SETH BENARDETE
(1930-2001)
My Memory of Prof. Benardete
Vishwa Adluri
I took Seth Benardete's lectures on Plato's Sophist. It was
my first semester at grad school and I found Benardete, surrounded
by his fans, disconcerting, even intimidating. His lectures
were less about transferring facts and information, and more
about the life of the mind and a dialogue with the Greeks. Instead
of books, I was confronted with a way of thinking at which I
was at best inept.
But with every lecture, I was transformed. Slowly I became accustomed to his way of thinking and was amazed by his analyses and interpretations. Outside, in the hallways, he was less forbidding. I remember a discussion with him about Parmenides. He mocked me, most kindly.
"2000 years worth of scholars cannot figure out Parmenides,
but you have?" he asked.
"Yes, I have," I snapped back defensively.
He smiled. Without irony or sarcasm and with outright generosity
and gentleness, he said, "Perhaps you have."
A noble lie, certainly. But it was a tonic that allowed me to
wrestle confidently with Parmenides, as I continue to do today,
ten years later. He taught me that "figuring out"
anybody or anything is not as much as fun as taking up a challenge.
Benardete knew more Greek than anyone could care to measure.
Being highly individualistic, he preferred to talk to the texts
for himself rather than create scholarly consensus legitimizing
his achievements. In the model of the Greeks themselves, he
read the texts with a critical brilliance, and was never, in
even a single thought, a slave to the Greek word. On the contrary,
he challenged the Greeks themselves. If the Greeks were to arrive
in our world in a time machine, of all the gentlemen and women
of the Pauly-Wissowa club, Benardete would certainly be the one
they would choose to speak to. For the rest of us, of course,
there would a press conference where the Greeks would "clarify"
the status of emendations, elisions, and other scholarly fetishes.
Prof. Benardete exemplified to me the difference between "knowing
Greek and speaking Greek" and I loved him for his ability
to "speak back to the Greeks". He was a prophet in
reverse, speaking eloquently about a past that others had no
access to.
May he continue his dialogue with the Greeks, whenever and
wherever he is.