This is a posthumous collection of essays and reviews by the philosopher-classicist Seth Benardete. Unlike the previous collection edited by Burger and Davis (The Argument of the Action [University of Chicago Press, 2000]), The Archaeology of the Soul could not have Benardete's stamp of approval, but the range and depth of (occasionally oracular) interpretation are unmistakably his. The volume, in a sense, completes Benardete's body of work and confirms him as one of the most philosophically penetrating thinkers of recent generations. Its highlights include his recovery of the self-reflective wisdom of Heraclitus and Parmenides (arguably exceeding the insights of the avid proponent of the pre-Socratics, Heidegger); his intensive interpretations of ancient tragedy on the city and the gods (perhaps surpassing the interpretations by Hegel and Heidegger [cf. 238n6]); his unfolding of the meaning of Roman poetry (in its unique placement between classical philosophy, the Roman Empire and law, and the coming of Christianity [309]); his uncovering of the philosophical nature of the ancient historians; and the discussion of the psychological core of Plato's and Aristotle's “metaphysics” (e.g., 354, 242, and 244); not to mention his reflections on Cicero, Nietzsche, and Derrida.

In the brief but very helpful preface, the editors offer the following as the key to the unity of the book and thus the plausibility of its subtitle and of Benardete's “platonizing” approach to the non-Platonic works that take up about half of the book: “Only because Plato seemed to [Benardete] to come so close to the truth of things could he hope to learn so much by unearthing Platonic resonances in other thinkers—whether earlier or later, poetic or philosophic” (x; cf. Leo Strauss's Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, most of which is not on Plato).

To be sure, there is something anachronistic in calling these resonances “Platonic” since “Benardete came to see that the discovery of philosophy through the ‘Socratic turn’ was really the rediscovery of an understanding already present in some form in the Greek poets” (xii; and ibid.: “Heraclitus or Parmenides is a genuine philosophic thinker precisely to the extent that a Socratic turn can be found in some form within his own thought”). Now, one could justify calling Parmenides Socratic or Platonic insofar as Plato has made the philosophic experience more conspicuous or even rendered it more intelligible. But while in his essay on Parmenides's poem Benardete refers to Plato's Parmenides for clarification, those references are not central to his interpretation. And in his reading of Heraclitus—in addition to relying, as he does in all his readings, on a meticulous reflection on the text itself—he begins with Lucretius and introduces Plato in the footnotes in apparently the same manner in which he brings up Herodotus or Sophocles. In fact, Benardete's heightened appreciation of certain pre-Socratics is the greatest change from his earlier understanding (see 328 and 375). In the case of ancient poetry, another non-Socratic alternative, Benardete does not claim that “philosophic reflection” is poetry's core element. Rather, “the relation between the local and the universal, between law and the transcendence of the law, which is at the heart of ancient poetry, recurs in the element of philosophic reflection in Plato” (6). In his essay on Parmenides's poem, Benardete compares Parmenides to Hesiod and suggests that Parmenides succeeds in integrating love and justice with rationality whereas Hesiod's Theogony culminates in the triumph of mind over love and teaches that the Sun (i.e., mind) and Justice come from different families (224); nevertheless, Hesiod and Parmenides agree that “the beautiful and the just are at the heart of the human” (ibid.). While perhaps not going beyond what is suggested in the essay on Parmenides's poem, the essay “Socrates and Plato: The Dialectics of Eros” articulates most directly the relation of eros to mind (but also law, justice, and the gods): “Plato has two themes, justice and love, both in their relation to one another and in their relation to mind. … The soul of man is the problem” (259; see also 239). Benardete uncovers a Socrates who, similarly to Parmenides, is “immune from illusions, hopes, and ideals, and is eros itself united with mind” (259).

The title for the collection the editors have chosen seems to be a version of Benardete's statement in the extraordinary essay on Greek and Roman poetry, “The Poet-Merchant and the Stranger from the Sea,” the first chapter of the volume: “The archaeology of the human spirit is one of the characteristics of ancient poetry” (1). The volume, however, points beyond such an archaeology to what the editors call “a lifetime of philosophic reflection on the human soul” (xiii). “Archaeology” is also used in the last chapter of the volume, “Memorial Speech for Leo Strauss”: “‘Archaeology’ was the only path still open to any possible ‘physiology’” (375; cf. 355). In this way, “archaeology” frames this volume. The greatest density of “archaeology” occurs, however, in Benardete's comments on the Thucydides chapter of Strauss's City and Man (370–72). The main theme of Thucydides's archaeology is the origin of Greekness in barbarism. One wonders, then, about the place of the historian Thucydides (and Herodotus) in a volume of “Platonic readings of ancient poetry and philosophy.” In a sense, Thucydides's history is a “chastened” version of Homer's fabulous patterns. But this formulation is “much too fragile, too poetic to capture the whole of Thucydides's thought,” in which “elusive patterns” are mere means to thought. Thucydides's “archaeology” is ultimately not history, but a heuristic device (370); Thucydides completes the transition from poetry and history to philosophy. As for Herodotus, Benardete remarks that in reaching Herodotus's understanding of law, one is led to “an appreciation of Aeschylus’ Persians, in which no word for justice … ever appears” (335). The poets and the historians expose the amoral roots of the city and display an “indifference to the issue of right in itself” (263). Plato, however, perhaps Parmenides or Heraclitus as well, radicalizes or completes poetic-historical thought and shows that, although “the good city lives in the element of justice while it violates justice from the start,” “this veil of false opinion is on the whole good as well” (264; cf. 41).

The reference to Strauss as an “archaeologist” raises the question of the relation between Strauss and Benardete (whose remarkable correspondence is yet to be published). “Political philosophy”—Strauss's crucial catch-phrase—is not used much by Benardete except in reference to Strauss (375, 359; but see 245). And one might receive the impression that Benardete addresses the uncanny, the sacred, the tragic (e.g., he wrote on Homer and Sophocles while Strauss wrote in a sustained way only on Aristophanes among the ancient poets, 375), the soul, eidos, phantasia, and many intricate literary puzzles while Strauss operates in the “rich middle” of political philosophy. But this would be misleading: for one, in going to the pre- and transpolitical, Benardete always clarifies the political (and conspicuously, the essay “Freedom: Grace and Necessity” offers a sharp indication of the essence of modernity—in its scientific and political dispositions and hopes). Strauss and Benardete also share a focus on “the problem of the gods” (e.g., 330; see also 61, 260, 283, 308, 346, 356–57 [Plato's Republic in relation to the Bible and Christianity], as well as 358: “writing poses the issue of divine revelation of the law”). Another way to see Benardete's affinity to Strauss is to say that the ontological psychology that Benardete outlines (242, 199) is in agreement with Strauss's “anti-historicist historical psychology” (376). For both, at any rate, political philosophy is linked to “first philosophy.” If anything, one might be tempted to say that Benardete turns all his authors into Strauss's Plato. But this facile claim is easily belied by the originality and sheer power, as well as filigree subtlety, of Benardete's readings. Benardete's demanding work is less likely to reach as broad an audience as that of Strauss. Still, while this collection is unlikely to change that situation radically, in “pointing the way to understanding,” it extends a “lifeline to the rest of us” (358).