ABSTRACT
Who was Clearchus, philosophically speaking?* While it is impossible to find a general answer to this question based on the small amount of (mostly biased) material there is, this issue underlies every interpretation of the fragments. Wehrli in particular judges Clearchus’ writings to be “Platonism for the Proletariat” (“Proletarierplatonismus”), 1 basing his interpretation on the fragments on the soul and ethics. This alleged Platonism is echoed without the negative verdict in Bolton's monograph Aristeas of Proconnesus (1962), by Karamanolis (2006), in Tsitsiridis’ essay “Die Schrift Über den Schlaf des Klearchos von Soloi” (2010) as well as in his monograph Beiträge zu den Fragmenten des Klearchos von Soloi (2013), and by Verde (this volume), all of whom believe in Platonic influences on Clearchus’ works.
