Kant, and Hegel (chap. 4). The fifth and
final chapter, reviewing first the work of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and
Jurgen Habermas and second the interpretationsof Plato's feminine figure Diotima
by Andrea Nye, Robin Schott, and Luce Irigaray,suggests how to envision Plato's
influence on the contemporarypractice and theory of rhetoric.
ThroughoutPlato's Dream of Sophistry, Marbackemphasizes how Platonic cate-
gories for rhetorical thinking were used in a necessarily distorted and incomplete
way, thus, on the one hand, transcending Plato's dialogues and, on the other hand,
assuring the continued interest in arguing about Plato's texts and the meaning and
value of Platonism. Recognizing Plato's persistent influence on the history of rheto-
ric, Marback also (and primarily) wants to call into question the assumption about
the continuity of Platonism. If one reductively equates Plato with Platonism, and
Plato with the Western rhetorical tradition, then one neglects the "argumentative,
interpretive and rhetorical enactments of the meanings of the keywords Platonism
and sophistry" (p. 133). Plato, despite anything he did or did not say, provides the
occasion, even the pretext, for a perpetualdebate about the use and abuse of rheto-
ric. In other words, in rhetorical theory and the history of rhetoric, Platonic errors
and inventive (mis)readings, thankfully,abound (p. 11):
Plato'srelationshipto rhetoric[is] one in whichPlatohas providedsubsequentgenera-
tionsuniqueopportunities fortalkingaboutdiscourseandpersuasion, Plato
opportunities
may not have imaginedand certainlydid not take. Platonism,as Whitehead's remark
suggests,is everythingPlatosaid,butit is evenmoreeverythinghe didnotsay.
The title of Marback'sbook refers to Plato's final dream as recounted by Olympi-
odorus (Vita Platonis): "Shortly before he died, Plato dreamt that he had become a

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184 RAMONAA. NADDAFF

swan which flew from tree to tree, thereby causing the utmost trouble to the archers
who wanted to shoot him down. Simmias the Socratic interpreted the dream as
meaning that Plato would elude all the pains of his interpreters."A prophetic dream
insofar as it serves to illustrate Plato's "elusive influence on the equally elusive field
of rhetoric,"Marback understands it to offer two different strategies for narrating
the histories of Western rhetoric: either one attempts to devise a final and complete
definition of "rhetoric,"or one aims, as it were, to miss the mark, to keep the mean-
ing of "rhetoric"open, admittingthe proteannatureof rhetoric,its resistance to cir-
cumscription and control. The first group of interpreterswrongly turnto Plato as the
sole source and creator of the Western rhetorical tradition: "the term Platonism is
used by historians and theorists alike to signify the collective efforts, inspired by
Plato, to systematically circumscribe the field of rhetoric so as to comprehensively
navigate and control discourse and persuasion" (p. 2). Marbacktherefore will offer
such dreamers evidence that rhetoric, just like Plato's own dialogues, resists Pla-
tonizing, emerging only "through interpretive encounters and the contingency of
circumstances . . . elud[ing] disciplinary reduction."The second group of theoreti-
cal readers tend to recognize Plato's monopoly on the rhetoricalfield and reconsider
his wrongly inflated influence so as to returnto the original antagonistic source: the
first sophists. As such, they attempt to consider rhetoric from a sophistic and not a
Platonic perspective, leaving behind, as an illusion, the quest for a final definition.
While such a reorientation correctly places Plato among other sophistic thinkers,
Marback argues that Plato indeed deserves special mention insofar as he served as
a, if not the, reference point for Westernrhetoricaltheories.
Concentrating especially on Neoplatonic uses of Plato, and their complication
both of the relation between sophistry and Platonism and of Plato's uncontested do-
minion over the field of rhetoric, Marbackfinally embraces a mode of interpretation
that "avoid[s] traditionalreadings of Platonic rhetoric that link it to Plato, favoring
instead readings of the tradition of rhetoric that approachit, as Plato dreamt, in its
'many senses'" (p. 136). The "many senses" of Plato are defined and distinguished
thus in Olympiodorus' continuation of his interpretationof Plato's dream: "For to
archers the interpretersare similar who try to hunt out the hidden meanings of the
ancients, but elusive is Plato because his writings, like those of Homer, must be un-
derstood in many senses, both physically, and ethically, and theologically, and liter-
ally." While Plato's writings can be likened to those of the poet Homer, Plato, from
Marback'sperspective, is not only a "poet." His identity-rather, his identities-
changes to reflect the meanings and significance he assumes for his interpretative
archers. For the 'Neoplatonists Plotinus and Proclus, Plato's interpretationof the
rhetoric of love opens a path to experiencing Being. Augustine's Neoplatonic Plato,
in turn, is something like a sophistic witch doctor, concocting a rhetoric "daemonic
and idolatrous."
Marback'sstudy of Platonic receptions demands that he control a vast array of
material whose styles and methodologies vary as dramatically as do the thinkers'
representationsand uses of Plato. Marbackmaintains a clear and focused perspec-
tive as he moves from century to century, proposing not only to grasp the transfor-
mations of the debates over the keywords but also the main philosophical, and
sometimes historical, contexts within which these debates arise. Marback'ssumma-
ries are lucid, his selection of texts is impeccable, and his capacity to returnpersis-

