Thinking of Death in Plato's Euthydemus: A Close Reading and New Translation

Plato's Euthydemus is a dialogue surrounding the trial and death of Socrates. It explores the relationship between philosophy and political life, featuring the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who are both haunted by the idea of being disembodied from substance. Gwenda-lin Grewal's close reading reveals how the dialogue's structure and the pair's arguments resemble thinking itself, and how they take this to an extreme, becoming the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit, expanding the reader's access to the dialogue's mysteries.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 07 April 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Plato's Euthydemus is one of the dialogues that revolve around the trial and death of Socrates. In this dialogue, Socrates encounters the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who appear as if they are the ghost of the Socrates of Aristophanes' Thinkery. The pair vacillate between choral ode and rhapsody, as Plato vacillates between referring to them in the dual and plural number in Greek. Gwenda-lin Grewal's close reading explores how the structure of the dialogue and the pair's back-and-forth arguments bear a striking resemblance to thinking itself: in its immersive remove from reality, thinking simulates death even as it cannot conceive of its possibility. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus take this to an extreme, and thus emerge as the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance.

The Euthydemus is haunted by philosophy's tenuous relationship to political life. This is played out in the narration through Crito's implied criticism of Socrates, the phantom image of the Athenian laws, and in the drama itself, which appears to take place in Hades. Thinking of death thus brings with it a lurid parody of the death of thinking: the farce of perfect philosophy that bears the gravity of the city's sophistry. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit in ways that substantially expand the reader's access to the dialogue's mysteries.

Weight: 558g
Dimension: 240 x 160 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192849571