Israel On Trial

How can you read Plato as a living teacher rather than a museum of doctrines? In this book, Altman argues that Plato built a curriculum, not a chronology. He urges you to replace the usual 'Order of Composition' with a 'Reading Order' that follows dramatic links and pedagogical stages. That re-ordering reveals a hidden architecture: Plato teaches by testing. He deploys basanistic pedagogy (from basanos, the touchstone) to refine the reader the way a goldsmith purifies metal—through trials, traps, and controlled contradictions that force you to defend what you’ve learned.

In this guide, you’ll discover why the Eleatic Stranger (Sophist–Statesman) and the Athenian Stranger (Laws–Epinomis) are not Plato’s final voices but pedagogical antagonists—master image-makers whose speeches you must scrutinize. You’ll then learn how Plato’s 'Tripod'—the One (as mathematical pedagogy), the Kluft (separation of Being and Becoming), and the Idea of the Good—frames the learner’s ascent via intermediates (numbers, figures) on the Divided Line. Finally, you’ll see why Apology–Crito on one side and Laws–Epinomis on the other stage two rival futures for philosophy, and how Phaedo functions as the culminating examination where arguments and action sift true Guardians from dazzled spectators.

Reading Plato as teacher

Altman restores an ancient habit—reading dialogues in a meaningful pedagogical sequence (Aristophanes’ trilogies, Thrasyllus’ groupings)—but re-centers it on dramatic continuity. Theaetetus leads into Euthyphro, which prepares Sophist–Statesman; the Apology then unmasks the genuine philosopher you’re meant to recognize after facing the Stranger’s phantasms. Short, disputed works (Hipparchus–Minos) are not outliers; they are compact tests interpolated at pressure points. Laws–Epinomis follows Crito to present an anti-Socratic, priestly politics that you must either detect as a snare or embrace as a solution.

Basanistic pedagogy

Plato does not simply expound; he examines. He writes visionary passages (Republic’s Good), proleptic confusions that pre-train your responses, and basanistic devices that provoke judgment. The Eleatic Stranger announces a 'parricide' against Parmenides (Sph. 241d–e) and entices you to let Motion into the realm of Being. The Athenian Stranger sacralizes a Nocturnal Council and legislates astronomy as piety. Both temptations are tests: will you surrender Socrates’ hard-won separation of Being and Becoming, or hold the line?

Image-making and deception

Sophist exposes two arts of imitation: eikasτικὴ (model-faithful likeness) and φανταστικὴ (viewer-tailored distortion). The Stranger wields the latter with finesse: political images (weaver, doctor, steersman) look symmetrical but hide asymmetries that justify violence ('cutting' citizens like diseased limbs; banishing as 'therapy'). Statesman’s revaluation of the 'mean' (τὸ μέτριον) subtly displaces arithmetic exactness with pliable judgment—another seduction readers often applaud without noticing the cost.

The One, intermediates, and the Kluft

Plato’s ascent needs a middle rung. Mathematics supplies 'intermediates'—objects of dianoia—that train you to leave sensibles without confusing your hypotheses for Ideas. The One here is not an Idea but a didactic tool (Republic 7); Parmenides’ gymnastic shows the perils of mis-hypostatizing unity. Phaedo’s 'equals themselves' belongs to this middle, not to the supreme realm, and the Final Argument’s strategic reversal (numbers acting as causes) is a pedagogical stress test, not Plato’s metaphysical capitulation (contrast Aristotle’s causal reading).

The trial arc: Socrates versus the Strangers

Read Apology as Plato’s portrait of the philosopher—obedience to Delphi, elenctic service, heroic acceptance of death (Achilles motif). Crito turns that portrait into decision: accept an unjust sentence for justice’s sake. Laws–Epinomis counters with a 'Fleeing Socrates' who, as Athenian Stranger, legislates an astronomical theocracy and restricts travel—an institutionalization of fear and control. Phaedo finally judges the competing regimes of courage: wine’s engineered boldness in Laws versus the hemlock’s serene freedom in philosophy.

Altman’s wager

If you adopt Reading Order, late 'departures' become deliberate trials; disputed dialogues become indispensable tests; and Socrates’ action—more than any proof—becomes Plato’s closing argument.

(Note: This approach overlaps with Straussian attention to dramatic pedagogy but remains text-internal and literary; it also counters Tübingen-Milan’s 'unwritten doctrines' by locating Plato’s teaching in written, staged tests.)