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 THE RETURNOF PLATO 185

tently to his own theoretical agenda is admirable.It is clearly too much to ask of one
author that he or she master the thought of such divergent and difficult thinkers,
even if unity is found and simplicity gained in their manipulationsof the traditions
of Platonism and sophistry.The book ultimately serves as an introductionto a broad
range of issues, and is attentive and responsive to the influences of recent work in
the field of rhetoric.
Given that Plato's Gorgias returns as a "master"text in the Western rhetorical
tradition, Marback might have included a substantial discussion of the dialogue's
narrative, arguing more in depth how and why Plato uses and originally forms the
-ike term rhetorike. Marback merely mentions this in passing (p. 8), preferring to
accentuate a receptivity to theories of reception: "Certainlyit matterswhether Plato
was the first to use the term rhetorike. But it also matters what has been made of
that fact over the course of Westernrhetoric'shistory" (p. 11). The use Plato makes
of this term, as incomplete, contradictory,and "rhetorical"as it may be, demands
more than an introductory comment. Such a discussion would also have allowed
readers who are unfamiliarwith the dialogue and with the figure of Gorgias himself
to situate themselves better when they learn in chapter 1 that Philostratus' "criti-
cisms of the older sophistry founded by Gorgias seem not so much Platonic as they
seem aimed at his perception of the lack of refinement and subtlety among Plato,
Polus, and Protagoras, the lack, that is, of their sophistic skill" (p. 23). The same
could be said of the Phaedrus in Marback's analysis of the pagan Neoplatonists'
rereadings of this dialogue and the subsequent development of a concept of voli-
tional participation that favors eloquence, persuasion, and sophistry-what Mar-
back names a "theurgic"rhetorical theory. In the Neoplatonic interpretationsof the
Phaedrus' four forms of madness (p. 30),

[r]hetoric and love and beauty are not developed in parallel simply for stylistic effect.
The experience of participationin the divine throughthe four madnesses is the goal and
consequence of Platonic rhetoric; as Eunapius suggests when he tells how Plotinus won
back Porphyry's soul with eloquence alone, it is a theurgic manipulation of the soul
through well-chosen words.

With Proclus, willful participation takes a specifically ethical and political turn.
His theurgic sophistry, symptomatic of the general collapse of sophistry and Pla-
tonism in the fourth-century Neoplatonic tradition, demands the cultivation of a
self and of rhetoricalpostures sensitively attunedto the "sympatheticindependence
of all being." Direct, personal involvement in politics is encouraged; fashioning
self and rhetoric, a philosopher can "discursively influence the world of human
interaction." As the second part of this first chapter argues, this conception of
Platonism and sophistry is radically rejected by Augustine, who contrasts the ap-
parently intuitive and simple unlearned Christian faith with the sophisticated, even
elitist, learned pagan reason. In Augustine's hands, the Neoplatonists come to
represent the rhetors-idolatrous and deceitful, violently and seductively persua-
sive-whom Plato condemns in the Gorgias. A rhetoric that manipulates through
complicated, ambiguous, and emotionally, even daemonically, provocative means is
a "bad" rhetoric. The ghost of Plato returns in Augustine's explicit rejection of
the Neoplatonists' theurgy as sophistry: "[T]he error in their rhetorical
judgement,
as well as their sin against God, is their sophistry, a prideful faith in their own

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186 RAMONAA. NADDAFF

meaning-making abilities" (p. 43). Pious rhetoric, the Christian way, understands
that meaning is not man-made; it comes to man from beyond until which moment
his linguistic signs are empty and powerless vessels. Rhetorical capacity is thus en-
visioned "antisophistically,"against the idolatrous excesses of the Neoplatonists'
eloquent speech (pp. 43-44):
Eloquenceconsists not of the ability to pridefullyelicit wisdom but ratherin the
humblerecognitionthatdivinewisdomgenerateseloquence.... Leadinga life of char-
ity,faithandchastity,Augustineconcludesthatanoratorcanbothspeakwithoutshame
and speakin any style becausesuch a life lends itself to an expressionthatis more
modest,morefocusedon wisdom,on whatis said,thanon eloquence,on how it is said.

