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Rolling Sisyphus’ Stone Uphill? Plato’s Philosophy of History and Progress Reappraised

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2021

Christian Vassallo
Christian Vassallo*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame and University of Calabria*
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Abstract

This paper addresses the following questions about Plato’s concept of ‘history’: (a) is there a ‘philosophy of history’ in Plato’s thought?; (b) if this concept exists, do the dialogues lay out a single, cohesive understanding of ‘history’ or does it vary from text to text?; (c) how does Plato understand the word ‘history’? This inquiry also addresses the role of ‘progress’ in some of the main Platonic dialogues. An in-depth analysis of these texts can also help us find a solution to the problem of the end of ‘history’, when a civilization either physically collapses (due to a catastrophic event) or morally decays (because of the corruption of its citizens and politicians). I argue that Plato’s ‘philosophy of history’ is not necessarily Sisyphean, but that it attempts to work out how to avoid the entropic decay of civilization and to preserve cultural – almost ‘genetic’ – ‘memory’ in order to counter the danger of cyclical regression.

Keywords

culturehistorymythnaturePlatoprogress
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 141 , November 2021 , pp. 179 - 196
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

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Footnotes

*

cvassall@nd.edu; christian.vassallo@unical.it. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at The Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, 21 March 2019, with the title: ‘Controversial issues on Plato’s ideals of history and progress’. I would like to thank warmly Gretchen Reydams-Schils for her kind invitation and extremely fruitful discussion on several points of this study, along with all the participants at the workshop for their stimulating questions. I am also grateful to John T. Fitzgerald, Vittorio Hölse, Harold Tarrant and the two anonymous referees for their useful suggestions and critical remarks. This research has been made possible through financing from the U.S.–Italy Fulbright Commission (Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program 2018–2019)

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