PREFACE TO PLATO ERIC A. HAVELOCK ‘THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS ANDLONDON, ENGLAND0 1963 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All ight reid intl inthe United Stars of America ih pring, 1998 sare for che complain ofthis work was indirectly afforded the anor daring the cours of in apoinement a visting fellow in the Tord Humans roar adminisered by the Counc ofthe Humanities of Princeon Univer= sity, His debt co the Counal and its of, to Peaceton Unive, and tbo to the Ford Foundation jx graefly acknowledged Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 13859 ISBN 0-674-69906-8 To MY FATHERFOREWORD will be 3 sris of studies designed to demonstrate what may be called the growth of the early Greek mind, By this Udo not mean another history of Greck philosophy in ee accepted sense of that term. All human civilisations rely on a sort of cultural ‘book’, that i, on the eapacity to put information in storage in order to reuse it. Before Hower’ day, the Greck cultural ‘book’ had been stored in the oral memory. Discoveries and conclusions associated. with the recent decipherment of “Tincae B', facinating and fashionable though chey ate, mest not be allowed to obscare this escaial fact. Between Homer and Plato, the method of storage began to alter, asthe information bocamealphabetsed, and correspondingly the eye supplanted the cat asthe chief organ employed for this purpose. The complete restls of ieracy did not supervere in Grcece until the wshering in of the Hellenistic age, when concepts ehought achieved as it ‘were fluency adits vocabulary beeamie more or les standardised. Plato, living in the midst of this revolution, announced it and became its prophet, ieee evidence for mental phenomena can lie only in Linguistic sage. Ifsuck a revolution a outlined did take place in Greece, it should be aeested by changes in the vocabulary and syntax of writen Greek. The semantic information hitherto compiled in Greck lexicoas will not help us much, insofar asthe vacioussig- nifications of words are arranged for the most pact analytically rather than historically, 28 atoms of finite meaning suspended in avoid, rather than a8 areas of meaning which are contained and defined by a context. ‘The effect isto foster the unconscious ‘snumnprion tht the Grcek experience ffom Homer to Aristode focis cultural constant capable of being represented in a sign system of great variety, to be sure, but consining merely of cts of interchangeable pas. “The enterprise which lies ahead would therefore be to seek to Ti present volume is offered asthe frst of what itis hoped