Altman reconstructs Plato’s dialogues as a course sequence that trains, tempts, and tests. You swap the philologist’s timeline for the teacher’s syllabus, following dramatic continuities that prepare you to face increasingly sophisticated trials. This Reading Order resolves puzzles the developmental chronology creates and restores contested works to functional places within Plato’s school.

The path through key dialogues

The journey begins with Theaetetus (how knowledge fails) and pivots through Euthyphro (piety’s confusion) into Sophist–Statesman, where the Eleatic Stranger dazzles with technical divisions and paradigm-talk. Apology then re-centers you on the real philosopher: Socrates. Hipparchus–Minos, a compact dyad, follows as a jail-cell practicum in deception and law. Crito dramatizes the ethic of staying rather than fleeing. Laws–Epinomis introduces a rival political theology. Phaedo closes the curriculum with both proofs and the argument-of-the-action—Socrates’ death as purification.

Interpolated dyads

Altman argues Plato often inserts paired miniatures as 'interpolated dyads' between major stations. Sophist–Statesman is interpolated before Apology to ensure you’ve seen a seductive pseudo-philosopher before meeting the real thing. Hipparchus–Minos is interpolated before Crito to train a young companion—and you—to spot sophistic praise and divine-law rhetoric. Laws–Epinomis is interpolated before Phaedo to stage the theological-political temptation the hemlock will finally judge.

• Sophist–Statesman: ontology and image-making as tests of perception.
• Hipparchus–Minos: deceptive praise and law-from-Zeus as forensic drills.
• Laws–Epinomis: priestly astronomy and the Nocturnal Council as regime test.

Why this order matters

Treating the dialogues as pedagogical steps dissolves 'late' versus 'early' anxieties. Phaedo is late pedagogically because it presupposes the Divided Line, the Parmenidean gymnastic, and hard experience with sophistic phantoms. Euthyphro’s function as a hinge between Theaetetus and Sophist becomes clear: piety, prophecy, and parricide are juxtaposed to steel you for the Stranger’s torture of 'father Parmenides.'

Authenticity through function

On this model, removing Hipparchus, Minos, or Epinomis breaks the course design. Their 'smallness' is a feature: Plato often tests with compact, pointed exercises. The prison-frame of Hipparchus–Minos anticipates Phaedo’s weeping jailor; Epinomis legally crowns the Council Laws architected, turning an ostensible fragment into a finished institutional program (or, pedagogically, into a deliberately alarming finale).

A reading practice

Ask, for each dialogue: whom is Plato preparing you to trust, and whom to distrust, in the next one? If the answer is 'Socrates' against a Stranger’s allure, you are tracking the curriculum correctly.

(Note: Thrasyllus’ later tetralogies partially preserve such sequencing but blur the tests; Reading Order restores the trials as trials.)

Plato’s most distinctive teaching tool is basanistic pedagogy—testing by crafted provocation. He makes you face authoritative-sounding falsehoods, tempting half-truths, and paradoxes that only a prepared mind can resist. You don’t merely read; you are examined. Like a skilled rhetor in Phaedrus, Plato can deceive because he knows the truth and, more importantly, he trains you to detect the very deceptions he stages.

Three coiled strategies

Altman identifies a triad: visionary (Socrates unveils the Good and the Divided Line), proleptic (texts pre-confuse to build immunity), and basanistic (a touchstone-trial that exposes what you really understand). Timaeus functions as a grand proleptic-basanistic device: the noble cosmology seduces you into reconciling Being and Becoming; only a Guardian trained on Republic’s Kluft resists.

The Stranger as examiner

In Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger 'puts Parmenides to torture' to license not-being and motion within what-is. In Statesman, he praises paradigms and the mean while sliding from arithmetic exactness to pliable judgment. In Laws–Epinomis, the Athenian Stranger welds law to astronomy and founds a priestly council. Each figure wears a philosopher’s mask while performing the sophist’s art of φανταστικὴ.

Textual tells and traps

Plato leaves fingerprints: self-contradictions, 'greater than necessary' admissions, sudden category shifts (treating numbers as Ideas), and strained analogies (weaver/doctor/steersman). He also builds in internal correctives: Socrates’ interruptions, younger interlocutors’ balking, or the sudden reappearance of Republic’s arithmetic rigor. Noticing these tells is the exam.

• Phaedrus: only one who knows truth can craft and catch deception—Plato trains you in both.
• Phaedo: Penelope-like weaving and deliberate false mixtures (e.g., pairing the Good with Bigness) test your mental discipline.
• Statesman: 'generation of the mean' tempts you to enthrone a practical tool as metaphysical principle.

