The Guardians on Trial

Based on a conception of Reading Order introduced and developed in his Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington; 2012) and The Guardians in Action: Plato the Teacher and the Post-Republic Dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus (Lexington; 2016), William H. F. Altman now completes his study of Platos so-called late dialogues by showing that they include those that depict the trial and death of Socrates. According to Altman, it is not Order of Composition but Reading Order that makes Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo late dialogues, and he shows why Platos decision to interpolate the notoriously late Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro and Apology deserves more respect from interpreters. Altman explains this interpolationand another, that places Laws between Crito and Phaedoas part of an ongoing test Plato has created for his readers that puts the Guardians on Trial. If we dont recognize that Socrates himself is the missing Philosopher that the Eleatic Stranger never actually describesand also the antithesis of the Athenian Stranger, who leaves Athens in order to create laws for Cretewe pronounce ourselves too sophisticated to be Platos Guardians, and unworthy of the Socratic inheritance.