Anything But a Series of Footnotes: Some Comments on John Sallis’s Platonic Legacies

Abstract

S Whitehead's widely cited and accepted remark that the history of philosophy is but a series of footnotes to Plato has implications for how both Plato and the history of philosophy is to be understood. Such an understanding does an injustice to both Plato and the history of philosophy. A recent book by John Sallis, Platonic Legacies, presents us with a counterview, one that offers a more exciting view of both Plato and the meaning of his legacy for the history of philosophy. The chief purpose of this article is to unpack some of Sallis's contributions in this regard.