How to sit for Plato’s exam

Treat beguiling clarity as a red flag. Ask: what prior doctrine is being bent? Who benefits from this image? Does the speaker smuggle a middle-term (number, mean, paradigm) into the place of an unhypothetical principle (the Good)? Mark inversions, abrupt additions (e.g., late 'arithmos' in Statesman 284e), and unearned analogies. Then, test them against Republic’s Tripod.

Purpose of the trial

Plato’s aim is therapeutic, not cynical. The sting causes doctrine to 'leap' into your soul; you become the kind of reader—and citizen—who can resist charming falsehoods.

(Note: This reading explains variance across 'late' dialogues without postulating a doctrinal collapse; the variance is a teaching method, not a change of mind.)

Plato arms you to face the most dangerous teacher: the one who seems most like a philosopher. The Eleatic Stranger masters the art of making images—sometimes faithful, often flattering. Sophist distinguishes eikasτικὴ (exact likenesses measured by length, breadth, depth) from φανταστικὴ (viewer-adjusted distortions). The book argues the Stranger repeatedly practices the second while advertising the first, producing a 'phantom philosopher' you must learn to unmask.

Two arts of imitation

Eikasτικὴ aligns proportions with the model; it preserves symmetry. Φανταστικὴ manipulates perspective to make big things look small, and vice versa. The painter shrinks the statue’s upper parts so it looks right from below—truth is sacrificed to seeming. Translated into speech, sophistry puts verbal 'copies' into young ears until they believe the speaker is wise (Sph. 236d–e).

Paradigms that hide violence

In Statesman, the weaver, physician, and steersman serve as political paradigms. But the hidden asymmetries bite. Weaving implies obedient material; citizens are not wool. Medicine justifies cutting and burning; politics should not. Navigation risks sacrificing sailors for the ship; just rule serves persons, not abstractions. The Stranger’s apparent eikasτικὴ is often phantastic camouflage for coercion.

Measurement and the pliable mean

Statesman splits measurement: arithmetic-geometry versus the 'fitting' (τὸ μέτριον, ὁ καιρός). He elevates the mean over numbers, dislocating exactness from arithmos (contrast Philebus’ ἀκρίβεια). Practical judgment matters, but the Stranger’s rhetoric tempts you to install a conditioned tool as an unconditioned standard. That swap mirrors sophistry’s core trick: replace the hard with the handy.

• Watch for soft words—'fitting,' 'timely,' 'needful'—used to trump number when power wants flexibility.
• Note confessions: the Stranger admits making the story 'greater than necessary'—a wink toward phantasτικὴ.

Reader’s counter-technique

Apply Plato’s touchstone: does the image scale, preserve symmetry, and stay accountable to principles learned in Republic (the Kluft and the Good)? If not, label it a phantom. Refit the analogy or refuse it. Then bring Socrates back into view: he is the eikōn by which to judge political images.

Why this matters now

Phantoms thrive wherever expertise speaks in metaphors. Learning to test images—especially political ones—keeps reason sovereign over rhetoric.

(Parenthetical note: Notomi and Benardete help map these illusions; Altman presses further by assigning them to a conscious pedagogical design.)

Plato’s ascent needs a stable ladder. Altman recovers a three-tier ontology—Ideas, intermediates, sensibles—anchored by the Kluft (the separation of Being and Becoming). Mathematics inhabits the middle as disciplined dianoia. The One here is not a supreme Form; it is a didactic instrument that lets you gather multiplicity without confusing your constructs for transcendent realities.

Divided Line and the intermediates

Republic 6–7 assigns mathematics to the second segment: it uses hypotheses and images to train the eye upward. Numbers and figures are intelligible but repeatable; they are neither bodies nor singular Ideas. This is why the 'equals themselves' in Phaedo should be read as dianoetic objects, not as the Form of Equality itself. Treating them otherwise triggers Parmenides’ aporia (the Third Man and the false One).

Parmenides as gymnastic

The Parmenidean exercise teaches you to handle unities safely. Hypotheses about the One can generate paradoxes when mistaken for the unconditioned. The lesson: keep the One you count (monads) distinct from the Good you contemplate. Philebus later restores the philosopher’s monads and accuracy linked to number—counterweight to Statesman’s seductive mean.

Guarding the Kluft

The Stranger’s 'parricide' tries to relax the ban on not-being and motion. Altman urges you to defend the Kluft: don’t let Motion into the realm of what truly is. When the Stranger treats 'what is' as both resting and moving (Sph. 250c), hear the touchstone scraping. This defense preserves the transcendent Good and prevents cosmology (Timaeus, Epinomis) from swallowing ethics.

