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Alfred Edward (A. E.) Taylor, 1869 – 1945. Taylor was the son of a Wesleyan minister, born 22 December 1869 and died on 31 October 1945. He is best known among classicists and historians of philosophy for his work on Plato and Socrates, where he wrote on a wide range of topics, from the famous ‘phrontisterion’ in Aristophanes’ portrait of Socrates to his meticulous commentary on the Timaeus. His theory (put forward jointly by Taylor and John Burnet) was that the science underlying this major work expounded the thought of “a progressive Pythagorean, contemporary with Socrates” – did not find favor among scholars. Yet much of his work on the texts of Plato has been admired for generations for its sympathetic treatment of his subjects and its scrupulous and masterful attention to detail. His great work, first published in 1926, “Plato, the Man and his Work” went through four editions in his lifetime. In recent decades it has been reprinted more than eight times, most recently by Dover in 2001.
Taylor gave a major impetus to work on the late Plato by publishing his annotated translations of Sophist, Statesman, Philebus and Epinomis. These he added to his translations of Parmenides and Laws, completed much earlier . For each of these translations he had written careful introductory essays. He had also added his own detailed and characteristic notes on the Greek text, notes which classical scholars admired. In the case of the Epinomis, he defended the unconventional position that Plato – not his disciple Philip of Opus – was the true author. The dedication which he wrote for his major work reads: “to all true lovers of Plato, Quick and Dead. . .” is vivid to all who read it. He will certainly have been conscious, -- from the day of its first appearance in 1926 -- that he himself was included amongst these same true lovers – and would still be so in 2006 A.D. and beyond.
Lydia Jutsum Taylor had died seven years before Taylor, in 1938. The epitaph he caused to be carved in their joint gravestone speaks unconventionally, replacing as it does the Vulgate’s “Pater” with Taylor’s own word “Domine”. It seems likely that he intended the biblical words to speak for both of them equally, though this meant altering the syntax of the verse from Luke. According to one of Taylor’s admirers, fellow Plato-lover Rosamond Sprague, Taylor may have been expressing a heterodox doctrine from the viewpoint of the Church of England. He may be leaving us to wonder whether he and his wife were inclined to a non-Trinitarian view of the divine nature. The gravestone is in Liberton, some miles south of Edinburgh, where he had spent his final years, productive to the end. In the case of the Theaetetus he wrote out 45 full leaves of translation, with scholarly notes, but died before finishing this task. He leaves off abruptly, in mid-sentence, at Stephanus 183 b 4. There are several mutually confirming signs to confirm the inference that he had too little life left, in late 1945, to finish this specific task. Are we being invited, --we who are still ‘Quick’, -- to complete this work ? It might please him for us to interpret it so. |
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2006 Malcolm Brown, All Rights Reserved.
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