Opposing the pagan's "active invocation of daemonic desire" to the "Christian

charitability towards the powers of the one true god," Augustine uses Plato at once
to reject the Neoplatonists' "noble sophistry" and to "open the here and now to an
unconditional truthfrom on high" (p. 44).
In the following three chapters (2-4), Marback continues to trace the various
uses and interpretations of Platonic rhetorics from the Renaissance through the
Enlightenment. Specialists in the fields will certainly be suspicious and critical of
Marback'sspecific readings and general characterizationsof Ficino, Parker, Sprat,
Bacon and Locke, Kant, and Hegel. However, he continues to offer persuasive in-
terpretationsof the constant returnto, even "obsession" with, the keywords "Plato"
and "Platonism,""sophist" and "sophistry,"as well as the historical and philosoph-
ical movement generating quite systematically the determinant,but not necessarily
determined, link between Platonic philosophy and sophistic rhetoric. Each histori-
cal case study argues for the changing representation of Plato's representationof
rhetoric and sophistry.
Commencing with the well-known appropriationand revival of ancient texts in
the Italian Renaissance, chapter 2 documents the rediscovery of Plato's debate with
the sophists as a means to secure the value of "pagan learning" and to devise a
rhetorical theory and practice that cultivates the fluid boundaries between the Pla-
tonic/sophistic distinction. In the Renaissance, a "time of sophistic," the uses of
Plato crystallize in the work of Ficino-from the "hermetic"Plato of his Pimander,
wherein persuasion returns as a magical and divine power linked to the "natural
forces of the cosmos," throughhis commentaries on the Symposium,Phaedrus, and
Sophist, where a sophistry of love and desire, Neoplatonic in inspiration, is devised
(pp. 69-70):
Ficinoaugmentshumanistic viewsof wisdomandeloquencethroughhis dualrelianceon
HermetismandNeoplatonism. Justifyingan activeuse of wordsas "baitsof pleasure"
and "divinelures,"Ficinodescribesa rhetoricalpracticegroundedin the tensionsbe-
tween inspirationand will, intentionand reception,as these are lived throughimagi-
nativeparticipation
in a dynamicuniverseof signsandimages.

Chapter 3, "Plato and the Advancement of Learning,"offers by far the most in-
teresting research in its discussion of Samuel Parker's 1666 Free and Impartial
Censure of the Platonick Philosophy, especially his interpretationof Plato's moral
reputation through poetic testimony and his attempt to preserve philosophy and
"rightreason" as he revises "Plato and the traditionof poetic wisdom." The chapter

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 THE RETURNOF PLATO 187

explains how "the development from a Baconian advancement of learning to a

Lockean, scientistic rhetoric [is] part and parcel of a re-reading of Plato's debates
with the sophists, a re-reading, that is, of Ficino's reading" (p. 75). Plato returns,
though ambiguously, as the rightful and persuasive enemy of sophists, mistakenly
imagined by the Platonic-Hermetic tradition. A "Platonic" friend of a rhetorics of
clarity and distinctness, Plato is put to use in the positive valorization of empirically
verifiable meaning and truth.
"Platonic Ambivalence in the GermanEnlightenment,"the fourth chapter, argues
that the Enlightenment'scontinued contemporaryinfluence resides in the important
place that Plato and the sophists occupied in definitions of the nature and progress
of rational philosophy (p. 105):

Chroniclingphilosophy'sdevelopmentsincePlato'sinitialefforts,Enlightenment histo-
riansemployrhetoricalstrategiesof representing
rationalityandthe ends of thinking
thatexcludecontingencyandconventionas counterproductive sophistries.Plato'scon-
questof the sophiststhusbecomesthe acceptableorderof eventsas it fits so well with
narrativesof rationalandtemporalprogress.
eighteenth-century
Brucker's revision of Plato and rejection of Platonism, and Kant's own rhetorical
critique of "the tyrannies and disruptions of either Platonic or sophistic rhetoric"
and the unresolved, problematic relation between "rhetorically enforced customs"
and "philosophically derived norms"culminate in Hegel's return,as solution, to the
first Sophists, who embody a cultural movement of self-critical reflection and per-
sonal conviction mistakenly rejected by Plato. As the conclusion "Waking from
Plato's Dream" contends, the keywords of "Platonism"and "sophistry,"especially
as used by the Neoplatonists, continue to inhabit and influence twentieth-century
thinking about the practice of rhetoric. Reviewing recent feminist readings of
the work of Plato's dramatic character Diotima, Marback reads Nye's critique of
Irigaray'sdeconstructive interpretationof Diotima as embodying a model for inter-
preting the Western rhetorical tradition and the internalization and imposition of
meanings on the keywords "Plato," "Platonism," "sophist," and "sophistry."7For
Marback,the uses, influence, and identities of Plato and Platonism are constantly in
flux, reflecting the myths, errors, and dreams of his archers, those interpreterswho
seek to understandthe elusive Plato in his "many senses." The scholarship of Pla-
tonists and anti-Platonists has kept Plato, for more than 2000 years, a dynamic
and vibrant voice of reason and unreason. He has not just provided the occasion
for footnotes. His work has also produced the need to footnote the footnotes, over
and over again. If, in the end, Marback'sinterpretationis correct, the question is
not Why publish anything more on Plato? but Why hasn't more been published on
Plato?8
RAMONA A. NADDAFF
University of California, Berkeley

7. Luce Irigaray, "Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato's Symposium, Diotima's

Speech," Hypatia 3
(1989): 32-44; Andrea Nye, "The Hidden Host: Irigaray and Diotima at Plato's Symposium,' Hypatia 3
(1989): 45-61. Marbackalso includes a discussion of Robin Schott's interpretationof Diotima in Cognition
and Eros: A Critique of the Kantian Paradigm (University Park, Pa., 1988).
8. The author wishes to thank the Editor, the Book Review Editor, and the editorial staff of Classical
Philology for their suggestions.

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