Numbers as means, not causes

Phaedo’s Final Argument lets numbers and opposites 'occupy' sensibles as causes—an intentional reversal that should make you flinch. If you’ve climbed the Line, you will refuse to let intermediates descend as efficient causes of Becoming. You’ll use them as training wheels, then set them aside for noēsis.

• Practical rule: when Plato speaks of the One, specify—monadic hypothesis, mathematical unit, or the transcendent Good?
• Diagnostic test: does the move collapse dianoia into noēsis or preserve their difference?

Why this matters

Lose the intermediates and you flatten Plato into immanent naturalism; enthrone them and you confuse means for ends. Keep them as a disciplined middle, and the ascent holds.

(Note: Aristotle’s testimony about mathematical middles corroborates, but Altman insists the status is pedagogical more than metaphysical.)

Against the Stranger’s glitter, Plato sets Socrates. Apology offers the clearest portrait of Plato’s philosopher: pious obedience to Apollo, relentless elenchus for others’ good, courageous acceptance of death. In Reading Order, Apology arrives after Sophist–Statesman to cleanse your palate. You’ve seen a phantom philosopher; now meet the real one and adopt him as your measure (the living eikōn).

Delphic vocation and the sign

Socrates roots his mission in Delphi: no one is wiser than he because he knows he is not wise. His daimonion 'turns him away' from certain public entanglements; it doesn’t command ambition. This explains his 'private life' principle (Ap. 31e–32a): a just man survives longer outside formal office. Yet he still returns to the Cave—daily exhortation, service, and, at the end, witness before a jury.

Guardian standards

Socrates lives the Guardian ideal: benefit others (ὠφελεῖν), care for the soul before wealth, and choose justice over life. The Achilles analogy (Ap. 28c–29a) recasts heroism as steadfastness in justice. When he refuses to pity-bargain for exile, he enacts what the curriculum has been building toward: principle over prudence, measure over mean.

Crito’s decisive choice

Crito brings theory to threshold. Escape is possible; darling friends plead; the Laws 'speak.' Socrates remains. He internalizes justice as lawfulness, not as submission to power. The argument is both rational (harm no one, keep just agreements) and dramatic (preparing for Phaedo’s calm). This is the opposite of the Athenian Stranger’s stance, who will later criminalize travel to secure order.

• Reader’s role: serve as witness across dialogues; corroborate patterns of Socrates’ life.
• Practical echo: prefer justice-preserving private integrity over power-seeking public office.

Measure for images

Use Socrates as the touchstone for the Stranger’s political images. If an image cannot be squared with Socrates’ justice and restraint, reject it.

(Parenthetical note: This reverses the modern 'Equation'—speaker = author; here Socrates remains Plato’s norm, while Strangers function as trials.)

After Crito, Plato confronts you with a regime that looks orderly, pious, and learned—yet may be anti-Socratic at its core. The Athenian Stranger in Laws engineers a theological-political machine: educate to astronomy, enthrone a Nocturnal Council, bind citizens to obey priest-scientists, restrict travel, and sacralize law. Append Epinomis, and the machine clicks into place.

Book 7 at the center

With Epinomis as Book 13, Laws 7 sits at the center, introducing arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy as the free person’s curriculum. The rhetoric carefully flatters Cleinias and Megillus, who crave honor more than knowledge (Tarán notes their star-ignorance). The curriculum anticipates a priestly politics: astronomy becomes theology; theology legitimates law.

Nocturnal Council and catch-22

Book 12 creates 'Divine Correctors' and seeds a Council with sweeping power. The founding puzzle—who authorizes the authorizers?—is theatrically solved in Epinomis: by continuing the conversation, the Stranger becomes co-founder (koinonos), and the first Council uses its authority to constitute itself. The last legal strokes bind citizens to honor Council and cosmic gods.

Wine versus hemlock

Laws dwells on regulated drinking as civic psychology; the state manages courage by intoxication. Phaedo places a different cup—hemlock—into Socrates’ hands. The contrast is stark: engineered boldness versus purified fear overcome by reason. The book uses the 'two drinking parties' to force your choice between social engineering and philosophical freedom.

Fleeing Socrates hypothesis

Read the Athenian Stranger as the road-not-taken: the Socrates who fled and became a lawgiver abroad. If so, Laws–Epinomis is a basanistic counterfactual, not Plato’s testament. It institutionalizes precisely what Socrates refused—ruling by fear, piety-as-astronomy, and suspicion of travelers. If, instead, you equate Stranger with Plato, you inherit a theocratic Plato at odds with Republic and Apology.

