Work #1031 · Mature period

Translation of Plato's dialogues

Schleiermacher's 1804-28 translation of Plato's dialogues — the founding modern German Plato edition and a major event in nineteenth-century philological scholarship

Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1804-28 (multi-volume translation with extensive prefaces and notes) · German (translating Classical Greek) · Translation with critical introductions

Tradition: German classical philology / nineteenth-century Platonic scholarship

The founding modern German translation of Plato — Schleiermacher's philological achievement that reshaped nineteenth-century Plato studies

Schleiermacher's multi-volume translation of Plato's dialogues (1804-28) was the founding modern German Plato edition. The translation came with extensive prefaces and notes that proposed a developmental ordering of the dialogues (with the Phaedrus argued as early, departing from earlier consensus) and that constituted the first systematic modern Platonic scholarship in German. The work shaped nineteenth-century German philosophical and philological engagement with Plato (Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche all worked from Schleiermacher's edition) and remains a major monument of classical philology.

Author

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Editions cited

Platons Werke (Berlin, 1804-28, multiple volumes); introductions reprinted as Schleiermacher's Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato (William Dobson, Cambridge 1836)

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School Embodiments

Platonism (Classical) · 30%

Rationalism · 15%

Idealism · 10%

Liberal Theology · 5%

Phenomenology · 5%

Structuralism · 10%

Realism · 15%

Critical Realism · 10%

Platonism (Classical) 30%

Founding modern German Plato edition; principal source for nineteenth-century German engagement with Plato.

"Plato's philosophical achievement consists not in particular doctrines but in the dialogue form through which philosophy itself is conducted." (Schleiermacher's Plato translation, Introduction)

Rationalism 15%

The systematic-philological method — careful textual reconstruction, developmental ordering — is rationalist scholarship in its high nineteenth-century form.

"Each dialogue must be read in its place in the developmental sequence, not as an isolated treatise." (Schleiermacher's introductions)

Idealism 10%

Schleiermacher's reading of Plato shaped the German idealist engagement with the Platonic tradition.

"In Plato, philosophy first becomes self-conscious as a particular activity of mind." (Schleiermacher on Plato)

Liberal Theology 5%

The philological-historical method Schleiermacher applied to Plato also organised his theological scholarship — careful textual reconstruction as the proper method.

"What I have done with Plato, I aim to do with the Christian textual tradition: read each text in its proper place in the developmental sequence." (Schleiermacher methodological)

Phenomenology 5%

Close descriptive attention to the dramatic-philosophical texture of the Platonic dialogues.

"The Platonic dialogue is not a treatise in disguise but a dramatic-philosophical form whose meaning lies in the form as well as the propositions." (Schleiermacher on Plato)

Structuralism 10%

The developmental ordering of the dialogues is structuralist in shape — meaning located in relational position within the corpus, not in isolated propositions.

"The meaning of any particular dialogue depends on its relation to the others — the corpus is a system, not a collection." (Schleiermacher on Plato)

Realism 15%

Realist about the recoverable historical-philosophical reality of Plato's actual thought.

"Through careful philological work we can recover what Plato actually wrote and what he actually thought." (Schleiermacher on Plato)

Critical Realism 10%

The careful distinction between actual Plato, later interpretations, and modern reception is critical-realist scholarly practice.

"Many of the doctrines attributed to Plato by the Neoplatonic tradition cannot be found in the actual Platonic texts properly read." (Schleiermacher introductions)

Internal Tensions

Schleiermacher's specific developmental ordering of the dialogues (the early-Phaedrus thesis especially) has been variously accepted and rejected by subsequent Plato scholarship. The translation's historical importance is uncontested.

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I. Time

The long historical arc from Plato's fourth-century-BC Athens to Schleiermacher's early-nineteenth-century Berlin.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Grain: Continuous Freedom: Deterministic Traversability: Linear Direction: Uni-directional Dimensionality: One

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II. Space

The Athenian dialogue-spaces Plato dramatised; the Berlin scholarly-academic space within which the translation was produced.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Curvature: Flat Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local

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III. Matter

The material textual tradition of Plato's dialogues across two millennia of transmission.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local

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IV. Observer

Schleiermacher as philologist; the German philosophical-philological reading public.

Attributes

Time Instance: Single Space Instance: Single Knowledge Extent: Partial Knowledge Retainment: Total Physicality: Embodied Agency: Active Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: None

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V. Energy

The intellectual-philological energies of careful textual reconstruction.

Attributes

Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dispersibility: Irreversible

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VI. Information

The textual content of the Platonic dialogues; the interpretive apparatus of introductions and notes.

Attributes

Ontological Status: Substantival Cosmic Conservation: Conserved Personal Conservation: Conserved Granularity: Discrete

Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint

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Titus Lucretius Carus

31/34

90%

Anaximander of Miletus

Computed school proximity

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