The State of the Question in the Study of Plato: Twenty Year Update

Abstract

This article updates "The State of the Question in the Study of Plato" (Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1996) based on research covering the years from 1995-2015. Its three major parts examine:(1) how the mid-twentieth-century consensus has fared, (2) whether the new trends identified in that article have continued, and (3) identify trends either new or missed in the original article. On the whole, it shows the continuing decline of dogmatic and nondramatic Plato interpretation and the expansion and ramification of the more literary, dramatic, and nondogmatic "new Platonism." What was a growing insurgency twenty years ago can now be described as a, if not the, dominant approach.