• Key statutes: travel bans, visitor policing, Nocturnal Council oversight of observers (Lg. 951–953).
• Pedagogical read: a brilliant lure designed to sort readers who prefer power’s order to justice’s risk.

Political moral

Beware regimes that divinize expertise. When law wears the vestments of science, dissent looks like impiety.

(Note: Voegelin, Strauss, and Halverson offer rival identifications of the Stranger; Altman turns the question into a test you must take.)

Between Apology and Crito, two brief dialogues—Hipparchus and Minos—function as a prisoner’s practicum in reading and ruling. Their small scale is deceptive. Each compresses Plato’s pedagogy: train moral resistance to sophistic charm, and probe how theology and law interlock. Read together, they prepare you to face the Athenian Stranger’s regime in Laws with steadier eyes.

Hipparchus: flattering lies and firm souls

Socrates oddly praises a tyrant who engraved Delphic sayings on Herms to educate the many. His young companion calls foul: 'You are deceiving me' (228a). Exactly so. Socrates’ story is bait; Hipparchus appropriates wisdom for prestige. The companion resists sophistic neatness—refusing to endorse 'profit' as intrinsically good—and thereby passes a first exam: cling to moral intuition when arguments grow slick.

Minos: law, gods, and caves

What is law? A rule about what is fine and shameful, said to be from Zeus to Minos—received in a cave. Socrates extols Cretan sobriety and drilling, rehearsing the rhetoric Epinomis will later amplify. Marsyas, flute-rival of Apollo, lurks in the background as an omen: musical contests mask theological politics. Minos thus links divine sanction to legal form, tutoring you to test claims of holy law when they reappear in Magnesia.

A jailor in training

Altman floats a dramatic hypothesis: the companion could be Phaedo’s weeping jailor (116d–e). If so, these dialogues are literal prison-lessons that forge the man who will later witness Socrates’ death with a steadier heart. Whether or not you accept the identification, the pedagogical fit is tight: mini-tests before the maximal test.

• Skill drilled: spot 'education' used as self-advertisement.
• Alert raised: when law invokes gods, ask who gets to interpret them.

Functional takeaway

Hipparchus–Minos tunes your ear to hear Epinomis’ astronomical priesthood as a political claim, not a pious necessity.

(Note: The dyad’s authenticity gains by function: remove it and the prison-to-hemlock arc loses its calibrating steps.)

Phaedo closes the course by fusing argument with action. The dialogue is a basanos, not a treatise—it sorts readers. Arguments about immortality are staged as exercises in disciplined dianoia, riddled with deliberate contradictions to test whether you can keep intermediates from usurping Ideas. The drama—Socrates’ bath, swan-song, and calm—delivers the ethical proof no syllogism can match.

Anti-cosmology and purification

Unlike Timaeus and Epinomis, Phaedo demotes visible heavens to a distorting medium—like seeing through water. The Glaucus metaphor teaches you to strip accretions from souls and texts to glimpse the original form. Purification (katharsis) becomes the philosopher’s art: detach from body’s 'ornaments,' practice death, and reorient sight from Becoming to Being.

Proofs as traps and therapy

The Recollection and Affinity arguments build ascent muscles; the Dianoetic Coda provocatively pairs the Good with Bigness, Health, Strength—an impossible mixture meant to make you object. The Final Argument elevates numbers and opposites into causal roles, a methodological transgression you should catch if you’ve mastered the Divided Line. Failure to protest marks you as dazzled by constructs; success marks you as Guardian-ready.

Argument of the action

Socrates’ refusal to flee (Crito) culminates in the serene cup. Where Laws manages courage via wine, Socrates manifests courage by truth. The bath, the farewell, the swan-song (Apollo as purifier) enact the curriculum’s end: philosophy is the practice of death, so that, in life, you can serve justice without fear.

• Reading drill: every time Phaedo invokes 'the equals themselves,' ask: Form or intermediate? Then check your answer against the Divided Line.
• Ethical drill: measure persuasive comfort against Socrates’ conduct; prefer the conduct.

Final criterion

If you can both reconstruct Phaedo’s arguments and explain why some of them are not Plato’s last word, you’ve passed the test. The hemlock seals the grade.

(Note: Dorothea Frede’s alertness to the 'absurd mixture' models the right readerly reflex; Altman extends it into a comprehensive pedagogy.)