As we have noticed thus far, Hume's characters in his dialogues, namely Cleanthes, Philo, and Demea, are all more complex and less like mouthpieces than the characters of Berkley.
One thing I have noticed, however, is despite this depth, certain behaviors of Hume's characters do not connote the same level of profundity as that of Plato's characters. There is plenty of implied meaning behind, for example, Cephalus leaving the room in Book One of Republic, or implied conversion of Glaucon in Book Nine.
Why is this so? It is true that there is certain level of societal satire in Plato that doesn't seem to be present in Hume. We also know a good deal of historical biographical information about many of Plato's interlocutors that gives the characters perhaps a more authentic depth than that of fictional ones, at least in the case of Hume, and certainly Berkley. Moreover, there is also an omniscient tension in Plato's dialogues--almost all of them contain a hero that everyone listening or reading (even in the time of Plato) now knows to have been executed.
Given these added layers, the depth of Plato's interlocutors is much greater than that of Cleanthes, for example, yet is it even fair to compare the two?
There is a part of me that feels as though the comparison is not fair based on the authentic depth of Plato's interlocutors that you had mentioned. It seems like the characters have a secondary purpose when they have that sort of authentic depth to them by making the conversations seem more grounded in reality; I would go so far as to say the dialogues of Plato seem to be more valid since he utilizes existing people to express ideas rather than creating characters that will by design do that.
ReplyDeleteI could of course be missing a major connection between the two, in which case, oops.