Mapping Plato
Over the weekend, it was very slow at work, so I played around with visualizing text along the lines of Moretti’s maps, and so I thought I’d post about it. Keeping with the Plato theme, I looked at the context of four dialogues and tried to create a map in Paint. In the end of this post, I will relate what I’ve done to authors who are more traditionally connected to history: Marx, Lenin, and other communists/socialists. First, I am going to give a quick summary of the context of each dialogue, and, then, there will be the “map” that I created. My prediction is comparing the descriptions and the map will show that sometimes a map is clearer than text.
The Republic: This dialogue begins with Socrates describing a conversation he had at the Piraeus, a port in Athens, the day before. The 251 pages that follow are his description of that conversation. That means that there is a one day difference between the speaker of the dialogue and the main action of the dialogue.
The Timaeus: This dialogue traditionally comes after The Republic. It begins with Socrates referring to his speech the day before, which is the speech of The Republic, and, then, other characters give their speeches. That means the main action of The Timaeus is a continuation of Socrates’ description from The Republic.
The Theaetetus: Two characters, Euclides and Terpsion, remember a conversation between Socrates and Theaetetus, a popular, gifted young man. Euclides was not at the conversation, but he did write down the details from Socrates. That means the main event of the dialogue, the conversation between Socrates and Theaetatus, comes to Euclides from Socrates.
The Sophist: This dialogue comes after The Theaetetus. That makes it a continuation of the conversation between Socrates and Theaetatus.
Now, compare these descriptions with the map below. As you can see, each the bubbles on the left contain the names of the dialogues, each with their own color. The lines lead to bubbles on the right. The furthest bubble to the right is the actual action of the dialogue, for example, the conversation between Socrates and Theaetetus is on the right.
Besides clarifying the context of the dialogues, the map reinforces an important point about Plato’s writing style. At least for the four dialogues, he places a few layers between his readers and the main conversations of his dialogues. That brings into question the accuracy of the speaker and the reader. Even an honest speaker can forget details from a conversation from the day before. The Theaetetus is ironic in this sense, then, because much of its conversation is about knowledge. I hear people say they know what Plato thought, but their access to the main activity of the dialogues is second- and even third-hand.
Mapping out texts like this, though in a more sophisticated way than mine, can reveal things about texts, their authors, and even the historical context in which the texts were written. What if someone mapped out the connections between Marx’s and Engles’ writings and every other communist that followed them, say, by mentioning their names and writings? What would that reveal about Lenin? Would that verify soviet propaganda that Lenin was following Marxism? I am convinced that such a map would reveal interesting things about the politics behind communist ideology. One could correlate events, like the success of the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks with communist writing in Russia. I imagine many lines of ideology stopping abruptly as their authors would disappear in the conflict with Lenin, Trotsky, etc.
I think it would be interesting to map the Bible and correlate that with Church history. I suspect that would reveal or emphasize patterns scholars do not always notice. Clearly, Moretti’s idea of mapping out texts is intriguing and useful.
