Olympiodorus: Commentary on Plato's Gorgias

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time to try to change that. Tarrant has linked Olympiodorus’ apparent tolerance of Christianity with facets of his interpretation of Socrates and his understanding of Socratic method, and with his adoption of the Stoic and subsequently Platonist concept of "common notions" implanted by nature.On these two issues see Tarrant (1997b), 185-8 and 188-90 respectively. No. 3 on the list of common notions there should perhaps not have been included; Jackson observes that it is dependent upon No. 4, as one sees at 11.5. For the common notions in earlier Neoplatonism see Saffrey and Westerink (1968), pp. 159-61.

The common notions had been taken over from the Stoics early in the history of Platonic exegesis and linked with the objects of Platonic "recollection"—that is, the Ideas—a connection encouraged by the notion-terminology (enno-) in the treatment of recollection in the Phaedo. It is interesting that in the sixth century AD, Olympiodorus was already providing the Socratic elenchus (cross-examination) with an epistemological basis by assuming that the truth resided, at least potentially, in the soul of the interlocutor, and by founding it, like Vlastos (1983), on the authority of passages such as this in the Gorgias. The true propositions which Vlastos finds lurking at the back of the interlocutor’s mind, and which have the potential to refute other moral beliefs, are founded for Olympiodorus on these common notions. It is interesting to contrast Olympiodorus’ attitude towards Polus (lecture 20) with Irwin’s much more generous assessment: "Overall, we might say that Polus’ distinction between the fine and the beneficial is quite legitimate, and indeed even a central feature of morality, since he sees, or at least does not deny, that we may have reason to act morally even against our own interests."Irwin (1979), p. 155. Evidently, the "common notions" of today do not accord with those of the ancient world.

An interesting illustration of Olympiodorus’ confidence in the common notions as the foundations of knowledge is his belief that similar ideas can be expressed in very different language.See 4.3 and 47.2-4 on the names of the pagan gods; In Alc. 21-23 on Socrates’ daimonion (divine spirit). The