modernist platonic dialogues… to some extent modernism in writing is about abbreviating what needs to be written while increasing what needs to be read (according to whom) with respect both to the size of modernist works and to the amount of secondary material required to properly read those works (according to whom)
What the modernist would abbreviate/ do away with in Plato’s works is the whole conceit that his dialogues are sorts of drama, that philosophy is a conversation between people (the representation in writing of such a conversation): philosophy, the modernist would say, is truly a conversation between parts of one person’s own mind. (which modernists) (is philosophy –not written philosophy but philosophizing– the same if it doesn’t occur between people? if it occurs between ‘person’?) Even if Plato had been trying to recreate an actual dialogue that he had heard his written representation of it would nevertheless actually involve the different parts of his own mind, would say the modernist [What do you make of the fact that his dialogues are sometimes conversations about conversations? The Phaedo. Does that seem to you ‘modern’?]
The writer of the modernist platonic dialogue therefore would do away with the idea of characters but keep their statements, and keep intact that certain sorts of statements come from specific moods of the author or “places” within him. (explain if you are equating statements made by different sorts of “moods” –of the author– with characters? with different sorts of “assumptions” do you mean? What do you mean ‘places’, identities?) (Are Fielding’s Thwackum and Square examples of characters made from differing “assumptions” within him, within Fielding? Do you mean ‘categories’?]
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If the Meno (for example) were written in the modernist style [do you mean modern?] there would be no Meno, no Socrates, and no slave, (no character of meno no character of Socrates no character of the slave) but only Plato, or, more likely, a character who was basically Plato but called something slightly different, something like Ploto, and the statements made by Meno, Socrates, the slave, would each appear in a different font face maybe, so as to call attention to the distinctions that occur within the thinking of “Ploto” which wouldn’t otherwise have any marker. (Finnegans Wake?)
The modernist version of a platonic dialogue would be more realistic than the originals because they would strive directly to express Plato’s thought rather than to express them through the mannequins of characters [how would that be different from Kant?][does it matter how well Plato has drawn his characters?] [Do pseudonyms like Kierkegaard’s figure into this?] [Is realism necessary to philosophy itself or just to “modernist expressions” of philosophy?]
The next question for the modernist [which modernist] would be the realistic portrayal of the thoughts as they occur to one in one’s consciousness. Do thoughts appear there fully formed, as they do in Plato’s works, or do they rather appear as fragments of language which the consciousness intuits the whole of instinctively, or does it vary from consciousness to consciousness and from time to time …
A related question: how would we describe how one of Plato’s characters arrived at formulating his expressed thought? What occurs in the mind of such a character between two expressions of thought? What occurs in the minds of the characters as, for instance, they listen to one of Socrates arguments or questions? Why didn’t Plato portray this?
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