The Other Plato

Collected writings on Plato's unwritten teachings.

Collected writings on Plato's unwritten teachings.

Offering a provocative alternative to the dominant approaches of Plato scholarship, the Tübingen School suggests that the dialogues do not tell the full story of Plato's philosophical teachings. Texts and fragments by his students and their followers-most famously Aristotle's Physics-point to an "unwritten doctrine" articulated by Plato at the Academy. These unwritten teachings had a more systematic character than those presented in the dialogues, which according to this interpretation were meant to be introductory. The Tübingen School reconstructs a historical, critical, and systematic account of Plato that takes into account testimony about these teachings as well as the dialogues themselves. The Other Plato collects seminal and more recent essays by leading proponents of this approach, providing a comprehensive overview of the Tübingen School for English readers.

Dmitri Nikulin is Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He has written several books, including Dialectic and Dialogue.

"…offers a spirited and compelling challenge to the now-canonical Chernissian position … Nikulin's volume is an invaluable contribution to contemporary literature on Plato in English and will stand as a formidable dialogue partner with the work of, for instance, Mitchell Miller and Charles Kahn. Nikulin's own introduction to the volume presents one of the clearest accounts of the major themes of the Tübingen School and its role in the recent history of Plato scholarship available in English, as well as posing anew a long-standing question about the role of history and tradition in the reception and interpretation of philosophical problems and systems." — Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal