Guthrie W K C History Greek Philosophy Volume 4 Plato Man and His Dialogues Earlier Period
Guthrie W K C History Greek Philosophy Volume 4 Plato Man and His Dialogues Earlier Period
Guthrie W K C History Greek Philosophy Volume 4 Plato Man and His Dialogues Earlier Period
V O L U M E IV
A HISTORY OF
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
BY
W. K. C. GU T HR I E
IV
HIS D I A L O G U E S : PERIOD
EARLIER
C A M B R ID G E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
C A M B R ID G E LO N D O N N EW YO RK M ELBO U RNE
Published by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 irp Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London n w i 2DB 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 296 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park, Melbourne 3206, Australia Cambridge University Press 1975 Library of Congress catalogue card number: 62-52735
is b n
: o 521 20002 4
First published 1975 Printed in Great Britain at the University Printing House, Cambridge (Euan Phillips, University Printer)
C O N T EN T S
Preface List o f Abbreviations
I II I L
n t r o d u c t io n if e of
l a t o
h il o s o p h ic a l
n f l u e n c e s
(1) Life (a) Sources (b) Birth and family connexions (c) Early years (d ) Sicily and the Academy (2) Philosophical influences III
8 8 io 12 17 32 39 39 41 42 45 48 52 54 56 67 67 70 80 87
h e
ia l o g u e s
(1) The canon (2) Chronology (a) Literary criticism (b) Philosophical considerations (c) Stylometric and linguistic tests (d ) External evidence and cross-references Appendix: Did Plato write any dialbgues before the death of Socrates? (3) Philosophical status: play and earnest IV
E S D
a r l y
o c r a t ic
ia l o g u e s
Contents
Socrates's accustomed manner o f speaking'; the ignorance o f Socrates; the poets divinely inspired; care o f the soul '; better to suffer evil than to do it; the philosopher can take no part in politics (2) The Crito page 93 date; historicity; Crito The dialogue 94 Comment 97 (3) The Euthyphro 101 date; dramatic date, Euthyphro The dialogue 103 Comment 107 dramatic force; the Socratic method; religion; logical points; Forms; a positive conclusion ? (4) The Laches 124 date; dramatic date and characters The dialogue 126 Comment 130 (5) The Lysis 134 date; scene and characters; the concept o f philia The dialogue 138 Comment 143 comments on particular passages; the Lysis and the Forms; additional note: Aristotle and the Lysis (6) The Charmides 155 date; dramatic date; scene and characters; the concept o f sophrosyn The dialogue 158 Comment 163 General; introductory conversation; first and second definitions; third definition doing ones own ; fourth definition the doing o f good things'; criticism o f Socratic method; fifth definition 'selfknowledge'; Aristotle on s e lf action etc.; sixth definition knowledge o f good and e v il'; lesson o f the dialogue} what is knowledge o f knowledge'?
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(7) The Hippias M ajor page 175 authenticity; date; dramatic date; the concept kalon The dialogue 178 Comment 183 general; first definition the appropriate'; second definition the useful'; third definition the beneficial'; fourth definition * pleasure through hearing or sight'; the Hippias Major and the Forms (8) The Hippias Minor 191 authenticity and date The dialogue 192 Comment 195 (9) The Ion 199 authenticity and date; note on rhapsodes and Homeridae The dialogue 201 Comment 204 poetic inspiration in the Ion; addendum: translation o f S33 c -534 d Socratic dialogues: summing-up 212
r o t a g o r a s
, M
e n o
, E
u t h y d e m u s
, G
o r g ia s
e n e x e n u s
Introductory (1) The Protagoras date; dramatic date; scene and characters The dialogue Comment general; identity o f justice and piety; identity o f wisdom and s e lf control; Simonides episode; argument that courage is knowledge; pleasure and goodness: Socrates a hedonist? conclusion (2) The Meno date; dramatic date; scene and characters The dialogue Comment
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Contents
breaking new ground; the aret o f a Meno; argument in character; Socratic definition; no one desires evil; the definitions o f shape: learning as recollection; Forms in Meno; Socrates and the slave; knowledge and true belief ( i) ; does Plato believe it a ll? is virtue knowledge ? knowledge and true belief (2); additional note: knowledge and wisdom (3) The Euthydemus page 266 date; dramatic date; scene and characters The dialogue 268 Comment 274 general; Socrates and eristic; the eristic arguments; the Socratic protreptic; additional note: Socrates's unnamed critic (4) The Gorgias 284 date; dramatic date; characters and setting The dialogue 286 Comment 294 mood and purpose; Socratic elements; Socratic method and its aims; rhetoric and morals; mathematics, proportion and order; pleasure and good; the mythical element; Forms; Isocrates and the Gorgiasy additional note: was Polus refuted? (5) The Menexenus 312 authenticity; date; dramatic date Conversational frame (summary and comment) 313 The speech (summary and comment) 315 additional note: some modern views
VI
h a e d o
, S
y m p o s iu m
, P
h a e d r u s
324 324
Introductory (1) The Phaedo date; scene and characters The dialogue
325
326
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Contents
Comment page 338 Plato and the mysteries; the Forms introduced; popular or political virtue; the argument from alternation; equality and the equals; anamnesis and the senses; the psyche simple; soul and harmony; objection o f Cebes and need o f teleological explanation; cause and aitia; Forms as causes; from physical objects to logoi; immanent Forms; opposites and incompatibles; Forms in the Phaedoy is soul a Form ? the myth; conclusion (2) The Symposium 365 date; dramatic date; setting and characters The dialogue 368 Comment 380 general; speeches o f Phaedrus and Pausanias; hiccups o f Aristophanes; speeches o f Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates: Diotima; Eros as intermediate; spiritual pregnancy and parturition; immortality; dialectic and the Forms; sublimation (3) The Phaedrus 396 date; time, place and characters The dialogue 398 Comment 412 general; philosophy and rhetoric: the unity o f the Phaedrus; divine madness and its form s; nature and functions o f the soul; the composite soul; is soul essentially tripartite? the order o f earthly lives; recollection and the Forms ; how knowledge is acquired: collection and division; cosmological chatter'; additional note: a speech by Lysias? VII
T
he
e p u b l ic
434 434
ix
Contents
(1) The main problem approached and stated (bks 1-2 , 367e) page 439 the holiday-makers: Cephalus (,327-331 d); refutation o f the unsophisticated: Polemarchus (3 3 1 d 336a); the Sophist's case: Thrasymachus {336b-354c); the adversary's case completed: Glaucon and Adeimantus (,35ya-368c) (2) The search for justice begins: origin and elements of social order (2.368 c~374e) the state as the individual magnified {368c 369 c); the city o f pigs (369 b ~ 3 J 2 d); the inflamed city (,3J2d ~ 3J4 c); which is Plato's ideal state? 444
(3) Selection of guardians and education of the young (2.3746-3.4123) 449 (a) Selection (374e-376c) 449 (b) Education o f the young 450 (i) cultural education (2.336 e-3.4036): (a) stories ( = poetry) (377 a-398 b) (subject-matter and form ); (P ) music (398 c-40 oc) 451 (ii) physical education, with appendix on doctors and lawyers (403 c -4 1 ob) 454 Summing-up (.41 ob-412a) 455 Problems: (i) education fo r guardians alone ? 455 (ii) Plato's attitude to truth; (iii) Forms in b k 3 ? (iv) theology and the problem o f evil (4) Guardians and auxiliaries: principles of government (3-4i2b-4.427c) division into rulers and auxiliaries; the grand myth; transfers on merit; life o f the guardians; third class: the state and war; unity o f the state (5) Discovery of justice: structure of individual character (4*427d-445 b) justice in the city; justice in the individual; in what sense is soul tripartite ? Note on moral responsibility 461
471
Contents
(6) Women and children in the Platonic state (with appendix on the conduct o f warfare) (4.445 b -5.471 c) page 479 women and children; additional note on unwanted children; conduct o f warfare (7) Is the Platonic city intended as a practical possibility? (5.471 c~473b) (8) Knowledge, belief and the two orders of reality: why philosophers must rule (5.473^6.4873) general; two problems: (i) knowledge, doxa and their objects; (ii) degrees o f reality (9) The philosopher and society (6.487b~502c) (10) The Form of the Good (6 .5 0 2 ^ 7 .5 19 ^ introductory; the Socratic heritage; two views rejected; the Good and the sun; the Divided Line; the Cave; historical note on Plato s cave; the practical lessons ( 11) Higher education of the Guardians (7.521 c-54ib) (a) mathematics; (< b) dialectic; (c) selection and time-table (12) The decline of the state: imperfect types of society and individual (8.5433-576^ why the state must decay; timocracy; oligarchy; democracy; tyranny; notes on the imperfect types (13) Which is happier, the just or unjust man? (57<Sb-592b) unhappiness o f the tyrannical man; the philosopher is happiest; tailpieces and conclusion; note on bks 9 and 10 (14) The feud between philosophy and poetry (10.595 a-6o8b) (a) Argument from degrees of reality the three beds and the doctrine o f Forms: (i) scope o f the doctrine, (ii) the uniqueness o f a Form 483 487
498 503
521
527
537
545 545
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Contents
(b) Psychological and moral objections to poetry page (c) Conclusion : poetry to be given every chance (15) We are planning for the whole o f time (6o8c-62id) (a) The soul is immortal (b) The soul not composite (c) Everyone gets his deserts in life or after death: the pilgrimage o f souls Conclusion Bibliography Indexes I Index ofpassages quoted or referred to II General index III Index o f Greek words occurring in notes 553 553 554 554 556 557 560 562 583 583 593 603
The device on the front cover is the head o f Plato from a herm in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin .
PREFACE
A reviewer of a recent work on theories of perception asked himself the general question what purpose was supposed to be served by historical studies of philosophy. Perhaps, he concluded, such histories should be regarded as the Good Food Guide, which tells you where nourishment is to be found, but does not itself attempt to provide it. I have not felt this strongly about my earlier volumes, but the aim of a work on Plato must certainly be to send its readers back to Plato himself, whether in Greek or if necessary translated. Here is no ordinary philosopher expounding in sober treatises a system of thought which can be in all essentials abstracted and sum marized. Anyone who expects that should start by reading the Symposium. We are dealing above all with a tremendous personality, one of the strangest and most individual writers who have ever lived, with a consuming interest not only in ideas but in people. This I have tried to bring out, and this is in itself sufficient reason for an arrange ment by dialogues rather than by subjects. (Each has its drawbacks, and as Shorey said, no method is quite satisfactory.)1 Another is the risk of applying modern divisions of philosophy - ethics, metaphysics, logic and so on - which would inevitably falsify both the method and the content of Platos thought. To emphasize these points is also my aim in the summaries (intentionally not so called) which in most chapters precede any discussion of a dialogues content. (Cf. also p. 45 below.) In the preface to my second volume I quoted an analytical philo sophers statement of the concerns of philosophy as an example of what early Greek philosophy was not. But not all modern thinkers are of the same cast. This statement of Albert Schweitzers view might have been written about Plato: Philosophical inquiry was always viewed by [him] as a means to the pragmatic end of assisting mankind
1 Shorey, Unity 8. The two methods are exemplified in Taylors and Grubes books respec tively. Taylor defends his on pp. vii and 23-5, and Grube his on pp. vii-ix, where he makes the surprising statement that the subjects of the Ideas and the nature of the soul would have appeared to Plato capable of separate treatment.
xiii
Preface
in finding its place and role in the universe, to help it create the good life. 1 Mr James Olney, in a fascinating book,2 has suggested that auto biography is to a large extent philosophy, and one may say conversely that all philosophy is in a sense autobiography.3 When Platos Socrates, in response to a question of Cebes, feels it necessary to go into the general causes of coming into being and perishing - that is, to reveal to his friends the deepest levels of his philosophy - he can devise no better way of doing it than by narrating an intellectual autobiography, my own experiences as he puts it (Phaedo 96a). In this sense I offer my attempt at an introduction to Platos autobiography. A reviewer of earlier volumes expressed the hope that I would not spend much time working over Plato and Aristotle because there are already so many excellent accounts of their lives and opinions. There are indeed, and the awareness of them has cast a heavy shadow over this work from the beginning. Yet when one has undertaken to write a history of Greek philosophy it hardly seems right to pass over its greatest and most influential representatives with a mere hasty sketch, and in the end Plato has expanded to two volumes. A friend to whom I made my frequent moan that there are so many books on Plato that it seemed a sin to add to them, replied comfortingly, Yes, but you are going to save us from reading all those books. If I cannot claim that, I have at least done my best to indicate the many different points of view from which Plato has been approached, the contrasting estimates o f him as a man and as a philosopher, and of the aims and lessons of the separate dialogues. A historian must deny himself the luxury of dispensing with references to others, claiming perhaps like Lon Robin that it was pointless to indicate agreement and equally so to mention divergences when he felt unable to set out in full his reasons for disagreement. (It seems in any case a little churlish not to acknowledge, where one can, that others have anticipated ones thoughts.) Platos appeal is almost universal. Besides philosophers (whether students of metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic or
1 George Marshall and David Poling, Schweitzer, a Biography (London, 1971). 2 Metaphors of Self: the Meaning of Autobiography. 3 This lias been said by Nietzsche, whom I have quoted (with others who have made a similar point) in vol. 1, 117.
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Preface
aesthetics), it extends to Hellenists, historians, political and social scientists, mathematicians, psychologists, theologians, educationists and literary critics.1 In fact the best excuse for yet another book on Plato is that no two are alike, because each reveals so much of its author as well as its subject. Since no one man can satisfy all these tastes, I have tried, in the spirit of the Guide, to show others the way to a menu that suits them better. This is all the more necessary in that many will doubtless detect that certain lack of philosophical sophistication and insight which my aforementioned critic saw as a possible effect in the eyes of professional philosophers . Not all may agree with his charitable addition that the work was generally all the more reliable as a result. It was the work of one who is really an historian, with the historians care for accuracy about the facts. To live up to this kindly verdict is certainly my highest aim. O f course only the tiniest fraction of the vast literature on Plato can be cited here, and - except for a few indestructibles, a Grote, Zeller, Wilamowitz and their peers - the selection will inevitably favour the more recent contributions and current controversies. This need not make the Guide element ephemeral. One reference leads to several, and a reader who on a favourite topic follows up the clues provided here, far from being starved of secondary material, will probably feel, as I have myself, like another sorcerers apprentice struggling in the torrent of learning let loose by his own modest researches; and even as one writes, as Heraclitus would say, fresh waters are ever flowing in. A brief word of warning. I have read a suggestion that when I go wrong it is particularly important that the error should be corrected because this history is coming to be regarded as the standard work in its field. If this is so I can only deprecate it, because, as I hope I have made clear, there can be no final or standard work on Plato, even supposing I were the one to write it. So much must be a matter of individual interests and interpretation, and no one can do more than raise his own edifice of personal judgements on as sound a foundation of fact (about his subjects text, background and so on)
1 Perhaps I may be permitted to mention in this connexion my Cincinnati lectures on Twentieth-century Approaches to Plato*. XV
Preface
as possible. This I have tried to do, but questionable opinions, ignorance on some points, and downright mistakes, are inevitable. The general reader, if such there be, may rest assured that I have adhered to the principle enunciated in the preface to the first volume, that footnotes are unnecessary for an understanding of the argument. Greek words, unless translated or explained, are confined to them, and they provide references to further reading for the specialist and in particular to interpretations differing from my own. If the book is, as I hope, to be read and not simply used as a work of reference, it may be wise to confine oneself to a dialogue, or small group of dialogues, at a time, just as the dialogues themselves are separate wholes, each with its own atmosphere and ethos. Finally I hope that the full analytical table of contents, as well as the index, may in some measure compensate for the disadvantage of arrangement by dialogues instead of subjects. This volume was already in the press when J. N. Findlays book Plato, the Written and Unwritten Doctrines (1974) came into my hands, and as yet I am in no position to discuss its findings. However, in his preface he says:
A study o f Plato which confines itself to the letter o f the D ialogues.. . has ended by stripping Plato o f his philosophical dignity and interest, has set him before us as a brilliant, but basically frivolous player-about with half-formed, inconsistent notions and methods, and has failed to explain the persistent, historical sense o f him as a deeply engaged thinker, to whom we owe one o f the most important, most coherently elaborated, most immensely illuminating ways o f regarding the world.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that this is not what a study of the dialogues has done for me, and I trust that the interpretation of them in the following pages, whatever its faults, will not fail to explain that appreciation of his unique merits which Professor Findlay so rightly describes as the outcome o f a historical sense. Unattributed references to vol. 1 etc. refer to the earlier volumes o f this work.
C A M B R ID G E JU L Y
W. K. C. G.
1974
xvi
LIST OF A B B RE VI A TI ONS
Most works cited in abbreviated form in the text will be easily recognizable under the authors or editors name in the bibliography. It may be however helpful to list the following:
P E R IO D IC A L S
Archiv f r Geschichte der Philosophie American Journal o f Philology Bulletin o f the Institute o f Classical Studies (London) Classical Journal Classical Philology Classical Quarterly Classical Review Gttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Journal o f the History o f Ideas Journal o f the History o f Philosophy Journal o f Hellenic Studies Journal o f Philosophy Proceedings o f the Cambridge Philological Society Philosophical Review Philosophical Quarterly Revue des tudes Grecques Transactions o f the American Philological Association
O TH ER W O R K S
(Full particulars are in the bibliography) CGF DK KR LSJ OCD OP Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. Meineke Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxyrhynchus Papyri
xvii
GHO
Abbreviations
PS RE SPM TGF ZN G. Vlastos, Platonic Studies Realencyclopdie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. Wissowa, Kroll et al. Studies in Plato s Metaphysics, ed. R. E. Allen Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. Nauck Zeller-Nestle
Note\ The dialogues known in England as Republic and Politics are in some countries called Politeia and Statesman (in the language of the country) respectively. Non-English readers should be warned that the abbreviation Pol indicates the latter work.
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I
INTRODUCTION
So much I can say about writers past or future who claim that they know the things about which I am in earnest, whether by hearing them from me or others, or discovering them for themselves - that in m y view they understand nothing o f the matter. There is not, and can never be, a treatise o f mine about it, for it cannot be put into words like other subjects o f study. Only out o f much converse about the subject, and a life lived together, does it suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping flame, spring up in the soul and thenceforth maintain itself. But this much I do know, that whether written or spoken, it would best be done by me, and if it were badly written, I would be the chief sufferer.
Plato, Epist. 7. 341 b-d
These words, whether written by Plato himself or in his name by one of those who had experienced the shared life with him, are supported by some remarks in one of his dialogues and must weigh heavily on the mind of anyone who dares to describe and interpret his work. This must be so at any time, but especially at the present stage of Platonic study, when strenuous efforts are being made by some scholars to reconstruct, from hints in Aristotle or the scant remains of others of his pupils, and from writers of later antiquity, the content of Platos unwritten doctrines (a phrase used once by Aristotle); that is, of the oral teaching which he gave in the Academy and which, so this passage might suggest, must contain his deepest and most strongly held philosophical convictions. It has always been obvious that Aristotle mentions and criticizes as Platos doctrines which do not appear in his dialogues, and efforts to interpret these and to assess the credibility of Aristotles accounts are by no means new. But the subject has been brought into much greater prominence in the last twelve or fifteen years, in particular by the intensive researches of a group of scholars in Germany, and this has stimulated discussion not only of the question of the unwritten doctrines themselves but also of the status of the dialogues which we possess
I
2-2
Introduction
and the extent to which they can be said to reflect the serious and mature philosophy of their author. It used to be thought that the difference was chronological, that the doctrines mentioned by Aristotle were only put forward by Plato in his latest years after most if not all of the dialogues were written; but it has now been claimed1 that such teaching was being given by Plato orally when he was writing the dialogues of the so-called middle period, including the Republic, if not even earlier. I mention this at the beginning to illustrate a more general point, that although it behoves a historian to be as objective as possible, and he may hope to be writing for the future as well as the present, he cannot escape entirely from his own situation in the history of his subject. For us this means the history both of scholarship and of philosophy. In scholarship, another feature of modern writing on Plato is its rediscovery of the intimate connexion between literary form and philosophic content. This insight was already shown by the Neoplatonist Proclus in the fifth century A .D ., when he wrote in his commentary on Platos Alcibiades:2
The introductory portions o f the Platonic dialogues are in accord with their whole purpose. T h ey are not devices thought up by Plato for dramatic effect. . . nor is their aim purely historical. . . but as the leaders o f our school were aware (and I m yself have elsewhere said something o f it) they too are dependent on the theme o f the dialogues as a whole.
In the nineteenth century this truth was lost sight of, so that Paul Friedlnder felt it necessary to repeat Procluss point in the words (Plato I, 232f.): One thing, at least, is certain: in Plato philosophy does not begin at the first point of dialectical discussion, but has
1 By H.-J. Krmer in Die grundstzlichen Fragen der Indirekten Platonberlieferung*, Idee und Zahl (1968), 106-50. 2 In Ale. ed. Westerink (1954), p. 8; quoted by Friedlnder, PI. 1, 366 n. 8. On the history of the matter in modern times, H. Gundert {Der Plat. D. 6) notes that Schleiermacher (b. 1768) first saw that form and content belong together, and related this methodically to Platos purpose. But the insight was lost, and the belief prevailed that in Plato Dichtung* and philosophy could be treated in isolation. He mentions Wilamowitz and Natorp, and for the rediscovery in more recent times Stenzel, Jaeger and Friedlnder. Other names are mentioned by . Neumann ( T A P A 1965, 283 n. 1). One may add R. G. Hoerber in C P 1968, 95-105, especially p. 97 n. 42, and E. M. Manasse, P .'s Soph, and Pol. 56, for its continuing importance in the later dialogues. (Contrast R. Robinson, P E D 84, and Jaeger, Aristotle 26.)
Introduction
already begun in the preliminary casual conversation or in the playful or serious imagery of the frame. The philosophical importance of the literary and dramatic elements is not of course confined to the introductory conversations, and the need for a restatement of it may be illustrated by reference to Grote, who in spite of his general percipience could write of the Charmides\ There is a good deal of playful vivacity in the dialogue. . . This is the dramatic art and variety of Plato, charming to read, but not bearing on him as a philosopher ; and again, of the dramatic richness of the dialogue: I make no attempt to reproduce this latter attribute. . . I confine myself to the philosophical bearing of the dialogue. It is admittedly possible for an over-subtle interpreter to exaggerate the philosophic import which Plato intended us to read into some light-hearted remark of one of his characters; but the recognition of the essential unity of a Platonic dialogue is something which one may hope will not again be lost.1 None but Platos contemporaries could enjoy the living interplay of minds which to him was the ideal, but in the dialogues he has left us more than an inkling of what it was like, and we shall never understand him if we ignore the warning in the Seventh Letter and try to turn their essentially dialectical (that is, conversational) approach into treatises like any other subject of study . This may aid us in forming a judgement of the scattered records of his unwritten doctrines, now being pieced together with so much care and skill. Some scholars write as if they gave us, in contrast to the dialogues, the real Plato, speaking of the things about which he was in earnest , whereas they are of course only the accounts of others who claimed to know his mind either by hearing them from himself or others, or discovering them for themselves ; and such people in his view understood nothing of the matter . If in the dialogues he is not always at his most serious, the play or pastime of Plato is worth more than the earnest study of lesser men. It is the dialogues which down the centuries have inspired and stimulated,
1 See Grote, P L 3 (1875), 1, 484 n. i; 492. Friedlnder, one of the most sympathetic and understanding of Platos interpreters, has nevertheless not always resisted the temptation to over-subtlety in seeing a philosophical significance behind the lightest words of his characters. A stimulating discussion of Form and Content in P.s Philosophy* is that of Merlan in J H I 1947.
Introduction
irritated and exasperated, but never bored, and when anyone, philo sopher or layman, speaks of Platos views, it is the dialogues that he has in mind. Whatever the motives of their author, for all of us, in Europe and beyond, the dialogues are Plato and Plato is his dialogues.1 Among philosophers Plato is as popular and highly thought-of as he ever was, but each age interests itself in those aspects of him which fit in with its own philosophical tenor. Without forgetting the influence of other trends such as existentialism, one may say that the prevailing tendency of modern philosophy, at least in the Englishspeaking world, is towards logical theory, in which such striking advances have been made that they have inevitably affected all the main branches of philosophy. This has led to a concentration on some of the later dialogues, whose purposes are mainly critical, at the expense of the more metaphysical parts of his writings. It has also led to a reappraisal of Platos attitude to the doctrine of Forms or Ideas, usually regarded as basic to his philosophy: that is, the doctrine that what we should call universals have a permanent and substantial existence independent of our minds and of the particulars which are called by the same names. A critic today will sometimes refer to them as universals and no more, though Platos language in many places makes it clear that they were much more than that to him. In the Parmenides, the first of the critical group, Plato brings forward serious objections to the doctrine which he nowhere answers, and opinions differ on the question whether he considered them fatal and abandoned or fundamentally altered it, or retained it in spite of them. Those who, while respecting his intellect, regard the doctrine o f Forms as a philosophical mistake, naturally suppose that he himself came to see this, and find proof of it in the penetrating criticisms of the Parmenides. Professor Cross illustrates the prevailing attitude when he speaks of the difficulty of giving any cash value to a phrase like timeless substantial entities .2 To continue the metaphor, one
1 What is said above is not intended to belittle the work of those who are trying to recover some of the unwritten doctrines which has obvious historical importance, though the ice they venture on is sometimes treacherous. See further pp. below. 2 R. C. Cross, Logos and Forms in Plato*, p. 19 in R. E. Allen*s Studies. It should be added that Allen*s brief introduction to this collection puts with admirable clarity the points that I have been trying to make here.
Introduction
might reply that it depends what currency you are using. By having cash value the modern philosopher means something like being convertible into terms which have a straightforward meaning; but there have been philosophers in many periods to whom the phrase would seem to convey meaning as it stands. Indeed other scholars claim to see unmistakable signs, in dialogues which must have been written later than the Parmenides, that he retained the doctrine to the end of his life. A dichotomy has sometimes been made between the historical and the philosophical approaches to the study of philosophers of the past, as if they were separate and incompatible. Such a rigid division can only do harm, and it is a mark of many modern philosophers that they are aware of the risk and have a strongly developed historical con science. Thus for instance Cross (I.e.) believes that on the orthodox interpretation the theory of Forms is unworkable and. . . largely meaningless, and for this reason he is disinclined to father it n Plato unless he must. But he immediately goes on to state emphatically that the merits of the orthodox interpretation as a piece of philosophy are irrelevant to the question of whether it is the correct interpretation . If it is wrong (as he believes it is), the evidence must be found in Platos own words. It is to be hoped that the days of antagonism between historians and philosophers are over. J. A. Stewart wrote in 1909 of the historians that a philosopher is, for them, a dead subject of anatomy, not a living man, and that compared with philosophers they are anti quarians, not disciples . O f Stewart, on the other hand, Professor Allan has noted that his work was not only an adaptation o f the Neo-Kantian Natorp, but he imagines that Plato had anticipated not only Kant, but Bergson, the Pragmatists, and the greater part of modern psychology . 1 What has to be avoided is neither a historical nor a philosophical approach, but what Dis called a philosophy which usurps the place of history . Far from treating his subject as a dekd subjeot of anatomy, the historian or classical scholar pursues
1 Stewart, P.'s Doctrine of Ideas 129, quoted by Dis in a good discussion of the historical and philosophical approaches, Autour de P. 3 52 ff.; D. J. Allan, introd. to StenzeFs P M D xxiv, n. i.
Introduction
his chosen method precisely because he wishes to bring him to life, to see him as a whole man, moving, talking and acting in the living context of his contemporary world, the soil in which his own thought grew and flowered. He can do this without belittling the contribution of the philosopher, whose interest in Plato lies rather in discovering what lasting contribution this ancient thinker has made to the advance of philosophy as a whole, and who rightly selects, and may interpret with special insight, what appeals to him most out of the inexhaustible riches of the dialogues. The two approaches are, and must remain, different, not however antagonistic but complementary, each imposing a salutary check on the other.1 As a historian I am glad to agree with Professor Dodds that Platos starting-point was historically conditioned, and to continue my story from the previous volumes by introducing him as the child of the Enlightenment, the nephew of Charmides and kinsman of Critias, no less than one of Socrates young men (Dodds, Gks and Irr at. 208). The characters in his dialogues include Charmides and Critias themselves, and the Sophists Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias, not to mention the revered figure of Parmenides, whom Socrates could just have met in his youth. Yet child of the Enlightenment must be taken strictly: he was not a part of it. Critias and Charmides, Socrates and the great Sophists belonged to an earlier generation. Socrates lived in Periclean Athens and fought in the Peloponnesian War in his forties. Pericles was already dead when Plato was born, and in his maturity he was a post-war figure writing in an Athens of different intellectual temper. When he put on to his stage the giants of the Sophistic era, he was recalling them from the dead.2 In thus making a start from the historical setting, I hope it is
1 I have developed this theme in the lectures at Cincinnati published in Lectures in Memory o f Louise Taft Semple, pp. 229-60, especially the second. Cf. also the quotation from Cornford in The Unwritten Phil. xiv. Some remarks of Stenzels (P M D 40) are also relevant: Such a complex structure as the theory of Ideas must necessarily remain open to various interpretations, since it assuredly contains forces of which the philosopher himself will only gain full conscious ness in the course of their development. Any view or interpretation which tries with the help of modern concepts founded on separation and analysis to describe the unconscious syntheses of an earlier time, must feel that it is making a selection, dividing that which, in the eyes of the ancient thinker, could not really be separated/ (Trans. D. J. Allan, with omission of one word which is not in the German.) 2 See also vol. h i , pp. xii, 325 f.
Introduction
unnecessary to repeat G. C. Fields warning ( P . and Contemps. i) against the tendency to pay too much attention to history and forget how much of his philosophy arises from reflection on realities which are the same in all ages. The dialogues themselves make such an error impossible, and it is to a description and discussion of the dialogues that this book will be mainly devoted.
II
L I F E OF PLATO AND PHI LOS OPHI CAL I N F L U E N C E S
(i) L IF E
(a) Sources1 If Platos Seventh Letter is genuine (a question which will be discussed in its proper place among his writings), we are in the unique position for a writer of his time of having an autobiographical document outlining the stages of his development and concentrating on his part in a historical episode, the violent course of fourth-century Syracusan politics. If he did not write it himself, its historical value is scarcely lessened, since the sceptics agree that it must be the work o f one of his immediate disciples written either before or shortly after his death. Such a source is of the highest value, even allowing for the probability that its overriding aim was the vindication of Platos actions and their motives. In his own writings Plato keeps himself firmly out of sight, and they reveal little or nothing about his life. He never writes in his own person,2 and mentions himself twice only, both times in intimate connexion with Socrates, once to tell us that he was present at the trial and once to explain his absence from the group of friends who were with Socrates in his last hours. A number of his friends and pupils wrote about him, including Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Philip of Opus, Hermodorus and Erastus, but their productions took the form of eulogies rather than biographies, and were already mingling legend with fact. In a school with a religious basis, such as Platos Academy was (p. 20 below), there was a traditional tendency to
1 A full account of the sources is given by Leisegang, R E 2342-7. See also Gaiser, Testt. Platonica*, in P.*s Ungeschr. Lehre (separately printed), p. 446. 2 This has never seemed to me to call for any particular explanation, but if any find it, as Ludwig Edelstein did, one of the most vexing problems raised by the dialogue form, they will find a number of suggested reasons, all somewhat speculative, in his article Platonic Anonymity* ( A J P 1962).
Life
venerate the founder, and even Platos own nephew Speusippus is credited with having followed Pythagorean precedent so far as to give him the god Apollo for a father.1 We also hear of lives by pupils of Aristotle, Clearchus (an encomium), Dicaearchus and Aristoxenus. Plato was also a favourite butt of the poets of the Middle Comedy, from whom we have a number of satirical quotations. All these early writings are lost, and the earliest extant life is by Apuleius in the second century a . d ., who followed the earlier encomiasts in making his subject a typical hero-figure. Not much later is the book devoted to Plato in the Lives and Opinions o f Eminent Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius, and finally we have from the sixth century lives by the Neoplatonic commentator Olympiodorus and an anonymous author, who carry the supernatural element to even further lengths. The most valuable is Diogenes, who, if his critical standards as a biographer are not what we would accept today, is nevertheless exceptional in conscientiously mentioning his sources, and they include a number of Platos and Aristotles contemporaries. Some of these are cited for sober statements of historical fact. He may quote Speusippus and Clearchus for the story of Platos divine birth, but we also owe to him the knowledge that Platos retirement to Megara to stay with Euclides after the execution of Socrates is vouched for by Hermodorus. Not all who wrote about Plato were eulogists. In the miscellany of Athenaeus, a near contemporary of Apuleius, there are lively traces of a hostile tradition which did not hesitate to accuse Plato of such faults as pride, greed, plagiarism, jealousy, gross errors, self-contradiction, lying and flattery of tyrants. For these accusations Athenaeus cites a certain Herodicus, described as a follower of Crates but probably living little more than a century before Athenaeus, and the historian Theopompus, which takes us back to the fourth century b . c . 2
1 D.L. 3.2. (For other reff, not given here see Leisegang, Lc.) For the Pythagorean precedent see vol. 1, 148 f. (Plato himself, in establishing his school, probably had the model of the Pythagorean societies in mind: Field, P . and Contemps. 34). Field {o.c. 2) remarks on the curious fact that the Greeks, who produced the first scientific historians, had little or no idea of applying historical methods to individual biographies. 2 The attacks, which are quite vicious and absurd, occur mainly at Ath. 5.215 cff. and 11.506 a ff. For * * see 215 f.; * v * * 508 c. (See also R E vili, 975 f anc* 2 Reihe, x. Halbb. 2185.)
In all probability Plato was born in 427 b . c . and died at the age of eighty in 3472 His birthplace was either Athens or Aegina (D.L. 3.3). As to his family, in the words of Apuleius de utroque nobilitas satis clara . His father Ariston traced his descent from Codrus, the last king o f Athens, and the family o f his mother Perictione was connected with Solon, who, as Field remarked (P. and Contemps. 4), might be of less venerable antiquity but at least had the advantage of having really existed. Plato had two elder3 brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus,
1 Professor Finley (.Aspects of Antiquity, 77 f.) wrote: Whenever later writers report anything about Plato in Sicily, as Plutarch does, for example, in his life of Dion, they take their information directly or indirectly from these two letters [Platos 7th and 8th]/ It would be difficult to substantiate this statement. Setting aside historians like Timaeus and Ephorus (Plut. Dion 35 etc.), Plut, also quotes Timonides, who, he says, helped Dion in his struggle from the beginning and wrote about it to Speusippus (Plut. Dion 35, D.L. 4.5). He was also a philosopher (Plut. 22), i.e. presumably like Speusippus a member of the Academy. I do not see why some of the information about Platos activities should not have come from him. More important perhaps is ch. 20, where Plut, reports what they say* about Platos dismissal from the Sicilian court and adds: But Platos own words do not quite agree with this account/ (The ref. is to Ep. 7.349-50.) Nor did the story of Platos being sold into slavery, which is told in one form or another by Plut. {Dion 5), Diod. (15.7), and D .L. (3.19 from Favorinus), whether or not it be true, originate in Platos letters. Note how Plut., after naming the ransom at 20 minae, adds Other authorities say 30/ It is in any case amusing to note that E. Meyer used the fact that many statements in Plut, are openly drawn from the letters as a weapon against those who reject them. See Taylor, P M W 14. 2 D .L. 3.2 quotes Apollodorus for his birth but Hermippus, Platos own pupil, for his death in the first year of the 108th Olympiad, 348-7 b .c . Others suggest an unimportant discrepancy of two or three years in the date of his birth. For details see Ueberweg-Praechter 1, 181, Zeller 2.1.390 n. 1. 3 From Rep. 368 a it appears that they were old enough to fight in a battle at Megara, as early as 424 (Burnet, T. to P . 207) or else in 409 (Wilamowitz, Pl. 1, 35: neither gives reasons for
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and a sister Potone, the mother of Speusippus. Critias and Charmides, who became members of the notorious Thirty in 404, were respectively the cousin and brother of his mother. Ariston, says Plutarch (De am. prolis 496 f.), did not live to hear Plato expound philosophy, and after his death Perictione married Pyrilampes, who must have been her uncle, since Plato himself (Charm. 158a) calls him the uncle of Charmides. Plato adds that he went on embassies to the Great King of Persia and other rulers in Asia. From this marriage Plato acquired a half-brother Antiphon, whom he makes the narrator of his dialogue Parmenides.l In contrast to his reticence about himself, he enjoyed introducing his distinguished relatives into his dialogues, or mentioning them with some precision. Charmides has one named after him, and Critias speaks in the Charmides and Protagoras. (The Critias of the Timaeus and Critias must be his grandfather.) Adeimantus is mentioned as Platos brother at Apol. 34a, and he and Glaucon take prominent parts in the Republic. At the beginning of the Parmenides we are told in detail that Antiphon is brother on the mothers side to Adeimantus and Glaucon, and that Pyrilampes was his father. From these and other references in Plato himself, one can practically reconstruct his family tree, and this suggests a considerable amount of family pride. Indeed, as Burnet says (T . to P . 208), The opening scene of the Charmides is a glorification of the whole connexion. This has led many to conclude that family influence must have been responsible for instilling anti-democratic ideas into Plato from his earliest years. Burnet (ib. 209 f.) strenuously denied this, claiming that the family traditions were rather what we should call Whiggish and that Critias and Charmides were only at a late stage oligarchical extremists, and pointing out that Pyrilampes was a democrat and friend of Pericles. Burnets remarks bring out once again the important point that the division between democrat and oligarch is by no means identical with that between plebeian and high-born.2 As to Plato,
his choice). For the actions in question see Hammond, Hist. 368 and 413. Apol. 34a also makes it likely that Adeimantus was older than Plato. 1 For full ancient references to members of Platos family, see Leisegang in R E , xi. Halbb. 2347k or Zeller 2.1.392 n. 1. On Critias and his relations with Plato, vol. hi, 298 ff. Genealogical tables are in Burnet, T. to P . 351, and Witte, Wiss. v. G .u. B . 53. 2 See vol. hi, 38 n. 1. Pyrilampes went so far as to call his son Demos. The note in vol. in, 102 n. 3, is inappropriate and will, I hope, be deleted from any future editions.
II
This being so, the remarkable thing is perhaps not that Plato was imbued with anti-democratic sentiments but that he flatly refused to go along with the extreme and violent actions of elder relatives whom he had earlier admired, and could recognize the moderation of the restored democracy in spite of the mischance of the trial and execution of Socrates. The only conclusion that age and experience brought him was the general one that it is very difficult to manage political affairs aright, and that all cities at the present time are without exception badly governed (.Ep . 7.325c, 326a). (c) Early years Speusippus (fr. 28L.), relying, says Apuleius, on domestica docu menta, praised his quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the firstfruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of study. His education, like any other Athenian boys, would be physical as well as mental, and his writings witness to a continued interest in the gymnastic side. Dicaearchus (fr. 40 W.) went so far as to say that he wrestled at the Isthmian games.1 No other information goes back to sources so near Platos lifetime. Those of later centuries name his teachers o f reading and writing, physical education and music, and speak of an early interest in painting and poetry. Whatever we may think of the story that after hearing Socrates talk he burned a tragedy
1 This may serve to remind us of the unimportant question of his name, which according to some authorities was a nickname bestowed on account of his broad, stocky build (or alter natively the breadth of his forehead - or his style! See D.L. 3.4.); originally he was named Aristocles after his grandfather. But Plato was a common name, of which 31 instances are known at Athens alone. See the arguments of J. A. Notopoulos in C P 1939.
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that he had written (D.L. 3.5), we can have no difficulty in accepting that the author of the dialogues showed early poetic gifts. We have indeed a number of epigrams, some of them both beautiful and touching, which have come down under his name and are generally accepted as genuine.1 We must admit however that we know little of his personal life in early years, though we can if we like reconstruct his experiences and tastes from a combination of what is known of contemporary Athenian family life and education with all the evidence of his own extra-philosophical interests which is to be found scattered throughout his dialogues, and which makes their effect so much more personal and immediate than that of any purely philosophical works. This will not be attempted here.2 Military service can be taken for granted, doubtless (considering his social status) in the cavalry, and he was old enough to take part in actual engagements in the last five years of the Peloponnesian War and later.3 The statement that Plato did not hear Socrates speak until he was twenty is attributed by Diogenes himself (3.6) to mere hearsay and introduced as part o f the improbable drama of the burning of the tragedy. It is most unlikely that the young kinsman of Critias and Charmides had to wait so long for the privilege. Another early philosophical acquaintance is said to have been Cratylus the Heraclitean. Aristotle ( Metaph. 987332) says that Plato was acquainted with him from his youth, Diogenes (without mention of source) that he attached himself to him after the death of Socrates.4 There is probably some confusion here, especially as Diogenes (3.5) says that before he
1 Diehl, Anth. Lyr. I, 87 ff. Most sceptical perhaps was Reitzenstein in R E v i , 90, but even he retained six, not because, but in spite of, the tradition*. 2 For readers of German it has been done most fully and vividly by Wilamowitz {PI. 1, 41 ff.). Much of our information on family life and education also comes from Platos dialogues, e.g. Lysis o jd f. and Prot. 325 cff. 3 Not much reliance can be placed on D .L/s statement (3.8) that according to Aristoxenus Plato went on three campaigns, to Tanagra, Corinth and Delium. If it goes back to Aristoxenus it has been distorted in transit, probably through some confusion with Socrates. See Field, P. and Contemps. 6 n. 1 (though Bluck indeed thought differently, P L T 25). These details are not very much more historical than the taunt of the malicious parasite in Lucian {Paras. 43), who claims that all philosophers are cowards and includes Plato in a list of those who never saw a battlefield \ 4 Olympiodorus ( V .P . 4), and the ProL in Plat. Phil, following him, also put Platos instruction by Cratylus after the death of Socrates. No doubt these statements go back to the same source. (See the quotations in Allan, A J P 1954, 277.)
*3
3 For the philosophy of Euclides and the Megarian school, see vol. hi, 499-507, 185.
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the mathematician, thence to Italy to the Pythagoreans Philolaus and Eurytus, and thence to Egypt to visit the prophets. The visit to Cyrene is also mentioned by Apuleius. That Plato knew and respected the mathematician Theodorus of Cyrene appears from the role which he assigned to him in the Theaetetus ; and Cyrene was also the home of the Socratic Aristippus, founder of the Cyrenaic school (vol. hi, 490-9). According to Diogenes, the order of his travels was CyreneItaly-Egypt, but Cicero (Rep. 1.10 .16, Fin. 5.29.87), who does not mention Cyrene, twice makes him visit Egypt before Italy and Sicily. The order of his travels can never be known, and some, as might be expected, have consigned them all, with the exception of Italy and Sicily, to the realm of legend. In themselves they are natural enough. The Greek colony of Cyrene was in the fourth century a centre of mathematicians and philosophers, and Plato had personal reasons for a visit. A trip to Egypt, where was the flourishing Greek commercial city of Naucratis, pour un Athnien navait rien dune aventure, as Robin says (P l. 7). Platos own interest in Egypt and its myths and stories1 is of course no proof of his having been there, as Wilamowitz, who castigates the sceptics, freely admits (P i. 1, 245 n. 1); but neither is it evidence against it. It is of interest that Strabo (17.29), an earlier source than any of our lives of Plato though still writing over three hundred years after his death, on a visit to Heliopolis in Egypt was shown the places where Plato and his pupil Eudoxus of Cnidus were said to have lived.2 To those accustomed to the ways of tourist guides this may not seem compelling evidence, but at least it testifies to a strong tradition among the Egyptians themselves that Plato had visited their land. The fact itself has no legendary suggestion, nor do the sceptics seem to be chiefly influenced by certain incredible accretions such as the presence with Plato of Euripides (D.L. 3.6), who was dead before 406, but rather by not very strong circumstantial con siderations, e.g. that there is no mention of voyages to Cyrene or
1 Egyptian matter in Plato is listed by Kerschensteiner, P . u. d. Orient 48, 49. 2 Strabo speaks of being shown the houses () of the priests and the of Plato and Eudoxus, which if earlier usage is a guide means not the houses where they lived but their customary places of resort. Cf. Plato, Euthyphro 2a and Charm. 153a. It has to be added that Strabo spoils his story by the gratuitous and impossible addition that the stay in Egypt lasted 13 years.
3 GHO
l6
mistakes was to execute Socrates, who was not only Platos friend and in his opinion the most righteous man then living, but a man who had defied the wrath of the Thirty to befriend one of their own number when they themselves were in the wilderness. As he brooded not only on this devastating loss but also on the kind of men who held political control, and on the laws and customs in general, on the necessity of personal connexions for success and the growth o f corrupt practices, the young man who had started out all eagerness for a political career felt dizzy and confused. He did not give up all hope of an improvement, but was always waiting for the right moment to act. It is not surprising, as Cornford pointed out, that for such a man the right moment never came. The whole of this long letter reveals - what we might guess from his other writings - that his power and gifts were of such a kind that he could never be a leading man of action in the society of his time. 1 His only conclusion was, he says, the scarcely practical one to ^vhich he gave expression in the Republic, that the troubles of the human race will never cease until either philosophers in possession of rightness and truth attain political power or those who have the power become by some dispensation of divine providence genuine philosophers. (d) Sicily and the Academy2 This was my frame of mind, the letter continues (326b), 'when I first came to Italy and Sicily. Earlier Plato has mentioned that he was forty at the time, i.e. it was about the year 387 b . c . He gives no reason for going, but his motive in the case of Italy was probably what later writers said, namely a desire to make personal contact with the Pythagorean philosophers settled there, and notably with Archytas the philosopher-statesman of Tarentum, to whose friendly relations with Plato the Seventh Letter itself bears witness.3 The political instability of the Italian Greeks, and their conception of la dolce vita ,4 were a shock to him, and provided further food for
1 Cornford, Platos Commonwealth*, in Unwritten Phil. 52. 2 See especially von Fritz, P. in Sizilien und das Problem der Philosophenherrschaft (1968). 3 For Archytas see vol. i, 333-6 ; for Platos motive in going to Italy, Cic. Fin. 5.29.87, Rep. 1.10.16, Tuse. 1.17.39. 4 326b. The apt translation is von Fritzs.
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by a Cyrenean called Anniceris or by unnamed friends. Details vary, but if the version is correct that the sale took place on Aegina and was effected by Pollis, a Spartan returning from an embassy to Syracuse, Platos visit lasted only a matter of months; for this could only have happened in the period when Athens and Aegina were at war, i.e. not later than 387.1 In the next twenty years nothing occurred to alter his opinion that politics was in a state pretty well incurable without exceptional resources2 and luck as well. To see what was right for states and individuals was itself only possible after a rigorous education and an unbiased search for truth, conducted apart from the confusion and prejudices of active politics - in other words it was only possible for philosophers, lovers of wisdom. If the only good rulers are philo sophers, his duty in present circumstances was not to plunge into the whirlpool of politics but to do what he could to make philosophers out of himself and other potential rulers. The first task was educational, and he founded the Academy. The Academy of Plato does not correspond entirely to any modern institution, certainly not a university of modern foundation. The nearest parallels are probably our ancient universities, or rather their colleges, with the characteristics that they have inherited from the medieval world, particularly their religious connexions and the ideal of the common life, especially a common table. That its foundation followed Platos return to Athens after his first visit to the West in
1 The Index Acad. (p. 16 n. i) is usually cited as the earliest source for the story, but its fragmentary text is quite unreliable. Diod. (15.7) says that Plato was sold by Dionysius in Syracuse itself. Plut. (Dion 5) speaks of Pollis selling him in Aegina at the instigation of Dionysius but does not mention Anniceris, who comes in D.L. (3.20). Olympiod. ( V .P . 4) tells the full story but transfers it to Platos second visit with the younger Dionysius as instigator. (Full sources in Zeller, 2.1.414 n. 3.) It is possible that the story can be traced back to Aristotle. So Diels thought, because at Phys. 199 b 20 Aristotle chooses as an example of a chance occurrence the stranger who happened to come, paid the ransom and went away*, a note obviously intended for expansion in the lecture-room. (See Ross ad loc. and cf. in D.L.) Taylor (JPM W 5 n. 1) counted it against Diels that Simpl. ad loc. (p. 384) supposes Aristotles allusion is to some situation in a comedy*. But Simpl. is precise: cb . Apart from the fact that Demeas was no but Crateias father, Aristotle was hardly in a position to allude to Menanders Misumenos. Simpl. has added his own example: as, one might say, happens in Menander when Demeas frees Crateia*. 2 Ep. 7.326a. This seems to me the natural translation, though it is not the usual one. Foremost among the necessary resources would be the friends and trustworthy co-workers* just mentioned at 325 d.
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Academy in the one-time practice in our colleges of having an improving book read to the scholars at their dinner.) In the Academy the meals were conducted according to fairly elaborate rules. Xenocrates in his headship wrote some out, as did Aristotle.1 Plato himself in the Laws (639cff.) speaks at some length of the necessity for symposia to be conducted according to rules applied by a master of ceremonies who must remain completely sober. This passage and the Symposium should save us from a natural impatience at the time spent over what we are at first tempted to regard as the trivialities of social intercourse. The periodic feasts of a thiasos were in any case religious occasions with their appropriate sacrifices.2 Plato and Speusippus, wrote Anti gonus of Carystus, did not hold these gatherings for the sake of carousing till dawn, but that they might manifestly honour the gods and enjoy each others companionship, and chiefly to refresh them selves with learned discussion . 3 Much of the instruction would be by Platos favoured dialectical method, but he also gave continuous lectures, some of which were open to a wider audience. Aristotle, said Aristoxenus, was fond of telling the story of Platos lecture On the Good. Most people came to it expecting to hear some wonderful recipe for human happiness, and left in disgust when his discourse was all about mathematics and astronomy. Aristotle used to quote this as an example of the need for a proper introduction when ones audience is unprepared.4 The lecture must have been given in the gymnasium, a public part of the Academy precinct where Sophists and others were wont to hold forth. Yet his own pupils attended too, philosophers in their own right, including Aristotle, Speusippus and Xenocrates, and wrote down and preserved what they could of it. So Simplicius says ( Phys. 151.6, Gaiser test. 8), and since the story certainly goes back to
1 Ath. 5.186b (vol. I, 405 Kaibel): The philosophers made it their business to join with their students in feasting according to certain set rules. There were sympotic laws of Xenocrates in the Academy, and also of Aristotle.* Id. 13.585 b speaks of written in imitation of the philosophers, and they occur in the list of the works of Aristotle (D.L. 5.26), who also wrote a book , the subject treated by Plato in Laws 1. (Ar. frr. 103 ff. Rose.) 2 See Festugire, Epic, and Gods 25 and reff, there. 3 Antig. (fl. c. 240 b .c .) ap. Ath. 12.547f. I have omitted the inessential , retained by Wilam. (.A. von K. 84), for which Kaibel prints Bergk*s suggestion . 4 Aristox. Elem. Harm. 2, p. 30 Meibom. Full text in Dring, A. in Anc. B .T . 3 5 7 f., where see his commentary. Part of text with commentary also in Gaiser, Testt. Plat. no. 7.
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could at best be the object of belief, not of knowledge; but between writing the Republic and the Timaeus he had become much more favourably disposed to its study. The tremendous interest of Aristotle (and also of Speusippus) in biology must have been fostered in the Academy. The Epicrates fragment suggests the period when the method of division, first mentioned in the Phaedrus and copiously illustrated in Sophist and Politicus, was beginning to take precedence in his mind. However, as we should expect of the author o f the Laws, if not of the Republic, the primary aim of education for statesmanship never left his thoughts. It was certainly his intention that many of his pupils should leave the Academy for politics, not as power-seekers themselves but to legislate or advise those in power, and we have the names of a number who did so.1 Best attested are Erastus and Coriscus, citizens of Scepsis in the Troad, who after a period of study at the Academy returned to their native city where they attracted the attention of Hermias the ruler of Atarneus. Under their influence and that of Aristotle and Xenocrates he studied Platonic philosophy, and adopted a milder form of government with satisfactory results.2 Later, Plutarch states that Plato sent his pupils Aristonymus, Phormio and Menedemus to the Arcadians, Eleans and Pyrrhaeans respectively to reform their constitutions, that Eudoxus and Aristotle both drew up laws for their own cities, and that Alexander applied to Xenocrates for advice on kingship.3 Eudoxus is a good example of the compatibility for a Platonist of political with scientific and philosophical work. His legislative activity at Cnidus is vouched for by Hermippus (ap. D.L. 8.88; that of Aristotle has been doubted), and he was at the same time a notable mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and (so we
1 At Pol: 259b, he says that a man who understands the art of ruling, even if he holds no office, will rightly be called a statesman in virtue of his skill. 2 The earliest source is Platos Sixth Letter, which is probably genuine. Next come the extracts from Hermippus and Theopompus in Didymuss commentary on the Philippics of Demosthenes, Strabo and the Index Acad. See esp. Dring, A. in Ane. B .T . 272-83 and Wormell in Yale C.S. 1935. 3 Plut. adv. Col. 1126 c. If anything, Skemp errs on the side of caution when he sums up (CR 1971, 28): It is difficult (except in the case of Erastus and Coriscus) to check the evidence for the sending of young men from the Academy into actual politics; but there is at least a probability that it is reliable, and that Plato personally felt this to be a responsibility.* For the evidence in full see Morrow, P.*s C.C. 8-9.
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in high places are particularly open to corruptive influences, so that the chances of success were indeed small. But, he pleaded, is it inconceivable that the son of a king or tyrant might have a philosophic nature, and once in the whole course of time might be enabled to preserve it? One would be enough, so we must not despair and dismiss the whole thing as pure fantasy {Rep. 494a~502c). It was not hard for Dion to shame the author of these words into returning to Sicily to help in the work of moulding the young tyrants mind, but it is quite unfair to Plato to say that his chief motive was to put his philosophical precepts into political practice.1 That is not the im pression given by the Seventh Letter, our only evidence for his state o f mind. He was now about sixty, and had spent the last twenty years in philosophical inquiry and teaching. He was, says the letter, full of apprehension. He mistrusted the youthfulness of Dionysius, knowing, as he says (328 b), the conflicting and changeable impulses of the young;2 as well he might, having himself insisted in the Republic (498 b) that immature minds were unsuited to the serious study of philosophy. On the other hand he had great faith in the judgement of Dion, now a mature man whose intellect he admired and who had shared his own inmost thoughts and aspirations. Perhaps Dion was right, and this was the only chance to train the one man who would be enough (for the letter repeats these words o f the Republic) before the flatterers and tempters of a tyrant got hold of him. But more than anything else Plato was moved by that pathetic and mistaken shame which the naturally theoretical and contemplative spirit feels at failing to meet a challenge to action for which it is, in fact, entirely unsuited. This, and a feeling that to refuse would be a betrayal of his friendship with Dion who, he thought, might be in
1 So Hammond, Hist. 517. See pp. 517-20 for the historical background to these events and a historians assessment of Platos part in their tragic outcome. 2 Dion himself emphasized of Dionysius as a point in favour of success (.Ep. 7.328 a), as well as the educability of his other nephews. When therefore Plato goes on immediately (328 b) to express his fears about ot and their this must include Dionysius. He is believed to have been over 25 at the time (Bluck, Letters V I I and V II I p. 85), and some have supposed him rather old to start on a course of study with Plato. (So Burnet, T. to P. 296, Bluck, P L T 36.) But it is clear that in both intellect and character he was backward and unformed. Ep. 3.316c speaks of him as o vt o at this time.
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Life
feared that a refusal on Platos part would look as if Plato thought little of his gifts and disapproved of his way of life. He therefore enlisted the philosophers to testify to the genuineness of his progress in philosophy, his trump card being Archytas, the Pythagorean philosopher-statesman from Tarentum. For Archytas and his circle Plato felt great respect and warm friendship, and he had himself brought them and Dionysius together (338d). The combined efforts of all his friends were too much for him, and he went back to Sicily for a third time in 36 1,1 though all that the Straits of Messene now suggested to him was the awful perils of Scylla and Charybdis (345 e). Never can a journey have been undertaken more unwillingly. Dragged (as he says) by the envoys from Sicily and practically pushed out by the enthusiasm of his friends in Athens, he yielded to the old argument that he must not fail Dion or his Tarentine friends nor refuse to put Dionysius to the final test. So the third act of the tragedy began. At least, he says, I got away with my life an indication of the complete failure of the enterprise. First, he must test the mettle of Dionysius by explaining to him what philosophy really is and the range of preliminary studies through which it must be approached, concealing nothing of the time and labour involved, or the truth that it must be a constant companion and guide for a whole lifetime. Acceptance of this programme Plato regarded as the acid test of a philosophic temperament. In the event he was not even allowed to finish his exposition of it; so sure was Dionysius (the very model of the Ignorant Man of Socrates, who does not even know that he is ignorant) that he knew the most important points already from the pernicious instruction that he had imbibed from certain philosophers at his court.2 Later he went so far as to write a handbook () of his own, based, so he claimed, on Platos teaching, thereby provoking from Plato the declaration which appears at the beginning of this volume (p. 1).
1 This is the generally accepted date. When the sun was eclipsed on 12 May 361, Plato already had a lodging in the palace garden* (Wilamowitz, PL 1, 550, presumably referring to Plut. Dion 19). 2 One of these was Aristippus (Plut. Dion 19), whose hedonistic philosophy would certainly not have been approved by Plato. For Aristippus see vol. hi, 490ff. (At 490 n. 3 I followed Grote who, relying on D.L. alone, associated Aristippuss stay in Sicily with the elder Dionysius, but Plutarch certainly has him at the court of the younger.)
27
Life
with a passionate avowal of their former love, which tradition said was inscribed on his tomb in Syracuse (D .L. 3.30). Our first conclusion from the evidence of the Seventh Letter and Plutarch must be that Plato was a born theoretician, and not the man to translate his own political and psychological theories into successful action. No one will think the less of him for that. The power of making a quick and correct judgement of men and situations, and of taking prompt decisions for necessary action in a situation where the leaders are being manipulated by others whose motives are purely selfish, is not likely, in any human being, to be found together with the intellectual profundity that produced the ethical and metaphysical theories, the achievements in logic, epistemology and ontology which constitute Platos primary and inestimable legacy to the world. It should cause no surprise that the author of the Republic and evn of the Laws was something of a political innocent, more at home drawing up laws and constitutions on paper than engaging in the rough-andtumble of Greek political life; and Syracusan politics, even by Greek standards, were very rough indeed. By temperament he resembled his own philosopher in Republic 6, who sees the impossibility of doing any good to a society bent on wickedness, and stands aside like a man sheltering under a wall while a storm drives over his head. Harward was right to say (Epistles p. 28) that in a matter like safeguarding the interests of Dion Plato was a child in the hands of Dionysius, who tricked him at every turn. Dionysius was not the worst; he wanted to have his own way and Plato for a friend. But there were schemers behind the throne bent on Dions downfall and the frustration of his and Platos plans for Dionysius, and for these too Plato was no match. His only mistake was in thinking that he ever could be, instead of holding back as he did at the time of the Thirty in Athens. In this respect it might be said that the years had brought him no increase in practical wisdom. But the reasons why, after all the doubts and hesitations to which he was so prone, and which the Seventh Letter emphasizes at every turn, he finally accepted the call to action, bring out another, not unattractive, side of his character. It is commonly said that he seized on the opportunity to realize in practice his now developed ideal of the philosopher-king, or at least 29
30
Life
a re-reading of the sources to throw more light on his character than has appeared from previous accounts, and sometimes a different light. All this may be worth bearing in mind when we go on to consider his writings. A second reason for re-telling it in this volume is that in attempts to date the dialogues they are frequently referred to as earlier, or later, than Platos first, second or third visit to Sicily; and the significance of such statements cannot be understood without some knowledge of the purpose and outcome of the visits them selves. Little is known of the remaining thirteen years of his life. Both the Seventh and Eighth Letters were written after the death of Dion, and show him, though no longer an active participator, willing to advise the Dionian party provided, as he says, that they sincerely wish to carry out Dions intention, namely, not to enslave Syracuse any longer to autocrats but to adorn and clothe her with the garment of freedom (336a) - freedom under the rule of law. Let the victors select the best men from all Hellas and appoint them a commission to draw up laws impartially. Let them also (for here lies the only hope of an end to civil strife) refrain from all acts of vengeance and show that they themselves are willing and able to be the servants of the laws. In the Eighth Letter, professing to speak in Dions name, he goes so far as to name a triumvirate whom he would like to see established as joint constitutional monarchs. Two other letters, believed by a majority of scholars to be genuine, testify to his continued concern for Dion until Dions death, and his sensitiveness to opinion about his own actions in Syracuse. In the Fourth he congratulates Dion on his early successes, asks for more news, and reminds him that one in his position is under a particular obligation to act with justice, truth and magnanimity. The Third, nominally addressed to Dionysius, accuses him of misrepresentation and recapitulates past events in the form of an apologia for Platos own conduct. All in all, however, he was as he says (E p. 7.350d) sick of his wanderings and misfortunes in Sicily, and once safely in Athens he presumably turned back with relief to philosophy and worked peace fully in the Academy with his pupils and colleagues. With Aristotle there, no longer a pupil but a member of seven years standing, not
4
31
GHO
(2)
P H IL O S O P H IC A L
IN F L U E N C E S
Plato did not think in an intellectual vacuum. Some of his profoundest and most original ideas resulted from the attempt to solve problems bequeathed by his predecessors, in whom he took the liveliest interest. Aristotle speaks of Platos philosophy as resembling the Pythagorean, but with certain features of its own. This is in the first book of the Metaphysics, where he is discussing the contributions made by previous philosophers to his own doctrine o f causes , 1 among which he counts the Platonic theory of Forms. Its distinctive character, he says, it owed, first, to early reflection on the Heraclitean view that the whole sensible world is in constant flux and cannot therefore be the object of knowledge. Impressed with this, Plato listened to Socrates who had abandoned the study of nature for ethics but in that field was seeking the universal and directing attention to the importance of definition. Both views seemed to Plato right, and to reconcile them he supposed that the definitions which Socrates demanded must apply to non-sensible realities; for he thought it impossible that the common definition could belong to anything in the sensible world, since such things were always changing. Realities of this kind, continues Aristotle, he called Forms [in Greek ideal, whence our theory of Ideas], and he said that sensible things existed apart from them2 and were named after them. Aristotle then goes on to make comparisons with Pythagoreanism whose accuracy is
1 Metaph. A, 987a 29ff. I put causes* between quotes because Aristotles term is much wider, though there is no other convenient translation. When he repeats the account of the genesis of the theory of Forms in book M (1078b 12T.) there is no mention of the Pythagoreans. 2 Ross on 987b8 (p. 161) says that it is difficult to supply after and it should be taken with . So he gives the rather odd translation: and he said the sensibles were called after these and were called what they were called by virtue of their relation to these \ In that case when we have . . . six lines further on (and repeated later), we must take in a different sense. I find this more difficult. At M 1078 b 30 and 31 he uses the words and .
32
Philosophical influences
controversial.1 I mention the passage now only to make the point that besides what we can learn from the dialogues themselves there is also external evidence for the influence of other philosophers on Platos mind which may be worth examining and assessing. For the Pythagoreans we know also of the personal ties with Archytas and others which he formed and maintained on his visits to the West. In the dialogues, there is no need to emphasize the fact that Platos chief inspiration for the greater part of his life was Socrates. In the great majority of them he takes the lead throughout, even in the Theaetetus and Philebus which must have been written in Platos late maturity. In this period however we shall have to consider the sig nificance of a striking change. In the Parmenides, Socrates is a young man quite overshadowed by the elderly and revered Parmenides and though his part at the beginning is important, he is silent for fourfifths of the whole. In the Sophist and Politicus, which follow the Theaetetus, he gives place to the unnamed Eleatic visitor after a few introductory remarks, and similarly in the Timaeus to the Pythagorean Timaeus from Locri. O f Presocratic cosmogonical and physiological theories Plato shows his general knowledge in the famous passage in the Phaedo (95 eff.) where Socrates says that to answer adequately the question of Cebes he must go into the whole question of how things come into being and perish. The influence of Heraclitus is seen in the Symposium (20yd) when Diotima describes our bodies as being in a constant process of change and renewal throughout our lives, affecting hair, flesh, bones, blood and all the rest.2 Cratylus 402a quotes Heraclitus by name for his famous comparison of the world to a river into which you cannot step twice (vol. 1, 488ff). At Theaetetus 152e he is mentioned together with Protagoras and Empedocles as a believer in the genesis of all things from motion and mingling, in contrast to Parmenides, the only one who denied motion; and later in the same dialogue the Heracliteans are satirized as people impossible to deal with (179 eff.). Faithful to their doctrine they are in perpetual motion. They cannot argue, but
1 Cherniss has questioned the historical accuracy of the whole passage. See his A C P A 109 n. 65, 180 n. 103, and 193. 2 See vol. 1, 467 f.
33
4-2
34
Philosophical influences
wholly false as Parmenides had claimed (fr. 1.30), but somewhere between knowledge and ignorance as their subject was between the being of the Forms and sheer nonentity.1 Since much of Platos philosophy is unimaginable without the towering figure of Parmenides, it will seem surprising that he is not mentioned by Aristotle in his account of the genesis of the theory of Forms. A probable explanation, if not a justification, is that this occurs in his examination of earlier views on a particular subject, the causes of coming-to-be and perishing. That Plato investigated these he admits, but since Parmenides and his followers simply denied that motion and coming-to-be take place in reality at all, they must, he says (986b 12 -17 , 25- 6), be set aside as inappropriate to the present investigation of causes . The account of the Pythagoreans in the first volume showed how difficult it is to separate their philosophy from Platos. The very word philosophia as Plato uses it is a link between them (p. 204) and his interpretation of philosophic understanding in terms of religious purification and salvation (204 f.), his passion for mathematics as a glimpse of eternal truth (213), his talk of the kinship of all nature, of reincarnation and immortality and of the body as the temporary tomb or prison of the soul (311), his choice of musical terminology to describe the state of the soul (317 with n.) and especially the mathematico-musical account of the composition of the world-soul which he puts into the mouth of Timaeus of Locri (214), and finally his adoption of the doctrine of the music of the spheres in the myth of Er - all these are evidence of a close affinity between the two in which Plato must have been a debtor. In fact he turned to the Pythagoreans for help in solving the two most serious problems which faced him in his attempt to set the predominantly moral teaching of Socrates on a secure philosophical base. The search for ethical standards had led Socrates to demand universal definitions; but universal definitions could have no application in a world subject to Heraclitean flux. If Socrates was right, then, there must exist unchanging realities outside the world of ordinary sensible experience. The two questions which
1 For modern attempts, like that of Vlastos, to deny to Plato any belief in degrees of reality, see pp. 493-8 below.
35
Philosophical influences
its light from the sun is mentioned in the Cratylus (409a, p. 306). Platos relations with Democritus are a fascinating but tantalizing subject, for he never mentions him, yet it is impossible to believe that he was not acquainted with his work, or that, if acquainted, he did not react strongly. There were curious similarities between them. Democritus called his ultimate realities ideai (vol. 11, 395 n. 2), though for him this denoted the millions of irregularly-shaped, solid physical atoms. These ultimate realities were beyond the bastard cognition of the senses, and, like the Platonic Forms, accessible only to thought (462). This made him a more dangerous foe, but a foe he remained, for he committed the ultimate blasphemy of denying purpose in the universe and teaching a soulless, irrational mechanism. Plato must have had him in the forefront of his mind when in the Timaeus he put forward a mathematical atomism which could only be the work of Reason1 and in the Laws castigated atheistic philosophers who attributed the origin and nature of the cosmos to chance.2 Lastly, we have seen in the third volume how deeply Plato was involved in the arguments between Socrates and the views of the great fifth-century generation of Sophists. Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias cross swords with him in dialogues called by their name, and together with Prodicus, Thrasymachus and others are frequently introduced or their views discussed. I have maintained that these characters appear as themselves, not as masks for Platos contemporaries, but he is hardly likely to have ignored these although, except for Isocrates, he does not mention them by name. He is fond of expressions like a certain theory, some men, I have met many such, young men and late-learners, those who only believe what they can grasp with their hands, more refined intellects and so on. Whatever his motive for leaving them anonymous, it is very probable that these phrases conceal contro versialists with whom he was personally acquainted. Names that have been suggested at various times include Antisthenes, Euclides and his Megarian friends, and Aristippus.3
1 Cf. vol. i i , 462, and for the dangers of supposing too close a connexion between Democritean and Platonic atomism see ib. 406 n. 2. 2 Laws 889 a ff. See also vol. 1, 144 and vol. hi, 115 f. 3 The possibility of references in Plato to the views of these three has been touched on in vol. in, 208-11 and 2i4f. (Antisthenes), 498f. (Aristippus), 506f. (Euclides). See also the preface, p. xiv.
37
Ill
THE DI ALOGUES
(i) THE CA NON
Apart from the letters, Platos written work consisted entirely of dialogues, all of which have survived. (Even the Apology has an element of dialogue.) Whether all that have survived are by Plato is a different question. Diogenes (3.62) gives a list of ten which were recognized in antiquity to be spurious. O f these the Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias , Axiochus and Alcyon have come down in our manuscripts, together with two more not in Diogeness list and named by their subjects, On Justice and On Virtue. There is no reason to question the verdict of the ancients or saddle Plato with any of these.1 The others have a respectable pedigree, having been collected and arranged (on the analogy of tragedies) in groups of three at least as early as Aristophanes, head of the royal library at Alexandria in the third century b . c ., and again in nine groups of four at or before the beginning of the Christian era.2 The latter grouping is reproduced in full by Diogenes, and the natural inference from his information is that its contents were identical with those of the earlier groups. It is reassuring to know that the dialogues were in the great library of the Ptolemies, where they would be looked after by a series of distinguished scholars and critics. Copies would be obtained by the royal agents from the library of the Academy.3
1 The apocryphal dialogues have been edited and translated by J. Souilh in the Bud series (Paris 1930). 2 D.L. 3.56-62, who attributes the arrangement in trilogies to some, including Aristophanes the grammarian. He gives the contents of five trilogies and says the rest of the dialogues follow individually and in no particular order. Publication in tetralogies he attributes to Thrasylus , usually if somewhat improbably identified with Thrasyllus the favourite astrologer of the Emperor Tiberius. (See on this man Gundel in R E 2. Reihe, 11. Halbb. 581-83.) I do not know why Grote and Taylor call him a rhetorician, but Longinus (ap. Porph., v. Plot. 20) lists his name with others who have written on the principles of Pythagoreanism and Platonism. In any case there is some evidence that the arrangement in fours existed earlier. See Taylor, P M W iof.; Leisegang, R E 2363. Most recently J. A. Philip (Phoenix 1970, 298 and 300) denies that the arrangement could have originated with Thrasyllus. 3 By Demetrius of Phalerum according to Grote (1, 152). On the permanence of the library of the Academy and its bearing on the genuineness of the Platonic corpus see ib. 133 ff. and
39
The dialogues
A few of those in the canon of tetralogies - Alcibiades //, Rivals , Hipparchus and Epinomis - were occasionally thought doubtful in antiquity. 1 None but the Epinomis would be defended today, nor are the others of any importance. The Epinomis, according to Diogenes (3-37)5 was sa^ to have been by Platos pupil Philip of Opus, who also copied out the Laws. Otherwise attributions varied, e.g. the spurious Alcyon was attributed by Favorinus (ap. D.L. 3.62) to one Leon, and by Athenaeus (11.506c) to Nicias of Nicaea. Nothing is known of either. In more recent times the canon was accepted without question until the end of the eighteenth century, but by the time of Grote it was set aside and each dialogue was tested by other testimony, both external and internal, as if its inclusion in the tetralogies meant nothing. Internal testimony meant too often the arbitrary opinion of the critics as to what was truly Platonic and what unworthy of the great man. Some of their reasons now seem no better than that of Panaetius the Stoic, who (if the story be true)2 rejected the Phaedo because he did not believe in immortality and could not bear to think that Plato took such pains to prove it. The nineteenth century did its best to rob us of some of the most valuable parts of Platos work. The following have*all been rejected by one or other of its scholars: Euthyphro, Apology, Laches, Lysis , Charmides, Hippias M ajor and Minor, Alcibiades /, Menexenus, Ion , Meno, Euthydemus, Cratylus, Parmenides, Sophist, Politicus, Philebus, Critias, Laws, Epinomis. 3 O f these, opinion is still divided over the first Alcibiades, Ion, Menexenus, Hippias Major and Epinomis, but all scholars would agree that if we had to deprive ourselves of the others we might as well give up studying Plato. That fortunately
Field, P . and Contemps. 47 f. (against Gomperzs denial of a library in which Platos works were preserved). Grote is criticized by Zeller, 2.1.444 ff. For the destruction of the Academy, including its library, by Sulla in 87 B .C ., see Drrie, Erneuerung des Platonismus 1 8 f. J. A. Philip discusses the whole question in his article The Platonic Corpus (Phoenix 1970). He argues for a more or less canonical Academic text, dating from the fourth cent., as direct progenitor of the one deposited in the Alexandrian library. 1 For references see Zeller 2.1.441 n. 1 or Leisegang, R E 2365. 2 For authorities see Grote 1, 157 n. t. Zeller in a long note (2.1.441 n. 1) cast doubt on it, as have Robin (PI. 30 n. 1) and others depending on Zellers arguments. I do not find these as impressive as others do. For Panaetiuss heretical denial of immortality see Rist, Stoic Phil. 184^ 3 See Zeller 2.1.475 fr. with notes, and for the Laws 976 n. 2; for Apology, Grote 1.281 n. a (Ast), and for Laches and Lysis Raeder, P .s Ph. Ent. 91 n. 2 (Madvig).
40
Chronology
there is no need to do, but there are some in the Thrasyllan canon which the majority of scholars after Grote, who defended the complete list (and his arguments are still worth reading), still reject as not by Plato. These are the second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rivals , Minos, Theages, and Clitophon.1 All of them are short and slight, and the question of their authenticity is of no great importance for students of Plato.2 So far I have spoken as if the Alexandrian canon, traceable to the third century b . c ., were the earliest evidence for recognition of the Platonic dialogues in antiquity, but this is to omit the oldest and most indisputable source of all, namely Aristotle. Bonitz methodically classified his citations of Plato under four heads.3 Quoted both with the name of Plato (or in some cases Socrates) and the title of the work are Phaedo, Republic, Symposium, Menexenus,4 Timaeus and Laws. Quoted as from Plato (without name of dialogue but easily identifiable) are Meno, Republic, Phaedrus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Philebus, Timaeus, Laws. Similarly but with the name of Socrates (as the speaker in the dialogue): Apology, Protagoras, Euthydemus Quoted by their title but without Platos name are Gorgias ( Callicles in the G orgias'\ Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Hippias Minor, Timaeus. There are also unmistakable references to particular passages in a number of these dialogues without mention of author or title, as well as to the Politicus.
(2 ) C H R O N O L O G Y
Since Platos philosophical activity extended over a period of at least fifty years, it is obviously important for students of his thought to determine, at least approximately, the chronological order of his writings if not their absolute dates. This is a difficult task, which in the past has led to wildly different results. Four types
1 For the Theages see vol. hi, 399 n. 1. Calogero and Friedlnder accept the Hipparchus. See the latters Plato, vol. 11, 127 f., 319 n. 1. 2 For a fuller but still brief and clear account of the position (in 1926) see Taylor, P M W 10-16. 3 Index Aristotelicus, Arist. Opera vol. v, 598 fr. In what follows, the appearance of a dialogue under more than one head only means, of course, that it is referred to several times in different ways. 4 Symp. and Menex. are referred to as and respectively.
41
The dialogues
of aid have been invoked, which I mention in ascending order of objectivity.1 (a ) Literary criticism Many scholars have tried to place dialogues in an order reflecting the progress of Platos literary talent, claiming to judge the relative maturity of style, mastery of dramatic technique or artistic power which they display. Thus Taylor ( P M W 20 and 235) argued that the Protagoras cannot be an early work because it is a masterpiece of elaborate art, expatiating on the brilliance and lifelikeness of its dramatic portraiture. By contrast Adam ( Prot. xxxiv) considered that the dramatic fire and other features of the dialogue all point to a comparatively early date. The Meno, on the other hand, Taylor found crude because of its abrupt plunge into the main subject of discussion. Apart from the fact that Menos opening question is dramatically perfect, conveying at once the youthful impetuosity of his character which is further revealed in inimitable touches as the dialogue proceeds, it is also true that on the whole Platos dialogues get less dramatic as he matures. Nothing could be more dramatic than the opening scenes of the Charmides or Lysis , yet the one is agreed by all, and the other by most, scholars to belong to an early group. Plato began by giving vivid pictures of Socrates engaged on his mission, and as he went on became more concerned to develop positive doctrines. He retains the dialogue form, but it becomes less dramatic and pictorial and he allows Socrates to indulge in uncharac teristically long discourses only punctuated by expressions of assent from the others. Several nineteenth-century critics thought the Protagoras a work of Platos youth, written before the death of Socrates, even (according to Ast) when Plato was only 22. To Wilamowitz it was incredible that he could have treated Socrates so light-heartedly after his execution, whereas nowadays the general belief is that the Protagoras was written a good many years after it.2
1 I omit the possibility of dating by relation to the works of other writers (employed e.g. by Ritter; see Dies, Autour de P . 246f.), the results of which are both meagre and uncertain. I agree with Field (P. and Contemps. 65) that this source of information had better be dismissed altogether. 2 For Ast see Grote, PL 1, 197 (who disagreed); for Wilamowitz, his Pl. 1, 149: This is how Plato knew him; but after his martyrs death, he had to portray him as the man who had
42
Chronology
In antiquity it was said that the Phaedrus was Platos first dialogue, because there was something youthful about the theme, and its happy, summery atmosphere and discourses on love have led others to the same conclusion. Schleiermacher would certainly not win the assent of any scholars today to his assertion that not only the Phaedrus, but also the Parmenides, bear evident marks of Platos youthfulness. Stenzel ( P M D 152) wrote frankly that the brilliant argument of the Phaedrus turns to ridicule all our ideas of chronology, on the grounds that, although an authentic Socratic dialogue, it contains manifestly later doctrines.1 Other examples could be cited, but these should suffice to show that those who profess to admire Platos literary and dramatic artistry, and to trace in the dialogues its development from apprenticeship to maturity, are in danger of seriously underrating it. T o any appreciative reader of his dialogues, it should come as no surprise that in his later years he remained capable of describing in vivid and sympathetic terms the joys and agonies of youthful eros - he who when over seventy could mourn for Dion who maddened my soul with love . The comedy and entertaining portraiture of the Protagoras have led to directly opposing conclusions about its date. It is difficult to know what is meant by an authentic Socratic dialogue, but if it means one which has an authentically Socratic content, this, as Stenzel emphasizes, cannot be claimed for the Phaedrus, whereas if it only means one in which Socrates is the chief speaker, that is also true of the Philebus which is universally agreed to be late. The one literary characteristic which can be attributed to Plato without qualification is versatility, and to those who would pin him down to particular literary habits at particular dates he will always show himself as the swan into which (according to a Greek commentator) he once dreamed
achieved the aim of following only the Logos. I know of only one scholar who today would put the Protagoras before Socratess death (and that not for the same reasons as Wilamowitz), namely J. L. Fischer in The Case of Socrates 62 n. 4. 1 On the ancient evidence (D.L. 3.38 etc.) see Thompson, Phaedrus xxiii xxv. For Schleier macher and others of his opinion, Grote 1, 197 and Raeder, P .'s Ph. Ent. 247. Some, while rejecting the absurd notion that the Phaedrus was Platos first dialogue, are still inclined to date it comparatively early on the same grounds as Diogeness informant, the youthful nature of its theme: they cannot believe that such a vivid description of sensual love was written by a man in his fifties! See further on Phdr. p. 396 below.
43
The dialogues
he had turned. In his dream men were trying to snare him, but he flew from tree to tree mocking them, and no one could catch him. Nevertheless, the temptation to trust to ones own impressions in this way is, and will no doubt continue to be, irresistible. There is however an interesting passage where Plato himself comments on his choice of literary form. The majority of the dialogues are written as direct conversation, with the names of the speakers preceding their words as in the script of a play. Some however, including some of the most important like the Republic, Phaedo, Symposium and Phaedrus, are narrated. There may be a brief dramatic introduction in which Socrates agrees to repeat the conversation to a friend, which he does in the main part of the dialogue. This method has obvious dramatic advantages in that Socrates can describe the scene and the persons involved, but eventually Plato decided against it. The con versation which forms the main part of the Theaetetus is introduced as being read from a report which Euclides wrote down after hearing an account of it from Socrates. He explains, however, that he has not written it in narrative form as Socrates told it, but as an actual conversation, to avoid tedious repetitions of I said, he replied, he agreed and so on. This reads like a statement of policy on Platos part, and suggests that any dialogue in narrated form will be earlier than the Theaetetus. Since none of the dialogues which on other grounds are thought to be later is in this form, this affords some confirmatory evidence of their lateness, though it must not be forgotten that the majority of those believed to be earlier are also in direct dramatic form. It is interesting that the Parmenides, a dialogue which all agree to be closely linked with the Theaetetus, though some put it just after and some before,1 starts in reported form with an elaborate introduction and the said hes inserted (though very perfunctorily), but these are quietly dropped little more than a quarter of the way through the dialogue (at 137c) and never reappear. It looks as if Plato were already tiring of this method of composition, and ready for the change announced in the Theaetetus.
1 For reff, to Parm. in Tht. and Soph. see below, p. 53 with n. 1.
44
Chronology
i) Philosophical considerations As a guide to the relative chronology of the dialogues, these have a better claim to our attention than literary maturity or artistic powers, but they too have only a limited usefulness. It would seem natural that a philosophers thought should display a logical order of develop ment. He will obtain certain results first, and later build on them in working towards solutions of other problems, and he must tackle certain questions before he is ready to face others. He may also change his mind. To trace this development may be easy in a philosopher who writes, as most philosophers do, systematic treatises. It is more difficult to find it in Platos dialogues, a unique form of literature not to be compared with modern philosophical dialogues like Berkeleys or Humes in which the participants are lay-figures and the dramatic element plays no part. In any case these men wrote treatises as well. Plato never appears in his own person, and each of his dialogues is a separate work of art. In many the human element is paramount, and the argument is tailored to the characters, not vice versa. The Protagoras is the outstanding, but by no means the only example. There is a clash of personalities and viewpoints in which Plato some times seems more interested than in the conclusions reached. Indeed there may be no conclusion, and the character of each speaker may seem to be so individually drawn that none can be said to represent Plato himself. Doubtless Socrates comes nearest, but are we expected to sympathize with him throughout the length of the Protagoras? He too will adapt himself to his company, and use quite different approaches when he is talking to a respectful young admirer like Charmides or Lysis, a brilliant pupil like Theaetetus, or a formidable Sophist like Protagoras, or playing with the humourless egotism of Hippias or the fallacious cocksureness of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. Apart from all this, the elements of religion, poetry and myth, and other features like the exaltation of a sublimated sexual love as the true gateway to philosophy, arouse very different reactions in different readers and render highly subjective any suggestions as to what Plato literally meant (an absurd question, but one frequently asked) or what represents immaturity and what development.
45
The dialogues
If we knew the relative chronology of the dialogues, it would be interesting to trace such development as they reveal; but the dialogues being what they are, we cannot reverse the process, as Field said ( P . and Contemps. 64): It follows, also, if the dialogues are as described, that we cannot hope to work out a logical order of the development of the thought contained in them, and then apply this as a proof of the chronological order. He points to the startlingly divergent results which were attained by this method, compared to the relative agreement among those who adopted the more objective criterion o f linguistic tests, and he describes it as a method foredoomed to failure because it involves not merely trying to impose a system on Plato, but each one of us trying to impose his own system. This is too harsh. There is, it is true, one broad division between inter preters of Plato which will affect their judgement on this point: that, namely, between those who suppose that Platos philosophy under went such radical changes during his long life that his later dialogues repudiate the teaching of the earlier and those, who like the late Paul Shorey, insist on the essential continuity and unity of his thought. Shorey wrote ( Unity 5): The attempt to base such a chronology on the variations and developments of Platos doctrine has led to an exaggeration of Platos inconstancy that violates all sound principles of literary interpretation and is fatal to all genuine intelligence of his meaning. Yet I cannot believe that the criterion of philosophical development, checked of course by any other evidence available, is useless in the hands of a careful historical scholar with no particular axe to grind. To take an obvious example, when in the Parmenides Plato raises grave objections to the doctrine of Ideas in the form in which he himself has propounded it in the Phaedo, Republic and elsewhere, it is undeniable that this is the result of further hard thinking on the subject and the Parmenides must have been written after these other dialogues. Again, we are surely right in detecting a change in Platos attitude to the physical world, a progress away from the exhortation to avert our eyes from it, or use it only, like the astronomer of the Republic (529), as a first step on the way to grasping the unseen reality, the place beyond the heavens where true being dwells
46
Chronology
intangible and invisible ( Phaedrus 247 c), towards a developing interest in nature for its own sake. In the Timaeus (3oa-b) the cosmos and its contents have become the best work of the supremely good artificer, a work so wrought by reason as to be by nature as fair and good as possible. It is indeed realized in changeable matter, and cannot therefore be eternal or perfectly intelligible like the model after which the Divine Intelligence created it. The world of Forms still exists and is supreme, but had Plato still felt about the natural world as he did when he wrote the Phaedo, Phaedrus and Republic, he could never have devoted the careful attention not only to questions of cosmology and of the atomic composition of matter, but also to the details of an elementary chemistry, of the physical basis of sensation, and of physiology in general, which we find in the Timaeus. Parallel to this change of emphasis in subject-matter we find a change of method. The use of hypothesis, as described in the Phaedo and Republic, gives place to a procedure not altogether unrelated to it nor in conception novel, but elaborated and serving a rather different purpose. This is the method of division, mentioned with approval in the Phaedrus (205c - 266b) and illustrated and applied at somewhat tedious length in the Sophist and Politicus.* It is a method of definition by dichotomous2 classification in dialectical form, that is, pursued by two or more people in discussion. They first agree on the widest class to which the definiendum belongs, divide it into two by adding differentiae, choose one of these and divide again, and so on. Thus in the illustrative exercise in the Sophist (2i8eff.), the subject chosen is the angler. Angling is agreed to be a skill. Skills are divided into productive and acquisitive and angling assigned to the acquisitive. Acquisition may be by consent or by force, and so on. The goal sought by this method is obviously the infima species, which Plato calls the atomic form because it cannot be further divided into genus and differentia ( Phaedrus 277b, Soph. 229d). In other words the progress of knowledge is downwards, from the universal to the
1 Division according to kinds is mentioned at Rep. 454a and was a legacy to Plato from Socratic definition and perhaps other fifth-century sources (vol. hi, 204, 439); but its elaboration in Soph, and Pol. is a new development. 2 Plato prefers dichotomy, but admits at Pol. 287 c and Phil. 16 d that division into more than two may occasionally be necessary.
5
47
GHO
The dialogues
particular, and the search ends with the discovery of that which is as near to the individual as possible while remaining definable.1 In the heyday of the doctrine of Forms, the highest realities, and the truest objects of knowledge, were what we should call the widest universals, and the philosophers progress was an ascent of the mind to a region as far removed as possible from the perceptible individuals of the physical world. Later, it comes nearer to the activity of scientific classification for which the Academy was ridiculed in comedy, and which Aristotle carried to such heights in his biological works; and it would be sheer perversity to suggest that the development was in the opposite direction. Other possibilities could be mentioned, for instance the attempt to trace the appearance of Pythagorean elements in Platos philosophy which may reasonably be thought to be the effect of his contact with the school when he visited South Italy at the age of forty. Results may vary in certainty, and in tracing what now seem obvious lines of development we may be unconsciously influenced by our acquaintance with certain results of dating by the stylometric tests to which I now turn. (c) Stylometric and linguistic tests These rest on the assumption that over a sufficiently long period the style and language of an author will be subject to changes, some deliberate (like indifference to, or avoidance of, hiatus), some un conscious. The latter are the more significant, especially with an author like Plato who, as has been pointed out,2 deliberately changes style from one work to another and even within the same work. The
1 Stenzel actually says (P M D 24) that division is a method whose purpose is to determine the classes defined by natural science in order to bring individual reality within the grasp of science. Individual reality is of course not within the grasp of science (a dilemma which deeply concerned Aristotle, e.g. at Metaph. 999324-9; cf. Plato, Phil. 16 e), but no less than Aristotle Plato in his later years seems to be trying to come as near it as possible. He does say in the Phaedrus (265 d) and Philebus (16e) that division must be preceded by collection, i.e. a survey of related species to determine the wide generic form under which the definiendum must first be brought; but in practice (in Soph, and Pol.) he omits it, and the summum genus is treated as self-evident. 2 By G. J. de Vries in his commentary on the Phaedrus, iof. He gives references to a number of scholars who have uttered salutary warnings against too nave a faith in this type of evidence, but recognizes its cumulative weight.
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Chronology
method was inaugurated by the Scottish scholar Lewis Campbell in the introduction to his edition of the Sophist and Politicus (1867), in which by careful and patient counting he drew conclusions about the affinities of some of the later dialogues through a comparison of their vocabulary, grammar, sentence-structure and rhythm. There is, fortunately, one fixed starting-point, namely the Laws. This work is not only said by Diogenes (3.37) to have been left unfinished at Platos death, and by Aristotle (Pol. 1264b26) to have been later than the Republic, but bears marks of lack of finish and revision, and is indisputably the latest of all his writings. The method was independently pursued by the German Dittenberger (1881) and then by the Pole Lutoslawski (1897), whose claim to determine the order of the dialogues with mathematical exactitude was some what overdone and led to criticism. It was continued with more circumspection by Ritter, who to silence criticisms by Zeller took a laborious byway and applied it with striking success to the works of a modern writer, namely Goethe, whose chronology was known independently.1 Success demands a meticulous and complete enumeration of the occurrences of words and expressions in different dialogues, especially unimportant ones like particles and brief formulas of assent, and this even with the help of Asts Lexicon Platonicum was time-taking and tedious. It was natural therefore that the advent of the computer should have given a new impetus to researchers, and since the mid 1 95os, computers have been used not only to compile accurate lexica and concordances of classical authors (an invaluable service) but to settle questions of relative dates and even authenticity. However, so far as our present subject is concerned we may note the pronouncement made by a worker in the field, in the course of a sober assessment of the possibilities : Even in the thorny problem of the order of Platos dialogues the researches of scholars like Campbell and Lutoslawski have satisfied most scholars concerning the general order of the
1 The literature on stylistic research is extensive. Works mentioned above are in the biblio graphy, and for the earlier period in general see Ueberweg-Praechter 6 ^ -7 2 * . Ritters defence of the method (with historical survey) is in his N . Unters. (1910), ch. 5. Simeterre in R E G 1945 gives a useful summary of the position at that date, and for brief accounts in English see Burnet, Platonism 9 -12 and Field, P. and Contemps. ch. v.
49
5-2
The dialogues
dialogues, though particular difficulties (like the position of the Timaeus and Cratylus) still remain. 1 The generally agreed achievement of the stylometric or linguistic method (and it is no small one) has been to divide the dialogues into three successive groups. Between the groups some see differences suggesting lapse of time or possibly an event which could have had an effect on the writers style, but the variations of opinion on a few dialogues suggest that they cannot be great. Thus some scholars put the Parmenides and Theaetetus in the middle group,2 others in the late, while others are doubtful. In philosophical content they are certainly difficult to separate from the late group.3 The Timaeus was universally considered one of the latest until G. E. L. Owens attempt to redate it in 1953, since when it has been the subject of lively dispute. The position of the Cratylus is also doubtful. With these provisos Cornfords grouping (C A H \ 1, 31 iff.) may be taken as representative of the generally accepted conclusions: Early: Apology, Crito, Laches, Lysis , Charmides, Euthyphro, Hippias Minor and (?) Major, Protagoras, Gorgias, Ion Middle: Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Symposium, Phaedrus, Euthydemus, Menexenus, Cratylus Late: Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Politicus, Timaeus, Critias, Philebus, Laws As to the order within each group, there is a considerable measure of agreement about the dialogues in the last two groups, but more uncertainty about the first.4 With the dialogues thus sorted into groups by other means, we may note that the groups are also distinguished by a difference in philosophical interest. Group 1 concentrates on the moral issues and
1 T . M. Robinson, The Computer and Classical Languages, Class. Notes and News 1967. This is a useful short introduction to the subject, with a bibliography including periodicals and news-letters. (Much of it is repeated in U. of Tor. Qu. 1967 in the course of his witty and balanced review article on Ryles Plato's Progress.) 2 E.g. Robin, PI. 43; Field, o.c. 67; Kapp, T . of I. in P.s Earlier Dialogues 55. Kapp would also put Phaedo and Symp. at the end of the early period. The Theaet. shows a change of style towards the end, and Cornford noted (P T K 1) that the latter part could have been finished years after the beginning, and the Parmenides composed in the interval. 3 Cf. Friedlander, Plato in, 449. 4 See the tables in Ross, P T I 2.
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Chronology
search for definitions characteristic of the historical Socrates, in group 2 a metaphysical interest is predominant, whereas the first four dialogues mentioned in group 3 introduce a new note of criticism in both the ontological and the epistemological fields. Parallel with this goes the change in the position of Socrates which has already been mentioned (p. 33). In the early and middle groups (and the Theaetetus whose position between the groups is doubtful) he is the central figure, but in the last, with the exception of the Philebus, he takes no part at all in the main discussion, and in the Laws is not even present. The stylometric method has undoubtedly proved itself. Ritter (Platon I, 230f.) gives impressive tables showing the chaos of opinion that prevailed before its introduction, as compared with the large measure of agreement now attained. However, this might be a good place to repeat the warning of two possibilities which should not be left out of account. First, some of the dialogues must have taken a long time to write. The composition of the Republic and Laws, in particular, probably extended over years, and other, shorter dialogues might have been written in the meantime. Secondly, there is some slight evidence that Plato was all his life an assiduous polisher and reviser of his own works. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in a rather unhappy metaphor, says that up to his eightieth year Plato never ceased combing and curling and every way braiding his own dialogues , and adds the story that after his death a tablet was found containing various versions of the opening sentence of the Republic.* That is all. It does not amount to much, and scholars have reacted variously to it. W. G. Runciman (P L E 3 n. 5) says that this traditional assiduity in revision makes it dangerous to argue from the affinity of a particular passage with a passage in a later work. Field on the other hand was scornful. After a description of the development of stylistic research he continues :
These stylistic investigations lend no support at all to the hypothesis, beloved o f certain scholars, o f second editions or revisions or rewritings o f particular dialogues. It must be insisted that this idea is in every case a
1 Dion. Hal. De comp. verb. 25. D.L. (3.37) repeats the story about the opening of the Rep., which he says was related by Euphorion and Panaetius.
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The dialogues
purely gratuitous invention, introduced to bolster up the pet theory o f some particular scholar which would otherwise be too much at variance with the evidence to be maintained.1
{d) External evidence and cross-references If a dialogue can be dated absolutely, or at least given a terminus post quern, by a reference in it to a particular historical event, or the relationship between two dialogues determined by a reference in one to the other, this is of course the most indubitable evidence of all. Unfortunately such windfalls are few, and the historical allusions are not always uniformly identified by scholars. Laws 638 b mentions a conquest of Locri by Syracuse, which is generally taken to refer to the action of Dionysius II about 356 b . c . Since Plato would then be over seventy, this fits well with the other indications that the Laws was the work of his old age. The occasion of the Theaetetus is the return of Theaetetus, dying of wounds and dysentery, from the army at Corinth, and this is now2 agreed to refer to the fighting near Corinth in 369. Since it is mentioned in the introductory conversation, which is represented as taking place many years after the main dialogue between Socrates and Theaetetus, no anachronism is involved, but elsewhere Plato does not seem afraid of anachronism. The most striking example is the Menexenus, in which Socrates recites a speech which he claims to have learned from Aspasia and which brings Athenian history down to the Peace of Antalcidas (the Kings Peace) in 386, thirteen years after his death. The Symposium (193a) mentions the dispersion of the Man tineans by Sparta in 385, though the dramatic date is fixed at 416 by the victory of Agathon which the party celebrates.3 These upper limits of date are all that can be fixed with certainty, though there are other conjectures more or less probable. To determine
1 Field, o.c. 67 f.; cf. Thompson, Meno lix. Ross on the other hand ( P 7 Y 9) says Plato is known to have been assiduous in revising his works, solely on the authority of the passage in D.H. There is indeed no other. 2 After the arguments of E. Sachs, De Theaeteto. See Cornford P T K 15. Zeller (2.1.406 n. 1) referred it to the Corinthian War of 394-87, largely because, on grounds of philosophical content, he thought it must have been written earlier than Phaedo or Rep. - an indication of how changeable opinion has been in these matters. 3 See further p. 365 below.
52
Chronology
relative dates we have references to the Theaetetus at the opening of the Sophist and to the Sophist in the Politicus (284b). The Timaeus begins by recapitulating some parts of the Republic as a discussion which was held yesterday (which it could not have been),1 and the unfinished Critias is a continuation of the Timaeus. In addition one may recognize clear2 references to the Parmenides in the Theaetetus (183e) and Sophist (217c). All these dialogues are comparatively late, and the earlier ones offer no convenient handles of this sort. Naturally scholars have wished to relate the dialogues not only to each other but to events in Platos life, notably the founding of the Academy and the three visits to Sicily. As one example of the results claimed, I quote Leisegang, who places them as follows (R E 2350*.): Before the first Sicilian visit: Ion, Hipp. M in., Pro t., ApoL, Crito, Laches, Lysis, Charm., Euthyphro, Thrasymachus (i.e. Rep . book 1), Gorgias In next twenty years (the years of the Academy, between first and second visits): Menex., Euthyd ., Meno, Crat., Symp., Phaedo, Rep ., Phaedrus, Parn z., Theaet. Between second and third visits: Soph., Pol. After third visit: Tim ., Crit., Phil., Laws3 The upshot is that, largely thanks to precise stylistic analysis or what Campbell called quantitative criticism, there is general agree ment on the broad chronological grouping of the dialogues, but the place of some individual dialogues is still uncertain and under lively debate. We are left with the practical problem of the best order of treatment, and one can hardly do better than follow a rule which
1 The occasion of each is marked by reference to a particular festival (Rep. 354a, Tim. 21a ; cf. Cornford, P T K 4 f.), and the festivals were not on successive days. Apart from the change in dramatis personae, it looks as if by this device too Plato is emphasizing the fictitious character of the connexion. 2 Clear to me at least, and I am glad to have some support. Cornford (P .s Cosm. 1) wrote that the passages in Th. and Soph, are in terms which can only refer to the Parmenides. Also the arguments at 244 bff. appear to assume familiarity with those in the Parm. (ib. 226). On the other hand 4 out of the 5 scholars cited in Rosss table (P T I 2) put Parm. later than Th., though all put it before Soph. 3 I choose Leisegangs grouping as the most generally probable. Ross (P T I 10) relates selected dialogues to the Sicilian visits in a way which agrees with it, except that he puts the Meno before the first visit. A different picture is given by Erbse in Hermes 1968, p. 22 (following Kapp).
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The dialogues
combines a general respect for chronology with convenience of exposition.1 To act on the hypothesis that Platos thought developed in certain directions rather than otherwise is unavoidable. If a certain amount of subjectivity must enter into this, at least the achievements of the stylometrists have set limits to it, which save one from the grosser errors. The date of each dialogue will be more fully discussed in its own section.
A P P E N D IX
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Chronology
Thompson (Meno xxxi, 19 0 1) declared himself convinced by G rotes arguments, and added: Fo r the conception o f the Socrates o f the dialogues a certain mythical atmosphere is required, which readily gathered at no long interval after his death, but which would have been as impossible during his life-time as the appearance o f his ghost/ Wilamowitz (1920) and Ritter (first in 1888) both thought that some dialogues must have preceded Socratess death because they portray him in a mischievous and all-too-human guise which would have been impossible after it. A n example from W ilamowitz occurs on p. 4 2 above, and in his Kerngedanken ( 1 9 3 1 ) 1 Ritter found it unthinkable that the Lesser Hippias could have been written after the distressing accusations against Socrates, because the ordinary reader must consider him in that dialogue the worst pettifogger and twister o f words, the worst o f all Sophist babblers . So much for Thompsons mythical atmosphere. For A . E. Taylor ( P M 1 V 2 1, 1926), Platos literary activity could not have begun before the death o f Socrates. The idea o f Plato dramatizing the sayings and doings o f the living man, whom he revered above all others, is absurd, and the original motive o f all the Socratic logoi was to preserve his memory. Field (P. and Contemps. 74, 1930) was o f the same opinion: It really seems impossible, in spite o f the opinion o f some undoubted authorities, to make any convincing account o f motives that could lead Plato to compose any o f them while Socrates was still alive. It was clearly the effect o f Socratess death which turned Plato from ambitions for an active political life to the state o f mind which would find its expression in writings o f this kind. Added to which is the fact that some o f the dialogues which imply the death o f Socrates - the Crito for instance - bear all the marks o f being his earliest productions. But Friedlnder at the same time2 thought differently. He had been arguing that certain dialogues (including Laches and Charmides) preceded the
Euthyphro, Apology and Crito which are concerned with Socratess trial, and it seemed to him unreasonable that Plato should have written them after 399 and only later approached the subject o f the trial and execution. It makes much more sense to assume that Platos first writings date from before the end o f the fifth century. Neither Robin (PL (19 3 5 ) 40) nor Ross (P T I ( 19 5 1) 4) thought this impossible, and Ross considered T aylo rs psychological arguments unconvincing.
1 See the English version (Essence pp. 28 and 39 n.), and earlier his Platon 1, 56. 2 Die plat. Sehr. 1930. See the English translation, Plato hi, 456.
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The dialogues
T w o examples, both dated 1969, will show that the question is still open. J. L . Fischer starts from a belief that Plato was 18 when he first met Socrates, and that he had already started to write. (This presumably refers to the early poetic and dramatic compositions mentioned by Diogenes, 3.5.) And he cannot accept the assumption that, having made a start and being a writer all his life, Plato did nothing for the next ten years but listen to Socratic conversations, whether from Socratess own mouth or as repeated b y others from written notes. It would, he says, be more logical to assume that no small part o f these notes was made up o f Platos dialogues. B y contrast E. N . Tigerstedt says briefly: Pace W ilamowitz and Friedlnder, I cannot imagine Plato - or anybody else o f Socrates disciples, - writing a Socratic dialogue , whilst the living Master was walking and talking in the streets o f Athens. 1 It will be seen that most o f the arguments on either side are highly subjective. I f certainty is impossible, I am inclined to side with Grote and his successors, not so much on psychological grounds (though I would agree that they support the negative conclusion) as on the historical grounds which Grote adduced, and above all the evidence o f the Seventh Letter for Platos preoccupations up to the death o f Socrates and the effect o f this event itself in finally converting him from political ambitions to the life o f philosophy.
(3)
P H IL O S O P H IC A L
STA TU S: PLAY
AND
EAR N EST
Y o u must see that in a sense all science, all human thought, is a form o f play.
J. Bionowski
The question whether Plato himself regarded the dialogues as a medium for the communication of serious philosophy, and what, in consequence, should be our own attitude towards them, calls for something more than the brief mention it received in the introduction. This opened with a quotation from the Seventh Letter suggesting that philosophy can only be seriously pursued through oral discussion and living companionship, and that written works on the subject
1 J. L. Fischer, Case of Socrates 29, and E. N. Tigerstedt, P.'s Idea of Poetical Inspiration 18 n. 39.
< 5
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The dialogues
These are strong words, and suggested to Crombie that Plato saw his own dialogues as a harmless though not very exalted pastime like philately ( E P D i, 148). This however is not an easy thing to believe of the author of the Phaedo and Republic, to say nothing of the Parmenides and Sophist ; and what immediately follows in the Phaedrus itself does a little to mitigate the censure. To conclude then, says Socrates (278 b), our message to all prose-writers, poets and lawmakers must be this: If they wrote with knowledge of the truth, if they can face a challenge and defend their work, and out of their own mouth demonstrate the inferiority of the written word, we must not call them by the name which their writings suggest but hail them as philosophers. To appreciate Platos position, we must first of all forget our own world, with its public and private libraries and its publishers churning out many thousands of books every year, and think ourselves back to a time when oral delivery still retained a certain priority over the written word.1 Writing was considered as an aid to speaking rather than a substitute for it. Homer, lyric, tragedy and oratory were only written down in order to be memorized and sung or spoken. By Platos time the position was already changing, and at this transitional stage the relationship between spoken and written logos became a subject of lively argument. Herodotus and Thucydides had written their histories, and philosophers like Anaxagoras and Democritus their treatises, but reading aloud, whether to oneself or others, was still the normal practice. Thucydides (1.22) expresses a fear that the austerity of his work may make it less pleasant to listen to, and Socrates ( Phaedo 97b-c) describes the effect of hearing someone reading from a book of Anaxagoras.2 More relevant is the evidence of a controversy, in Platos own time, between the upholders o f the spoken and of the written word. With Platos rival Isocrates oratory itself became a purely written medium. Though a trainer of orators, he was himself a nervous and feeble speaker, and wrote in the form of public speeches
1 The point has been well made by Friedlander, Pl. i, 109 ff., who however perhaps exag gerates it by leaving out any reference to Thucydides or the lost writings of the Presocratics. 2 Thuc. 1.22; Plato, Phaedo 97b-c. Cf. vol. hi, 42 f. Even the self-conscious claim of Thucydides that he intends his work to be a lasting possession, rather than a competition-piece to be heard only once, suggests an awareness that he is composing in a novel genre.
58
59
The dialogues
of Lysiass speech, and Socrates replies, 4Do you really think I am joking and not in earnest? And in the Symposium Agathon describes his flowery speech on love as combining paidia with a modicum of spoud.1 In the Euthydemus (278 b) Socrates applies the word to the trick questions of the Sophists. Worth noting is the frequent connexion of paidia with imitation as opposed to the real thing, and with the mimetic arts. In the Phaedrus the written word was the copy or dreamimage of the spoken, in the Republic (602 b) painting and poetry, summed up as mimesis, are 'paidia not spoude\ and in the Sophist (234b) all mimetic art is classified as a particularly skilful and pleasing kind of paidia. In Laws 10 (889 c-d) the atheist, who exalts mindless nature as the creator of the real world, dismisses the products of human intelligence as toys (paidia) containing little reality, counterfeits like those of painting, music and the like. To create anything spoudaion, men must cooperate with nature. Not only does Plato make the general judgement that a wise man will write only as paidia; he often applies the term to his own work. In the Phaedrus itself, at the end of the discussion on written and spoken discourse, Socrates says (278b), Well, now I think we have sufficiently played out our game with logoi? After inveighing, in the Republic, against unworthy students of philosophy who bring it into disrepute, Socrates pulls himself up with the words (536c): But I forgot that we are amusing ourselves ( pai{omen), and got too worked u p. . . I lost my temper and spoke too seriously. Parmenides, in the dialogue named after him, after being persuaded into giving a demonstration of the method of argument which he himself recom mends, that is, drawing all the consequences from a hypothesis and then from its negation, says (137b), Well, since weve agreed to play this troublesome game. . . 2 Along with the accusation of eironeia against Socrates went the complaint that he was always playing, never serious. Here we begin to see that Plato can use the word ironically,
1 Phaedrus 234 c!, Symp. 197 e. For some other examples see Euthyphro 3 e, Apol. 20 d and 27a, Meno 79 a, H. Maj. 300d, Gorg. 500b, Laws 688 b. 2 The words form an oxymoron, and since Parmenides has referred to this kind of argument as mental gymnastics, there is probably a suggestion here of hard and exhausting physical games, which at the same time train and strengthen the body.
60
6l
The dialogues
a sober game suitable to old men (685a), and again the rational
paidia of old men (769a, to which Clinias replies that it is rather the spoud of men in their prime). In inventing laws for an imaginary
city they are behaving like elderly children (712b). Here too the use of paidia seems connected with the subject-matter, namely humanity and its affairs. Only God is worth serious devotion, and the best thing about man is that he was created to be the plaything of God.1 So human affairs are not worth taking very seriously - but, he goes on immediately, unfortunately we are forced to take them seriously. To Megilluss protest that he is slandering the human race, the Athenian replies that he was thinking of it in relation to the gods: if you like, lets say it is not contemptible, but worth a little spoud'.1 Now no one will believe that the author of the twelve books of the Laws and ten of the Republic, to say nothing of the Statesman and all the dialogues aimed at continuing the Socratic quest for virtue, thought of human conduct as scarcely worth serious attention. In his attribution of paidia and spoud he himself can use a little playful irony to remind us that there is a divine realm above the human, there is a changeless reality above the turmoil of the physical world, and it is to these that our highest intellectual and spiritual powers should be devoted. As a description of Platos attitude here, nothing could improve on the magnificent last sentence of the Sixth Letter, which asserts his twin principles that seriousness should never become tasteless and that seriousness and play are sisters.3 All this should help us to know Plato better and to put in their proper place the words of the Phaedrus which have so troubled readers who saw in them a dismissal of his own dialogues as mere jeux d'esprit which he never intended to be taken seriously. We can think differently of his remark (277 e) that nothing ever written in verse or prose is worth taking very seriously when we know that he applied exactly the same phrase to the whole field of human action.
1 Or the gods. Plato uses singular and plural indifferently. Cf. 644 d. 2 Laws 8o3b-8o4c. That human affairs are not worth taking very seriously has been said earlier, in the Rep. (604 b). There however it receives a special appropriateness from its place in the context of an argument against giving way to immoderate grief at bereavement or other misfortune. 3 If this letter was not by Plato, I wish we had more work by its unknown author. He was capable of writing like Plato at his best.
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The dialogues
or not, the words in question are most naturally taken as a brief reference back to the qualifications of a philosopher which have just been mentioned. A man, said Socrates, may produce written works and yet be a philosopher if (a) when he wrote he knew the truth, (b) he can take up a challenge and defend in argument what he has written, and (c) he himself is capable of demonstrating out of his own mouth the inferiority of the written word. These merits are indeed something more valuable than what he has written, and no one will be surprised if Plato, teacher and arguer as much as writer, claimed to possess them himself. This is not to prejudge the question whether Plato had more to teach than he could put into the written dialogues. That he did is plain from Aristotle and the Letters, and strongly hinted at in the dialogues themselves. One has only to think of Republic 6, where Socrates admits that knowledge of the Form of the Good is beyond them, and they must be content with analogies and similes. The problem must be left till later, but the opinion may be expressed here that whereas in the school Plato could go more deeply into the nature of being and goodness than was possible in his writings, what he taught was a continuation only, not a different doctrine. Aristotle quotes the dialogues freely, and always as a no less authentic source of Platos teaching than what he imparted to his pupils but did not publish. Much could be said in general about the nature of the dialogues, but most of it has been said before, and since the greater part of this volume will be devoted to a study of them individually, it is to be hoped that something of their qualities will emerge. I should simply like to end this section with two extracts from an assessment by Hermann Gundert which seem to me to make the essential points extremely well, and which therefore I have ventured to translate.1
(ia) The Platonic dialogue is not a pleasing form o f presentation in which to propound a doctrine or discuss a thesis which could also be
Aristotles reports. Zeller (2.1.486) neatly, if perhaps superficially, anticipated the unwritten doctrine school by claiming that by giving the written word the purpose of reminding us of the spoken, Plato expressly ascribed to it the same content ! 1 Der plat. Dialog pp. 16 and 19. The above was written before reading pp. 23 fr. of Eberts Meinung und Wissen, 1974 (a book which contains more than its title suggests).
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(6) [The author is here speaking o f the Meno, and the error o f separating artist from philosopher in it.] This form , the mimetic, belongs rather in essence to the philosophical content o f the dialogue. W here philosophy is embodied in conversation, every word, whether directed by opinion or by truth, is the logos o f particular people in a particular world. O nly here, where the subject in question declares itself throughout in the particular situation, gestures and turns o f phrase o f the speakers, can its generality be so expressed as to pave the w ay for a change in the soul.
Plato spoke the plain truth when he said that there was not, and would never be, any treatise5 ( or ) of his on the things that he took seriously. What he has left us is something much better, the mimesis of dialectical discussion itself.
A D D IT IO N A L NO TE
I have said nothing o f a passage in Ep. 2 which is partly identical with that quoted from Ep. 7. Its authenticity is much more doubtful. Many scholars who are ready to vouch for Ep. 7 as Platos would not do the same for Ep. 2. Ross (P T I 158) considered it open to grave suspicion and thought that the arguments for spuriousness put forward by Hackforth, Field and Pasquali would convince most readers . I f this is right, the passage would be an imitation o f that in Ep. 7, and certainly the almost verbatim repetition o f the denial that there was or ever would be a treatise by Plato looks very like it. The wider contexts are also very similar in phraseology. In Ep. 7 Plato is complaining to others about the conduct o f
1 Was Dr Gundert, I wonder, thinking of Phaedrus 275 d-e? ( * , .) 2 In so far as this second phrase ( nor capable. .. ) adds anything to the preceding one, it perhaps goes rather far.
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6 -2
The dialogues
Dionysius in claiming to have mastered his doctrine and presuming to w rite on the subject; Ep. 2 purports to contain his admonitions about this to Dionysius himself. The passage runs as follows ( 3 i 4 b - c ) : The greatest safeguard is not to write but to memorize, for inevitably what is written becomes public. Fo r that reason I m yself have never written anything about these things. writings now called sentence is peculiar one interpretation. There is not, nor will be, any treatise o f Plato. The his belong to a Socrates made fair and new. The last to this letter, and its last phrase admits o f more than The adjective tieos can mean either new or, o f a
person, y o u n g. So Grote translated (Pi. 1, 223) Socrates in the days o f his youthful vigour and g lo ry ; but the phrase could equally well mean a Socrates spruced up and brought up to date . (See also Edelstein in A JP 1962.) This is more sensible, when one considers that the Euthyphro and Crito depict him at the time o f his trial, when he was seventy, and the Phaedo in his last hours. Harward, who believed the letter genuine, explained the omission o f the sentence from Ep. 7 chronologically (Epp. p. 17 4 ): Ep. 2 was written in 360, before the composition o f the late dialogues in which Socrates retires into the background, but writing Ep. 7 in 353 Plato could no longer speak as if they did not exist. I f the words are Platos,1 what did he mean? O nly, I should say, what one would conclude in any case from reading the dialogues, in which he never speaks in his own person and in most o f them gives the leading part to Socrates. Socrates had been his inspiration and guiding star, and the teaching that he put into the masters mouth was intended, not indeed to reproduce unaltered what he had said, but to modify and develop it in ways which, as new philosophical questions arose, seemed to Plato to provide no more than an essential defence o f the ideals for which Socrates had stood. (See further on this vol. in, 3 5 0 -5 .) It was Socrates made new or brought up to date. Once again we must remember that, if genuine, the words occur in a letter, written to meet a particular situation and not as part o f a carefully weighed and complete account for posterity o f the Platonic writings. In the very next sentence (always assuming authenticity) Plato tells Dionysius to read the letter several times and then burn i t presumably, as Harward says, having kept his own draft. Like the 7th, this letter also emphasizes the necessity for much con versation and a lifetime o f preparation. It says ( 3 i4 a - b ) that the true doctrine sounds ridiculous to the uneducated, that it must be repeated and listened to over a long period, and that there have been gifted men who have only come to a full understanding o f it after thirty years.
* The genuineness of the passage has again been defended by J. Stannard in Phron. i960.
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IV
E A R L Y S O C RA T I C DI ALOGUES
IN T R O D U C T O R Y
Plato gives every dialogue separate treatment, adapting its subject to his choice of persons and occasion. In one way, therefore, each must be thought of as a separate unit, and there are some mavericks (the Cratylus, say, and the Menexenus) which it is particularly difficult to herd into a group. Others however are fairly amenable to such grouping, either on chronological grounds where these are convincing, or on grounds of subject-matter, or because they seem to represent much the same stage in Platos philosophical pilgrimage. Such grouping has obvious conveniences, and it is possible to note similarities without being blind to the unique elements in each separate dialogue. An obvious case of a natural group is the late one of Theaetetus, Sophist and Politicus. Another generally recognized group is the Socratic,1 using that term not in the wide sense to denote all the dialogues in which Socrates takes the lead, but for the smaller, early group in which it may be claimed that Plato is imaginatively recalling, in form and substance, the conversations of his master without as yet adding to them any distinctive doctrines of his own. This was first distinguished as a separate group in 1839 ky K. F. Hermann, who believed that in his first period Platos Socrates has no other views or philosophical ideas than had the historic Socrates as we find him in Xenophon and other sources not open to suspicion.2
1 Bambrough summarizes Ryles view of Platos earlier progress thus: according to it the historical Socrates was interested in seeking definitions, but offered no metaphysical doctrine about the status of the objects or subjects of definition. Plato presents in the early aporetic dialogues a biographically faithful account of a Socrates engaged in informal conversation about moral concepts. Later he developed his own theory of Forms. All this I accept wholeheartedly, and shall not here go into the more controversial historical parts of Ryles 1966 book. 2 For Hermann see Flashar, Ion 5. Flashar accepts his view as a zu communis opinio gewordene These, though he himself doubts its validity. See especially p. 104, and also Witte, Wiss. v. G. u. B. 45 for the view that P.s literary activity did not begin until he founded the Academy at the age of 40. W . accepts as a consequence that this excludes any close connexion with Socrates, and all the dialogues must be considered as expressions of P.s own independent philosophy.
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Introductory
(i) The question to be discussed arises out of scenes of ordinary life described at some length, in contrast to the plunge in medias res of Gorgias, Meno or Cratylus. (ii) The objective of all of them is the definition of an important moral or religious conception: courage in the Laches, temperance in the Charmides, piety in the Euthyphro, friendship (in a very wide sense) in the Lysis, to which one may add justice, in a dialogue which may have been planned at the same time and developed later into the first book of the Republic.* These, with the exception of friendship, form four of the five cardinal virtues recognized in Greece. The fifth, wisdom or knowledge (), is what, in Socratess view, they all may be reduced to. (iii) The method of procedure, governing the structure of the dialogues, is this. A series of definitions is elicited from the respondents, each a modification of the last necessitated by Socratess objections, until they arrive at a clear formula. This is then criticized in turn and finally rejected. No definition is finally adopted, and the apparent end is deadlock and bafflement; and the argument has been so conducted that the reader is left in doubt what conclusion he is meant to draw. It is these similarities, both of aim and of structure, that justify the belief that these four dialogues at least were designed to form a single group.2 One may add that in all of them Plato still seems to be trying to portray for posterity, as well as he can, Socrates himself and his method of handling a discussion, and that this applies to a few others as well. For our present purposes I shall choose nine dialogues as deserving to be called Socratic by the criteria here explained, and take them in the following order. First the Apology and Crito as a defence of Socratess whole life and a memorial to his conduct at and after his trial. In its historical content, describing his last hours and death, the Phaedo belongs here too, but the philosophical subject-matter and
1 Many scholars believe that Rep. i was composed much earlier than the other books, and originally formed a separate dialogue which they call Thrasymachus. But see p. 437 below. 2 Cornford amplified in lectures what he writes in C A H v 1, 312. He was, as he acknowledged, following up a suggestion of von Arnim, Jugendd. 88.
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(i)
TH E A P O LO G Y
The Apology is one of the most important sources for the life, character and views of Socrates himself, and has been extensively used as such in the last volume.2 Here it must be looked at as a whole, with any
1 O f the definition dialogues Gauss (Handkomm. 1.2.9) saYs ^ *s perfectly possible that Plato worked on them together and treated them from the start as substantially a single whole. This accords well with von Arnims and Cornfords opinions. 2 The following are the chief points referred to : opinion on historicity, 478 n. 1 ; accusers and charges, 382; Aristophanes and the question of Socratess scientific period, 374f., 423; the Oracle (Socrates wisest because he knows nothing), 339 n., 405-8; mission to convince others of ignorance, 408f.; self-chosen poverty, 379; folly of fearing death, 478f.; religious views, 473 ff.; divine sign, 402-4; exhortation to care for the soul, 467; just man must avoid politics,
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The Apology
particular problems to which it gives rise, and from our present point of view as students of Plato. Date. The stylometrists offer no help beyond saying that it belongs to a large early group, within which it could be either Platos first work or alternatively written after the Protagoras or even later. (See Leisegang, R E 2394f.) This leaves plenty of scope for argument. It is best to leave aside purely subjective impressions like Croisets (Bud ed. 132) that it could not have been written just after Socratess execution because its tone does not correspond to the feelings which must have been agitating Plato at that time. Since it purports to reproduce the speeches made by Socrates at his trial, at which Plato says he was present, it would be natural to suppose that he would write it as soon as possible, while the words were fresh in his memory. So thought Zeller (2.1.529 n. 2) and Adam (ed. xxxi). Friedlnder (who denies it, PL 11, 330 n. 4) called this the customary view . Most of those who have held it believe also that the Apology was Platos first work, none having been written before the death of Socrates. Besides the names in Friedlnders note, one may mention H. Raeder (P .s Ph. Ent. 92), who added the argument that the Apology foreshadows the other Socratic dialogues, in which Plato worked out more fully, but with certain variations, examples of Socratess cross-examination of statesmen, poets and others which are briefly mentioned in the earlier work. A more recent instance is H. Gauss (Handkomm. 1.2.10), who kept to what in 1953 he felt bound to call the old-fashioned view, and suggests that Plato wrote the Apology in Megara. On the other hand von Arnim, and Hackforth elaborating and criticizing his arguments, put it later, mainly on the ground that Xenophons Apology precedes Platos but cannot itself have been written before 394 when Xenophon returned to Greece from Asia. Others have followed them, yet not everyone believes that Xenophons
413; his defiance of the democracy and of the Thirty, 379f.; claim to have no private pupils, 373; Platos presence in court, 349 n. 1, 478 n.; Socrates different from other men, 414; counter-penalty proposed by S., 384; the unexamined life, 466; S.s age, 339; his prophecy, 331.
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Socrates at his trial in 399, and Plato twice mentions that he was present himself (34a, 38b). This may seem sufficient to justify a statement like Grotes that the Apology is a report, more or less exact, of the real defence of Socrates.3 Burnet added (in his ed., 63 f.) that as most of those present must have been still living when the Apology was published, he would have defeated his own end if he had given a fictitious account of the attitude of Socrates and of the main lines of his defence. There are however difficulties, and to Burnets point one can reply that it depends what the conventions of the time would lead his readers to expect. In favour of the idea that Platos Apology would be accepted as an imaginative work rather than an attempt at a true record, a number of considerations have been put forward. It is said that it was only
1 Arnim, X .s Mem. u. d. Apol. des S .; Hackforth, Comp, of P .s ApoL ch. 2. For other opinions see vol. h i , 340 n. 2 It mentioned the rebuilding of the Long Walls in 394. See Favorinus ap. D.L. 2.39 and P. Treves in R E , x l i i . Halbb. 1740. Treves dates it mit Sicherheit to 393-2. On Polycrates see his article or the reff, in vol. hi, 331 n. 1. (Bluck in his Meno, p. 118, argued for a later date.) 3 Grote, Pl. 1, 158 n. w., and on p. 281 : this is in substance the real defence pronounced by Sokrates; reported, and of course drest up, yet not intentionally transformed, by Plato. In Zellers time this was the prevailing view (Zeller 2.1.195 n. 1).
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The Apology
one of a whole literature of Socratic apologies, by Xenophon, Lysias, Theodectes of Phaselis (a pupil of Isocrates), Demetrius of Phalerum, Theon of Antioch, Plutarch and Libanius. This list is given for instance by Lesky ( H G L 499) as itself a reason for not accepting Plato as a reliable witness. However, it could do with a little analysis. Theon of Antioch is mentioned in the Suda as a Stoic who wrote an Apology of Socrates. He is otherwise completely unknown, but since he was a Stoic he must have lived a considerable time later than Socrates or Plato. Plutarch belongs to the first and second centuries A .D . and Libanius to the fourth. That imaginative Apologies were written in Hellenistic and Roman times is hardly relevant to our judgement of Platos. Nor would one expect a record of Socratess own defence from Demetrius of Phaleron, who was not born until at least forty years after his execution, and so was in all probability writing some seventy years after the publication of Platos Apology. Theodectes, a native of Phaselis on the coast of Lycia, is described by the Suda as a pupil of Plato, Isocrates and Aristotle. As to this one can only agree with Diehl ( R E 2. Reihe, x. Halbb., 1722) that his relations with these three masters, whose years of birth are separated by more than a generation, must have differed considerably. He was also known as a familiar friend of Alexander the Great. More important is the fact that, as we know from a quotation in Aristotle (Rhet. 139937), his defence of Socrates was written in his own name and not as the speech of Socrates himself. This is also true of a large part of the Apology of Xenophon, and what is put into Socratess mouth is given as second-hand : 4Hermogenes told me he said. . . Besides Xenophon, the only contemporary in the list is Lysias (c. 459-380). We know nothing of the form which his Apology took, but he cannot, any more than Xenophon, compete with Plato as a first-hand authority. We need not waste time over the argument that because the dialogues of Plato are avowedly fictitious, or at least imaginative, the Apology must be also. Many of the dialogues are represented as taking place when Plato was unborn or a child, and the Apology is in an entirely different category. Even less substantial is the argument put forward by Schanz (see Burnet, ed. p. 64) that since the aim of every defence is to secure acquittal and from this point of view the Apology
73
we may be sure that this is the authentic voice of Socrates. More serious is the point that Platos version reads like a finished artistic composition, and employs some of the rhetorical devices repeatedly used by the orators and originating in the current hand books. When Socrates begins by disclaiming any skill in oratory, and tells the court to expect nothing but the unadorned truth, because he is entirely unfamiliar with the ways of law-courts and can only speak in his accustomed homely manner, we might think that this is the genuine Socratic irony and not the way anyone else would talk - until we learn that to conciliate the dicasts by pleading in experience and deprecating the deceptive fluency of the other side was simply to follow the accepted rules. Even the proud refusal to stoop, as others do, to pleading for his life with appeals to pity finds parallels in other forensic speeches, including that textbook exercise of rhetorical and sophistical argument, the Palamedes of Gorgias ( 33)1
1 For these and other examples of rhetorical features see Dis, Autour de P. 409-11, and Burnet, ed. pp. 66 f. On the relation of the Palamedes to Platos Apology see further pp. 76f. below.
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The Apology
Now we have contemporary evidence (Xen. ApoL 2-5) that in spite of the remonstrances of friends, Socrates refused to prepare a defence in advance, claiming that his divine sign had forbidden it; and according to later tradition he refused to use a speech which the orator Lysias had written for him.1 If this makes it unlikely that he would have delivered anything as finished as the Apology, it also shows that even though protestations of oratorical inadequacy were common form, when Socrates tells the court (17 c) that he will be speaking at random and using whatever words come into his head, it was in his case true. Do these forensic ploys mean that Plato was doing post eventum what Lysias did before, writing the speech that Socrates ought to have delivered, instead of the one he did? Not necessarily. What need had a Socrates of previous study? Never was he at a loss for words or well-ordered arguments, as many Athenians knew to their cost. He might never have spoken in court before, but he knew all about the technique of oratory from arguments with Gorgias, Protagoras and other experts, and was capable of challenging Gorgias on his own ground. There is no improbability in supposing him to have been as familiar with the details of contemporary rhetorical theory and practice as Plato pictures him in the Phaedrus, where he extem porizes a speech in rivalry with one by Lysias that has been read to him. Xenophon says that when Critias drafted a law against teaching the art of logoi it was aimed especially at Socrates; and though Xenophon connects it with his conversations with the young, the phrase referred primarily to rhetoric. (See vol. hi, 44 with notes, 177.) When he found himself for the first time, at the age of seventy, facing a court, these devices of the speech-writers would naturally come into his mind, and whether or not we agree with Burnet (ed. p. 67) that his exordium was deliberate parody, he would enjoy the contrast which they afforded to the actual content of his message. Nothing could be further from current defensive rhetoric than the main burden of the speech, as even a summary will make plain. Nor
1 Cic. De or. 1.54.231, D.L. 2.40, etc. (Other reff, in Stocks ed., 26 n. 2.) In Athens the defendant spoke in his own person, but it was customary to employ a professional speechwriter () to compose the speech. (Phillipson, Trial 253.)
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The Apology
to prove that he is not a traitor (e.g. Would I do it for glory? But a traitor wins only disgrace; or for safety? But a traitor has every mans hand against him, not to mention the gods) reduce themselves to absurdity by proving, if anything, that no man is or ever has been a traitor. When Socrates speaks of Gorgias along with the other Sophists Prodicus, Hippias and Euenus, it is obvious from the whole paragraph (i9e-2oc) that he is being heavily ironical. Nor is it credible that Plato would have put into his mouth the criticism of rhetoric which he directs against Gorgias in the Gorgias if Socrates had in fact been in sympathy with him. (Cf. also vol. hi, 271-3.) We may therefore safely reject, with Coulter (p. 271), the thesis of some scholars that the reminiscences of the Palamedes imply approval of it. It may be that, just as he enjoyed pulling the Sophists legs by ironic expressions of admiration and envy of their skill, so it amused him, when he found himself for the first and last time in the position of a pleader, to recall - in a speech whose tone and content were utterly different some touches of a well known specimen of their art. At any rate their presence does not demonstrate that they, and the actual mention of Palamedes, were added by Plato and not in the speech of Socrates at all.1 Some have thought certain episodes in the Apology imaginary, while admitting the substantial historicity of the rest. One is the interrogation of Meletus (24c-28a), in which Socrates certainly carries out his promise (17c) to speak as he was used to speak in the market place. Doubters have to admit, however, that this interrogation of his accuser in the middle of his defence was a legally recognized
1 Calogero says reasonably (J H S 1957, 1, 15): He [Socrates] must also have remembered Gorgias Apology of Palamedes when he pronounced before his judges his own apology, of which we certainly have the best document in Platos work. When Coulter says (p. 295): By now the implication will have become clear that the Apology in an entire stratum of meaning has little or no relation to an actual courtroom speech delivered by Socrates, it is not easy to know what sense to attach to the words I have italicized. Calogero cites the mention of Palamedes in Xenophon, against which it is not conclusive to say (Coulter 302) that this might only mean that Xenophon had read Platos Apology. Equally he might not, and those who believe, with von Arnim and Hackforth, that Xenophons Apology was written first, have some reason on their side. See Hackforth, C P A ch. 2. The main thesis of Calogero, that Gorgias himself taught the Socratic principle that no one does wrong willingly, is certainly incredible, and has been adequately dealt with by Coulter on pp. 300-2.
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The Apology
us that Demosthenes and other orators revised their own speeches before publication, and in editing the words of another, and that his own martyred master, Plato probably went a little further towards the method of Thucydides (this obvious comparison has often been made), who stated that, while keeping as closely as he could to the general sense of what was actually said, he supplemented memory or the reports of others by his own view of what a speaker would think it necessary to say in the given situation (Thuc. 1.22.1). This would be all the easier as there was no written text of Socratess defence, though its absence does not mean that Plato could not remember most of what he said. Writing, as he says himself (Phaedrus 275 a), does not strengthen the memory but saps it, and when so much more was done by the spoken word, memories were stronger. Besides, whatever the actual date of the Apology as finally given to the world, it was a habit with Socratess pupils to make full notes of what he said (vol. hi, 343 .), and on this of all occasions Plato would not fail to do so. If this is too much for some sceptics, there is the other widely held view that Platos aim was not to reproduce the defence made by Socrates at his trial, but to cast in that form his own defence of the philosophers whole life, to tell us of his mission and to describe in a living portrait the whole greatness, the unique personality of the best, wisest and most just of all men known to him. After all, it is said, the Apology is in fact a defence of his life and teaching, and treats the actual charges only briefly and with some contempt. But at the very beginning Socrates offers adequate and convincing reasons for this. His danger did not come primarily from the indictment of Meletus, but from the anonymous accusers who over many years had encouraged a prejudice against him in the minds of the Athenian establishment. This explanation is seriously meant, and fully accounts for the course taken by the defence. The actual charges were two only; disbelief in the citys gods and corrupting the young. The prosecutors must have known that, even apart from the amnesty (vol. hi, 381 f.), it would not be easy on either of these counts to produce the kind of positive evidence necessary to satisfy a court; but they relied on (19 b !, fj ) the dislike and suspicion he had aroused
7
79
GHO
Speech ( iy a - 3 5 d )
Exordium . My accusers were most persuasive but not truthful, especially when they warned you against me as a dangerously clever speaker. What I say will be random and unpolished - but true. Having no experience of law-courts, I must beg your patience if you hear me speaking in the way I am accustomed to use in the market-place.1 Reply to the old accusers' ( 18 0 -2 4 b). I do not fear my present prosecutors so much as those who for many years have carried on a campaign of lies about me, calling me a wise man who investigates the secrets of nature and makes the weaker argument the stronger, practices popularly connected with atheism. These slanderers are many, and have got at you from your childhood, and I am helpless against them because, except for the comic poets, they are anonymous. These are my real accusers, and against them I must first make my defence. I have no wish to disparage natural science, but in fact I know nothing about it. I challenge you - ask each other, you who have heard me talk - have you ever heard me utter a word on such subjects? Nor am I a professional teacher like the Sophists, though I should be proud to have their skill.
1 17c . We are apt to think of talking in the agora by the money changers tables as a particular habit of Socrates, but it may have been one of the things that contributed to his being thought a Sophist. In the H. Min. (368 b) he says he has heard Hippias Tals ^.
The Apology
Then what is the explanation of these reports? I will tell you if you will listen quietly, though it may seem like boasting. Chaerephon asked the Delphic Oracle if anyone was wiser than I, and the Oracle said no. (Chaerephon is dead, but his brother will witness to it.) Now please be quiet: this really is relevant. Knowing my ignorance, I wondered what the god could mean, and thought of a plan to test his reply. I went to a man with a reputation for wisdom - a statesman hoping to be able to say You said I was wisest, but he is wiser ; but I found that in fact he was not wise, and I was just that little bit wiser that at least I knew my ignorance. I tried others with the same result. It angered them, which made me sorry and afraid, but I had to take the god seriously, and I discovered that the people with the biggest reputations were the worst. Poets were so far from being able to explain their own poems that I could only conclude that they did not write from knowledge but in a divine trance, like prophets. Yet because of their poetry they thought themselves wise in other matters too. So I decided that I had the same advantage over them as over the politicians. Lastly I went to the craftsmen. They certainly had valuable know ledge which I lacked, and in this respect were wiser.1 But they made the same mistake as the poets: because they were good at their craft, they thought they understood the highest matters too. So I decided that I was better off as I was, without their knowledge but also without their kind of ignorance. The Oracle was right. This cross-examining is what has brought enmity and slander on me, and the name of wise. It is the god who is wise, and he only took me as an example, his message being: He is wisest of you who, like Socrates, realizes that he has no wisdom worth the name. So I still go around examining anyone whom I think wise, and if he proves not to be, I help the god by demonstrating it. This business has left me no leisure for the states affairs or my own, and brought me into poverty. I must admit, too, that the young men of leisure who follow me enjoy the process and copy it, and their victims blame me - not
1 I translate sophos as wise, but its application to the craftsman in respect of his skill shows what a clumsy fit the English word is. For sophos see vol. iii, 27.
8l
7 -2
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The Apology
M. Most certainly it is. Well, I dont understand the charge. Do you mean I believe in some gods, but not the Citys, or in no gods at all, as an out-and-out atheist? M. The latter, I say. You dont believe in any gods at all. Not even sun and moon? M. No indeed, gentlemen. He says the sun is a stone and the moon earth. So you cant even tell me apart from Anaxagoras! The court is not so ignorant. Anyhow your charges are inconsistent: I believe in no gods and I believe in new gods - for I cant believe in supernatural phenomena without believing in supernatural beings, spirits or gods.1 Return to the general prejudice: value o f Socrates s mission (28 a 34 b). That will do for Meletus. It does not need much argument to show I am innocent of his charges. If I am convicted, it will be due not to him and Anytus but to the popular slander and ill-will which I have mentioned. If you think I should be ashamed at behaving in a way that endangers my life, I reply that any man worth his salt considers only whether what he is doing is right or wrong, not what its effect will be on himself. Otherwise the heroes at Troy - and above all Achilles - would be blameworthy. I obeyed orders and stood my ground in the army, and still more must I obey the gods orders to philosophize and examine myself and others. Fearing death is itself that worst sort of ignorance, thinking we know what we do not: it may be a great boon. So even if you were willing to acquit me on condition that I gave up my philosophic quest, I should say that, with all respect, I shall obey the god rather than you. I must go on telling you to care about improving your soul rather than about money and honour; and if anyone says he does, I must question and examine him, and reprove him if it prove to be untrue. You may acquit me or not, but I could not do otherwise if I had to die many times over.
1 The argument that one cannot believe in things daimonia without believing in daimones, and that daimones are the children of gods, is so wholly Greek as to be scarcely reproducible in English.
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The Apology
fathers and brothers of the corrupted testify. I see plenty of older relatives of my young friends here in court. Why does not Meletus call them ? But in fact they are all ready to speak on my behalf.
Conclusion: no emotional appeals for mercy (,3 4 b -jS d ). Since it is common practice to beg for mercy, parade ones weeping family and so on, you may think I am stubborn not to do so. It is not that, but whether or not I fear death, I think such behaviour would bring no credit on either myself or the City. It puts us to shame before foreigners, and reputation apart, it is not right. You are not here to show favour, but to judge justly, and it would ill become me, in defending myself against a charge of atheism, to try to make you break your oath. So I leave it to you and God to judge my case as shall be best for all of us. (ii) After the verdict: counter-proposal on penalty1
I am not surprised at your verdict, indeed I thought the majority would be larger. Meletus proposes the death penalty, and I must say what I think I deserve. My crime is to have neglected money, office and political intrigue, and concentrated on doing good to individuals by persuading them not to put their possessions before themselves and their own improvement, nor the Citys external prosperity before the City itself. In this I think I have done good, and what is wanted is a suitable return for a needy benefactor, so if I have to propose what is right and just, I suggest maintenance in the Prytaneum. This too is not arrogance. I am convinced I have wronged nobody, but I cannot persuade you of it in the brief time we have to talk together. If, as in some cities, a capital trial could last for several days, I believe I could, but the slander goes too deep to be eradicated in so short a time. However, being convinced of my innocence, why should I propose a penalty? To escape Meletuss? But I do not even know whether it is a good or a bad thing. I have no wish to live my life in prison, and a fine, with imprisonment until I could pay, would be the same thing. As for exile, if you my fellow-citizens cannot tolerate my ways, I am sure foreigners could not.
1 See vol. m, 383 f.
85
nature would have done this for you, and saved you the reproach of your enemies, who will say you killed the wise Socrates, whether I am wise or not. I have not suffered this sentence for want of arguments in my defence. Arguments I had, but lacked the impudence to grovel and wail before you as others do, and as you want it. I do not regret the defence I made, nor wish to live with a sense of my own disgrace. To escape death is not difficult: as any soldiers know, one has only to run away. To avoid wickedness is harder, for it runs faster. Being old and slow, I have been caught by the slower pursuer, my accusers by the faster. We must each abide by the penalty - which is fair enough. And I will make a prophecy. By getting rid of me you will not in fact escape from having your lives probed and examined. There will be others, younger and more severe, whom I have kept in check. You cannot escape censure by putting people to death, but only by reforming your own lives.
To those who votedfor acquittal (,3S)e~42a). Stay and let us talk a little: I have a few minutes grace while the officials are busy. I want you to know that my fate must be a good one, since my familiar divine sign has not opposed me at any stage. Death can only be one of two
1 On this offer of Socrates, and its denial by Xenophon, see Burnet on 38hl and Hackforth, C P A 15 -17 .
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The Apology
things: a dreamless sleep or a migration of the soul to another place.1 I would count either a gain, and if the religious stories are true, and we go to another place where we meet all the dead, nothing could be better. There are the real judges - Minos, Rhadamanthys and the rest-and other interesting people, including fellow-sufferers from unjust judgements, with whom to compare experiences. Best of all would be to continue my questioning, to find out who is wise and who only thinks he is - and at least they cannot put one to death for it there. So you too must not fear death, but have faith that a good man is never neglected by the gods. I bear my opponents no grudge, but only ask them to pursue my sons as I should have done, if when they grow up they prize money or anything else more than goodness, or think highly of themselves without cause. In that way we shall all have received justice at their hands. Now we must go, I to death and you to life. Which of us goes to the better lot is known only to God. Comment Since so much of the Apology was matter for vol. i i i , it will suffice to consider a few points which, while their occurrence here guarantees them as Socratic, also occur in Platos other works, where they may be recognized as part of the legacy of Socrates, and Socrates only, to Plato. His accustomed manner o f speaking (.ly e ). To disclaim oratorical skill and ask to speak in ones own way may have been a rhetorical clich, but coming from Socrates it must have sent a shudder down the spine of his accusers. That combination of everyday language with analogies from familiar crafts and occupations - how innocent it sounded, yet how perfectly calculated it was to lead his opponent into hopeless self-contradiction and other logical traps. Again, when he protests that the language of the law-courts is to him like a foreign tongue, it means more than it did from the professionals who used such
1 On this passage see vol.
i i i , 4 7 8 fr.
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The Apology
The poets divinely inspired (.22b -c ). Socratess statement here is plainly ironic, since his reason for making it is the inability of poets to understand their own productions. Nor could his best friends claim that he had a poetic side to his nature. But Plato had. He says much about poets, and his ambivalent attitude towards them can be largely explained by the internal conflict between his acquired devotion to the Socratic demand for rendering an account o f what you say and the re-emergence of his natural feeling that poetry had a value of its own, independent of its rational or moral content. In the Ion the ironic voice of Socrates still prevails, whereas in the Phaedrus divine madness, of which poetry is one product, is spoken of with genuine sympathy and admiration. The criticism of poets in the Republic makes no mention o f inspiration, and speaks of them with a strange mixture of disapproval and affection. Care o f the souV ( 29e ). Are you not ashamed.. .to take no care or thought for wisdom () and truth and the perfecting of the psyche ? Like everything worth doing, this tendance of the soul ( ) is for Socrates a techn ( Laches 185 e), and as its association with wisdom and truth would suggest, the psyche (usually translated soul) is above all the mind, the faculty of reason (vol. hi, 469 with n. 3). So it is still for Plato in the Phaedo, where the emotions are associated with the body, but in the more developed psychology of the Republic they too are assigned to soul, which henceforth has three parts, reason, thymos and desire (pp. 474-6 below); but in a properly balanced personality reason rules (as does the undivided psyche in the Socratic Alcibiades I ; vol. hi, 472), and it remains the only immortal part, as did the psyche when it was still limited to the intellect. In the Timaeus too the psyche has a mortal as well as an immortal part. The position in the Phaedrus and Laws 10 is more complex, and has given rise to differences of opinion,1 but there can be no disagreement about the fact that Plato maintained to the end the Socratic insistence on cultivation and training of the mind as the supreme duty of man. It is that which unites us to the divine, for
1 For a full discussion, see Guthrie, Platos Views on the Nature of the Soul, in Entretiens Hardt vol. I I I .
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not corrupt others because to live among bad neighbours is to risk harm to oneself. (Cf. p. 76 n. 1 above.) In the Meno (77b~78b) he maintains that no man ever desires evil, whether he recognize it as evil or not. If he does not, then he is not desiring evil but what he believes to be good. If he desires to obtain evil, it cannot be on the assumption that evils injure their possessor, for no one wishes harm to himself, so once again he must be reckoned among those who mistake evil for good. As I hope I have shown in a later chapter, this argument achieves its object by a deliberately Sophistic manipula tion of the ambiguity of good and bad. The brash naivety of the disciple of Gorgias called for different treatment from that accorded to an old and valued friend like Crito.1 The full truth as Socrates saw it is revealed in the Gorgias, where the principle that the wrongdoer is more to be pitied than his victim, and more so if he escapes punishment than if he is punished, runs through the whole dialogue. (See 469 b, 479 e, 5o8b-e, 527 b.) The point is made by extending the concepts of injury and benefit to cover the injury or welfare of the psyche. By the analogy of painful remedies for the body, it is shown that punishment is a therapy of the soul, whose disease is wickedness. In this way, without abandoning his theoretically non-moral identification of good with useful (vol. in, 462-7), Socrates preaches high moral doctrine by arguing that morally bad actions in fact harm their perpetrator because they inevitably injure him in his real self ( psyche), not simply in externals.2 Here as in the Meno he shows his awareness of the ambiguity of kakon, and does not assume, but sets himself to prove, that morally shameful, or disgraceful (), and bad () are the same (474c~5d). The philosopher can take no part in politics (31 c 32a ). Taught by the example of Socrates, Plato maintained this all his life. In the Gorgias (521 dff.) he makes Socrates dramatically anticipate his own trial and death because he tells the Athenians what is good for them, not what
1 Some make the point that the confusion was a typically Greek one, illustrated by the familiar ambiguity of and . Nevertheless in this argument Socrates (or Plato) knew very well what he was doing, suiting his speech to a young and unphilosophical listener. The point is amplified below, pp. 246f. 2 Cf. A pol. 36 c ; also Ale. I i28d, and vol. m, 471. 91
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The Crito
also the example of Socrates, and in the Republic he makes him repeat, as if in earlier life, the gist of what he said in his defence, and probably at other times too. There was another reason, also to be found in the Apology, why he should tackle his fellow-citizens individually (, 3ic) instead of speaking in the Assembly: the fulfilment of his mission demanded it. To change mens habits o f thought requires personal contact, and for Plato, his heir, philosophy and dialektk (which ordinarily meant conversation) were two names for the same thing.
(2 ) T H E C R IT O
Date. The subject of the Crito brings it very close to the Apology, and it is natural to suppose that it was written about the same time. Nor is there anything in its content to suggest otherwise. Croiset (Bud ed. 210) does not explain why he puts it after the Euthyphro, 1 and (though I would be the last to call such arguments conclusive) the philosophy of the Euthyphro tempts one to guess that it is the later of the two. There are no historical allusions to give a clue, unless one draws conclusions from the fact that at 53b Thebes and Megara are called well governed, which told Ryle ( P 's P . 221) that the work must be well after 370 and Wilamowitz ( PL 11, 55 n.) that it cannot be later than 395 ! That it follows the Apology appears from two allusions to it.2 Historicity. The Crito does not record a public trial, but a tte--tte between two people, neither of whom was Plato. He could therefore, if he wished, give his imagination freer rein. He could also, if he wished and if the conversation itself is historical, have learned of it from Crito. That Socratess friends tried to persuade him to escape is attested by Xenophon {Apol. 23), and Crito would certainly not be backward among them. The setting therefore lay to hand, but
1 Perhaps his opening remarks (p. 209) are meant to bear on the date. He says the Euthyphro is more closely linked with the Apology because it deals with Socratess religion, whereas Le sujet trait par le Criton tait loin davoir la mme importance. This is a very questionable statement. 2 At 45b (Socrates could not live abroad) and 52c (he chose death rather than exile). Cf. Apol. 37 d and 30 c. This is more probable than that both are independent references to Socratess actual defence rather than Platos account of it.
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C. Too plain a dream, I fear. Now listen to me and make your escape. If you refuse, I shall not only lose an incomparable friend but be thought to have refused to help you through meanness. S. No one whose opinion is worth anything will think that. C. But the others can do a lot of harm. S. Not they: if they could they could do good too, but they cant make a man either wise or foolish. C. Thats as may be. Anyway, dont worry that your friends may be blackmailed by informers - thats our business - nor that (as you said in court) you could not live abroad. I have good friends in Thessaly. If you are obstinate, you will do just what your enemies want, and also be deserting your sons. It will reflect no credit on you any more than on your friends. This is no time for argument: we must act tonight. S. Dear Crito, I do appreciate your concern. But are you right? It has always been my practice to act only on the argument that, after reflection, seems to me best. I cant abandon this rule just because of what has happened. Take your point about public opinion. We used to maintain that the opinions of some should be heeded and others not. Has my approaching death shown that this was wrong ? C. No. S. Well, it meant heeding the opinions of the wise, because they are good for us, and not the foolish, which are harmful. I used to employ illustrations from training or medicine1 showing that one must trust only the expert, or ones body would suffer, and apply them to moral qualities: to trust the ignorant many instead of the one expert is to ruin that part of us which is improved by right actions and harmed by wrong. The many may put us to death, but it is only the good life, not life itself, that we should care about. Money, reputation and children are not the main considerations, but only whether to run away would be right. That is what we must decide, so answer my questions frankly. Refute me if you can: I dont want to
was in Sicily with Dion, and naturally hoped for a chance to return to his native Cyprus. Actually he was killed in the fighting. So the dream was interpreted to mean that, once released from the body, his soul had found its true home. (Cic. De div. 1.25.53.) 1 Gorg. 479 a-c is an instance, and there are many others.
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he dislikes the ways and laws of Athens. By living your whole life and begetting children here, you have shown your satisfaction with us, and this, we claim, constitutes an agreement to do our bidding or else, as we allow (for our orders are proposals, not brutal commands), persuade us otherwise. Even at your trial you could have chosen exile, but boasted that you preferred death. Now like the meanest slave you want to run away in breach of your freely chosen agreement with us. This will do no good to yourself or your friends. They will risk heavy penalties, and you will be suspect in any law-abiding city, having justified the courts opinion of you as a corrupter of youth. In an undisciplined state you would hardly wish to live. Thessaly is such, its citizens would no doubt be amused by the story of your escape in disguise; but unless you curried favour with them you would soon have to endure some humiliating remarks. And what would have happened to all your talk about virtue and justice? And your children? Would you take them with you to be brought up as foreigners? Or leave them here in the care of friends? True friends will look after them no worse if your migration is to Hades rather than Thessaly. This is our advice as your guardians: put neither life nor children before the right. It is not we who will have wronged you but your fellow-men. If you break our agreement and return wrong for wrong, you will face our anger while you live, and our brothers in Hades will not receive you kindly when you die. To my present way of thinking, nothing else can stand against these words; but if you can urge anything against them, do so. C. I have nothing to say. S. Then let us act accordingly, for this is the way God leads. Comment The Crito is best read for its own sake, as an incomparable document of the Socratic spirit, complementing the Apology by showing how Socrates, while upholding his own right to live and speak in a way
The Times of 28 December 1971, A very precise estimate of the nature of a country and its political system can be made by applying one simple test: how easy is it for its inhabitants to leave? Platos approval, at this stage, of Athenian democracy is noteworthy.
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his ignorance had its limitations (p. 88 above), and he was fond of saying that however many people might assert something, it was he, and he alone, who had to be convinced if he was to agree with them. (Examples are Gorg. 471 eff., H. M aj. 298b.) This admittedly is not the same as claiming to know not only that there is a distinction between right and wrong but what it is. It may be that when an immediate practical choice had to be made (in this case between life and death) Socrates (or Plato on his behalf) did not act perfectly consistently with this claim to know nothing. What was essential to him was that the decision should be the outcome of logical argument, the common search (46d, 48d) in which he must get his partners agreement first to the premises ( 48 e) and then to each step in the argument. In method at least, he is the one expert, and also in knowledge of one thing: that conduct must be justifiable by universally applicable arguments rather than a narrow interpretation of ones personal interests and safety. Then there is the dramatic situation. Plato is showing us Socrates in the last two days of a long life devoted to innumerable discussions with Crito himself and other friends on precisely these questions of the nature of right and wrong. He says explicitly and repeatedly (46 d, 47 b, 49 a) that in laying down the premises of his argument Socrates is relying on the results of these previous discussions, which had not been entirely negative. Only a reminder to Crito is needed, whereas in applying their agreed principles to his present case (49eff.) he has to take him through an argument step by step. What Socrates and Crito know includes: that the welfare of the soul is more important than that of the body, that doing wrong is injurious to the soul, and that breaking a lawful contract freely entered into is wrong. What has to be demonstrated is that in the present case Socrates would be breaking such a contract. This is done through the mouth of the personified laws, and it follows that escape would save his body at the expense of his soul. ( Our brothers in Hades will not receive you kindly.) When Crito says that one must not ignore the views of the many because they are capable of doing great harm, Socrates replies (44d), Would that they could, for then they would be able to do great good
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nullified and torn up by private individuals ? It is the first appearance of a question sometimes discussed by philosophers today, namely whether, as a rule of conduct, one should ask oneself: What would happen if everyone behaved like me ?
n o t e . The following points from the Crito occur in vol. m : Crito says the case need never have come to court (45e), 383; the common search (46 d, 48 d), 449 n. i ; we must not do wrong willingly (49 a), 460 n. 2 ; nor return wrong for wrong (49 b and c), 1 1 3 ; the compact between Socrates and the laws (50c, 52d ), 140, 1 43; Socrates could have chosen exile had he
wished (52 c ), 384; Megara and Thebes as places where he could have gone (53 b), 499; Thessaly full o f disorder and wickedness (53 d), 301 n. 3 ; Socrates wronged not by the laws themselves but by their application (54b ), 146.
(3)
TH E EU TH YPH RO
On the genuineness of this dialogue one need only say that the arguments of those who in the last century questioned it (which may be found in Adams edition xxv-xxxi) form a remarkable exhibition of the perversities of which the human mind is capable. Date. There is no external evidence. Style and content both put it among the earlier dialogues, but within this limit opinions diverge. Bluck (P L T 61) is probably the only recent writer to suggest (as earlier did Schleiermacher, Stallbaum, Steinhart, Ritter and Zeller) that it might have been written between the prosecution and trial of Socrates, a thesis which Grote found incredible.1 Hackforth (C P A 51-3) supposed it to have been written before the Apology, Croiset (Bud 177) put it confidently ( Tout nous autorise p e n s e r ...) shortly after it, about 396 or 395, Adam (ed. xxxi) thought it con siderably later than the Crito', and for von Arnim (Jfugendd. 141) its argument presupposed that of the Lysis and it was even later than the Protagoras. (See p. 106 n. 2 below.) Von Arnim, like others, was influenced by its use of language generally associated with the theory of Ideas, but it is by no means certain that this terminology meant
1 Pl. I, 316 n. t. Grotes argument was that it would have made Socratess position at his trial much worse. The others argued that Plato speaks of the trial in a light, satirical tone which would have been impossible for him after the sentence !
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is incomparably drawn by Plato, and I will not spoil a readers pleasure by enlarging on it. He is commonly regarded as, in Leisegangs words (R E 2406), the type of a genuine and dangerous piety, the same that cost Socrates his life. . .a fanatical zealot for othodoxy. But this hardly fits what we are told, as Burnet pointed out (ed. 5 f.). He bemoans the way he is misunderstood and ridiculed in the Assembly, knows nothing of Socratess approaching trial, and greets him as a fellow-sufferer for his beliefs. In fact, as Jowett says (1, 306), he is not a bad man, and he is friendly to Socrates whose familiar sign he recognizes with interest. The dialogue1 (Direct dramatic form) Euthyphro meets Socrates outside the office of the magistrate responsible for religious offences. He is surprised to see S. in such unusual surroundings, so S. explains the charges which Meletus has brought against him. E. connects them with the divine sign, and treats him as a fellow-religious, suffering like himself from misunderstanding: his own prophecies are laughed at by the Assembly. S. thinks he may have more to fear than ridicule, and E. says comfortingly that perhaps his case will end favourably, as he believes his own will. What then is E .s business? Prosecuting his own father for the manslaughter of a slave who had murdered a fellow-slave, by leaving him bound in a ditch and neglecting him. E .s family think his proceedings impious, so little do they know the divine mind on questions of piety and impiety. This, S. thinks, argues great confidence in his own rightness, and E. agrees that he thoroughly understands these things. If then, says S., he can become E.s pupil, he can challenge Meletus on this authority,
possessed, from whom he himself has caught the inspiration. At Euth. 3 e he calls him a , and Euthyphro himself has just mentioned his power of foretelling the future. Taylor ( P M W 77 n. 1) solemnly points out that the Euthyphro does not suggest that he was subject to possession. He was hardly on business that called for it, nor was it easy for anyone to display his mediumistic powers while undergoing the Socratic elenchus. 1 See also, for a helpful summary in terms of modern analysis, R. S. Meyer, P.*s E .: an example of philosophical analysis, 1963. IO3
The Euthyphro
thing therefore seems right (and so is pleasing) to some gods, wrong and hateful to others, and so is both pious and impious.1 E. objects that no god would maintain that wrongful killing should go unpunished. Agreed. Men too accept the principle that wrong doing should always be punished. A defendant does not claim that though guilty he ought to go free: he claims that he is not guilty of the offence. How does E. know that all the gods would agree that his father killed unjustly and his own action is therefore right? Granted however that they would (for E. says he could prove it, given enough time), ought they to amend their statement simply by saying that what all the gods love is pious and vice versa, whereas what some love and some hate is neither or both ? E. thinks this is right, but agrees to examine the answer further, and S. poses a crucial question: Is what is pious pious because loved by the gods, or loved by the gods because it is pious? Euthyphro does not understand, and S. explains by pointing out that the relation between active and passive is not symmetrical but one of cause and effect. A thing-being-carried (present participle passive) is such because someone is carrying it,2 and not vice versa. In general, what is acted upon is so because someone or something acts upon it; the doer does not act because the object suffers its action. We cannot therefore say that the gods love what is pious because it is something-loved-by-the-gods;
1 As Adam points out, this objection would not have worried Protagoras. Cf. vol. in, 171. But S. has already got E. to agree that piety and impiety are contraries (5 d). 2 It is difficult to distinguish in English between crri and (iob). Indeed, the distinction which S. here draws for his own purposes is somewhat artificial in Greek. Plato himself came to use the periphrastic form as a synonym for the simple verb. So Laws 822 e for , 821 d for . Campbell quotes examples from Soph, and Pol. (S. and P. xxxiv; not exhaustive) to show that it was a mark of his later style. Note however at Charm. 169e and '. . . at Gorg. 500c, and cf. Goodwin, M . and T. paras. 45, 830 and R. A. Cobb in Phron. 1973, 82f. To represent by the active voice, as above, does not affect the argument. J. H. Brown (PQ 1964, 12) says: That X is carried by someone is the same as that someone carries X , not a causal consequence of it. In spite of this, it is curiously tempting to say that he was hit because something hit him is not obvious nonsense, whereas something hit him because he was hit is. In any case, it is a premise of S.s argument here that this is so. Perhaps Platos contrast of pass, indie, with participle instead of active with passive disguised, if it did not relieve him of, this difficulty. For something to be in a state depending on an action (carried, loved), it must be put, and sustained, in that state. There must, as Aristotle would say, be an efficient cause in act. Cf. Jowett4 I, 305 and 307. ( The act precedes the state.) On the logic of the whole passage see S. M. Cohen in JH P h 1971, esp. pp. 3-8. It has caused a great fuss, and reff, to other discussions will be found in T. D. Paxson jr., Phron. 1972, 171-90.
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The Euthyphro
food, architects buildings,1 doctors health and generals victory? Many fine things, says E., but when pressed to be more definite complains that to give a full account of these high matters is not the work of a moment. Briefly however, if one knows how to please the gods by prayer and sacrifice, that is piety, and what it effects is the salvation of individuals and communities. It is then (says S. with E.s agreement) a science of prayer and sacrifice, making requests to them and giving them gifts, a knowledge of how to ask rightly for what we need and to give them what they need from us - an art of mutual commerce. But how can gods be benefited by any gifts from us? They are not, replies E .; it is a matter of giving them honour, respect and pleasure - after which it is easy for S. to get him to repeat in so many words that the pious is what is pleasing to the gods. So the argument has come full circle. Either our present or our earlier conclusion must be wrong, and we must start again from the beginning. At this point E. remembers an urgent engagement, and S. is left lamenting the loss of an opportunity to confute Meletus by hearing from E., who understands such matters so well, what true religion and irrligion are. Comment The Euthyphro exemplifies splendidly how much we gain from Platos art of writing philosophy not simply in dialogue form, but as a clash of contrasting personalities realistically portrayed in a situation of high dramatic intensity. A philosophical dialogue on the nature of piety does not sound a particularly enticing prospect; but the prospect changes as we watch Socrates, in the early stages of his own trial for impiety and on the threshold of the magistrate who will deal with it, fall into conversation with a dogmatic, if self-styled and somewhat eccentric religious authority, and, in the guise of seeking help with his own defence, make it plain that he does not know what he is
1 There is a remarkable coincidence of language between i^ e -i4 a and i Cor. 3.9, * , . In this Christian view also we are co producers with God, and what God produces with our aid, analogous to the architects building and the farmers crop, is ourselves. The negative conclusion about here should not make us forget that Socrates knew very well what his own was, namely to persuade men into self-improvement, the improvement of their (Apol. 3oa-b). 7
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Daedalus-figure itself recurs to make the point that opinions never will stand still until firmly anchored by that calculation of the reason why which converts them into knowledge. To reanimate the discussion, Socrates himself makes a suggestion (n e ), parallel to his introduction of the doctrine of recollection in Meno and the equation of courage and knowledge in Laches, where the positive Socratic contribution is introduced in a neat literary variation by Nicias suddenly remembering something he has often heard Socrates say. This leads to a new definition, which though based on his own suggestion, also fails to stand up to examination, and the dialogue is broken off in apparent failure. That the interlocutor has been taught several lessons in methodical thinking is certain. Whether the ostensibly negative result conceals a positive message is much disputed. (ii) Religion. In early Greece, the killing of a man brought automatic pollution (miasma) on the killer and his whole family, and on the dead mans family until they had done all they could to avenge his death. In this respect there was no difference between deliberate and accidental killing, and although by the time of Socrates the law, and the ideas behind it, had moved considerably in a more rational and civilized direction, the old superstitions had not died. There were different courts for murder, accidental killing, and killing sanctioned by law, yet there was also another for trying the stone or weapon with which the killing was effected, if it were accidental (say a copingstone falling on a man) or if the user were not known.1 In the popular mind the idea of religious pollution, only removable by purificatory rites of which Apollo was the orderer and dispenser, was still strong. Euthyphro represents this transitional stage, with strongly conservative leanings. His purpose in offending his family by prosecuting his own father is primarily to avert miasma, yet he is capable of saying that this is unaffected by the question whether the killer is or is not one at your own table and hearth, but depends solely on whether or not he had right on his side (4b-c). He shows his conservatism even more strikingly in his nave acceptance of the Homeric and Hesiodic
1 See Guthrie, G. and G. 191fr. and cf. ancient sources esp. Dem. 23.65-76. IO9
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The Euthyphro
carries two main implications. One is that there can be no inherent moral reason why this rather than that ought to be thus commanded. The other is that the glorification of the righteousness of God is reduced to a pretentious tautology. If you accept the second alternative then you are insisting on standards of right and wrong which are, at least logically, independent of Gods will. This option__ opens the possibility of moral criteria which are in no way subjective. It gives back substance, though not by the same token truth, to the magnificent claim of the prophets of Israel that the Lord their God is a righteous God. Discussing Flews non-Christian views from a Christian standpoint in the Downside Review (1970, p. 10), Dom I. Trethowan writes: What a theist will say is that God is our own good and that his commands are statements of the way in which we may reach him. It is an extraordinary thing that so many modern philosophers think of the Christian God as an autocrat issuing arbitrary orders. Flews purpose in including Socratess question in the Introduction was to show that in philosophy the impossibility of final answers does not rule out the possibility of progress, and this at least we may accept for our comfort.1 (iii) Logical points. Plato is not writing logic. His interest is meta physical. So Ross (.Analytics 26) of an argument in the Phaedo. He never wrote logic for its own sake, but only by the way, to remove obstacles from the path of clear thinking about moral standards or the nature and extent of the realm of being. Martha Kneale describes the position thus: Although it is clear that Plato discovered some valid principles of logic in the course of his argument, he is scarcely to be called a logician. For he enunciates his principles piecemeal as he needs them, and he makes no attempt to relate them to one another or to connect them in a system as Aristotle connected the various figures and moods of the syllogism. It is not unlikely that he would even have disapproved of logical investigations pursued for their own sake. Yet in spite of his lack of system, and the fact that while his dialogues contain much logical material, none of them is purely logical in
1 The latest essays on the contemporary relevance, religious and philosophical, of the problem are those of MacKinnon and Meynell in the Aristotelian Societys suppl. vol. 46 (1972).
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(c) At i i a Socrates complains that Euthyphro has not revealed to him the essence (ousia) of piety, but only an accident (pathos), some thing that it undergoes or that happens to or characterizes it,1 namely that the gods like it. Commentators point out that the distinction is here made for the first time in extant literature.2 As the fundamental distinction between the essence of something, to be expressed in its definition, and other qualities which belong to it either permanently or temporarily, but do not form part of its definition, this simple dichotomy is the first necessary step on the way to Aristotles elaborate analysis, when in the Topics (io ib 17-25) he distinguishes definition, proprium, genus and accident. According to this more sophisticated scheme, the pathos loved by the gods would be a proprium of piety, for an accident in the strict sense belongs to an individual, and may alter without affecting its essence, i.e. its character as a member of its species, like the colour of hair in a man. (See also on Lysis 2i7d , pp. 148. below.) (d) At n e ff. Socrates explains to Euthyphro (who cannot at first grasp it) that universal affirmative propositions are not convertible: all dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs.3 This introduces the notion of genus and species, or in Platos language whole and part,4 and brings them a step nearer to the correct method of seeking
1 At this stage Plato has the literal connexion with very much in mind, but with Aristotle it became the equivalent of ( , Metaph. 1022b 15). Cf. its application to number and magnitude at Metaph. 985b29 and Rhet. 1 3 5 5 b 3 1 . For at H. Maj. 301b contrast Friedlander, Pl. 11, 317 n. 6 (Hippias is muddled) with Soreth, H. Maj. 56 (their combination here is natural and right). In spite of Tarrants criticism in CR 1955, 53, Soreth is surely right. Cf. also Malcolm, AG Ph 1968, 189 n. 3 ad fin. 2 So Burnet and Adam ad loc. Taylor (P M I V 152 n. 2) says the terms must belong to an existing logical terminology because Plato uses them without explanation, but as Burnet pointed out, they are immediately explained by the following words, . 3 I still speak of the conversion of A propositions, though I appreciate Allens point (P.'s E . 5if.) about the distinction between logica utens and logica docens. S. does not state the formal rule, but since he asks whether, because (oOv n e i i ) all the pious is just, all the just is pious, and explains his meaning by the further examples of fear and reverence, number and even number, we may surely grant that Plato was fully aware of the logical point. For contrast with Allen see Sprague, P U F 92 f. 4 Allen (P.'s E . 85-9, 102) brings out the point that for Plato, with his metaphor of part and whole, the genus is fuller and richer in content than its species; a notion which has become overlaid by the Aristotelian idea that genera are poorer in content than species, and that passage upward in the abstractive hierarchy is passage toward emptiness. This point becomes extremely important later in relation to the hierarchy of the world of Forms.
9-2
II4
The Euthyphro
respect of its impiety? Does not this apply to everything that can be characterized as impious? (6d-e) You remember then that I did not ask you to indicate to me one or two of the many pious actions, but the very form (eidos) itself by which all pious acts are pious. For you said, I think, that it is by one form (idea) that impious things are impious and pious pious. Dont you remember? Teach me then what this form is, so that, fixing my eyes on it and using it as a pattern, I may call pious any action of yours or anyone elses that is of the same sort and deny the title to anything that is not.
N O TES
on
5 d 1 5
(1) At 5d4 I translate with Burnet in his 1924 ed. His arguments ad loc. are stronger than Adams, and I see nothing in favour of (OCT). (2) It worries some scholars that in Plato seems to recognize a negative Idea. Ross has dealt with this in P T I 167f., but in any case we cannot assume at this stage that the Euthyphro is talking about Platonic Ideas as they are usually understood from later dialogues. (3) I take in line 3 to be only a stylistic variant for . For = identical see vol. 1, 305 n. Aristotle (GC 323h l!) can speak of ., and cf. Diog. Apoll, fr. 5 (DK il, p. 62 lines 3-5). What do these passages enable us to say about forms?1 In some sense they exist. This is not argued but assumed. It would be unreasonable to suppose that Socrates repeatedly asked the question What is the form ? without believing that it was something real and not a figment of the imagination. Moreover, at 11 a he says that to ask What is the pious? is equivalent to asking for its being, or essence (ousia). That he should take this for granted is natural, because everyone does. Protagoras was no believer in absolutes, but when asked Are justice and piety things ()? Do you say that piety exists? it was natural for him to reply in the affirmative (Prot. 33oc-d). We all agree that there is such a thing as justice or piety, not least a man who complains Theres no justice in the w orld!2
1 For a full discussion see R. E. Allens P.'s E . and the Earlier Theory of Forms, to which I am deeply indebted, even if I have not always seen things in the same light. I have noted some places where I have ventured to differ, so that the reader may choose Professor Allens interpretation if he wishes. 2 This does not only apply to the man in the street. G. E. Moore was no follower of S. or Plato, yet his language in Princ. Eth. (i2f.) is remarkably Socratic: Pleased means nothing
I16
The Euthyphro
o f immanence. The actual preposition in is uncommon, but Plato speaks freely of the Form being present to its instances in the sensible world and entering into them, and of the instances as sharing in, possessing and receiving the Form.1 As his theory developed, it would have been difficult for the Forms both to retain their immutability and to serve as explanations of qualities manifest in the sensible world without this ambiguous status, and to maintain it became a truly formidable crux. It even led him at one point to speak of the Form itself and the form in us in a way that has caused some scholars to suppose them two different things (pp. 353-6 below). The question, therefore, is not whether Socrates here speaks of the form of piety as in or possessed b y pious acts, but whether he also speaks of it as existing outside them. O f this there is no trace. No one reading the Euthyphro could suppose that when he asks What is the pious? he has in mind anything but the characteristic common to all acts to which we give the name pious, whose presence in them explains and justifies our applying the same epithet to all. Forms, in fact, are universals. Now Aristotle says that Socrates first directed attention to universals by his demand for definition, but did not separate universals from the particulars. Plato on the other hand, and those who followed him, made the Forms both universals and at the same time separate individuals - which, he adds, accounts for the difficulties in which they landed themselves. Plato was impressed by the Heraclitean view that everything in the sensible world is ceaselessly changing, yet convinced that for knowledge to be possible there must be a stable object to be known. But (as Aristotle agreed, Metaph. 1086b 5) it is universals that make knowledge possible, hence Plato concluded that what exists outside the flux of change and is the only object of knowledge is the universal - i.e. what had hitherto been considered only as such but now becomes something much more. Aristotle himself kept closer to Socrates (who, he says, was right not to give the universals separate existence, Metaph., ib.) with
1 See the examples listed in Ross, P T I 228-30. The list is not perfect (Cherniss in A J P 1957, 250) and the references should be checked with the texts. In particular, not all of the few occurrences of tv seem to be applied to Forms in Platos technical sense. But it amply demon strates the point above.
II7
I18
The Euthyphro
means no more than what I have already said, that its presence in the instances gives the objective justification for calling them pious. To understand the sentence This action is pious one must translate it into This action contains the form of the pious.1 The expression persists when the Forms become transcendent as well as present in things, but is used especially in connexion with the latter relationship. So at Phaedo iood: that by which all beautiful things are beautiful (dy) is the beautiful, and what makes them beautiful (d j) is its presence, or association, or whatever the mode of its attachment may be. Finally, in naming the universal which is to be defined Plato in this dialogue almost always uses the common Greek idiom2 of article with adjective ( the pious) rather than the abstract noun piety. Between 13 c and 14e he four times uses the noun (), just enough to show that he is there regarding it as a synonym, and at 14 c 5 the holy and holiness is plainly a hendiadys. Then to the end of the dialogue, he reverts to the adjective, which is evidently his favourite, and I have therefore kept to its English equivalent. This carries certain consequences for the doctrine of Forms. To say that piety is itself pious, as praying and sacrifice are pious, sounds, to us at least, nonsensical. But to say that the pious -th a t which by its very nature is pious and nothing else - is not pious, could sound equally nonsensical, and in the Protagoras Socrates and Protagoras agree in rejecting the notion (33od-e, p. 223 below). Clearly then, if the two are identified, there are rocks ahead, in the shape of what has come to be known as the problem of the self-predication of the Forms. It was not until much later that any such difficulty presented
later by grammarians. There is also the dative of accompaniment. At Prot. 332 b-c the dat. is followed by with gen. and then . 1 Allen objects (p. 124) that no one who has failed to understand This rose is beautiful would find it illuminating to be told that the expression means This rose partakes of Beauty . On the contrary, it gives just the help that an intelligent contemporary Athenian, bemused by the Sophists, would need. It was the old problem of the one and the many and the assumed univocal character of is. As we all know, a rose is a rose is a rose. But one thing cannot be two. How then can what is a rose be at the same time beautiful? (See esp. Soph. 251 a, Ar. Phys. 185 b 25; and cf. Cornford, P. and P. 72-4.) Not, say Socrates and Plato, because it is the same thing as the beautiful, but because it contains or possesses the beautiful (or beauty). Cf. also the explanation of Grube, P .s Th. 19. 2 For examples of this semi-abstract use see Blucks Phaedo 176 and 202 (quoting Webster), and cf. vol. 1, 79 (Anaximander). 9
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The Euthyphro
distinguished by Plato) which it may at any time lose, since all particulars are changeable. These reflections put us in a delicate position. With other critics, I deprecate reading into Plato more than he says, assuming that because he says A , and A to a modern reader implies B , therefore he must have meant B although he did not say it. This applies especially to the argument of Burnet, Taylor and others that because the words eidos and idea are used in this dialogue of the universal characteristic, therefore a particular unitary doctrine called the Theory of Ideas, just as it appears in Phaedo and Republic, must lie behind it, being in fact a theory of Socrates himself. It may be thought equally rash to suggest that the language of the dialogue raises problems of which Plato himself was not yet aware, but which forced themselves on him as he advanced further from the simple intellectual ethic of Socrates, and account for distinctions expressly drawn, solutions offered, and bafflement experienced in his later work. Yet at least the positions are different, and in judging an early dialogue it would be unreasonable to exclude from our minds all knowledge of the others. This hindsight can alert us to the seeds of future discussions already latent in words and phrases that are actually there. To sum up, a form in the Euthyphro is the essential nature of a moral quality, expressed in its definition.1 It exists independently of our conceptions of it, and is unchanging, but exists only in its instances. In them, it is that element whose presence makes them what they are-piou s if it is the form of piety and so on.2 Being constant, it is, when once known, recognizable in future instances and may be used as a touchstone to test whether they have the quality or not. Finally we noticed that Platos habit of referring to a universal by means of an adjective with article rather than an abstract noun led him into language which at the time would seem only natural but portended future modifications in the status of forms and the relation between particulars and universals.
1 So far, it is fairly close to existing usage in Thucydides, the Hippocratics and others. (See vol. in, 430, and Allen, P.'s E . 28f.) A difference is that whereas its normal use was with substantives - the form of a disease, of persuasion, forms of war, of death etc. - in the Euthyphro we have the form of a moral quality, expressed adjectivally as the pious. 2 The view taken here coincides with Soreths, H. Maj. 28.
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The Euthyphro
Platos art is not bound by rules like this, and in fact a positive conclusion of great importance is reached just before the interlude, when Socrates gets Euthyphro to see that if the gods love piety that is because of its intrinsic character: its character as piety cannot depend on the accident that the gods are fond of it. In spite of Socratess logical smoke-screen (distinction between active and passive, essence and accident), Euthyphro could have replied that pious was by definition equivalent to loved by the gods. Orestes had a religious duty to kill his mother because Apollo ordered it, and there was no other criterion by which he could be judged. This is what he believed until he met Socrates, who with the air of innocently pointing out the inevitable logical consequences of his companions own position, leads him to agree unwittingly to something quite different. This positive conclusion about piety as an unchanging essence prepares the way for Socratess suggestion after the interlude that its essence is moral (p. n o above). From there onward the positive results are as follows. Piety is one of the two main species of morality (for so one may translate dikaion in this context), right conduct in our attentions to the gods, and right conduct towards our fellow-men. As we know, Socrates believed that goodness or virtue was a single whole, though operating in different fields through what are called the separate virtues, and here we have a pretty strong hint to that effect. Next, by way of the concept of piety as service, Socrates introduces his King Charless head, the analogy with the crafts ( technai). Service itself is a techn, and all technai depend on knowledge. So therefore does piety (14 c). That piety should amount to a kind of knowledge is Socratess own view, and it is not untypical that he should slip it into a suggestion on his opponents level (he has in fact got Euthyphro to use the word first, 14 b 3), as if to say: Even you must admit that piety is a form of knowledge, though you have a wrong idea of its object. Similarly in the Protagoras (352b-d) he elicits from Protagoras the assertion that knowledge and wisdom are the most powerful agents in human affairs, though as he knows, their ideas of the content of this knowledge are wholly different. Socrates, under the guise of the eternal searcher and questioner, concealed some quite positive
123
Date. As with the Euthyphro, we must be content to say that it is in the early group. All criteria by which scholars have tried to place it more accurately are highly subjective. Leisegang for instance thought that several features referred back to the Protagoras. The first is that both complain about sons who learn nothing from their fathers! Wilamowitz, like von Arnim in Jugenddialoge, also put it after the Protagoras, yet before the Lysis , Charmides and Euthyphro. O f more recent critics Dieterle (1966) called the Laches perhaps the earliest of Platos works, and Gauss thought it clearly the first of the group of definit ion-dialogues on account of its more primitive and awkward
1 Inevitably. Cf. the quotation from Field on p. 68. 2 For a bibliography of 20th-century literature on the dialogue, see Hoerber, C P 1968, 95 n. 1, and Schoplick, 86-90.
I24
The Laches
form.1 Other reasons offered have been no more compelling. If I were to adopt the same subjective criteria, I should say that it is a little gem of construction (not at all ungelenkig), but that its philo sophical simplicity suggests an earlier work than the Euthyphro, which only appears earlier here for its dramatic continuity with the trial dialogues. Dramatic date and characters. Socrates is praised by Laches for his courage in the retreat from Delium in 424 b . c ., and Laches himself was killed at the battle of Mantinea in 418 (Thuc. 5.74.3 in conjunction with 5.61.1). The conversation must therefore be supposed to take place between these two dates, more than 11 years before Plato was born, when Socrates was between 45 and 50.2 All the participants are historical figures, Lysimachus and Melesias the less distinguished sons of famous fathers,3 namely Aristides the just and Thucydides the opponent of Pericles (not the historian). Lysimachus is said by Demosthenes (contra Lept. 115) to have received a reward of land in Euboea and money for unspecified services to the state, and Melesias is mentioned by Thucydides (8.86.9) as one three representatives sent by the Four Hundred on an ill-fated mission to Sparta. Their sons, who are present as almost silent listeners but for whose sake the whole discussion is initiated, are mentioned in the Theages as chafing somewhat under Socratess tutelage (see vol. hi, 400), and young Aristides recurs in the Theaetetus (151 a) as one who had left him too early and suffered a miscarriage of his thoughts in consequence. Nicias is too famous to need much description. Statesman and general, he is best known for the irony whereby he, who had spoken and voted against the folly of the Sicilian expedition, found himself chosen to command it, and for the tragic failure of the expedition under his leadership. There is (pace Wilamowitz, 1, 184 n. 1) an allusion to this at i98d-i99a, where Socrates says that a general should not allow himself to be influenced by soothsayers, which is
1 Leisegang, R E 2400; Dieterle, P.'s L . und C. 32; Wilamowitz, PL 1, 183 and 185; v. Arnim, Jugendd. pt. 1, ch. 1; Gauss, Handk. 1.2.9. For a full list of views on the relative date, see Hoerber, I.e. 96 f. 2 For attempts to date it more closely, see Hoerber, I.e. 95 f. 3 The mediocrity of Melesias is mentioned at Meno 94c-d.
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The Laches
advisability of such training for their own sons. Nicias and Laches commend their intention, but Laches thinks they ought rather to consult Socrates, who is also present. (The scene is not mentioned, but is probably a public gymnasium.) Lysimachus did not know that S. was interested in education, but Nicias confirms it, adding that he is in S.s debt for getting Damon, a man in every way suited to be a companion for the young, as music-teacher for his own son. Lysimachus is delighted to hear this, and Laches confirms the recom mendation by a glowing account of S.s conduct on the battlefield. S. replies modestly that it is for his elders to speak first, and he will add anything that he can. Nicias and Laches, however, disagree on the merits of this form o f training and the practical competence of its instructors, and this makes it all the more important to get S.s opinion. He would have the casting vote, but he replies characteristically that it is not numbers but knowledge which should decide the issue. And he immediately lifts the discussion out o f its narrow context by insisting that before deciding who is the expert they must decide what is the art about which they wish to consult him. He must under stand the end in view, and hoplomacYiy is only a means. The end is the building o f our sons characters (psychai). S. can claim no quali fications in this art, and Nicias and Laches should be closely questioned to find out whether they have either been trained in it or can point to success achieved without training. Lysimachus thinks this an excellent idea, which prompts Nicias to remark that it is obvious that he does not know S.; if he had he would know that whoever talks to him, on whatever subject, soon finds himself called to account for his whole life. W ell , he continues, Im ready. I know whats coming to me, in fact I knew all along that with S. here it would not be our sons but ourselves that we should be talking about. But its no bad thing, in fact I enjoy it. What about Laches? Laches knows nothing o f S.s words, but he has seen him prove himself by deeds, and from such a man he is ready to submit to examination and to learn. S. may go ahead and confute him as much as he likes.1 Thus given the lead, S. suggests a new approach, closer to first
1 Croiset (Bud 89) describes this speech of L. as dune loquence et dune posie qui ravissent.
10
I27
G HO
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The Laches
contradicting his previous admission that courage, being good, must lead to good results, and must therefore be more than rashness untempered by knowledge and good sense. At this point he gives up and confesses failure, being, as he says, unused to such discussions. S. therefore turns to Nicias for help, which he gives by reminding them of what he has often heard from S. himself, that everyone is good at that in which he is wise.1 If then the brave man is good, courage is a sort of wisdom. But what sort? Not presumably technical, as of a good musician. No, replies Nicias. Courage is the wisdom of knowing what is or is not to be feared.2 Laches (obviously jealous of N.s air of superiority and familiarity with S.s thoughts) thinks this nonsense. It is the professional craftsmen who understand what is to be feared in any given case, as a doctor knows whether a symptom in disease is dangerous or not, but this does not make them brave. No, replies N. A doctor knows only what is healthy or unhealthy, not which of them is most to be feared. There are men for whom death is less fearful than continuance in life.3 Then, says Laches ironically, your brave men are the soothsayers; only they know whether life or death will be better. N. denies this. They can foretell death, disease, loss, victory or defeat, but which of these will be best for the man whom they befall they can no more say than anyone else. Laches says sarcastically that by a brave man N. must mean a god, and hands the argument over to S., who at first confirms his un favourable opinion by suggesting that if courage is knowledge no animal can have it, so in this respect the lion and the deer are on a
Laches (199 a), where however it is quickly widened to knowledge of good and evil in general (199c). It is also repeated as S.s own in Rep. (430b). How close this comes to the truly Socratic view is hardly matter for a footnote; it involves the Meno, and possibly the Phaedo, as well as Laches and Prot. But at least S. would agree on this. A weak swimmer who deliberately enters dangerous currents out of bravado is merely foolhardy. If he has a family to support, his action may be harmful and wicked. If however he does it to save the life of another, knowing the risks but rightly concluding that his purpose outweighs them, he may be said to possess the virtue of courage. 1 Or well-versed, or in what he understands. For the meaning of sophos see vol. h i , {. 2 It is interesting to compare this definition with the courage ascribed to the Athenians in the funeral speech of Pericles (Thuc. 2.40.3): We possess to an unusual degree the ability to act boldly and at the same time to think out our enterprises; and those are rightly judged to have the best spirit ( psyche; cf. Burnet, Ess. and Add. 141) who recognize most clearly what is fearful and what enjoyable and are not thereby deterred from taking risks. 3 N. shows himself an apt pupil of S., for he is making the same point that S. himself makes at Gorg. 5iie~5i2a.
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The Laches
we read, of a short and apparently simple work like the Laches, first in Shorey ( Unity 15 n. 77) that its chief object is not the reduction of all virtues to knowledge, as Zeller thought, nor to bring out the unity of virtue (Horn), nor even the establishment of the definition wise perseverance (which Bonitz favoured as the only suggestion not disproved), but only to exemplify in the contrast between Nicias and Laches the logomachy described in Polit. 306, 307*; next in Wilamowitz (1,186) that the definition of courage is of minor importance and Platos purpose is the defence and rehabilitation of Socrates; or in Friedlnder (11, 49) that its subject is not so much courage as education. Croiset (Bud 88) goes so far as to say that the definition of courage is only a pretext, but sees the dialogue as a simple exposition of method, sufficient to itself. There are also more recherch surmises, such as Horneffers (in Croiset I.e.) that Platos purpose was to refute Socrates himself and separate his own doctrine from his masters, or Hinskes (in Kant-Stud. 1968) that the sujet central is reflection on the means of remedying the profound crisis which Athens was undergoing.1 In discussing future dialogues we may spare ourselves references to such single-minded interpreters. What then is to be found in the dialogue, apart from its considerable value as entertaining literature? We see a model of Socratic dialectic proceeding on the same lines as in the Euthyphro : request for a definition, single instance offered instead, correction of this to a general concept, the suggested concept found faulty in its turn, discomfiture of the interlocutor relieved by a positive suggestion from NiciasSocrates, this in turn found unsatisfactory, and a final confession of failure coupled with exhortation to future study. Socrates maintains his profession of ignorance throughout. Nicias and Laches are the experts in education. They must know, or they could not talk so confidently on the subject (i86c-d, exactly the tactics used on Euthyphro at Euth. ijd ) . When invited by Laches to teach* them, he expresses his pleasure that they are ready to take counsel and look into the matter together* (189c). In trying to get a satisfactory definition from Laches, it has been noticed2 that Socrates here uses
1 References to, and criticism of, a number of such interpretations will be found in O Brien, Socr. Parad. 117 -18 (117 n. 8). 2 See v. Goldschmidt in Dieterle, P.'s L . and C. 61.
I 3I
I32
The Laches
the Protagoras, by taking pairs of virtues successively and trying to prove their identity. Having observed this, we may allow ourselves to notice a few hints earlier in the dialogue which point in the same direction. At i92d Socrates gets Laches to agree that the results of courage must always be beneficial, never harmful. In the Meno (8yd-88d) a similar statement about virtue as a whole leads directly to the conclusion that it is knowledge. At 191 d, by including in courage the ability to withstand pleasures and pains, he tacitly equates it with another of the recognized virtues, temperance or self-control (sophrosyn; cf. e.g. Symp. 196c, Phaedr. 237d-e, Rep . 430e). The conclusion, then, is an affirmation of Socratic intellectualism in ethics: Then do you think that such a man would in any respect fall short of virtue, if he knew all that is good, and understood perfectly how it is, has been, and will be produced, and evil also? Would such a man lack temperance or justice and piety, he to whom alone it pertains to be on his guard about what is or is not to be feared in the affairs of both gods and men, and to procure what is good, because he knows how to deal with them rightly?
(199d)
On this fundamental point at least we are still at the Socratic stage. Knowledge is all-sufficient, and there is no hint of Platos later recognition of the part played by the emotions in right or wrong conduct, with the consequent assumption of two or more aspects or parts of the soul.1 Other Socratic touches are the references at 185e to education as tendance of the soul (as in the Apology) and the fact that this and the following sentences amount to an injunction to know oneself and a challenge to account for ones life, as Nicias is quick to point out at 187 e. As for any doctrine of substantial forms, the Laches seems if anything less advanced than the Euthyphro. The words eidos, idea
1 Shorey and Hoerber (see the latter in C P 1968, 101) interpret the Laches in the light of the distinction in the Rep. between and . Laches in their view represents the temperamental aspect of bravery, Nicias its cognitive element. The two are indeed brilliantly contrasted in this respect, but for Plato the truth lies with Socrates, and with Nicias so far as he quotes S. That S. in his actions exemplified courage as understood by Laches only goes to prove that for the true philosopher (and such S. was for Plato, for all his own professions of ignorance) his knowledge is sufficient guarantee of right conduct.
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(5)
THE L Y S IS
Date.3 There is the usual diversity of opinion about a dialogue of this sort. Leisegang (R E 2409f.) notes that language-statistics put it at the end of the first or beginning of the second group, that Dittenberger even put it after the Symposium (which is highly unlikely),
1 Here the Greek comes nearest to suggesting a standard. Cf. with Euthyphro 6e et ; also Crat. 389a et al. 2 It .occurs only here in the Laches, and never in the Euthyphro with reference to piety. 3 For earlier claims of spuriousness, now discredited, see Levin in Anton and Kustas, Essays 248 n. 2.
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The Lysis
von Arnim and Wilamowitz close to Charmides (which seems very probable; von Arnim, Jugendd. 138 and Rh. M us. 1916, 386, thought Lysis the earlier), and that it is most often thought to belong to the early, Socratic period. Stenzel ( P M D 10) thought it might be later than the Phaedo, for Grube ( P .s Th. 216 n. 2) it was probably later than most of the early dialogues, for Schoplick ( L ys . 77) transitional between the early and middle periods. Tentatively we may look on it as a late early dialogue, and even more tentatively suggest that Plato wrote it almost at the same time as the Charmides and probably before it.1 There is nothing to indicate the dramatic date, nor is it important. At the end (223b), Socrates describes himself as an old man, but since he is talking, not very seriously, to two schoolboys of twelve or thirteen, one cannot attach much weight to this. Scene and characters. The setting of the dialogue is universally praised for its charm and liveliness. It shows to what trouble Plato can go in setting a scene and revealing character, and also his skill in allowing philosophical debate to arise naturally out of a real-life situation. If the subject is to be friendship, or more generally the attraction of one person for another in all its varieties, it must exemplify itself in the speakers.2 So the characters, besides Socrates, are four, two schoolboys who are fast friends, and two older youths who are their admirers. The youth Hippothales and his favourite Lysis do not appear again in Plato, nor are they known in history, though Lysiss family is represented as famous for its wealth and victories in the games.3 The other pair, Ctesippus and Menexenus, are uncle and nephew (206d). They were intimates of Socrates and present at his death ( Phaedo 59 b). Ctesippus, who seems to have been of an amorous disposition, reappears in the Euthydemus as the champion of a different favourite
1 A. W. Begemann in his dissertation on the Lysis sees the dialogue as an exercise in relational logic, and on that account regards it as contemporary with the Parmenides. See review by de Vries in Mnemos. 1966. (The dissertation is in Dutch with a short English summary.) B. is also summarized and criticized by Schoplick, Lysis 12 -17 . 2 The relationship between character-drawing and philosophy in the L . is the subject of a note by Hoerber in C J 41 (1945-6). 3 It appears however that his daughters tomb has been found. She was appropriately named Isthmonike. (Wilamowitz, PL 11, 69 n. 2, referring to Ath. Mitt, xxxvn, 227.)
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verb philein, to like, love or feel affection for, ranges from parental love to the love of a glutton for dinner. By itself it rarely connotes sexual love, for which the word is eros (n.), ern (vb.). A few quotations will bring out the fact that the two are distinct, though eros ought to, and commonly does, imply philia , but not vice versa. At Laws 837 a Plato says that when philia is violent, intense or passionate (; so also Aristotle at E N 1 1 58a 12 calls eros an excess) we call it eros ;1 and at Phaedr. 231c they say that those who are in love feel especial friendship towards, or affection for ( philein), the objects of their passion. At 256c lovers who have indulged their bodily desires will remain friends, but less so than those who refrain. In Euripides ( Tro. 1051) Hecuba, fearful of Helens lasting power over Menelaos, says, He is no lover whose affection is not for ever, and finally Aristotle (An. Pr. 70 a 6) gives, simply as an example of probability, the probability that those loved will feel affection for (philein) their lovers.2 Some light will also be thrown on the relationship by the Lysis itself. A further point is that philia is not confined to human relationships. Aristotle (E N 115 5 3 16 ) speaks of philia between parents and offspring among birds and animals as well as men. In Theophrastuss botanical works there is philia between plants. In Empedocles it was at the same time a cosmic force causing the physical elements to combine, love or liking among human beings, and an influence for good. (See vol. II, 152fr., 248f., vol. in, 149 n. 2.) In Platos own Timaeus ( 32C2) the cosmos enjoys philia between its constituent elements because they are linked by geometrical proportion, and in the Gorgias (508 a) heaven and earth as well as gods and men are united by philia , orderliness and other virtues. These uses must not be thought of as simply metaphorical. Psychical (human) and physical philia are clearly distinguished by Aristotle in the Ethics ( 115 5 b iff.) .3
1 But not always. Lysiss father him (207(d). 2 If, as the O.Tr. assumes, tous * and tous * are the subjects of their verbs. But both grammatically and as good sense the words may equally well mean that it is natural to hate the envious and to feel affection for those who arouse ones passions. The last part would then be parallel in meaning to Phaedr. 231c, and Lys. 2i2b -c. For the relationship between and pcos see also Arist. E N 115 7 3 6 -16 . 3 To write the above I have not read all the scholarly literature about . For further investigations the following should be a useful start: F. Dirlmeier, Philos und philia im vorhellenistischen Griechentum (diss. Munich 1931).
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M. and L. obviously do, since they have achieved a perfect friendship already. M. must tell him the secret, and his first question is: If one man likes another, which is the friend, the liker or the liked? M. thinks it makes no difference. But A may like B , yet be actually disliked by B , as some lovers are plagued by the thought that while they feel affection for their beloved, the beloved actually hates them. In that case, which is the friend (philos)} Neither, thinks M., and withdrawing his former statement, agrees that no creature is a friend to any other unless the other returns the liking. Very good. Then people cannot like horses (be philippoi) or wine or anything else, unless liked by them in return (212d). You cannot even be a philosopher unless wisdom (sophia) likes you in return. This being absurd, what is liked is dear (philon) to him who likes it, whether or not it likes him in return. A small child is philon to its parents even when they punish it and for the moment it hates them. On this argument the liked, not the liker, is the friend, and so the object of hatred is an enemy, not the hater. Thus many are liked by their enemies and hated by their friends. This is impossible, therefore the liker must be friend of the liked and the hater the enemy of the hated. So we must conclude as we did before, that one may be a friend (philos) of one who is not his friend (is not philos, sc. is not liked by him) or is even his enemy, when he likes someone who dislikes or even hates him; and so with being an enemy. At this point M., like others subjected to the Socratic treatment, gives up, and Lysis shyly agrees with S. that the inquiry cannot have been on the right lines. Pleased with his enthusiasm, and judging that M. has earned a rest, S. makes a fresh start with L., suggesting that they look first to the poets, our fathers and leaders in wisdom. Homer says the gods made friends by drawing like to like, and the same idea that like is attracted to its like is found in the writers on nature and the universe.1 We must limit this to good men, for the wicked are not made friends by proximity. Probably the writers meant that they are not alike - they are indeed so fickle and changeable
1 For this as a physical principle in Presocratic thought see vols, i and n, indexes s.v. like to like. It accounted specifically for perception, which makes it interesting that S. adds the words to the line of Homer.
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with the good owing to the presence o f bad (217 b), but before the presence of the bad in it has made it bad itself. This requires explanation (2i7d). Some things are themselves what is present to them, others are not. The difference is illustrated by hair whitened with powder and hair naturally white through old age. When a thing has evil in it, but is not yet bad itself, the evil in it makes it desire the good, but when the presence of evil has made it bad, it deprives it of desire, and so of friendship, for the good. Thus philo-sophers are neither the wise nor those so unwise as to be evil. They possess this evil, ignorance, but are not rendered so foolish by it as to think they know what they do not. Now the hunt is really ended, as the boys agree. But s t a y - is the quarry a phantom? Look at it this w ay(2i8d ). If anyone likes, or is a friend to, somebody or something, it must be, they agree, from some cause and for the sake of something; and is that something, for the sake of which a friend is friend to his friend, also philon ? Since M. does not follow, and S. himself is not quite sure what he means, he returns to the example of doctor and patient. Here the neither-good-nor-bad is friend to the good owing to the bad and hostile (his sickness) for the sake of what is both good and philon (health). But if (as they agree) health is both good and liked (philon), then on the earlier premise it in turn must be philon from some cause and for the sake of something. This process cannot go on indefinitely, with everything being prized not for itself but for something else (219c); there must be a first link in the chain which will not refer us to a further goal but itself be the first friend, or ultimate object of love, for whose sake all the other things are friends ( phila, dear, valued). These others, then, turn out to be mis named, for they are but shadows of the first, not valued for themselves but only as means. Truly philon is just that one thing in which all the so-called phila culminate. It is not philon for the sake of any further philon. Now the good is valued as philon. But is it true (as has been said) that it is loved on account of the bad? In that case if there were no evils affecting body, soul or anything, the good would no longer be any use to us, and it would appear that we had only loved it as a remedy, and one no longer needed. It seems we have no need of 141
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boys off home. Though they all claim to be friends, they have failed to discover what a friend is. Comment There are many opinions about this dialogue, and I must confess to my own, which is simply that it is not a success. Even Plato can nod. Cornford called it an obscure and fumbling essay on the same theme as the Symposium, showing that when he wrote it Plato had not reached his mature theory of love. Wilamowitz said much the same thing (P i. I, 187), and according to Leisegang (R E 2410) it is mostly regarded as an early Socratic dialogue which finds its necessary expansion in the Symposium.l Others however see in the friendship of the Lysis something quite different from the love which is the subject of the Symposium.2 The failure is in method and presentation. Though ostensibly another example of the Socratic method in operation, anyone seeking to discover it would be well advised to turn instead to the Euthyphro, Laches or Meno.3 Socrates not only gives an unappetizing view of friendship,4 but appears to be completely at the mercy of the ambiguities of the Greek word for it. Why should he himself be the dupe of these ambiguities, instead of (as elsewhere) having them uttered by someone else - even trapping him into uttering them - in order to lead him to an awareness of them and so assist him maieutically ? Or why should he himself indulge in (or be the victim of) sophistic and fallacious arguments without a hint as to the true solution?5 True, he may do
1 Cf. also Gomperz, Gr. Th. ii, 382f.: The matter of this dialogue need not trouble us; we shall find it developed to greater richness and maturity in the brilliant luminary of which it is the modest satellite. 2 A selection of views is mentioned by Hoerber in Phron. 1959, 15 -17 . Foremost defender of the kinship of Lys. with Symp. is Friedlnder: the Lys. shows the philosophic Eros on the level of Platos early works. The terms friendship and love are interchangeable through out. (PI. i i , 1 0 2 ) . A principal objective pursued in the dialogue is the relationship of love and education (p. 93). Wilamowitz however (PI. 11, 68 f.) thought that and stood for fundamentally different emotions and different relations between men. 3 Pace Edith Hamilton, for whom the Lys . has no superior among the dialogues as an illustration of Socratess method (Collected D .'s 145). Her brief prefatory note may serve as antidote to the above, possibly prejudiced, view. 4 Grote (PI. 1, 5 1 7 f.) said that in Xen. Mem. 2.4-6 we find the real Socrates presenting [friendship] with a juster view of its real complications. It is pleasant to find the commonly despised Xenophon held up as a mirror of the real S. 5 Mrs Sprague, speaking of the Laches, says (P U F 84) : Thus deliberate ambiguity on the
ii
gho
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their friendship is an inferior variety, comparable to commerce; the perfect kind can only be experienced by good men, who will enjoy each others company not through any lack, for the happy too can want to spend their days together (E N 115 8 3 2 1 ).1 In any case, the explanation by natural affinity is offered only to be rejected like the others. Socratess insistence on usefulness as the criterion of value or goodness has been fully explained in vol. in, pp. 462-7, which need not be repeated here. Everything and everybody, from pruning knives to bodily organs and from them to doctors, cooks or weavers, has a function to perform, and must be judged by a product extrinsic to itself ; and each has its own particular virtue or excellence (arete) which consists in the ability to perform its function. Yet there must also be an ultimate function which we all have to perform in virtue of our common humanity, and the beneficiary of this function, and of the universal aret necessary for its performance, is the soul. This aret alone is always beneficial, never harmful (Meno 87e-89e). The doctor produces health, the merchant money, but health and wealth may alike injure the soul if they are not used with that wisdom which is aret. This is the virtue which Socrates all his life was seeking, as we see him doing in the Meno. It cannot have been absent from Platos mind when he speaks of the ultimate object of love in which all others find their consummation. Yet for the purposes of this conversation with the boys, he does not develop it with any mention of a kind of friendship which is based on knowledge and tends to the good of the psyche,2 but returns abruptly to the more arid question whether we are friends to the good on account of evil, and what would happen if, per impossibile, evil ceased to exist.3 Crombie sees the main argument as intellectual teasing. Plato is neither tangled in the ambiguities of philia nor straightforwardly
1 For Aristotle see further pp. 154f- below. 2 At the beginning of the discussion the Socratic point is put to the boy Lysis at its most elementary level, namely that goodness consists in usefulness and demands knowledge of that at which one is good. 3 , 221 a. Neither S. nor Plato believed in a millennium, and S. would have agreed with what P. made him say in a later dialogue ( Theaet. 176 a) that evils can never disappear from this world.
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I append a few comments made in reading, before concluding with a consideration of the possible ontological significance of some of its terminology. 2 i i b. Many critics see Menexenuss eristic nature as an important feature of the dialogue. He is dreist, spitzfindig and keck (Hanslik, R E , x x ix . Halbb. 858), self-assured (Hoerber, Phron. 959, 17); Plato gives him a higher degree of consciousness and intellectual flexibility than to Lysis (Friedlnder, Pl. 11, 95). In fact he says little but a docile yes and no (or their equivalents), Ive no idea (213c) and I dont quite follow (218e). Glaser ( W. Stud . I935> 5 ) say s it onty w*th the eristic M. that S. begins his eristic wrestling with ideas, but from 213d to 215c he carries it on with Lysis. The only eristic in this dialogue is Socrates. 2i2d. If friendship is reciprocal, one cannot be phil-ippos or phil-oinos unless the horses or the wine return ones affection. As Hoerber rightly says {I.e. 21), The main argument against reciprocity is a linguistic difficulty in the Greek language. Friedlnder thought Plato aimed at bringing out these verbal ambiguities and even clarifying substantial problems which they concealed. Such clarification is more worthy of a Euthydemus or Dionysodorus. 2146-215 a. Characters that are similar in being good cannot be friends. Stallbaum pointed out (Lysis 100, 113 , 15 1) that the argument rests entirely on treating similar as if it meant in every way identical ,1 and good as perfectly and absolutely good, of a goodness never attained by man. That good cannot be friend to good is explicitly denied at Phdr. 255b: on the contrary, good cannot help being friend to good. At 2 15 d the impossibility of retaining friend as the meaning of philos is brought out by the absurdity of saying that the poor must be friends of the rich because they need their aid. Also, the inclusion of sick man and doctor here is a false antithesis. The contrary of the sick is the healthy, indeed the doctor may himself be ill but none the less necessary to the sick for that. Socrates is presumably thinking of what he expresses at 2 i7a-b , that illness is the opposite of the medical
1 For the ambiguity of see vol.
I,
305 n.
M?
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classification, the whiteness of hair naturally white through old age is itself an accident (Top. i ch. 5, cf. p. 113 above). 218 b. This description of philo-sophers as intermediate between the wholly wise (the gods) and the wholly ignorant is truly Platonic (and in origin probably Pythagorean: see vol. 1, 204). Cf. Symp. 204a, Phaedrus 278 d. 218 d, from some cause and for the sake of something, with examples at 2i9 a-b : for the sake of () the loved. . .on account of () the hated, on account of illness for the sake of health. Grote (P i. 1,512) speaks of some producing cause and some prospective end, and calls this a very clear and important distinction (513 n .y ). It corresponds to Aristotles efficient and final causation, but as Grote goes on to point out, Plato later confuses the two: at 220e for the sake of the hated should be on account o f. 219 c-d. The first appearance in Plato of the impossibility of an infinite regress, which was to assume such importance for him and for Aristotle. In the Parmenides and Aristotle it occurs as a damaging argument against the theory of Forms, and as an argument for a First Cause it is at the root of Aristotles theology. 221 d-e. The inference that what is desired is what one lacks, and that is what naturally belongs to one (is ), seems arbitrary, and one may sympathize with Bekker who called the connexion quite extraordinarily superficial (Philol. 41, 306, quoted by Glaser, IV. Stud. 1935, 59 n. 15). That Eros brings together the naturally cognate is said by Aristophanes in the Symposium, where however it has acquired point from the myth of the origin of the sexes which he has just related. The first part of the equation, that desire is of what one lacks, is repeated in the Symposium by Socrates himself (200e). 222a. It needs no great perspicacity to see in the genuine lover Socrates himself. One need only compare his two main speeches in the Phaedrus, especially 255 a. 222 c-d. (a) What is naturally akin to man is the good ( ). Here, thrown away with the other alternatives, is Platos real opinion, as can be seen from Rep. 586 e ;1 and in spite of the
1 And, I should say, from Diotimas words at Symp. 205 e. It is not clear to me, as it is to Pembroke (in Longs Problems in Stoicism, i37f.)> that P. is anxious to discredit the
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theory of forms was so familiar to the lads Lysis and Menexenus that Socrates had to warn them not to be misled by it ! Two notions are relevant: the presence (parusia) of a quality in that which it characterizes, and the primary philon\ which is loved for its own sake alone. Plato speaks (2iyd-e) of the presence o f white and bad or alternatively of an object as possessing these attributes, and correctly distinguishes accidental from natural, or all-pervading, characterization. This is terminology which, though used later of the relationship between Forms and particulars, would not sound strange in any tongue, least of all in Greek, in which adjectival phrases like the hot, the cold, the white had hovered ambiguously in meaning between substance and quality. (Cf. p. 119 with n. 1 above.) It need not have any doctrinal significance.1 The primary philon or object of love is rather different. Socrates calls it that which is primary object of love, for whose sake the others are prized. The others are like phantoms or imitations of it,2 which may deceive us, whereas it is that first thing which is truly (cb ) object of love (2i9c-d). In reality ( ) that thing itself ( ) is the object of love in which all these so-called friendships terminate. . .The really loved is not loved for the sake of another loved thing (220b). This is the kind of language that Plato applies to the Forms of his developed doctrine, and the primary object of love, the goal of all subordinate friendships and likes, became in the Republic the Form of the Good, though it is not here formally identified with good.3 Moreover its relation to anything else called friend or object of liking is in one respect like that between a Form and its sensible manifestations, namely that they resemble it
1 It is used in a similarly non-technical way in later dialogues too. Cf. Gorg. 497 e, Rep . 437e; also Charm. 158e. Nor should one see metaphysical significance in the words and as applied to health and disease at Ale. /, 126 a. 2 The word () is used of a phantom (//. 5.449, and cf. Plato, Theaeu 150c), ghost (Od. 11.476), dream, shadow, reflection and representation in painting (all in Plato, Soph. 266 b-c). The common element, contained in its etymology, is an appearance of something without reality. It is therefore incorrect to say, as Allen does (.Euthyphro 71 n. 2), that its use does not imply resemblance in the ordinary sense. 3 It was a bad slip on von Arnims part to say ( Jugendd. 53) that this highest goal of all endeavour is called at 220c. The which is the subject of the new argument beginning at 220 b is not the ultimate good, but precisely that which is good because useful for some ulterior purpose. It is in its common meaning of good for something. At 220 d-e, S. actually says that the bears no resemblance to it.
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must be interpreted in the light of that teaching from hints dropped by Plato when, for dramatic or other reasons, he did not want to introduce them expressly. For the Lysis , Glasers article is the out standing example of the latter school.1 The policy in this volume will be more like the former, to assume no more than is said in a dialogue or can reasonably be inferred from it, without bringing in the whole of Platos philosophy as it is expressed elsewhere. Looked at in this way, Plato in the Lysis is still at an early stage in his progress from his masters One thing I know, namely that there are absolute moral values (p. 88 above), to his own mature philosophy. Here we follow Wilamowitz (PL ii, 75). Having quoted the expressions by which Plato designates the , he continues: So indeed he speaks later, when he has realized that what he is seeking lies in another realm, the key to which is not philia but Eros, the link between the earthly and the eternal. But of this link and this realm he does not yet know, and once he knows it, he no longer speaks of any tco [truly philori\. This assigns the Lysis its place in Platos intellectual develop ment just as the style fixes it in the series of his writings.2 Should the other school be right, our procedure may still have value as an expository method; but it does seem an extraordinary supposition that Plato evolved a doctrine of eternal Forms known by an immortal soul in another world, as expounded in the Phaedo and Republic, then first expressed it (for all agree these dialogues are earlier) in this teasingly allusive way by a series of conundrums, and only later condescended to explain it fully.3
1 For instance on pp. 16 5f. he says (I translate): So in the Lysis is the way from the Presocratic and Socratic to the Platonic theory of friendship pointed out to the initiated, admittedly only if one recalls the later utterances whose content already lurks unexpressed in the early dialogues. He even draws freely on Ep. 7 to reveal in Lys . the kinship of the soul with the Ideas, and a doctrine that friendship depends not on affinity between the parties but affinity between both of them and , i.e. the eo. He is followed by Schoplick, for whom Lys. proceeds on two levels, with both a foreground and a background meaning (p. 44). The reason for the final aporia is that words are used ambiguously, in both their Platonic and popular senses. Schoplicks explanation of this procedure seems half-hearted (83 f.). Might it not rather be the case that the Platonic sense is still not clearly detached from the other in P.s mind? 2 Among those expressing similar views are Grote (Pl. 1, 523, approaches to, but is not coincident with, the Idea of the Good), Grube (who speaks of clear evidence of a slowly developing vocabulary, P.'s T. 8) and Leisegang ( R E 2411). 3 Witte (V. von G. u. B. 6) calls this view an Abwertung of the earlier dialogues under the influence of Wilamowitz. It is however the impression that I receive from Platos own
*53
Throughout the Lysis one wishes that Plato would take the excellent advice of his own Socrates in the Charmides (163d): I give you leave to assign to any word what meaning you please: only make clear, whenever you utter a word, what it is that you are applying it to. 1 In his discussion of philia and its cognates in the Ethics (bk 8) Aristotle has cleared up many of the confusions of the dialogue in such a concise and businesslike way that the temptation to quote some of what he says is irresistible. He begins by noting the very wide application of the term, and explicitly limiting his own discussion to the human sphere. Next he says that we must first consider the object of liking ( ), thus freeing us at once from the active passive ambiguity of philos. We must not, he says, speak of philia for inanimate objects, for (a) they cannot return it, and (b) we do not wish for their good. Here he has a dig at Plato (Lysis 212 d): one does not wish wine well, but only that it may keep for ones own enjoyment, whereas a friend in ordinary usage is one to whom one must wish good for his own sake. There are three kinds of friendship, first, friendship for ulterior advantage, and second, friendship for pleasure. Both these may be called accidental friendships, since the friend is not loved for his own sake but only in so far as he provides benefit or pleasure. Hence they are easily broken. It is to the useful class that friendship between opposites belongs, poor and rich, ignorant and learned ( 1 1 59b 12, Lysis 215 d). Thirdly there is the perfect friendship which springs up between those who are alike in being good. Each loves the other for himself alone and their friendship lasts as long as their goodness. This friendship includes mutual benefit and pleasure, and it is lasting, for virtue is a stable characteristic. It is rare, because such men are rare, and it needs time to ripen, whereas the first two kinds may exist between bad men, or bad and good, or the neither-bad-nor-good and either the bad or the good. But a certain measure of equality is necessary. Two people cannot expect to be friends if there is a great disparity between them, whether in virtue and vice or in wealth or status. The effect of this latter condition, however, is mitigated when he says later (1161 b 5) that although one cannot feel friendship for a slave qua slave, one can disregard his status and feel friendship for him as a man.2
texts, and I find it no detraction from the interest and importance of the earlier works. What Wilamowitz says in P/., 1, 202 f., is true and valuable. The privilege of watching the gradual growth to maturity of the ideas of a man like Plato is no small one. 1 A precept that can be transposed straight into modern phraseology, as Levinson has pointed out (Anton and Kustas, Essays 273). 2 Adkins (CQ 1963, 3 7 ff.) argues that even Aristotles perfect kind of friendship is motivated
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(6 ) T H E C H A R M I D E S 1
Date. It is generally agreed to belong to the early group, though, like others, it is variously placed within it.2 Some writers avoid the question, worried perhaps by the way in which it seems to combine rather crude and early characteristics with more advanced problems like that of a knowledge of knowledge. Considerations on pp. 163F. below suggest that it comes late in the early, Socratic group. Dramatic date. Socrates has just returned from campaigning at Potidaea (153a and b), so the conversation takes place at or soon after 432.3 He is in his prime, just under forty, and Plato is not yet born. Characters and scene. The opening scene has been described as a glorification of Platos family connexions (Burnet, T. to P. 208). His relatives Critias and Charmides are the chief speakers with Socrates, at 155a their descent from Solon is mentioned, and at 158a Platos stepfather Pyrilampes is eulogized. As to Charmides, there is tragic irony in the portrait of the future member of the oligarchic tyranny, killed like his cousin in battle with the democrats in 403 (Xn. Hell. 2.4.19), as a modest and ingenuous youth, as good as he is beautiful. Critias is older, though still a young man, and is the guardian of Charmides (155 a, 176c).4 As in the Lysis (p. 135 above), the characters exemplify in their own persons the trait which is the subject of the dialogue. Charmides
by self-interest and based on equal social standing (p. 43), but does not mention the passage about a slave. On Adkinss view of the general Greek attitude see also O Brien, Socr. Parad. 31 n. 18. 1 For useful bibliography see the notes to Herters 1970 article. 2 A few examples: later than Lysis , von Arnim ( Jugendd. 6 3f., 138), Thompson (Phaedr. xxvi); closely related to it (its twin), Wilamowitz (Pl. 1, 187, 189). Ritter (Essence 27, reviving an older view) puts Charm, in the first of six groups and Lysis in the fourth, with Symp. and Phaedo. Presupposes Euthydemus, Erbse (Hermes 1968, 37); a little earlier than Euthyd., von Arnim (o.c. 112). See also Raeder, P .s Ph. Ent. 97, Tuckey, Charm. 1, Ross, P T I 11. 3 After the battle at Potidaea in 432 (C A H v, 186 and 475; Hammond, Hist. 660). See also Witte, o.c. 41 f. S.s service at Potidaea is mentioned again at Apol. 28 e and Symp. 219 e. 4 For Platos relationship to Critias and Charmides see above, p. 11. That Charmides in youth was exceptionally modest and retiring is repeated by Xen. (Mem. 3.7), who says that Socrates persuaded him to enter public life. Plato mentions him again in the Prot. (315 a) among the Sophists followers. A full account of Critias is given in vol. i i i , 298-304. See also Tuckeys appraisal of both (Charm. i6f.) and Witte, W. v. G. u. B . 46-53.
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Mastery of the baser desires is not mentioned among the definitions offered by Charmides and Critias in this dialogue. This, Witte suggests (o.c. 39), is because they represent, not the popular or demotic element, but different ideals current in the aristocratic circle of Platos own family. The emphasis, in the introductory part, on the nobility of the company is certainly remarkable and at i57d -e Socrates says that his noble ancestry makes it only natural that Charmides should be out standingly sophrn. Nevertheless there is much to be said for Friedlnders view ( Pi. 11, 8of.) that, as with courage in the Lysis , Plato is guiding the reader towards his philosophical conception of sophrosyn as coincident with the whole of virtue as a unity, not made up of distinct parts. It would be like him to use even the prejudices of his characters to further his own cause in this way. One reason for our own difficulty in explaining what sophrosyn meant to a Greek is that being a social ideal, it varied at different times as customs and beliefs altered, and at the same time between different social classes. When religion was a strong force, it certainly included a properly deferential attitude of man towards the gods. Moreover in the latter part of the fifth century both the popular and the traditional aristocratic norms were being challenged in favour of the out-and-out selfish tyranny of the strong man, the view represented by Callicles and opposed by Plato in the Gorgias. (See vol. in, 101 ff.) Sophrosyn in the ordinary sense Callicles dismisses as folly and cowardice (491 c-e). This disparagement of it, says Plato in another context (Rep. 56od), marks the transition from the oligarchic to the democratic and anarchic character; and Plato himself is echoing almost word for word the remarks of Thucydides on the changing values of ethical terms under the stresses of the Peloponnesian War.1 The pleasure-principle of Antiphon is an example of the same tendency. For Charmides and Critias sophrosyn was a virtue. How they conceived it will emerge from their attempts to define it in the dialogue. Enough has been said to show the impossibility of trying to represent it by a single English word,2 but if one is needed self-control is probably the least inadequate, or in some contexts self-discipline.
1 Vol. hi, 84f. The striking resemblance is noted by Witte, o.c. 24. 2 A few attempts to render it in different languages may however be enlightening. Cicero
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The Charmides
the simple authority of Homer, that modesty is not a good thing for everyone. Well, Ch. has heard it said that sophrosyn means {Thirddefinition) doing ones own, minding ones own business. Can this be the answer? Here S. inflicts some shameless sophistry on the innocent boy. Equating doing with making,1 he asks if it would be good for a society if everyone made and washed his own clothes, was his own cobbler, potter and everything else. Obviously it would not, but this is to stand the ordinary meaning of minding ones own business on its head. S. claims it is the obvious meaning, and concludes that whoever defined sophrosyn in this way must have been speaking in riddles. Critias had been showing growing signs of impatience, thereby confirming S.s suspicions that he was the author of the definition. Ch., anxious to hand over the discussion, provokes him further into a burst of anger, and he takes up the defence himself. Cr. begins correctly by pointing out that making is not doing. A craftsman may make the things of others (e.g. shoes for dozens of customers) but at the same time be doing his own business.2 Then, quoting Hesiods No work brings disgrace,3 he claims that Hesiod could have had no low or disreputable occupations in mind. He meant good and useful works, for these alone are what properly belong to a man,4 and it is in this sense that sophrosyn is doing ones own. It amounts, then, simply to this, that Cr. defines sophrosyn as (Fourth definition) the doing of good things. Questioned by S., Cr. agrees that whoever is sophrn must know
1 ^ , 162 a. 2 The point was more difficult for a Greek, because whereas meant solely doing or acting, was used for both acting and making, ; usually meant What are you doing?, but with a direct object (a house, ship, statue etc.) it meant making or creating. To add to the confusion, meant both deeds (as object of ) and material works, as of a sculptor, builder etc. (as object of ), to say nothing of tilled lands (relevant to Cr.s introduction of Hesiod). To distinguish from is not, as Tuckey claims (p. 20), sophistical. At Euthyd. 284 b-c their confusion is used to prove a sophism. 3 W. and D. 311. The accusation of misusing this line to justify reprehensible activities was brought against Socrates himself. See Xen. Mem. 1.2.56, and Witte, o.c. 81. 4 . On this word see pp. 142. i, 149 above. Witte (o.c. 83) says that its equation with betrays Cr.s aristocratic affiliations. As pointed out on pp. 149^ Plato himself adhered to it; but his idea of goodness went deeper than the snobbish ideal of Cr.
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The Charmides
desire or wish which are not for pleasant or good things but for themselves, and similarly with love or fear, or an opinion which is of itself and other opinions rather than of the usual objects of opinion. There follows (168b) a passage in which a peculiarity of the Greek language enables Plato to draw a facile analogy between the objective and comparative uses of the genitive case. Knowledge is relative, it must be o f something (tiv); and what is larger is larger than something (also tiv); and if anything were larger, heavier etc. than itself it would also be smaller, lighter etc.1 The general point that emerges is that whatever exercises its function in relation to itself will have the character () of that to which its function is related. Thus to hear itself, hearing must be audible, to see itself sight must be coloured. With comparatives the reflexive relationship is clearly impossible, but as to subject and object, S. declares himself incapable of deciding for certain whether anything can exercise its powers on itself (he adds the examples of self-burning heat and a self-moving motion), whether, if so, this applies to knowledge, and whether, if it does, this knowledge of knowledge is sophrosyn. Since Cr. has been reduced to equal perplexity, S. suggests that they assume for the present that knowledge of knowledge is possible, and go on to the question of its usefulness. Will it enable a man to know what he knows and what he does not know? Cr. thinks that is just what knowledge of knowledge means, but S. is sceptical. It is none of the special sciences - not knowledge of medicine for instance, or politics - but only that peculiar one which recognizes knowledge as such. Hence a man equipped with it, but not with knowledge of medicine or music or architecture, cannot thereby judge of what he knows or does not know, but only that he knows. Nor can he test the knowledge of others. He cannot tell an expert physician from a quack, for that requires a knowledge of medicine. He will simply be aware that the man has a certain knowledge, but what it is knowledge of, sophrosyn, conceived as knowledge, will not tell him. Such knowledge serves no useful purpose. It would be different if it did enable us to know what we and others know and what we dont.
1 Crombie (E P D i, 21) thinks the logical point about irreflexive relations must have been added by Plato for its own sake, because it is not essential to the context.
161
12-2
162
The Charmides
its nature, in spite of making all sorts of concessions. We granted, against the argument, that there is a knowledge of knowledge, and that it could recognize the products of other kinds of knowledge, in order to allow that the sophrn knew that he knew what he knew and that he did not know what he did not know, though it is impossible to have any knowledge of what one does not know. Still the argument mocked us by proving that sophrosyn was useless. It would be sad to think that Charmides will be no better off for all his beauty and sophrosyn, but it cannot be true. It is just that S. is hopelessly bad at investigation and argument. Comment The Charmides is a curious and difficult dialogue, described with some feeling by Crombie as one whose point it is very hard to see ( E P D I, 2ii). It repeats familiar Socratic elements: the ignorance of Socrates, the paramount need to tend the psyche, the search for definition of a particular virtue, the insistence that if Charmides is temperate he must have an idea what temperance is, criticism of the definitions offered and apparent failure of them all, the idea that sophrosyn (like any virtue) involves self-knowledge. But the Socratic tenets themselves lead to surprising difficulties if one follows out their implications. Socrates said he had only one advantage over other men: not in possessing any positive knowledge but in knowing his own ignorance. But how does one know what one does not know? It sounds like a contradiction. Does it simply mean knowing that one does not know? But then one must ask: knowing that one does not know what? Again, the Delphic injunction Know thyself was at the heart of Socratess teaching. Here however it leads to the assertion that sophrosyn is knowledge of itself, and the question is seriously, confusingly and fruitlessly1 discussed whether and how there can be a knowledge of knowledge (for knowledge regularly has an object outside itself, as medical knowledge has health), and if there can, what would be the use of it. It is reasonable to conclude
1 There are of course other opinions. Gauss (Handkomm. 1.2.98) holds that, in view of the discussion of knowledge of knowledge, if P. had left us nothing but the Charm., he would still have to be reckoned among the greatest philosophers of all time.
163
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The Charmides
he was brought up. The sayings of Chilon, one of the Seven Sages, contain, besides an admonition to behave quietly and peaceably and shun talkativeness, a warning against haste in the street (D K vol. i, p. 63). In Aristophanes the old education in sophrosyn enjoined silence and orderly walking in the streets ( Clouds 961-4). Chilon was a Spartan (cf. Prot. 343 a), and for a high-born Athenian Sparta was the model, where it was approved practice to walk the streets in silence, not looking round but only at what is before ones feet (Xen. Rep. Lac . 3.4). Critias himself wrote eulogistic accounts of Sparta in prose and verse. Thus both these definitions of sophrosyn are just what one would expect from a youth like Charmides. Later, in a more mature analysis in the Politicus (3060-307^, Plato describes restraint and slowness, and speed and vigour, as equally admirable qualities, either of which, however, could be displayed unseasonably or to excess. The ideal character is a blend of the two ^ io d - e ) .1 To get from his respondent the admission (159 c) that a virtue, or virtue itself, is necessarily good is common form in Socratess method of refutation. (Cf. Laches 192 c, Meno 87 d, Prot. 349 e.) He can then argue syllogistically against the proposition that V (a virtue) is x : V is necessarily good, a: is sometimes bad, therefore V is not x .2 After the second definition Charmides agrees that sophrosyn is not only kalon (fine, praiseworthy) but also agathon (160e); and since this in regular usage included the notion of good fo r a person or a purpose, he is easily tripped up. Homers dictum was that modesty is not good for a poor man ( Od. 17.347, quoted also at Laches 201 b). Third definition: sophrosyn is minding ones own business, or more literally, doing ones own (161 b). Here the dialogue presents its first puzzle. Everyone knows that this is the final outcome of the search for justice, the highest virtue, in the Republic; namely that
1 These passages are cited by Witte, o.c. 64, 25, 26,71. For Critias on the Spartans see vol. hi, 302. These observations ought perhaps to modify the remarks of Classen, Sprachl. Deut. 106. 2 Cf. Witte, o.c. 71 f., though how far S.s argument resembled the Sophistic is perhaps doubtful. W. (who dismisses the argument as an eristisches Kunststck, p. 68) refers to Aristotle, S E i65b7ff., but at least the second premise is always a true , not merely v 5. No ordinary person will deny that courage, sophrosyn or excellence in general () is good and praiseworthy.
165
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The Charmides
the accuser of one of the Thirty Tyrants (to whom Critias also belonged) says that no doubt he will describe himself as a decent, orderly character, not headstrong like some, but preferring to do his own.1 Its anti-democratic implications are obvious from the Republic itself, where Plato recommends it on the ground that it would be fatal to the community if an artisan or tradesman, emboldened by wealth, popular support or physical strength, should try to enter the class above him, or one of that (the military) caste aspire to the councils of government (434a-b). It was natural enough, therefore, for Socrates to suspect that Critias was the man from whom Charmides had heard it, whether or not his use of it was a historical fact.2 After the Republic, maturer thought led Plato to point out in the Politicus (307 d-e) that even doing ones own, or minding ones own business, can be carried to excess, inducing an indifference to ones fellows and to the welfare of the whole community, and in foreign relations to defeatism and a policy of peace at any price. This attitude, when it affects matters of high policy, Plato condemns in the strongest terms as the worst possible distemper in a state. Plato knows very well that no one who equates sophrosyn with doing ones own means that we should all make our own clothes and oil-flasks. But the time has come for a new development in the con versation. Socrates has got all that could be expected from Charmides, and wishes to provoke Critias into taking part. This he does by a shameless distortion of the aphorism, which rouses its champion to an angry defence. Charmides, whose boyish innocence is unable to see through the trick, is only too ready to assist Socrates by not only confessing defeat but mischievously suggesting that perhaps his informant did not know what he was talking about, and the change over is made with all desirable dramatic realism. Thus the dialogue conforms to pattern in having a turning-point, marked by the surrender of the respondent and a fresh start on a new
1 Lys. 26.3. The word is brought in a little later, at 26.5. See Classen, Sprachl. Deut. 100 and Witte, o.c. 43 f., for the quotations. 2 Many have thought Critias the originator of the phrase, and Diels-Kranz even include it among his fragments (41a). See Tigerstedt, L . of S. 537, Herter, Festschr. Vretska 84 n. 3 and Witte, o.c. 39 n. 85, for details. More probably it was a floating catch-phrase (cf. the of the Tim.), but one which would certainly be a favourite with Critias. See on this question Classen, Sprachl. Deut. 99-101 (with a rich selection of ancient quotations).
167
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The Charmides
is in the Delphic precept Know thyself (164(d). It is, then, a form of knowledge.1 Thus Critias has presented Socrates with his own doctrine that virtue (or a virtue) is knowledge, and even more precisely that sophrosyn is self-knowledge, the doctrine of the first Alcibiades.2 Here however it leads to a tangle of difficulties of which the Alcibiades knows nothing. They arise from the sudden and surprising identification of knowledge of oneself with knowledge of itself i.e. of knowledge, with the even more surprising rider that the knowledge which is its object is not simply that which sophrosyn has at first been said to consist of, namely a mans knowledge of himself, but must be understood universally, as knowledge of all knowledge. At 166 c Critias says (and repeats it at 166e) that alone among forms of knowledge it is knowledge of itself and of other kinds of knowledge. The identification, knowledge of him s = knowledge of zVself, looks like a fallacy, and has often been branded as such,3 but if we are to follow Plato in his efforts to make philosophic sense of Socratic ethics, we must accept that it is taken as natural by both Socrates and Critias, and hence presumably by Plato himself. It is seen most clearly at 169e, where Critias says: When a man has knowledge, he is knowing, and when he has knowledge whose object is itself, he will know himself. I dont dispute it, replies Socrates. Seen in the framework of the dialogue, the transition could well appear an inevitable consequence of statements already made. We
1 The transition from to (often distinguished as representing con natre and savoir respectively), introduced by S. at 165c, is made much of by Tuckey (30f., 38). Reading on, however (see especially Critias at id-e), one must say with Witte (o.c. 109, comparing Prot. 352c and Rep. 4766-4776) that Plato regularly uses simply as the substantive corresponding to the verb . (At 169 e $ is treated as a synonym.) This does of course lead to ambiguity, since has overtones both practical and theoretical which lacks. 2 Ale. /, 131b , 133c. See vol. hi, 471 f. Whether or not Ale. I is by Plato, I take it as a reliable source for Socratic teaching. For J. I. Beare (Essays Ridgeway 43 f.) Ale. I must be earlier than Charm., whereas for Friedlander (PL 11, 80) it is later. 3 Herter (Fesrtschr. Vretska 76 f. with notes) and Tuckey (32-6) refer to earlier critics who have so condemned it, Herter also (p. 77) to some who have seen nothing wrong. His own solution involves the full-blown theory of Forms: is a Form, the an appearance (79 f.), and $ in the realm of Forms corresponds to in the sensible world (81). On the next page, speaking of sight seeing itself, he even mentions the of the Sophist. I do not find this convincing, but as I have said (pp. 15 2 f.), the gap between those who do not and those who do think it right to explain any and every dialogue in the light of P.s mature and late work will probably never be bridged.
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which assumed enormous importance later on. The great man whom Socrates desiderated in this case (169 a) turned out to be Aristotle, with his proof of the impossibility of self-action based on the doctrine of potentiality and actuality: what causes change or motion must be in actuality with respect to the change to be caused (what heats must be hot, to teach geometry one must have learned it, and in general what brings something about already possesses the form), and what is acted upon must be only potentially in that state. Hence to speak of something being the object of its own action would involve the absurdity of saying that it is simultaneously in act and in potency with respect to the same act of change. This was a refinement on Plato himself, who in his maturity believed firmly in self-movement, identified with the life-force ( psyche), as the source of all other, and this difference between the two thinkers determined the difference between their conceptions of deity.1 No hint of these momentous consequences is present here, where he can only pass on with the remark that the conception of self-action is improbable though perhaps not impossible. Some have doubted the wisdom of including the emotions here. One may surely speak of a fear of fear (i.e. of showing cowardice), and an ageing man may, unlike Sophocles, regret the passing of desire.2 But the inaccuracy of citing these as instances of something acting on itself would have been pounced on by Aristotle as he showed up the looseness of talking about a doctor curing himself ( Phys. 192b 24): in fact one thing (his mind with its medical knowledge) acts on another (his body). Similarly the desire which has desire for its object is different from its object, desire for a woman. Even if Plato could not formulate this as Aristotle did, some such awareness may have been in his mind. It is difficult to be sure. Since neither of them can decide whether a knowledge of knowledge is possible, they pass to the question whether, were it possible, it would be of any use. In fact Socratess way of proving its uselessness
1 Ar. Phys. 8.5; Plato Phaedrus 245c, Tim. 89a, Laws 8950-8963. Cherniss (.A C P A 435) thought it probable that P. already accepted the concept of self-motion in the Charm. 2 Cf. Goethes quatrain quoted in Tuckey, p. 45: G ib .. .die Macht der Liebe, gib meine Jugend mir zurck.
I7I
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The Charmides
that (say) astronomy is a science, without any knowledge o f its subject.1 Sixth andfinal definition : the knowledge of good and evil. If knowledge of knowledge and ignorance did mean what Socrates originally supposed, it might be expected to guarantee happiness in individuals and states, and one of the best things in the dialogue (or at least the most pertinent to the present day) is the vivid picture of a society run entirely by experts, in which no one is allowed to undertake a task dependent on technical training, from shoemaking or weaving to government, unless perfectly qualified, yet which lacks the one essential for happiness, a knowledge of ends as well as means. Through it Critias is made, by Socratic dialectic, to utter from his own lips Socratess own conception of the knowledge which will ensure that we live well and happily: it is the knowledge by which we know good from evil, or in more Socratic and less biblical language, the truly beneficial from the useless or harmful. The preceding argument has forbidden them to call this sophrosyn, so the dialogue as a search for the essence of this virtue ends in failure, since it has led to the unacceptable conclusion that sophrosyn is no good. So did the Laches, on the different ground that courage (like the recipe for happiness here) appeared to consist in a knowledge of good and evil, but that would make it the whole of virtue instead of a part, including (we must note) sophrosyn (199 d). The Charmides, like the other early definition-dialogues, drives home by its apparent failure the Socratic lesson that virtue is one, and consists in knowledge, knowledge of oneself and of what is, and what is not, good, useful or beneficial essentially and without exception. In this conviction Socrates had lived and died. He could never state positively that he possessed this knowledge, only exhort his friends to join him in the search as the most worth-while thing in life. (Cf. vol. in, 442 fr.) Plato was deter mined to discover it, but first he must draw out and understand the philosophical implications of Socratess simple, practical ethic. The
1 i7oa6-8. I owe much to Tuckeys discussion of the C h a r m but find it difficult to agree that the use of the plural is meant by P. to indicate that knowing that one knows is meaningless unless one knows what one knows (p. 64).
I74
Authenticity. The genuineness of the Hippias M ajor (so called as the longer of two dialogues named after Hippias) was not doubted in antiquity, and it is included in the canon of Thrasyllus (pp. 390*. above). But since the beginning of the nineteenth century it has been alternately attacked and defended with equal vigour.1 Many of the arguments used are of the subjective, unworthy-of-Plato type. The author had no sure feeling for the style of the young Plato, says Gauss, and Hippias is represented as much too stupid. Dorothy Tarrant notes confusion and strangeness of language, and she and others choose to interpret coincidences of language or substance with other dialogues as imitation on the part of the unknown writer. (One thing one learns from reading Plato intensely enough to write about him is that he was an inveterate repeater of himself - even to the point of tedium.) A close verbal parallel in Aristotle (Top. 146a21) with H. M aj. 298a is dismissed by Tarrant as no sure indication that he knew the H. M aj.\ whereas to Ross it was a clear allusion and to Grube an obvious borrowing.2 Sceptics differ as to the date of their imitation. Tarrant follows Wilamowitz in believing it to be the work of a young pupil of the Academy in Platos lifetime, Pohlenz put it in the time of Aristotle, while Gigon and Gauss (who regard it with considerable contempt) deem it a product of the Hellenistic age.3 Here it will be treated as
1 For a convenient brief survey of the controversy up to 1953 see Soreth, H. Maj. 1-4. Her whole work is a powerful defence of its genuineness. Reff, for both sides are given by Friedl., PI. 11, 316 f., n. 1 (1964) and Hoerber in Phron. 1964, 143. An adequate idea of the facts and fancies pro and contra will be gained by comparing the work of D. Tarrant, H. Maj. 1928 and CQ 1927 (contra) with that of Grube in CQ 1926 and C P 1929 (pro). Recent defenders of genuineness are R. Robinson, Crombie, Ryle and J. Malcolm. See Malcolm in AG Ph 1968, 189 with n. 2. Tarrant, H. Maj. p. x, Ross, P T I 3 f., Grube, CQ 1926, i34f. and 147. Similarly Tarrant (xv) inferred from a parallel in Xen. Mem. 4.4.5 that the writer of H. Maj. knew the Memorabilia, whereas Taylor (P M W 29) thought Xenophon might have had in mind the opening remarks of the Hippias. 3 Or in Gausss more picturesque phrase, a Hellenistic cookshop of literary forgeries (Handk. 1.2.208, where Gigon is quoted). For the young contemporary of Plato see Wilamowitz, Pl. i i , 328f., Tarrant, H. Maj. xvi and lxv ( a young man in close touch with Plato - probably a student of the Academy), CQ 1927, 87. One feels some surprise that a young man like this should write a reductio ad absurdum of the ontology of the Phaedo (Tarrant ll.cc.; cf. Grube, CQ 1926, 141), and still more that he did not even know Greek properly ( CQ 1927, 84, on 286d).
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180
182
83
3.8.6-7O
The second attempt (gold), ridiculous as it sounds, does show some understanding of the difference between what is beautiful and what makes things beautiful, but is quickly shown to be not universally applicable and leads on to the First definition which satisfies the Socratic criterion of generality (290 d): Whatever suits, or is appro priate to something makes it beautiful (though in fact Hippias has not demonstrated its universality, i.e. that everything beautiful owes its beauty to suitability). The preliminary discussion of this provokes the genuinely Socratic observation, apropos of the golden and wooden spoons, that what serves its purpose best, and is most in place, is ipso facto both best and most beautiful.2 For Socrates, appropriate and useful coincide. Here the incensed Hippias interrupts to lift the talk from soup-ladles to higher things. His attempt is of purely
1 By Moreau in R E G 1941, 27 f., and independently by Malcolm, AG Ph 1968, 191 f. Moreau sees the whole doctrine, Malcolm a major step towards it. With this argument, he says, P. is moving from logic to ontology. Yet although he is explicitly contrasting H. Maj. with Euthyphro and Laches Malcolm does not mention the sentence at Euth. 8 a. Nor does he mention Laches 192c, where it is certainly shown that endurance (offered as a definition of courage) can be both beautiful and ugly (which courage cannot). This case differs in that endurance proves to be not too narrow but too wide a definition; but it should be taken into account. In Euth. and Lach, it is not (as it is in H. Maj.) comparison which shows particulars to have contrary qualities, but neither is it at Phaedo 74b or Rep. 479b, and at Symp. 2 io e -2 iia this is only one of a number of ways in which it is true. 2 See vol. in, 388 f., 462-4, esp. Xen. Mem. 3.8.4-7 on p. 464. Moreau {I.e. 30) thought that = had an incontestably Platonic sound, and although the only other occurrence he can quote is in Ale. I (135 b), he is probably right; or rather it is Socratic, adopted by P.
184
185
186
187
188
189
I9O
Authenticity and date. Though some nineteenth-century critics doubted it on moral grounds (Apelt called it a kind of apologia for sin, and spoke of its reversal of all moral ideas),1 it is now widely accepted that Aristotles reference to it by name is a guarantee of Platonic authorship.2 It is also almost universally thought to be either the earliest, or among the earliest, of Platos dialogues.3 Wilamowitz,
1 For the bearing of such considerations on the authorship cf. Grote I, 388: These critics cannot bear to admit any Platonic work as genuine unless it affords them ground for superlative admiration and glorification of the author. Tarrant (H. Maj. 31 f.) rejected it because the character of H. is tame and indefinite in comparison with H. Maj. and the style and vocabulary are undistinguished. Contrast Taylor, P M W 35: much more brilliantly executed than the H. Maj : 2 At Metaph. 1025a6, Arist. criticizes the argument in the H. that the same man is both true and false. He does not mention Plato, but on this see Grote and Taylor ll.cc. 3 Von Arnim is unusual in putting it after Gorg. and Meno. (See Rosss table, P T I 2.) More typical opinions are: a first attempt (Zeller 2.1.479), une tmrit de jeunesse. . . un des premiers essais (Croiset, Bud ed. 20-1), Plato. . .adolescens (Stallbaum, Menex. etc. 274), le premier en date peut-tre des crits platoniciens (Moreau, R E G 1941, 41). One troublesome point is usually ignored, namely an obvious reference from one dialogue to the other. At H. Maj. 286 b, H. invites S. to an epideixis on Homer which he is soon to give at the request of one Eudicus. At the beginning of H. Min. he has just given it, and Eudicus asks S. what he thinks of it. To Wilamowitz this was no problem: H. Maj. was spurious, and
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194
*95
196
459 f
197
19 8
The Ion
Plato, and what can be said in its favour has been said in vol. m .1 When based on the craft analogy in the crude form in which we have it here in the Hippias and in the early part of the Gorgias, it un doubtedly involves a fallacy. To Socrates the truth of the doctrine was obvious, and he was probably unaware that one of his favourite arguments for it was, taken at its face value, unsound. It needed, at the least, support from his belief about the nature and needs of the psyche, which not everyone would accept. Since Plato took it over from him, we need not be surprised if he needed a little time to advance beyond it. But his more complex and searching mind would soon be assailed by doubts, and I suggest that in this reductio ad absurdum of the consequences of admitting the notion of conscious and voluntary wrongdoing we have one of his early attempts at defending it. (9)
TH E IO N 2
Authenticity and date. Though the list of scholars who, in the past, have rejected the Ion is, in E. N. Tigerstedts word, imposing, and Ritter in 1910 claimed to have proved it spurious by language-statistics, few would doubt today that it is Platos own work.3 Estimates of its date have varied from before the death of Socrates to 391, the most probable estimate being between 394 and 39 1.4 It bears all the marks of an early Socratic dialogue, and Wilamowitz, who dated it before 399, saw it as the attempt of a tiro (PL 11, 36).5
1 See pp. 450ff., and for its retention by P. the reff, on p. 460 n. 1. 2 For a critical review of previous scholarship (before 1958) see the introduction to Flashars Der Dial. Ion. 3 Tigerstedt, P .s Idea of Poet. Insp. 18, Ritter, N . Unters. 217. There is also a compromise theory that it was sketched out by P. and finished by a pupil. (So Diller in Hermes 1955, following Schleiermacher.) 4 On the question of date, including historical allusions to the Asclepieia and Panathenaea at 53oa-b, and to events and personalities at 541 c-d, see Flashar, o.c. 96-105. If these allusions are as commonly interpreted, it seems we must admit that P. saw no objection to making S. refer to events after his death. (See however Wilam. 11, 33. On anachronisms in P. see p. 215 n. i below.) The Menex. provides an even more glaring anachronism; that in the Symp. is probable though not perhaps certain. (See pp. 313, 365 below.) 5 Exceptions to an early dating relative to other dialogues have been few. Wyller (Symb. Osl. 1958, 38 n. 1) put it in the ambience of Gorg. and Meno as having structurally and the matically nothing to do with the aporetic Socratic group; and Gauss (Handk. 2.1.12) put it late in the early group because he saw in it Platos rejection of Socratic rationalism. (Contrast Stallbaum, Menex. etc. 339: Omnia spirant sapientiam artemque mere fere Socraticam.)
199
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The Ion
questions.1 Outside the Ion there is no evidence that these com mentators were ever called rhapsodes, and the most reasonable con clusion is that Ion (who is otherwise unknown, and for all we know invented by Plato for his own purposes) is exceptional among rhapsodes in combining recitation with exposition. He himself says that his fine thoughts on Homer deserve a golden crown from the Homeridae (53od), thus linking his activities with theirs.
The dialogue (Direct dramatic form) Socrates meets Ion of Ephesus, fresh from victory in a contest of rhapsodes at Epidaurus, and hoping for similar success at the Panathenaea. S. envies rhapsodes: they not only wear bodily adornments worthy of their art but spend their lives with great poets, especially Homer the greatest and most divine of all, learning his verses and understanding his mind also, for a good rhapsode is the interpreter of the poets thoughts to his audience.2 Ion agrees. This has been his chief endeavour, and he can utter such fine thoughts on Homer that he deserves a crown from the Homeridae. Not even Metrodorus, Stesimbrotus or Glaucon could excel him.3 In answer to questions from S., Ion insists that his expository powers are confined to Homer, but admits, first, that where Homer and Hesiod agree he could discuss both equally well,
1 See Phaedrus 252b and Isocr., Hel. 65, which fit well with Ion 53od and Rep. 599e. Rzach ( R E 2148) oddly uses these latter as evidence for a different, more general use of the name Homeridae as venerators or admirers of Homer. Though he does not mention them, he is presumably taking the words , which occur at Ion 536d, 541e and elsewhere (Prot. 309a, Rep. 6o6e), to refer to the Homeridae (like Stallbaum, Menex. etc. 331 f.). 2 That is, by the way he delivers them, as an actor interprets a part. There is no reason to think that in this ironical praise S. has anything more than recitation in mind, though as it turns out Ion interprets in other ways too. 3 Metrodorus of Lampsacus, said to have been a friend of Anaxagoras, was noted for his fanciful interpretations of the Homeric poems as allegories of natural phenomena. Texts are in DK ii, 49, no. 61. See also ZN 1.2.1185 n. 2, 1254 n. 4, and Nestles article in Philol. 1907. For Stesimbrotus see R E 2. Reihe, vi. Halbb. 2463 f. It will be noted that neither of these, with whom Ion compares himself as an expositor, was a rhapsode. At Xen. Symp. 3.6 Stesimbrotus is expressly contrasted with rhapsodes because, unlike them, he understands the hidden meanings of the poems, (, i.e. allegory, cf. Rep. 378d, Plut. De aud. poet. 19e.) The identity of Glaucon is not quite certain (Flashar, Der D. Ion 35).
201
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a god who simply uses them as a mouthpiece.1 Think of Tynnichus, a man who never wrote a good poem in his life, till suddenly he wrote the paean which everyone is singing. Clearly the god had chosen to demonstrate through the most wretched of poets that good poetry is not a human achievement at all. Ion is delighted ( Your words go straight to my heart), and fully ready to agree that as mediator between poet and listener he himself is a link in the chain of the possessed. When he is rendering pathetic or terrifying scenes, his eyes fill with tears and his hair stands on end - hardly sane behaviour, as S. points out, for one attending a festival in festal garb and surrounded by friendly faces. And the magnetism runs through him to the last link in the chain, his audience, who are affected in the same way. (If they were not, says Ion, he would be the one to weep, for loss of his reward.) So (continues S.), just as different Muses inspire different poets, a particular poet can pass on the afflatus to a rhapsode. Ion is possessed by Homer, and by this possession, not by any skill or science, can appreciate and expound him. To this shifting of the ground from recitation to criticism and exegesis Ion demurs: no one who hears him talk on Homer could think he was possessed and out of his mind. On what Homeric topics, then, can Ion discourse? On all, is the reply. S. then shows, by copious quotation, that Homer often writes quite technically of various accomplishments - driving, medicine, fishing, prophecy - and gets Ions agreement to the principle that different arts represent different types of knowledge, and that the best judge of whether Homer is writing well on each art is the expert in that art. What, then, in Homer, pertains to the rhapsodes art so that Ion, who is a rhapsode, will be the proper judge of it? He is still inclined to answer Everything, but being reminded that he is contradicting himself, claims for it everything except what is the
1 , 534^; \ , 534e with its cognates, usually translated interpreter etc., has two meanings: (i) interpreter, i.e. translator from a foreign tongue or explainer of the obscure; (2) messenger or go-between, simply reporting what he is told. So at Rep. 524b, where interpretation or explanation would make no sense, Symp. 202e, and here. To mistranslate it at 534e4 as interpreters, with Jowett and others, is to destroy the point which S. wishes to emphasize, the utter passivity of the poet. A man cannot interpret when out of his wits, ol vous 534d 3. Hence Ions demurral at 536d.
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divided against himself, an anti-Platon chez Platon . The resulting in terest in the Ion has been widespread ever since Goethe, whom most commentators mention1 along with Platos own remark in the Republic (607b) about the old disagreement between philosophy and poetry - though as to that, they themselves disagree. When Grube says that both the inspiration of the poet and the beauty of his work are here freely admitted, and there is here no quarrel between poetry and philosophy, so long as poetry does not. . . lay any claim to knowledge, he might be directly challenging Jowetts The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry. . . is already working in the mind of Plato, and is embodied by him in the contrast between Socrates and Ion.2 The first thing to strike a modern reader must be the total in comprehension of the nature of poetry shown by Socrates in the questions through which he tries to elicit the requirements of a good critic. He approaches a poem as if it were a textbook of practical instruction in some craft or mode of life, to be judged only by an expert in the particular practice described. Aesthetic criteria are never mentioned, and although for a moment he waxes lyrical in describing the divine afflatus, we are bound to remember this same inspiration being mentioned in the Apology with obviously ironical intent simply as the reason why no poet seems to understand his own poems. Though we are entitled to criticize the Greeks from our own point of view, to understand Plato we must know what was expected o f a poet, how his task was conceived by himself and his audience (for poetry was written to be heard, not read), in the fifth and fourth centuries b . c . We know that in general his function was held to be primarily didactic, and that up to the fifth century moral and political advice was commonly offered in metrical form. This has been illustrated in the last volume (29 f.). We may remind ourselves briefly of Hesiod,
1 See e.g. the reff, in Flashar, o.c. i f. and Leisegang, R E 2377. 2 Grube, P .'s Th. 182, Jowett, Dialogues I, 102. So too Flashar, o.c. p. 1: the old quarrel appears in Ion for the first time as a matter of philosophical concern; and Friedlnder, PI. 11, 136: That ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry . . .cut through the centre of his own existence. . . Plato has grasped the Heraclitean tension in his own nature as a thinker and has given it form as a poet. Unlike Grube too, Wilamowitz (PI. 11, 43) thought that here P. makes only the negative point that poets have no knowledge. Only much later, in the Phaedrus, did he recognize the good in their unconscious creation.
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all those who came to T ro y (//. 2.484-92). Hesiod and Pindar express a similar relationship.1 The poet receives supernatural aid in his story, as do his heroes in their adventures, but there is no question of possession, ecstasy or frenzy. The Muse is not in the poet, replacing his own mind, as Dionysus is in the bacchants, with whom Plato compares the poet in the Ion (534a). There may even have been an element of novelty in Platos claim that when a poet wrote well he was divinely inspired, possessed and out of his mind (^, ). It cannot be traced further back than Democritus, who, though an older man, lived well into Platos lifetime.2 Later, in Cicero, Democritus and Plato are cited by name as sole authorities for the doctrine that no poet can be great or good without the inspiration of madness caused by a divine power. Horace derides those who, because Democritus rated ingenium (Gk. physis, natural gifts) above ars (Gk. techn, cf. Ion 533e6) and admitted only mad poets to Helicon, let their nails and beards grow, gave up washing and sought remote places.3 If Plato, as many have thought, borrowed his ideas of poetic inspiration from Democritus,4 it is certain that (if not in the Ion, then in his later works) he transformed them into something peculiarly his own. The thesis that a mystical explanation of poetry on the lines of Dionysiae possession did not appear until the fifth century, and was a philosophic refinement on a mere Homeric conception of the relation between the poet and the divine powers, cannot perhaps be taken as proved, depending as it does on an argument ex silentio; 5 but historical
1 Dodds, o.c. 82 and nn. 121 and 122 on p. 101. But see also Tigerstedts critical note, J H I 1970, 169 n. 32. 2 For his date, see vol. 11, 386 n. 2. But to the authorities there mentioned should be added H. de Ley in LAnt. Cl. 1968, 621-6, who argues again that D. was at least as old as Socrates. 3 Hor. A .P . 295-8, Cic. Div. 1.38.80, De or. 2.46.194. D .s theories of inspiration are mentioned in vol. 11, 476 f., and fully treated by Delatte, Conceptions etc. 28-79. The relevant frr. in D K are 18 and 21. 4 For a comparison between D. and the /on, see Delatte, o.c. 57 ff., who believed that even the striking figure of the magnetized rings may be owed to D .s scientific interest in magnetism. Close relationship is suggested by a comparison of the language of D., fr. 18 (what a poet writes ) with that of Apol. 22 b c: like prophets, poets say ^. For the combination of and cf. D., fr. 21 " ^. (On ^, Delatte 32 ^) 5 And it has to be noted that in the Laws (719 c) P. himself refers it to a and says that everyone believes it; but this may be a literary artifice. On the whole question Tigerstedt in J H I 1970 provides a thorough review of modern scholarship, and his conclusion is the one adopted here.
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Plato (and these included Ion; see 542b and cf. 536d, 541e), claim that he is the educator of Greece, and that for culture and the manage ment of human affairs one should read and order ones whole life by him (Rep. 606 e). Some say that Homer, and the tragedians his followers, understood everything about technical skills, the virtues and vices of humanity, and religion; and that a good poet must know his subject if he is to write at all (ib. 598e). When therefore Plato criticizes the claims of the poets, and of current panegyrics on Homer by the Homeridae and others,1 he is not just perversely distorting the nature of poetry but faithfully representing it as it still appeared to most of his contemporaries.2 This view of it as the complete guide to practical achievement and moral conduct he rejected on both intellectual and ethical grounds. It was spurious, because in fact Homer and the others did not under stand the technical or other principles underlying the actions which they describe; and many of their stories, even of the behaviour of. the gods, were the reverse of morally edifying. Their ignorance is already remarked on in the Apology, and his main onslaught on both counts, but especially on their moral influence, comes in the Republic (pp. 45if. below). Taught by Socrates to reject the image of the poet as sophistes, with a wisdom and knowledge of his own, Plato offered, as an alternative explanation of their utterance of many fine things, his theory of divine possession, of the poet as a mindless medium for a gods utterance just like the prophetess (Ion 534c-d), of whose maddened mouth Heraclitus had spoken in the previous century (fr. 92). But how seriously did Plato hold this theory, and what was its effect on his estimation of the value of poetry? This has always been a puzzle, and since he has much more to say about it in later dialogues it certainly cannot be answered from the Ion alone, which it would
1 Some scholars argue that his target here is Ion alone, a particularly foolish rhapsode, others that it is rhapsodes in general but not poets (examples in Flashar, 12 with n. 3), and others that he is only using the rhapsodes to get at the poets (Tigerstedt, o.c. 21 f.). It should be obvious that the subject is both the poets (with particular reference to Homer) and their . About the latter there can be no doubt, and the poets, the first link in the chain that continues to Ion and his audience, can hardly be excluded, especially when one takes the Apology into account. 2 For further evidence, from others besides P., see Verdenius in Mnem. 1943, 246-51. 209
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pretentious and stupid. But as in other early dialogues, Plato is beginning to feel his way beyond Socrates. This first full description of the poets state of mind (or non-mind) is certainly different from the curt dismissal of their god-sent ignorance in the Apology, and a certain note of sympathy has crept in. He never flinched from the thesis that poets, unlike philosophers, wrote without knowledge and without regard to the moral effect of their poems, and that therefore they must be either banned or censored; but I would tentatively suggest that in the theory of divine possession he saw a possible defence of his own susceptibility to their charm (which he confesses at Rep . 607 c), sufficient at least to account for the extremely respectful and honorific cong accorded to a poet in the Republic (398 a). Here we may leave this light-hearted little piece, whose concern with poetry has probably led us to give it more serious attention than is good for the enjoyment that Plato intended it to afford.
ADDENDUM:
TRANSLATIO N
OF
533C -534D
Y o u r speaking so well about Homer is, as I said, not an art. It is a divine force that moves you, like the stone which Euripides calls Magnet [fr. 567 N .] but most people the stone o f Heracles. It not only attracts iron rings but transmits its power to them so that they can do the same, attracting other rings, until sometimes there is a long chain o f bits and rings o f iron suspended from each other, every one o f them depending for its power on the original stone. So too the Muse takes possession o f some men herself, and through these others are filled with her spirit until a chain is formed. A ll good epic poets (and it is the same with lyricists) utter all their fine compositions not through art but because divinely possessed. Just as those under corybantic influence are not sane when they dance,1 so it is not from a sane mind that the lyric poets produce their beautiful songs. W hen once they embark on melody and rhythm, they rave and are possessed, and their souls behave like those o f the bacchants who draw honey and milk from the rivers when the god possesses them, but not when they are in their right minds. Poets say so themselves - tell us, I mean, that the songs which they bring us they draw from honeyed fountains in I know not what gardens and vales o f the Muses - just like bees, and flying like bees too.
1 See Rohde, Psyche (Eng. tr.) p. 307, notes 18 and 19, for some evidence that this comparison is not necessarily flattering to the poets.
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SO CRATIC
d i a l o g u e s
s u m m in g
up
In the nine dialogues of this section Plato gives an affectionate but candid portrait of Socrates as he knew him, and his way of going to work, but at the same time shows himself puzzled, or not fully satisfied, by the philosophical implications of some Socratic tenets and takes a few tentative steps further, thus foreshadowing some of the problems which will concern him deeply later on. As for any doctrine of Forms, some of these dialogues have no connexion with it, and the language of the others does not suggest the transcendence of Forms or anything beyond the conclusions of Socrates as he argued from two premises generally accepted by common sense: (i) If two things are to be called by the same name n they must share a common form or essence which is within each one and gives it (or rather is) its character qua n; if any do not, the common name has been wrongly applied to them. (2) Justice, holiness and other virtues are objective realities.2
1 Song accompanied by dance and pantomimic action (LSJ). 2 For forms in Euthyphro see pp. 1 14-41 above, in Laches 1 33f., in Lysis 150-3, in H. Maj. 188-91.
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V
PROTAGORAS, MENO, EUTHYDEMUS, GORGIAS, M E N E X E N U S
INTRODUCTORY
The dialogues here grouped together have a great deal in common. First, they differ from the previous group in being of much greater length and elaboration. Secondly, though Plato depicted the Sophists in many works, including one called The Sophist, the Protagoras and Euthydemus are the two that are devoted exclusively to them, while the Gorgias shows Socrates combatting an extreme form of sophistic ethics. Protagoras and Meno attack the same question : Can virtue be taught?, and in both Socrates concludes that they have been pre mature in asking it before settling what virtue is. The question recurs in Euthydemus, and the argument that so-called goods only become good through right use, and that therefore knowledge is the only unfailingly good thing, is repeated there and in Meno. An entirely new note is struck in Meno and Gorgias by the introduction of the immortality of the soul, in Meno as a solution to the problem of the possibility of knowledge, and in Gorgias as subject of the first of Platos great eschatological myths designed to demonstrate that the righteous life is, in the end, the most rewarding. The short Menexenus is here treated as a tail-piece to the Gorgias: in the Gorgias Plato said what he thought about contemporary rhetoric and its moral as sumptions, and in the Menexenus he gives a sample of it.
(i)
Date. Many nineteenth-century critics thought the Protagoras a youthful work, written well before the death of Socrates, and for von Arnim in 1914 it was the earliest dialogue of all. Ritter thought it very early both on linguistic grounds and because, like Wilamowitz, he could not believe that Plato would have portrayed Socrates so
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produced in 420 (Athen. 5.218d), must be accepted as an anachronism introduced for the sake of an apt allusion.1 Scene and characters. In no other dialogue has Plato lavished so much care on these, or succeeded so brilliantly in displaying his powers of vivid presentation.2 If the Protagoras conveyed no philosophical lesson, it would remain a superb work of literature. It must be read, not just read about. As we listen through its pages to the talk of some of the most notable intellectual figures of that great generation, each at his most typical (and if with his idiosyncrasies a little exaggerated, none the worse for that), we need no longer ask why, in spite of his disparagement of the written word, Plato chose to write, nor why, precisely on account of it, he chose the dialogue form. We also see Plato exploiting to the full the possibilities of the reported form (already encountered in Lysis and Charmides) for conveying a lively description of setting and people. As a small but striking illustration of his eye for the maximum dramatic effect, we have the comment of Protagoras on the sons of Pericles (328c-d): They are still young, and there is promise in them. Platos first readers knew that, a few years later, the plague carried off both within one week. More than that, Plutarch, who gives this information, quotes a passage written by Protagoras himself in admiration of the exemplary manner in which the great statesman bore this double loss.3 O f the chief characters no more need be said here, as with other Sophists they form the staple subject of Part One of the previous volume. Indeed Protagoras might be said to be its hero.4
1 We shall meet Platos anachronisms again. Some are listed by Robin, Platon 25 f., and Zeller wrote a monograph ber die Anachronismen in den Plat. Gesprchen (1873). 2 The Parasites, a comedy of Eupolis produced in 421, also portrayed a gathering of Sophists and others, including Protagoras, at the house of Callias, and Wilamowitz (PI. 1, 140) assumed that Plato took over the scene. Writing after the deaths of his characters, he may well have found this contemporary satire helpful in restoring them to life for a brief spell. 3 Plut. Cons, ad Apoll. n 8 e -f, Pericles ch. 36. 4 What is known of Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias and Critias is concentrated in ch. 11, but see also the index, for their teachings are distributed through the discussions of the earlier chapters.
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will only accept the advice of a trained expert, whereas on questions of public policy they listen to any citizen, whatever his education or lack of it.1 Moreover, the ablest statesmen do not seem able to impart their accomplishments to others, even their own sons.2 Can Prot. demonstrate that virtue can really be taught ? He replies with a long epideixis,3 beginning with a myth of the origins of society and civilization.4 The upshot of this is that though technical ability sufficient for individual sustenance was original in man as a rational creature, the moral qualities necessary for social and political life were not, but were only acquired after harsh experience of the dangers of living scattered among physically stronger animals. Thus although these virtues are not an original part of human nature, they are necessarily present to some extent in everyone who is neither dead nor a social outcast. This explains why the Athenians admit that every citizen, not just a limited class of trained politicians, may have a contribution to make to the Assembly. At the same time they do agree that it is acquired by teaching in the widest sense, though not necessarily by formal instruction. Life in a civilized community is itself an education in the requisite virtues, just as it is in the native language. From birth onwards the process is carried on by parents, nurses, tutors and schoolmasters, and for adults by the laws, whose primary purpose is educative, and by a mans neighbours, for it is to everyones advantage that his neighbour be just and good. Nor is it true that statesmen do not instruct their sons. If a son is not equal to his father, that is due to a difference of natural endowment. A Sophist like himself can only add the finishing touches which enable a pupil not only to be a good citizen but to occupy a leading position in the state. After expressing his profound admiration, S. confesses characteristi cally that there is just one little point still worrying him. Prot. had
1 For S.s own opinion of the Athenian democratic process see vol. i i i , 409 ff. 2 This argument is repeated at Meno 93a~94e (where to Pericles are added the examples of Themistocles, Aristides and Thucydides) and Ale. I n 8 d -ii9 a . Adkins protests (J H S I973> 4) tH sit S. has only demonstrated that is not taught, not that it is not teachable. But in his view the first, not unreasonably, implied the second. See Meno 89d-e, 96b-c. 3 , 320c, 328b. For these Sophistic displays of eloquence, see vol. iii , 41 f. 4 For a fuller account of Prot.*s speech and its significance see vol. i i i , 63-8, 255 f.
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Eventually Prot. is persuaded, against his will, to resume the method of question and answer but with himself replacing S. as the questioner. When he has put all his questions it will be S.s turn again. His proposal is to approach the nature of virtue by asking questions on a poem of Simonides, the moral exegesis of poetry being, as we know, a common practice of the Sophists. After a few exchanges S., the abhorrer of long speeches, offers to expound his own interpretation of the poets meaning, and encouraged by all three Sophists launches out into a long and ingenious parody of a Sophistic epideixis, which is gravely approved by Hippias but thoroughly distorts the poems meaning and does nothing to further the main argument. He then pleads that they leave this sort of thing (which he compares with substituting cabaret entertainment for serious conversation after dinner) and use their own minds and his own method of the common search. Left to take the lead again, he asks Prot. to repeat his view of the virtues. He replies that they are parts of virtue, most of them quite alike but one - courage -- very different, for a man can be outstandingly brave yet utterly unjust, impious, licentious and stupid. Well, men, they agree, may be bold either through having knowledge (as trained soldiers fight more bravely than untrained) or in ignorance of what they have to face. Only the former have the virtue of courage, for virtue must be something good (p. 165 above), and those who rush ignorantly into dangers are fools.1 Hence it is knowledge which turns mere rashness into courage, which means that the element of courage in an act is in fact knowledge. Prot. objects that S.s argument has been fallacious, and without attempting a defence S. abruptly makes a fresh start. He suggests that whatever is pleasant is in itself (apart from any consequences) good, in fact pleasure itself is good. Prot. thinks this a dangerous doctrine, but agrees to investigate it. Surprisingly perhaps (but as his words make clear, out of professional pride) he accepts at once the full Socratic view that knowledge is sovereign, and a
of those whom nomos divides, for which see vol. i i i , 162, 118-20. Prodicus shows his zeal for making fine distinctions between words loosely used as synonyms, ib. 222. 1 For the relation of this to Laches 193 c, see p. 128 n. 1 above.
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is both better and pleasanter than to shirk it, and the cowards do not. Thus the thesis is proved, that courage is knowledge. In conclusion, S. remarks that he and Prot. seem to have changed places. He, who did not think that virtue could be taught, has done his best to prove it to be knowledge, which, surely, is the proper object of teaching; whereas Prot., who claims that it is teachable, was reluctant to equate it with knowledge. They are confused, and the remedy is to consider first what virtue is, and only after that ask themselves how it is acquired. Another time, says Protagoras, and ends the conversation with some generous compliments on S.s talent for philosophy. Comment As a source of historical information on the Sophists, especially Protagoras himself, Hippias and Prodicus, and the intellectual atmosphere of the second half of the fifth century, the Protagoras has been treated in the previous volume. Here our concern is Plato and Platos Socrates. Adam remarked ( Prot. ix) that no Platonic dialogue is so full of fallacious reasoning, and none contains an ethical theory so difficult to reconcile with other Platonic teaching. Yet its authenticity has never been seriously questioned, because the extraordinary vivacity and power of the dramatic representation, as well as the charm of style, have furnished proofs of authenticity which even the most sceptical critics have been unable to resist. Vignettes like those of the hypochondriac Prodicus, holding forth in a deep booming voice from under a pile of blankets on his bed in a converted store-room, and Hippias dispensing magisterial answers from his thronos to questions on astronomy and related sciences, are indeed memorable. In the earlier dialogues Socrates tackles his adversaries privately before or after their displays,1 or talks to a few friends. Here he both listens to, and plays his part in, a full-dress performance by both the methods advertised by Protagoras and Gorgias - continuous declamation and question-and-answer 2- before a large and distinguished audience. (Twenty of those present are mentioned by name, eight of
1 Cf. H. Maj. 286a-c, H. Min. 363 a-b, Ion 53od. 2 Prot. 329 b, 334 e, Gorg. 447 a-c.
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cut Eleatic alternatives. In admitting that justice and piety exist as things, Protagoras is not of course subscribing to any doctrine of Forms, but simply giving the answer of common sense.1 His further admission, that justice is just and piety pious, in the same sense as their instances, is more questionable. Men and their acts are just, and this makes it natural (even if it raises philosophical difficulties) to say that there is some common quality - justice - which they all share; but whereas just or pious men earn the epithet by paying their debts, offering sacrifice and so on, one cannot say that justice or piety do any of these things. By doing them men have the characteristic; justice is the characteristic. This self-predication, and the difficulties into which it led Plato when the Forms had acquired for him an independent existence apart from their instances, have been mentioned already.2 They did not trouble him when he promulgated this doctrine with religious ardour in the Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus, but only in the period of critical reaction which followed; and since in the Protagoras we find as yet no sign of misgiving, we may be sure that at this stage, before he had thought out the full consequences, especially the ontological consequences, of the simple teaching of Socrates, he had not himself seen any objection to calling justice just and piety pious.3
1 Hippias makes the same answer at H. Maj. 287c. Cf. p. 115 above, Vlastos, Prot. liii n. 10, and Allen, Euthyphro 109: though the theory of Forms is indeed a metaphysical theory, it is es sentially continuous with common sense. Peck (.PhR 1962, 173) aptly compares Prot.s own language at 324d~325a. Cf. also Isocrates quoted on p. 189 n. 1 above. 2 P. 119 above, where the influence of the common use of the adjectival form is noted. Taylor gives the particularly clear example of a pair (P M I V 355), which is used by P. himself at H. Maj. 301 d to show that things need not possess separately an attribute which they possess jointly (p. 182 above). Savan in Phron. 1964 defends S. on the ground that, seen in terms of the paradigm (the parts of a face), what he asserts is not self-predication but only that the of justice is just action, the of holiness is holy action, which is not self predicative though it is analytic. Savans reasoning is acute, yet this is not how S. puts the question when he asks (330c) ... , ; True, the eye has the power of seeing (or more accurately, we see through the eyes as instruments, Tht. 184c), but it is not justice, but a man, that has the power of acting justly. Justice is that power, and to say that a form has itself the characteristic, or the , which it imparts to particulars is what is meant by self-predication. The eye sees because it has the power of sight: one would not say that sight sees. Crombie, in CR 1966, 311, makes another attempt to deny self-predication here, but it leaves me in doubt at least. 3 In a challenging paper (/.c., p. 222 n. 1) Vlastos has queried the whole basis of the assumption of self-predication in Plato, accepted and discussed by many, including himself in 1954 and later. I had intended to offer a note on his new conception of the Forms, but having
16
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says is not parallel to saying that whoever is not wise must be foolish, overlooking the fact that most men are not outstandingly either. It is like saying that whoever is wise must be impatient because wisdom and patience are different things, or on the same argument what is white cannot be triangular. A man cannot be just and unjust, but he can perfectly well be just and black, or tired, or young, because blackness, tiredness or youth, though not the same as justice, are not incompatible with it. Neither is piety, and that is the point that is here ignored. That Plato himself, like his commentators, did not distinguish a mean between two extremes (black, white, grey) from something which in itself is neither because outside their range, appears from Gorg. 467 e. There as examples of what is between () good and bad he gives sitting, walking, running, stones and wood, on the grounds that they are sometimes one or the other, sometimes neither. Yet surely the difference is real and important. An intermediate like greyness cannot be either of the extremes; what by itself bears no relation to the extremes can, by the addition of circumstances or motive, become either (running to save a drowning man, running to commit a murder; running leading to health, running leading to a heart attack). The weakness would tend to be concealed from Plato by the habit of reifying concepts, a natural Greek tendency which was intensified by Socratic teaching and led Plato to his belief in inde pendently existing Forms. We might say (pedantically) that a man can be both pious and not-pious, as a way of putting the point that he can possess other attributes besides his piety; but Plato asks whether the thing, piety, can be both pious and not-pious.1 The relation of one object to its many attributes was still a live question in Platos day,2 and when, in the Sophist, he came to analyse the difference between contrary opposition and mere otherness, he had to do it in the elaborate terms of the theory of Forms. Motion and being are different Forms, but they can combine in a particular,
1 With here cf. , Euthyphro 6 d (pp. ii8f. and 179 above). 2 Cf. p. 119 n. i above. Not till the Phil. (i4c-e) can he dismiss it as trivial, as a result of his own earlier work, e.g. at Phaedo 103 a-b.
2 25
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letting up, he says, and passes at once to the next pair, justice and self-control (333 b), but his argument for their identity hardly gets started before Protagorass exasperation at being asked to assume for its sake something that he does not himself believe leads to his out burst on the relativity of the concept good and so to a quarrel. The Simonides episode (339 a -34ja ) . When this is patched up, and Protagoras turns the discussion to Simonides, Socrates, who sees no point in taking moral lessons from a poet instead of working them out for oneself, feels entitled to treat the subject with outrageous levity. Here at least there can be no doubt that Plato knew what he was doing, and it is splendid entertainment, but hardly philosophy.1 He appeals to Prodicus to confirm that when Simonides says hard he means bad, and when Protagoras replies hotly that he means difficult, turns round and says that is his opinion too, and Prodicus must have been joking. Finally he gives a comic Sophistic epideixis on the poem, in which among other things he maintains that the Spartans are the most cultured and philosophical of the Greeks, and their apparent lack of intellectual interests and addiction to militarism and the more brutal sports are an elaborate disguise (342 a-d); and by violently wrenching a word from its proper connexions in the sentence claims to find in Simonides his own conviction that no one willingly does wrong (345 d). The argument that courage is knowledge (349 d -3 5 1 b). Compelled to return to the main argument, Protagoras admits that the other virtues are very similar, but insists that courage is something quite different: a man may be outstandingly brave yet wicked, depraved and stupid. This therefore presents the greatest obstacle to Socrates in his
1 It cannot be dealt with in detail here. Cf. Crombie, E P D i, 234: The purpose of this passage (apart from comedy-value) is probably to show that, as Socrates says, you can make a poem mean anything you like, with the implication, perhaps, that reliance on poetry as a means of education is misguided. Those interested in the episode will find the following helpful: H. Gundert, Die Simonides-Interpr. in P.s Prot., Ermeneia 1952; L. Woodbury, S. on , 1953; Adkins, M . and R. (i960), App. on The Scopas-fr. of Simon., PP 355 9; Pfeiffer, Hist. Class. Schol. 1 (1968), 32-4; des Places, Simon, et Socr. dans le Prot. de P., Les t. Cl. 1969. For the reconstructed text of the fr. see Adams Prot. p. 198, which only differs in minor points from Diehl (Anth. Lyr. 11, 62-6), Bowra etc.
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can be degrees between full knowledge and complete ignorance, but that does not invalidate the argument. Socrates nowhere denies that there are degrees of courage. For this criticism to be effective there would have to be a class of confidence to which the antithesis informed or ignorant does not apply, as in arguing against a man who said that there is no other colour besides white or black one would not point to shades of grey, which are a mixture of black and white, but to red or green.1 Protagoras now sees that he has been tricked into the appearance of admitting that all the confident are courageous, when all he originally said was that all the courageous are confident. He seems to think it makes a great difference, but one may fairly make three comments: (1) When asked if he would describe the courageous as confident he simply replied Yes, and keen to meet dangers from which most men shrink in fear. He made no reservations, and would not have thought of the distinction between courage and unthinking confidence if Socrates had not put it into his head. It is Socrates who points out that not all the confident are brave (350ci). (2) In unguardedly admitting the equation in the form put to
1 Adams next charge, of illicit conversion, requires reference to the Greek: even if S. has proved that all brave men have knowledge, he has not proved that all with knowledge are brave, which he says is S.s conclusion. It is true that P. makes him conclude ( 3 5 0 C 4 ) : , where the rposition of the article before makes it natural to translate on this argument knowledge would be courage. If this is so (though in other cases P. can be detected using the article inconsistently; see Stallbaum on H. Maj. 293 e), I should say it is only a slip on P.s part. All he wants S. to show is that all courage is knowledge. The converse does not follow from his argument, but his present purpose does not require that it should, nor did either S. or P. believe it. The feeling that he would accept the correction without embarrassment, as not affecting the main argument, seems justified when the opponent apparently takes S. to mean only what he obviously intended to say, namely that courage is knowledge. It may even be that in the offending sentence there is no actual mistake, though it lays itself open to misunderstanding. By P. may have meant, not knowledge in general, but the knowledge involved in the particular brave act. Adding the article in English gives the necessary correction : in particular cases (e.g. diving, cavalry charges) only the trained and knowledgeable exhibit true courage, therefore it is the knowledge which is courage, and not the boldness which they also show. Prot. himself seems to take S. to have meant no more than this when he says (35od6) that by a similar argument you could prove , not . But in fact he has got so confused that at the conclusion of this demonstration he says (35064-6) that by it you could show that . So he at any rate is in no position to quarrel about non-convertible propositions. In the Meno, where the complications of trying to outwit a master-Sophist are absent, the articles are correctly allotted: 88b crn and 88d * .
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be aware of this I should not like to say, but at any rate the two have got into a state of rare confusion, and seeing no way out of it he does what he has done before: he simply drops this line of argument and abruptly starts another. Pleasure and goodness (3 S i b - j 5je ) : Socrates a hedonist? This is the famous argument for hedonism which has led to so much contro versy. Three main views have been thought possible.1 (1) (a) Socrates advocates a vulgar hedonism such as he fiercely combats in the Gorgias, so that there is a direct contradiction between the two dialogues: he is a Socrates who can prove that virtue is knowledge only on a hedonist assumption which is plainly incompatible with the ethical standpoint of the Gorgias and the Republic (Dodds, Gorg. 21). This is untenable, as had been pointed out by Ritter (.Essence 59f.). The qualifications introduced in the Protagoras make the hedonism there advocated utterly different from the crude view advanced by Callicles in the Gorgias, where there is no mention of forethought and the art of measurement. The hedonistic calculus of Socrates necessitates a large measure of self-control, whereas Callicles claims that to live rightly is to let the appetites grow as large as possible and not check them, but have the courage and intelligence to minister to them and satisfy each desire as it comes.2 (b) Different in emphasis, but essentially the same, is the view that the passage represents the genuine Socratic and Platonic position at the time when the dialogue was written. This was strongly upheld by Grote, and in a modified form by Hackforth. Plato, says the latter, is making a serious attempt to understand for himself, and explain to his readers, what the Socratic equation [i.e. of virtue with knowledge] really meant . Socrates himself had stopped short of a criterion for distinguishing an apparent from a real good. Platos first attempt at an answer is psychological hedonism. By the time he wrote the Gorgias he had advanced beyond it. Thus Hackforth (and Dodds
1 For fuller reff, to the modern debate see Friedlnder, PI. 11, 302 . 24; Sullivan, Phron. 1961, notes to pp. ioff. H. G. Wolz, Hedonism in the Prot., in JH P h . 1967 is a reply to A. Sesonske on the same subject in 1963. 2 Gorg. 491e 492 a. Note especially - . For fuller comparison between the standpoints of Prot. and Gorg. see pp. 302-5 below.
23 1
, ,
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to show them at their best. Protagoras was an opponent, but a worthy one, and to devote a dialogue to showing the strength rather than the weakness of the adversary was not wasted labour. He is not a friend or disciple, but a mature philosopher, old enough to be Socratess father, with his opinions formed and hardened and a reputation to maintain. It would be no use putting before him the full paradoxical rigour of Socraticism. So Plato brings them together as guests in the house of a common friend, with other friends around to intervene if the talk threatens to become acrimonious. Socrates himself stops short whenever he sees Protagoras getting seriously annoyed (which accounts for the superficial incoherence of the dialogue), and Protagoras puts up with a lot of provocation, rightly protesting when protest is called for but never abusive. The contrast with the uninhibited insults exchanged in the Gorgias is striking, and shows that hostility is not Platos mood here.1 O f his disapproval of Sophistry, he has given clear warning in the introductory conversation with Hippocrates (who takes no part in the main dialogue), and he can now avoid a confrontation without fear of misunderstanding. A logical outcome of the Sophists teaching - though up to now they had been unaware of it - was a life lived according to the hedonistic calculus, the maximization of ones personal pleasure and satisfaction. Introduced as the opinion of the common man (who similarly has not realized that this is the logical outcome of his attitude), it is so presented that finally the Sophists agree it is their view too. But before they do that, Socrates has refined it so that pain includes not only ill health and poverty but the shame one would feel at the knowledge that one was behaving like a coward, and pleasure the satisfaction obtained from fighting to preserve the freedom of ones country.2 At the beginning (351 c i) he had rebuked Protagoras for
1 This opinion inevitably has a subjective element. Sullivan (/.c. n ) says some commentators underrate the hostility, and agrees with Vlastos, who wrote that S.s handling of Prot. is merciless if not cruel, and described him as delivering a mortal stab and making the victim himself give one more thrust to the knife {Prot. xxivf.). A reader must judge for himself, but I suspect that the famous agonistic champion (335 a) was quite able to look after himself, and Sullivan has at least to admit that there is nothing like the attack on Callicles in the Gorgias . Also a view like his must ignore the note on which the dialogue ends. 2 We need not accuse S. of pitching his examples low (see Vlastos in Phoenix 1969, 7 4 f. with n. 15) because he adds and rule over others. Neither he nor Plato escaped completely
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one: not a series of ad hoc questions about how to act in different situations, but an inquiry into the existence and nature of unchanging moral principles. With the identity of pleasure and goodness established, it is not difficult for Socrates to show that, on the agreed assumptions as Protagoras says, courage can be reduced to knowledge. He makes agreement a little harder by omitting at this final stage any concrete examples to remind us of the thesis that in choosing a course of action the total amount of pleasure and pain, future as well as present, must be weighed up. Thus what the brave man sees is not merely the immediate hardship and risk but the choice between victory and defeat, freedom and subjection, or at the individual level, honour or self-respect and disgrace. In fact the point about present and future pleasures was passed over very hastily (35635), and to say that in the presence of immediate pain or danger the one may be weighed against the other by a simple and unemotional act of intellectual judgement does not seem to show much psychological insight. Yet it was the genuine belief of the man who said Virtue is knowledge and went to his execution in the faith that no evil can happen to a good man . If he failed to appreciate the complexity of other mens characters, it was only because, so far as his own was concerned, there was none to be accounted for. Conclusion. If we look to the Protagoras for philosophical lessons, it may seem an irritating patchwork of niggling argument, irrelevant digressions, false starts and downright fallacy. Read as a play in which the most outstanding and individual minds of a brilliant period meet and engage in a battle of wits, it will give a different impression. That is how it should be read. A serious discussion of the nature of virtue, and how it is acquired, must be left, as Protagoras said, for another occasion - and, we may add, for different company: it is not to be achieved in the competitive atmosphere of a public gathering of Sophists. And so we turn to the Meno.
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Date.* With the /^/ we enter a new phase after the early Socratic dialogues and the Protagoras, and it has been plausibly held2 that its introduction of Pythagorean themes (immortality, reincarnation, the kinship of nature, mathematics) was stimulated by Platos first visit to Italy and Sicily in 387. Similar themes appear in the Gorgias, which most scholars put close to the Meno but before it (e.g. Dodds, Gorg. 43). Opinions are almost equally divided as to the priority of Meno to Euthydemus, but all would now agree that it precedes the central group of Phaedo, Republic, Symposium and Phaedrus. 3 Its absolute date has been variously assigned between 386 and 382.4 Dramatic date. This may be taken to be 403 or early 402, after the restoration of the democracy, when Anytus was a leader of the party in power (cf. 90b) and there were political reasons why Meno should have visited Athens and stayed with Anytus.5 (He is described as the latters guest at 90b.) In the spring of 401 Meno joined the expedition of Cyrus, from which he did not return. The conversation, then, is supposed to take place some thirty years after that in the Protagoras. The prosecution of Socrates by Anytus and others is not far off, which adds dramatic force to the words of Anytus at 94 e, and of Socrates at the end of the dialogue. Scene and characters. The locality of the conversation is not specified, but since Meno is in Athens as the guest of Anytus, and AnytuS himself casually joins the other two in the middle of their talk (89e),
1 See in general Blucks ed. 108-20. 2 E.g. by Nestle (Prot. 44) and Bluck 115 f. Morrison on the other hand (CQ 1964, 42 f.) has maintained that Meno, Gorg. and even Phaedo were written before the first Italian journey, and reflect contact with the scattered Pythagorean communities on the Greek mainland. 3 Thompson in 1901 (Meno liii) put it after Phaedrus, but before the rest. 4 On historical allusions in the dialogue, see Bluck I.e. and the elaborate article by Morrison on the historical background in CQ 1942. Their slipperiness as a basis for dating is illustrated by the fact that according to Treves (R E x u i. Halbb. 1742) the mention of Ismenias at 90 a shows the M . to have been written before his execution in 382, whereas Croiset (Bud ed. 231) believed that Plato would not have thought of him unless his execution had been in the recent past. 5 For details see Bluck 120-2, and Morrisons 1942 article on which he depends.
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we may guess it to be at his house.1 O f Anytus nothing further need be said here.2 Meno is a rich Thessalian aristocrat (he has brought many attendants with him, 82 a), young, handsome, vain and imperious as the dialogue shows: indeed Socratess twitting of him on these points is one of its more entertaining features. But he has met Gorgias and been dazzled by his brilliance, and is now fascinated by the fashionable Sophistic topics. Above all, as an ambitious youth, he wants to know how aret is acquired, that elusive quality which makes all the difference between success and failure. Some Sophists claim to teach it, but Gorgias laughs at them (95 c). What does Socrates think? In fact Menos life was to be cut short before he could profit by the answer. Xenophon in the Anabasis gives him a very bad character, but may have been influenced by his own admiration for the Greek leader Clearchus, Menos bitter enemy.3
The dialogue (.Direct dramatic form) Meno puts to Socrates the urgent question: Can virtue be taught, or is it a matter of practice, or a natural gift, or what?4 S. surprises him by replying that he does not even know what it is, much less how to acquire it. M., as Gorgiass pupil (vol. in, 253f.), can tell him: the virtue of a man is *, of a womanly, of a slave { and so on. There is a virtue for every age and every occupation. S. objects that what they need is not a list of different virtues but the common form or
1 I do not see why this should be most unlikely, as Bluck (120) and others have believed. It is at least more probable than the fanciful speculations of Bluck about Anytus being nearby all the time (in a gymnasium) but out of earshot. Grube ( P .s Th. 231 n. 2) thought his opportune entry probably the worst piece of dramatic technique in Plato, and Wilamowitz ( PI. 1, 279), who guessed the scene to be a gymnasium, stigmatized it as wenig knstlerisch. But if it were A .s own home, these criticisms vanish. That it is probably out of doors proves nothing, and Croisets objection (Bud 231) is equally pointless. 2 See vol. i i i , 381. Easily accessible accounts of him are in the editions of Thompson (xxixxiv) and Bluck (126-8). 3 See further Thompson xii-xx, Bluck 122-6. The individual character of M. is made to emerge skilfully and delightfully from the conversation, and it is difficult to understand the blindness of Wilamowitz in saying that Platon charakterisiert den Menschen berhaupt nicht, or of Bluck (125) in quoting and following him. M. is no type figure. 4 For the nature of aret and contemporary views on the manner of its acquisition see vol. i i i , ch. X.
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The Meno
puts it on a different plane from any dialogues so far considered. It is an appeal to a doctrine of certain religious authorities and poets that the human soul is immortal, and having lived many lives alternating with periods in the beyond, has seen everything that there is in both realms. Learning or discovery, therefore, is in reality only recovery, or recollection, of what we knew before. Since all reality ( physis) is interrelated, the recollection of one thing may with appropriate effort lead to the recovery of all the rest. M. would like evidence of this, and S. takes an ignorant slave of his and demonstrates how he can be led to give the correct solution to a geometrical problem without being told it, simply by being asked questions which, S. claims, do no more than elicit knowledge already latent in his mind. The way is now clear for a return to the question What is virtue?, but M. would prefer to go straight to his original problem of whether it can be taught. This seems to S. methodically wrong, but he suggests that they might proceed on a hypothesis: on what hypothesis about its nature will it be teachable? The answer is, if it is a form of knowledge, for only knowledge can be imparted by teaching. So, says S., the next thing is to find out whether or not it is knowledge. Virtue, they agree, is always good and can never bring one to harm. But things commonly regarded as good - health, wealth, even some spiritual qualities - are liable to misuse. Only right use can ensure that they produce benefit,1 and this depends on knowledge or wisdom. This alone is invariably beneficial, therefore this alone is virtue. So far so good, but is this theoretical conclusion confirmed by experience ? If virtue can be taught, presumably there will be teachers of it, but are there ? At this point Anytus enters, and the question is referred to him. He dismisses the Sophists with contumely, and
cf. Laches 189 c, p. 131 above). There is no trace of sarcasm in M /s questions, nor any evidence that he is doubting S.s good faith (p. 156). Nor is there anything in the point that M/s remark is not a paradox because it takes the form of three questions (p. 157). They are rhetorical questions which could be rephrased as statements without change of meaning ( you cannot* instead o f how can you?*), and the argument is on the same level as that whereby Euthydemus and Dionysodorus prove* that neither those who know nor those who do not know can be learners (p. 269 below). For M.*s error as resting on a reduction of all knowledge to knowledge by acquaintance*, see Ebert in Man and World 1973. 1 This recurs at Euthyd. 28oe-28ib. That the argument was Socratic has been shown in vol. i i i , 463 fr. It may have been suggested to him by Prodicus. See [Pl.] Eryxias 397e.
17 2 3 9 GHO
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24O
The Meno
Comment Breaking new ground. The Meno has been described as a microcosm of the whole series of Platos dialogues. Those before it are ostensibly negative and destructive, those after it constructive. In the Meno the Socratic elenchus first proceeds to its destructive conclusion, and we are then shown how this purging of the false conceit of knowledge was the necessary preliminary to a positive search for it with some hope of success. Philosophical method and the nature of knowledge are leading themes, and Socrates appears as one ready to state and prove a positive doctrine about them. One might even claim to detect the very moment when Plato first deliberately goes beyond the historic Socrates to provide for his teaching a philosophic basis of his own. It would be at 8ia, where Socrates declares with unwonted solemnity that he can rebut the eristic denial that learning is possible by an appeal to religious beliefs. The aret o f a Meno. The theme is that of the Protagoras : Can aret be taught? And we cannot remind ourselves too often what this word, which we translate virtue, meant in the mouth of an ambitious youth like Meno. It is the kind of skill and virtue which fits men to manage an estate or govern a city, to look after their parents and to entertain and send off guests in proper style. 1 Menos first attempt at a definition of it is the ability to govern (73c).2 Argument in character. The first main section, down to Menos com plaint of mental impotence at 8oa-b, illustrates Platos extraordinary skill in intertwining matters of method and content. T o the confusion of some of his commentators, he did not write one treatise on logic and another on ethics: he wrote genuine dialogues, in which the ability to grasp an apparent point of method is affected, not simply by the intelligence of the parties but by their whole character and outlook on life. Meno combines ambition and self-seeking with second hand ideas from Gorgias and the remains of a respect for conventional
1 91a. Cf. Prot. 3 18 0 -3 19 a. According to Aristotle ( E N 112332 ), , named as a virtue by Meno at 74 a, included . 2 This too he would have learned from Gorgias. Cf. Gorg. 452d.
24I
17-2
, ,
, ,
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The Meno
lies in the fact that there are two senses of know what is, of which the ability to give a satisfactory definition of it is not even the primary one. That is the recognitional sense, i.e. simply to be able to use the word * correctly in ordinary and typical contexts . It is not surprising, he adds, that Laches, who will unfailingly recognize courage when he meets it, should be unable to define the word courage in a way to satisfy Socrates. On a different point, Robinson (Essays 32f.) says that before asking for a definition of one should ask if it always means the same, or at least remember the possibility that it does not. Socrates demands of Meno that because he gives the same name to a number of things, he should identify the common element in all of them: he does not raise the apparently prior question whether we give the same name to each one in the same sense. On this second point, Socrates knew very well that different people (or even the same people at different times) meant different things by the same words. (See vol. in, 431, and the quotations from Xenophon and Plato on p. 165.) He thought it wrong, however, because they did not realize that they were doing so, and so were confused in their own thoughts and in their communication with each other. Nor would matters be much improved from his point of view by substituting for the confusion an admission that a moral term had several meanings (or uses), for the moral order depended on its being used univocally. A term like aret has, in modern terminology, emotive force. Whatever it is, everyone thinks it a good and desirable characteristic; and if we know that one man uses it for the power to rule, another for the acquisition of worldly goods, another for intel lectual gifts and another for unselfishness, we are hardly helped in looking to it as an ideal or standard at which to aim. Admittedly Socrates, unlike his critics, spoke in the belief that such a standard of virtue did exist: it was not something that we arbitrarily fixed for ourselves but something that was there for us to discover, and in his belief it was single. Even so, he raises the prior question in one
Geach in Monist 1966, and G. Santas defended it against him in JH P h 1972. One of his points is that in Euthyphro S. is only asking from E. what he himself has claimed to know, viz. a general criterion for judging whether an act is pious or not.
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The Meno
When Socrates points out that courage is usually recognized in those who bravely face the sea, or illness, or poverty, or who have the moral fibre to resist their own baser impulses, he agrees at once. In a way, if you like, he was capable of recognizing courage in all its ordinary and typical contexts, but it did not occur to him that he would use the word in these contexts until Socrates had pointed it out. Socrates was quite serious when he said that his mission was not to teach people what they did not know, but to make them consciously aware of what they knew already. His (and Platos) whole aim was to get men to think, to reflect on the various uses of a word and the reasons why the same word is used each time.1 After all, the main lesson of the Meno is that what is called the acquisition of knowledge is no more than the explication of what was implicit, the actualization of knowledge that was potentially ours already. The syllogism does no more, but its formalization by Aristotle provided an important tool of thought nevertheless. At 71 b, in making his point that one cannot know whether some thing has a certain attribute unless one knows what that something is, Socrates asks how a man who has no idea who Meno is could know whether he is handsome, rich or well-born. This looks like knowing in the sense of being able to recognize, and has on that account been condemned as inapt. Doubtless one knows Meno in a different way from knowing virtue, and as Aristotle was to emphasize, individuals are indefinable. Socrates (or Plato) often uses a rather loose analogy for what it is worth and no more.2 But if it only means that one can recognize him at sight then it is not what Socrates and Plato meant by knowledge; and if one knows him properly - his character, habits, intellectual capacity, limitations - one can at least put this into words. If nevertheless Socrates overplayed the claim that if we know something we can say what it is (Laches 190c), it was due to his tendency to see all forms of knowledge as analogous to an exact science or a craft. It is not much use discussing with somebody
1 Except of course in purely accidental coincidences of form, as with bear* or can* (verbs) and bear* or can* (nouns), where we are not dealing with the same words. 2 On this, and on the difference between (be acquainted with Meno) and (know facts about him) see Bluck, Meno 212, 213 f.
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The Meno
who does them) do not necessarily mistake evil for good. They may know well that they are evils in a moral (or universal) sense; if they benefit their possessor but injure a hundred others, they will be far more evil than good. In general Socrates has utterly confused the moral and practical aspects o f good. 1 If to commit robbery with violence is bad, it does not follow that the stolen goods will injure their possessor in any commonly accepted sense of the word. The crowning equivocation comes when Meno is made to agree that whoever desires evil desires it to come to him or to happen to him ( c). To have bad things happen to you is the same as to suffer harm, but if you desire something evil - say another mans ruin or death - to have it come to you need not harm you. No, with a more perspicacious opponent Socrates would certainly have had to carry his defence much further. How, we shall learn from the Gorgias. Briefly, he did it by extending the concepts of harm and benefit to cover the injury or welfare of the psyche. In this way, while maintaining this theoreti cally non-moral identification of good with useful or beneficial, he preached highly moral doctrine by arguing that immoral actions did in fact harm their perpetrator because they inevitably injured him in his most vital part, his real self. For Socrates, in fact, the moral and the practical or self-centred aspects of good coincide, and he was prepared to argue the point.2 But it certainly needs argument, and that is not vouchsafed to Meno, who, as he says explicitly (78c), thinks o f good only in terms of external goods like riches and political power - the kind of goods which Gorgias claimed his pupils could attain through his art of rhetoric. Consequently he can only think of evil in terms of their opposites, poverty or political insignificance, and he is at the mercy of Socratess verbal traps.
1 M. was really beaten when he lightly agreed to the substitution of for at 7 7 by. These words may be near synonyms, but have in fact a different ethos. Thompson simply says (Meno 102) that by the substitution any poetic tinsel attaching to the word is removed, but it is more than that. (S. should have remembered his Prodicus!) need have no moral flavour, but the opposite of is , base or disgraceful. It is worth comparing the whole passage with Symp. 204d-205a. 2 Cf. the conversation with Polus, esp. Gorg. 4740-4776. For S., in fact, and , and , were the same thing (see previous note), but only if one accepted his highly individual views. (Gorg. 477a , ; and c, e t , ;) All this was true of the historic Socrates. See the account of him in vol. hi, esp. pp. 466-73.
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The Meno
Socrates expressly connects with him and criticizes as inferior to his own definition of figure.1 Learning as recollection (8 ia -d ).2 The purpose of the doctrines of immortality and recollection, and their demonstration on the slave, is first to overcome Menos difficulty about the acquisition of new knowledge, but also, by choosing a question to which Meno knows the answer but the the slave does not, to show him that his reduction to helpless perplexity is no matter for complaint but the necessary pre liminary to constructive thought (84a-d). The episode with the slave is a working model, and a vindicator, of the Socratic method. The doctrine of anamnesis (recollection, calling to mind) is that the human soul is immortal and has been through many earthly lives and many periods of existence outside the body. It has thus seen all things, both those here and those in the other world, and there is nothing it has not learned . Moreover all nature is akin , so that a soul which has been reminded of one thing only may from that go on to rediscover any thing else3 if it is willing to persevere. This is the truth, and the eristic argument, which would discourage us from the necessary effort, is false. Plato does not claim originality for this teaching, and indeed the doctrines o f immortality, reincarnation, remembrance o f former lives and the kinship o f all nature are all to be found in earlier Pythagoreanism and its sympathizers like Empedocles. (Even the connexion of universal kinship with the mathematical concept o f proportion (, Tim . 31c, 32 c) can be traced back to them.) When he attributes them to theologically minded priests and priestesses, he probably has in mind the Orphies, whose religious beliefs were closely allied to those of the Pythagoreans.4 But he has subtly transformed their religious dogmas to support his own philosophy. By the nature ( physis) which was all related, the Pythagoreans understood the
1 I take this to refer to the second, geometrical definition of figure, though Klein (p. 70) seems to refer it to the first. 2 For some bibliography on anamnesis see Heitsch, Hermes 1963, 36 n. 1. 3 According to the principle of association of ideas, laid down at Phaedo 73 c-e. 4 For the Pythagoreans see vol. 1, 200ff., for Empedocles vol. 11, 250f., and for the Orphies vol. I, 198 (and more fully Guthrie, G. and G. ch. 11).
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solution was the doctrine of transcendent Forms, changeless, eternal, independent of their imperfect manifestations or imitations (mimeseis) in this world and imperceptible to the senses. It involved him in a num ber of further problems, some of which only gradually obtruded them selves. The immediate questions were two: was there any evidence for the existence of perfect and changeless entities outside the empirical world, and if so, how could they be known, being ex hypothesi beyond experience ? And the answers to both were suggested by Pythagorean philosophy.1 First, the changeless world of mathematics, which the Pythagoreans had shown to lie behind the phenomenal world and to impart to it the order and regularity which it displayed ( for the P y thagoreans say that things exist by mimesis of numbers, Arist. Metaph. 987b 1 1), made it easier to believe in the changeless world of moral (and later other) Forms. It is true that the angles of a triangle together equal 1800, yet it is not precisely true of any triangle drawn by man or seen in a triangular piece of material. No visible line is the mathe matical line, which having no breadth cannot be seen. These only approximate to the truth, as a just action approximates to the Form of Justice. Pythagorean mathematics made it antecedently possible to believe in realities beyond the sensible world, which moreover are responsible (aitia) for it, just as, in what was (according to tradition at least) the original discovery of Pythagoras that started him thinking on these lines, a strictly intelligible numerical structure accounted for the beauty of a melody. We explain the independence of mathematical truth by saying that the mathematicians statements are analytic, simply setting forth the logical consequences of defining a triangle or a straight line in the way we do. They reveal more fully the impli cations of our concepts, but do not describe external reality. This would not have appealed to Plato. What impressed him was the timeless truth of this kind of statement, and the fact that the shapes of sensible things could never, as it were, live up to it completely. It must be the same with ideas like justice and beauty. We could not compare two actions in point of justice if we had not a conception of an absolute
1 It is perhaps worth noting that the problem which S. sets the slave to solve involves the traditional theorem of Pythagoras*. On Pythagorean influence in general see A. Cameron, Pyth. Background.
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times raised, that anamnesis only pushes Menos eristic question one stage further back. I f it is impossible to find out what one does not know already, how did the soul learn in the first place what it recol lects in this life? His answer is that it did not have to learn,1 but knew the Forms by direct acquaintance. T h e analogy with sight (developed in Rep . 6) is meant seriously. Nous, the highest intellectual faculty, is not the ability to reason things out to a conclusion: it is (for both Plato and Aristotle) what gives an intuitive and immediate grasp o f reality, a direct contact between the mind and truth. W hile we are in the body, such contact can only be recovered as the culmination o f a process o f reasoning (identified at Meno 98 a with anamnesis), but for the disembodied mind it is a matter o f direct vision.
Forms in the Meno. A t Phaedo 74 a ff. the argument for anamnesis runs
like this.2 W e know what equality is. W e get this knowledge from seeing what we call equal sensible objects, which however are not the same as equality but fall short o f it. N o w if we can say this, that what we see resembles something but falls short o f identity with it, we must have had previous knowledge o f the other thing. Hence we knew equality before our perception o f equal sensibles first led us to conceive that they imperfectly resembled it. From this it is concluded that our knowledge o f equality came before our acquisition o f sense-organs, when our souls were not yet in human shape , as in the Meno, 86a, the slave acquired his correct opinions when he was not a m an . Moreover, the same applies to goodness, justice, piety, and everything on which we set the seal o f absolute being ( 7 5 c -d , 76 d ). Here in an argument for anamnesis the moral forms are linked with the mathematical as objects o f pre-natal knowledge. Some have argued that this is not so in the Meno, and that the doctrine is promulgated there without a belief in transcendent Form s: in the Meno the theory o f Ideas is carried no farther than in earlier dialogues .3 This is incredible.
1 Cf. 86a, , it will be for all time in a state of having learned \ 2 Any comment on this argument must come later. It is well discussed by Hackforth, Phaedo 74- 7 3 Ross, P T I 18. Rosss position has been opposed by Gulley, I.e. 196 f., Vlastos, Dialogue 1965, and others. For further reff, see Ebert, Mein, und Wiss. 84 n. 2. It will appear that I am
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base will contain four such halves, i.e. an area equal to twice the whole. Socrates claims that he has told the boy nothing but only asked him questions in the right order, thereby eliciting knowledge which was in his mind all the time. We may think his questions decidedly leading,1 but certain points emerge from the choice of a mathematical example. Mathematical knowledge cannot be handed over by a teacher like the chemical formula for water or the name of the first President of the United States. Each must comprehend it for himself, and when he does so, as N. Hartmann put it ( K l . Sehr. i i , 57), the surprising fact emerges that he discovers precisely what everyone else must discover. The boy does not say yes or no to please Socrates, but because he sees that it is the obvious answer. What shows him his errors, and the right answers, is not so much the questions as the diagrams themselves, and were he mathematically inclined he might, given time, draw the dia grams and deduce the truth from them, without an instructor, as the boy Pascal is said to have done.2 This answers, or at least weakens, another objection to the experiment in its context. Socrates and Meno want to find out something that neither of them knows, whereas Socrates, whether or not his questions to the slave give away their answers, does know the solution to the problem that he sets the slave, and his questions are dictated by his knowledge. Meno has to know it too, so that he can see the relevance of the lesson to his own predica ment. So the circumstances are not parallel. One may reply in the words of Flew ( Introd. 404) : What has to be recognized is that whoever taught Menos slave, no one ever taught Pythagoras. The experiment distinguishes for the first time between empirical and a priori know ledge, the one referring to the natural, changeable world and the other to universal and timeless truths; and it suggests that whereas facts of the former kind are drawn solely from experience of the world outside us, or external authority, the latter type of knowledge seems to emerge
1 Whether the first questions, to 82d (Does the slave recognize a square? Are all its sides equal? How big is it and how big would one double the size be?), supply their own answers is irrelevant. This is only the preliminary stage of setting the problem and making sure that he understands the terms to be used, as when S. asked M. if he understood the terms limit, surface, solid. 2 For Pascal see Cornford, B. and A. S. 72 f.
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still beliefs, not knowledge (85c). As so far stirred up in him, they have a dreamlike quality, and to attain the absolute certainty of knowledge the questions would have to be repeated to him in different ways. But that even he can attain knowledge without being told is now beyond doubt. One of the most important lessons of the anamnesis doctrine was that learning was a continuous process, with several stages between (apparent) blank ignorance and knowledge - important because it invalidated the Sophists favourite method o f attack by the crude either-or question: How can we learn either what we know or what we dont know? or the similar question in the Euthydemus (275d): Who are the learners, the wise or the ignorant? It has been said that Plato offers no explanation o f the false beliefs which the slave first produced. Only at a later stage, it is true, when his philosophy had become more critical, did he (in the Theaetetus and Sophist) seriously tackle the question of the origin of false opinions; but for him at present anamnesis is itself an explanation. It means, after all, remem bering, and we all know what happens when we try to remember, say, a name that we have forgotten. A number of wrong names suggest themselves first, and though we cannot yet hit on the right one, our previous, now latent, knowledge enables us to reject them and to recognize the right one when it comes. Baxter? we say. No. Bolton, Butler? Were getting nearer, surely. Ah - Butcher; thats it. With the truths of reason, the gradual approach to the correct answer is a matter of strenuous intellectual activity, but the process is analogous. Twice the length? After further thought, no. A length and a half? Nearer, but when we work out the consequences we see that it will not give the right answer either. And so on. If the false suggestions did not intervene, we should have no process of learning but the impossible leap from sheer ignorance to knowledge which the anamnesis-doctrine is designed to avoid. According to it, there is no such thing as blank ignorance in the sense that the mind is a tabula rasa or blank sheet of paper. Rather is there writing on it in invisible ink, awaiting the proper reagent to make it perceptible. And if we try to decipher it hastily, or before it has fully come up, we may make mistakes. The status of true belief will assume greater importance later in the dialogue (pp. 261-4 below).
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mathematics illustrates it by a geometrical example so obscure to us that its interpretation is endlessly disputed.1 Fortunately it is unnecessary to an understanding o f what he means by arguing from a hypothesis. It differs somewhat from what we ordinarily mean by this familiar device.2 We cannot answer a question as it stands, so we say, Well, if so-and-so is the case, the answer must be such-and-such. So let us assume that it is the case, and examine the consequences of that assump tion. This should help us to discover whether the assumption is true, and so what is the answer to our original question. Platos Socrates, on the other hand, says, If virtue is knowledge it will be teachable, therefore we must first investigate whether it is knowledge (87c). The hypothesis is not to be assumed but proved. What we might call the hypothesis on which they are arguing (and it is called such by Socrates at 87d 3) is the statement that virtue is good. This agreed starting-point is indeed a tautology, aret being the noun corresponding to the adjective agathon. This perhaps affords an excuse for Socrates, who has denied that he can know a property of anything when he does not know what it is, affirming that it has the property good. At the same time, the answer given by anamnesis to the question How can you discover anything when you dont in the least know what it is? was to the effect that our minds never are in a state o f utter and complete ignorance. In any case, as we have seen (p. 165 above), this opening was a standard one for Socrates. By treating the proposition virtue is knowledge not as a hypothesis but as the immediate subject o f investigation, Socrates has led the
1 86e-87b. Heath in 1921 ( H G M 1, 298) says that Blass in 1861 knew of 30 different interpre tations and many more had appeared since. Bluck devotes an appendix to a critique of earlier explanations ( Meno 441-61). Possibly the technical use of argument from a hypothesis was mathematical, and P. was extending it, just as asymptotic* is beginning to be used in nonmathematical contexts ( Our advance to knowledge is of asymptotic type, Sherrington, M . on his N ., Pelican ed. 301) but anyone explaining it would still refer to graphs and coordinates. That * had a non-technical sense o f supposition, probably narrowed by Socrates to suggested definition, appears likely from Euthyphro 11 c (and cf. 9d), Gorg. 454c (both probably earlier than Meno) and Xen. Mem. 4.6.13. In Meno too the hypothesis takes the form of a definition. Cf. vol. h i , 433 n. 2. There is little evidence for Thompsons statement (ad loc.) that the word * was familiar in P.s time in the ordinary scientific sense of an assumption . The only relevant examples in L S J are all from the Hippocratic V M , whose priority to P. is at least doubtful. See also on this point Wilam., PI. 11, 150 and Robinson, P E D 99 f. On the background of the three mathematical passages in Meno cf. Gaiser in AG Ph 1964, 241-92. 2 On whether S. here disregards his own advice at Phaedo 101 e, see Sayre, P A M 29 n. 40.
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meant being good at something, so that Socratess insistence that it consisted in knowledge would not seem so paradoxical to a Greek as it does to us. But although to make his point he started from the analogy with the crafts, he did not believe that the knowledge which is virtue was a mere technical skill like horsemanship. This is the truth which Plato is now seeking to substantiate philosophically. Virtue is nothing less than the knowledge of good and evil, and that is something which each man must discover for himself, till he sees it as inevitably as one sees a mathematical proposition after following every step of the proof. In this process another man may help, but it is useless to tell his pupil the answer as he tells him how to use the reins in order to get the best out of his horse. The one is an empirical fact and belongs to the world of change. The other is an intellectual discovery about the intelligible world to which both mathematical and moral truths belong, where Justice and Virtue are always the same and a tangent truly and timelessly touches its circle at one point only. No: if virtue cannot be taught in the sense of being handed over like a parcel, that is for Plato no indica tion that it is not knowledge. Knowledge and true (right)1 belief (2) (t 9 ja-9<)d ). Right opinions, or true beliefs, so long as they last, are as good a guide to right action as knowledge. They differ from knowledge in being (a) unstable (98 a), (b) impossible to transmit to others (99b). They may be converted into knowledge, and tied down so that they cannot slip out o f the mind, by working out the reason ( 98 a);* and this is recollection, as we agreed earlier. Suddenly we are brought back to the Platonic realm of intelligible reality, not inferred or abstracted from earthly events but recollected from the minds prenatal acquaintance with it. The reason which is worked out is (as in the mathematical demon stration) the logical reason for a necessary consequence, not the cause of an effect in this world. Anamnesis restores to us guiding principles transcending nature or society. Our present politicians rely on a certain knack of hitting on the right solution2 to practical problems without
1 The two epithets, and $, are used indifferently. 2 99b 11. It may be that P. intends a pun on the usual meaning of the word, namely good reputation, as some have thought (see Tigerstedt, P 's Idea etc. 43), but it does not seem to me very apt. I prefer a suggestion of Cornfords, that P. has coined a sense
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individual cases a man of aret (as commonly understood) will most often make the right answer, so achieving his own success and enhanc ing the power, wealth and reputation of his city. Yet even such men, as Socrates discovered, if you ask them what they mean by these terms, can give no adequate reply. They may, like Meno, offer instances: This or that was a just act, and to behave like that is what justice means/ Now according to Plato true beliefs are latent in the mind of everyone, and it is therefore possible for them to come to the surface of our consciousness. In so far as this is not the result of a properly conducted dialectical process, and so not knowledge in Platos sense, it might perhaps be described as a gift from Heaven, but only in the sense that the Greeks attributed any piece of luck to Hermes. For practical purposes the good statesman is in the same condition as the slave after his questioning. Socrates does not claim that he has knowledge. The single rapid run through the proof, with himself very much in the lead, has not sufficed to make the working out the reason part and parcel of this thought and put him in unshakable possession of the truth (85 c). What has been achieved is the substitution of true for false doxai and the opening of a path to knowledge hitherto closed by the slaves impression that he knew what he did not. His having true doxai stirred up in him like a dream corresponds to the state of mind of the good statesman. While it lasts he and his city will prosper, but it is dangerous because like the statues of Daedalus his present convictions may give him the slip. To secure them permanently he would have to complete the process of anamnesis. Then, knowing the essence of the unchanging Forms of just, brave and the rest, he would no longer rely on an empirical guess as to the probable outcome of his actions, and by this reference to the external standard of independently existing Forms, his policy would acquire a virtue and above all a con sistency hitherto unheard of and unattainable. His former right doxa would have become knowledge by working out the reason, for the Form of Good, if he only knew it, is the cause of a good act (Platos development of the Socratic dictum that by the all xs are x ; see p. 119 above). To conclude, doxa in the Meno is a dim and uncertain awareness of the same objects (the Forms) of which knowledge is the full, clear and
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embark on the genuine art of politics, and the only living man to per form the statesmans task. But Socrates is turning into Plato (as Dodds notes ad loc., the boast is hardly in the vein of the historic Socrates), who aims at founding a school for the education of statesmen. The ideas have already germinated which will bear fruit in the Republic, where the ideal statesman is also the philosopher who has recaptured the vision of the Form of Good through a course o f study in which years of mathematics are the indispensable prelude to dialectic, the science which is able to exact an account of the essence of each thing and impart it to another (Rep. 534b). Only when that is mastered will the (for Socrates) essential question of the Protagoras and Meno be answered.
A D D IT IO N A L
NO TE: KN O W LED G E
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W IS D O M
A t 88b, S. substitutes phronesis (usually translated w isdom or good sense) for epistm (knowledge), obviously with no change o f meaning intended. Thompson ad loc, called phronesis the mental faculty correlative to it , but as Euthyd. and other dialogues make clear, the relationship is almost one o f identity. Sophia (wisdom) and epistm are similarly inter changeable. The general association o f sophia with knowledge, especially practical knowledge or skill, has been illustrated in vol. hi, p. 27, and here at 93 d Cleophantus is sophos in horsemanship and other accomplish ments. A t Euthyd. 281 b both phronesis and sophia are equated with epistm (cf. 282 a and Thu 145 e), and at 288 d S. defines philosophy as the acquisition o f epistm. Both in Plato and elsewhere one must translate phronesis and sophia as either knowledge or w isdom according to the context. Plato uses this feature o f Greek language and thought to further the thesis that virtue is knowledge, and o f course the knowledge which unites the virtues is not knowledge as understood by the ordinary man ; but he did not invent it. The Greeks would have found it difficult to write an essay like Russells on the difference between knowledge and wisdom, or a line like Tennysons Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers . T h ey knew the difference (witness the great Antigone chorus, vv. 3 3 2 - 7 5 ) , but could scarcely express it in those terms, save perhaps by an oxymoron ( * , Eur. BaccL 395). In reading Plato this is something that must be constantly borne in mind.
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Date} The prevailing opinion is that the Euthydemus, like the Aferco, was written after the early Socratic dialogues and the Protagoras, but before the great central group. Its relation to the Meno is disputed,2 but few would follow some earlier scholars in putting it after the Phaedrus. The strongest case for a latish date is probably Crombies, who rightly notes that many of its interests overlap those of the Sophist and Politicus; but in themselves these puzzles, largely suggested by Par menides, were familiar to Antisthenes and other contemporaries of Socrates, and they are here raised in an eristic context with no attempt at serious treatment. The absence of the Pythagorean themes of immortality and anamnesis, and virtually of mathematics, might incline one to put it before the Meno. These, it is true, would be out of place in an argument with two such mountebanks as Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, but why, we might ask, did Plato choose to show Soc rates dealing with their elementary fallacies? The obvious motive, to defend him from the charge of being a similar figure himself, seems to link it with the Apology rather than with Platos maturer works. The bare mention, without discussion, of the question whether virtue (274e) and sophia (282 c) are teachable has been used to argue on both sides or neither.3 One must also take into account the possible reference to the doctrine of Forms at 300d~30i a (pp. 273 f., 278-80 below), the coincidences with the Charmides, so close as to look like cross-references from one dialogue to the other (pp. ., 281), and the curiously casual and isolated reference to the sciences of mathematics and dialectic (pp. 272, 281 f.). Perhaps the best conclusion is Crombies: However, its date is not really important/ I deal with it now rather than earlier because it
1 For reff, to past doubts of its authenticity see Keulen, Unters. 3 . 16. 2 Reff, in Keulen, o.c. 49 . 3 E.g. Wilamowitz thought it showed E . was later than Af., Pl. 1, 303, 308 ( ihn \Men6\ mssen wir im Gedchtnis haben), n, 252. Leisegang also ( R E 2426) held that E . presupposes M . even while noting that its language associates it with the early group. Von Arnim on the other hand thought the contrary: the full treatment of the teachability of virtue is reserved for a later work, viz. Meno ( Jugendd. 126). See also Bluck, Meno 113 f. Sprague (Euth. 21 n. 29) thinks the point has no bearing on the question of priority of composition, and Keulen (49 n. 28) suspends judgement.
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raises certain difficulties for which a knowledge of the dialogues so far considered, whether or not they were written earlier, will be helpful. Dramatic date. The indications are: (i) it is many years after the foundation of Thurii in 444 (271 c); (2) Socrates is old enough for Crito to be afraid he is too old to learn (272 b); (3) Protagoras appears to be dead (286c) and Alcibiades (d. 404) is alive (275 a). It is therefore between about 420 and 404, and in view of Critos reference to Socratess age (more striking than his own in the Lysis , p. 135 above), probably nearer the latter.1 Scene and characters. Like other dialogues concerned with the education of a boy the main conversation is set in a palaestra or gymnasium, in this case the Lyceum, and, like the Lysis , in the dressing-room, the other participants being the boy Clinias, Ctesippus (cf. pp. 135 f. above), and the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. But the whole work is a skilful blending of the direct and reported forms. Socrates is narrating the conversation to his old friend Crito, who how ever does not merely listen to it but breaks in half way through and himself continues the discussion with Socrates, and at the end makes comments which elicit further comment in return. In this way we see the two Sophists through different pairs of eyes: their own, which reflect unbounded delight in their cleverness, those of Socrates, who lauds them to the skies but gets in some pointed rejoinders, of Ctesip pus who loses his temper with them, and of honest Crito who in spite of his respect for Socrates, seriously doubts his wisdom in becoming involved with such dubious characters. Like Lysis and Charmides, the boy Clinias was well born, in fact the cousin of Alcibiades (275 a). Euthydemus is distinguished from Protagoras in the Cratylus (386d) as holding that all things are alike to all men at the same time and always, and Aristotle names him twice
1 Taylors inference (P M W 90) that the conversation must be supposed to take place before the profanation of the mysteries in 415, which led to the banishment of Axiochus the father of Clinias, does not seem compelling. Jowetts editors (Dialogues 1, 202 n. 1) give no reason for their surprisingly early date between 430 and 420.
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his throne. He would only ask, must an intending pupil be already satisfied that virtue can be taught, or does their skill extend to making a man good who believes either that it cannot be taught or that they are not teachers of it?1 They can do that too, so S. concludes that they must be best not only at teaching philosophy and virtue but at instilling the desire to learn it; and he begs that for the sake of Cl. they will confine their epideixis to this theme and direct it at him. Since aret for them means the ability to get the better of other people, E. began with a demonstration of their new art of refutation, asking Cl. whether those who learn are the wise or the ignorant.2 He plunges for the wise, and is immediately asked whether the boys at school already knew what they learned. No, so he admits it is the ignorant who learned. But when the master rattles off a lesson, who learn it (pick it up)? The wise, so the last answer was wrong. (Cheers and laughter from the Sophists supporters.) Next, do learners learn what they know or what they dont know? Cl. chooses the latter. But does not Cl. know all his letters? And does not what his teacher says consist of letters? So if he learns (or understands)3 what the teacher says he learns what he knew already. D. picks up the ball and soon shows that Cl. was wrong to admit this, since learning means acquiring knowledge and one does not acquire what one has already got. Before E. can launch a third attack, S. comes to the boys rescue. So far, he says, the Sophists have only been playing with him, as in the first stage of initiation. His full initiation into the Sophistic mysteries will come later. All-important is a proper understanding of language. They wanted Cl. to see, for instance, that the Greek word for learn () is used both for acquiring new knowledge and for making use of the knowledge one has (which latter is more often called under standing, ), and so can be applied in different senses both to
1 The man is of course S. himself. Compare his opening move against Protagoras (Prot. 3i9a-b): A splendid art, if you really have it. . .1 say this because I did not think it could be taught. 2 The adjectives are and $. The Sophists play on the ambiguity of these terms, meaning both knowing a subject - or possessing a skill - and wise, and $ both ignorant and stupid. See p. 265 above. The Socratic answer to this unreal dilemma is at Lys. 2i8a-b. 3 means both, as S. will shortly point out (2776-278 b).
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Let the Sophists now call a halt to play, and fulfil their promise to arouse in Cl. a concern for wisdom and virtue. In his own amateurish way, S. will try to show them the sort of thing he means. He too works by question and answer, with the following result. To fare well one needs many good things - wealth, health, good birth, power and honours. May we add moral virtues and wisdom {sophia)} Yes. There is also good fortune, but that is not a separate category because in every occupation the expert (sophos) enjoys better fortune than anyone else.1 Now happiness does not depend on the possession of good things, but on their use, and what enables us to use them aright is knowledge. Without it, other possessions can be actively harmful, and the less one has of them the less harm they can do. In themselves neutral, they are bad if employed ignorantly, good if wisely. Knowledge or wisdom then (sophia) is the one thing necessary for happiness, and one must make every possible effort to acquire it, importuning father, friends, fellow-citizens or foreigners to impart it and undertaking any honourable service in return - that is, if it can be taught. Cl. believes it can, and S. thanks him for saving them from a long investigation. This being so, does Cl. agree that philosophy (the search for wisdom) is paramount, and intend to pursue it himself? With all my might. There, said S., you have my amateur effort at the sort of exhortation to virtue and knowledge which I want to hear transformed by your
1 The equation of good fortune with wisdom or expertise is dubious perhaps, but highly moral, an extension of fortune favours the brave. It is also authentically Socratic: wisdom cannot err. (At Meno 99 a chance is similarly excluded from the factors that make for success, but on the grounds that its results are not due to human direction.) But there is also a difference between Greek and English (or German; Bonitz, Plat. St. 251 n.) idiom, and , chance and good fortune, are from the same root as , to hit the mark. So S. says at 280 a that must always $ v , or it would not be .
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professional skill. The response of the professors is to assert that in wanting Cl. to become wise, his friends want him to be no longer what he is, and since to be no longer is to die, this must be what they wish for him. Ct. accuses them of lying, whereat E. proves that lying is impossible because he who speaks must speak (say) something; this must be something which is (or it would be nothing), and he who says what is speaks truth.1 Ct. retorts that nevertheless liars do not speak of things as they are. D. interprets the phrase as meaning that e.g. to speak of warm things as they are is to speak of them warmly. Ct. replies with an insult, and S. intervenes to keep the peace. Let them not quarrel over words. If E. and D. mean by destroying someone making him a better man (and this they claim to do) by all means let them do so - or at least try it out on S. himself as a corpus vile . Ct. protests, that he was not being abusive: contradiction is not abuse. D. promptly proves that there is no such thing as contradiction, by a development of the previous thesis that falsehood is impossible.2 S. now moves over to the attack. The argument, he says, is a familiar Protagorean one.3 Do they really believe it? Challenged to refute it, he retorts that on their own argument refutation is impossible, for no one can be wrong. But if no one ever errs, in action as in thought (to which E. agrees), then (with many apologies for the crudity of his question) what on earth is left for the Sophists to teach?4 D. can only make the feeble retort that S. should not bring up what they said earlier because he is baffled by what they say now. This, S. replies, certainly is baffling, for does not baffled b y mean unable to refute ? After an altercation
1 A supporting argument (284b-c) depends on the ambiguity of the Greek , as meaning both do (like v) and make. Sprague aptly quotes As You Like It. Oliver: What make you here? Orlando: Nothing. I am not taught to make anything. ( Euth. 24 n. 35.) 2 The deception here lies in the ambiguity of the word $ (strikingly illustrated by modern disputes as to its meaning in Protagorass man the measure fragment; see vol. i i i , 189f.). After Are there statements about every existing thing? (285 e), D .s subsequent question could mean either that it exists or doesnt exist? or Describing it as it is or as it is not? So he can go on, We proved that no one $ crn because no one says what is not. Then the only alternatives are the three which he enumerates. On the Eleatic premise that no one says the thing which is not, the remaining alternative, which Sprague calls the crucial case {Euth. 28 n. 44), cannot arise; for if, in her words, D. speaks the description of the thing whereas Ct. speaks another of the same thing, one of them must be speaking cbs , equated with v , which is impossible. 3 See vol. i i i , 182 with n. 2. 4 At Tht. 161 d this criticism is levelled at Protagoras himself and his doctrine that what appears to each one is true for him.
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of a special craft like carpentry. All they could think of was that it must be knowledge of itself, namely the knowledge how to make others good, and so on ad infinitum . They had failed again, and had to appeal to the Heavenly Twins once more. Thus encouraged, E. undertakes to prove that S. already has the knowledge he is seeking, because whoever knows anything (and S. admits he knows a few trivial things) knows everything, for no one can be knowing and not knowing at the same time. Further, he had this knowledge when he was born and even before it, and before earth and sky existed . S. tries to introduce the qualifications which would expose the fallacy, but is bullied into abandoning them, thus: Do you know what you know by something? Yes, the mind. I didnt ask what you know by. Do you know by something? Yes. Do you always know by that something? Yes, when I know. That wasnt the question. Do you always know by something? Yes. Then you always know. Again S. attacks, by saying that, if he knows everything, he must know that good men are unjust. Where did he learn that? Nowhere, says D. incautiously, and is jumped on by his brother for ruining the argument. Catching at a straw, D. leads them into more verbal clowning. Since S.s father is not father of his half-brother, he is not a father, so S. has no father. Alternatively, being a father he is father of everyone, because one cannot be both a father and not a father. Ct. has a dog. The dog is a father. Therefore it is Ct.s father. As similar arguments fall thick and fast, Ct. begins to get the hang of it: the Scythians had the pleasant habit of gilding their enemies skulls and using them as drinking-cups. Since they now own the skulls, says Ct., they are drinking out of their own skulls. E. retorts with a fallacy dependent on Greek idiom.1 S. rebukes Cl. for laughing at such beautiful things, whereat D. asks him if beautiful things are the same as beauty. No, but each has some beauty present to it. Then if an ox is present to you, you are an ox. How can a thing be different because of the presence of something different? S. (confessing that he himself was beginning to imitate the
1 (a) In the phrase , can be either active or passive. Anything visible is , therefore it can itself see. ( b) v can mean to speak of what is silent or for the silent to speak. The ambiguity of the acc. and inf. construction is used again by D. in his interpretation of as to cut up the cook. 273 19-2
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cratess writings are of the type. Socrates himself claims to have offered a pattern for protreptic discourses .1 While illustrating his method like other dialogues, this one serves the particular purpose of showing how sharply it contrasted with those of the men whom Plato con demned as eristics but with whom, in the eyes of many, Socrates was identified. It is their eristic skill which at 272b Socrates says that he longs to acquire. This word eristic was so freely bandied about that it might be said that one mans philosophy was another mans eristic: I pursue truth, you simply want a cheap victory in disputation. In the eyes of Isocrates, Plato and other Socratics were as much eristics as any Sophist was to Plato.2 It was therefore vital for Plato to demon strate the difference between eristic and Socratic dialectic. At the same time, by contrasting their treatment of a gifted and impressionable youth, he rebuts the charge that Socrates corrupted the young, recalled when he says He is young, and we fear. . . that someone. . . may corrupt him (275b). Socrates and eristic. That difference was real and important but by no means obvious; and Plato must have been uncomfortably aware that it had been obscured by some of his own dialogues. The resemblance extended beyond the formal similarity that both proceeded by brief question and answer (on which he himself makes Socrates insist at Prot. 334d and Gorg. 449b).3 It cannot be denied that some of the equivocations and unreal dilemmas which Plato shows up with such gusto in the Euthydemus are used by Socrates himself in other dialogues, no doubt with historical fidelity. The method was to demand an exclusive choice between two alternatives when what is needed is the insertion of a qualification or a recognition that a word is being used ambiguously (as in Euthydemuss question whether those who learn are the wise or the ignorant). Socrates uses this device in H. M in .,
1 282 c!, . the informative excursus on eristic in Thompsons Meno 272-85. Some Platonic references to it are collected by Gifford, Euth. 42f. Cf. also Grote, PI. 1, 554 n. r : The Platonic critics talk about the Eristics (as they do about the Sophists) as if that name designated a known and definite class of persons. This is altogether misleading. The term is vituperative, and was applied by different persons according to their own tastes. 3 On the importance of this for the eristics success see Keulen, 72 f.
2 See
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Most of the fallacies result from either a literal application of, or else a reaction against, the dicta of Parmenides (a) that the verb to be has only one meaning, namely to exist, and cannot be qualified, (b) that no one can perceive or speak of what is not. (a) leads to the assertion that Cliniass friends want him no longer to be ; 1 (b) was used by Antis thenes to prove the impossibility of false statement (cf. Euthyd. 283 e) and contradiction (285 d), what is not in the sense of a non-existent object being confused with what is not the case. (Cf. Ctesippuss criticism at 284 c, never answered by the brothers : He speaks the things that are, but not as they are.) Protagoras, however, had based the same tenet on his own anti-Parmenidean thesis that whatever anyone believed was true.2 The difficulty of accounting for false statement or belief was at the time a serious epistemological crux, and Plato did not tackle it thoroughly until the Sophist. He does however leave the reader in no doubt that Socrates saw through the logical tricks. Among his criticisms to which the brothers have no answer are: (1) is ambiguous (to acquire information and to understand, 2776-2783); (2) the thesis that error is impossible (a) undermines their claim to be teachers, (b) destroys itself, because if it is true Socrates cannot be mistaken when he disbelieves them (adduced against Protagorass man the measure at Thu 171 a-c); (3) if he knows everything he must know something untrue (296e). He also repeatedly tries to put in the necessary qualifications to Parmenidean disjunctions. Two of the eristic hits have a special interest. When Euthydemus proves by childishly fallacious means (stripping you always know of its qualifications, 296 a-c) that Socrates has known everything before he was born, even before earth and heaven came into being, it sounds ridiculous, but at the same time is not very different from what Socrates said about Menos slave: If he always possessed the know ledge, he must always have known. He did not acquire his opinions in his life, therefore he possessed and had learned them at some other
1 Cf. also Melissuss argument against change (fr. 8.6): If what is changes, what is has perished, and what is not has come into being (borrowed by Gorgias; see [Arist.] M X G 979b 28). 2 For Parmenides see vol. 11, 27f., 7 3 ff., and for the impossibility of contradiction vol. i i i , 182 (Protagoras) and 21 off. (Antisthenes). It is introduced again in the Crat. (429d). A rich list of sources on the origins of eristic is given by Keulen, 77 n. 68. 277
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communion or whatever the relationship may be : for I dont go so far as to dogmatize on that. I too would not dogmatize, but I have the impression that Plato is beginning to see difficulties in the Socratic habit of explaining predi cation in terms of abstract nouns (or synonymous article-plusadjective phrases, p. 225 above). He clung to it, indeed entrenched it more firmly when he made the Forms transcendent, but the question of the relation between Forms and particulars dogged him all his life, and the first hint of it is here. For Platos immediate purpose, however, both this and the knowing everything and always paradox are further examples to show how close to eristic quibbling the teaching of Socrates might appear, yet how far apart the two are in reality. Whether this passage contains a reference to the full theory of Forms, as developed by Plato in the Phaedo and Symposium, is by no means agreed.1 Wilamowitz (PL 11, 157-9) saw here no trace of the Platonic doctrine (the joke depends simply on the grammatic-logical relationship of subject and predicate), yet was convinced that Plato already had in mind what he gave expression to in the Phaedo. It would simply have been unsuitable in the present company. This latter con clusion is based on a less than compelling comparison with Crat. 389b, but he does make the important point that the language of that passage shows how close to ordinary thinking the doctrine of Forms is (or as I should prefer to say, sounds). I do not myself see that there is anything here which takes us beyond the position of the Lysis or H. Major, of which I have spoken already. The only relevant expres sions occur in one or both of these.2 Plato is chiefly concerned to protect the memory of Socrates from the stigma of eristic, and the whole spirit of the dialogue is Socratic. Clinias is another Charmides, there is an almost rollicking element of comedy, and no trace of the high
1 Gifford p. 59 quotes Zellers claim to find in it not merely, with Steinhart, a close approximation to the doctrine of ideas , but the actual enunciation of this doctrine ; but he agrees rather with Stallbaum who sees here only the logical doctrine of universals as held by Socrates, on which P. afterwards founded his metaphysical doctrine of Ideas . Friedlander (Pl. il, 192), whom Sprague follows, agreed with those who see an undeniable reference to what is called P.s theory of forms , but Ritter (Essence 101 n. 3) thought the indefinite * inappropriate to this. 2 See pp. ifoff., 188 ff. I am well aware how far the above considerations fall short of proof, and readers may be reminded of some remarks in ch. h i, 2 (Chronology). 279
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contributions of his own. What, they ask, is the art which, being concerned with use as well as acquiring or making, will ensure hap piness? The important suggestion is of course the last; namely the kingly or political art.1 This founders, however, on arguments used in the Charmides about sophrosyn. What is its product, and what is its content? As a useful or beneficial art, it must produce something2 as medicine produces health and agriculture food. (At Charm. 165 c-d the examples are medicine and building.) This something must be good, but we have shown that the only essentially good thing is knowledge. Statesmanship, then, must produce knowledge for the citizens, but not knowledge of any special craft like cobbling or architecture.3 It can only be knowledge of itself (292 d), exactly like sophrosyn in the Char mides ; that is, it makes men good and wise by teaching them how to make men good and wise. This gets us nowhere. We are going round in circles,4 and the value of statesmanship has escaped us, as did that of sophrosyn. This is serious argument on a Socratic level, teaching the same lesson as the Charmides and other Socratic dialogues (pp. 173 f. above). For Platos solution to the problem of the ideal statesman and his education we must wait until the Republic, but may remind our selves of what we have read in the Meno (pp. 261-3 above): existing statesmen owe their success to lucky conjecture, and if anyone could educate another in the political art, he would seem a being from a higher world. Finally, the most advanced piece of Platonic thinking in the dialogue is thrown out as a mere illustration among others. Clinias-Socrates is distinguishing between the arts of acquiring and using. Like hunters who hand over their catch to the chef, so (290c) geometers, astrono mers and calculators (who are themselves a kind of hunters, not
1 Called at 291c, a reminder that it is what Protagoras claimed to teach {Prot. 319a). 2 ' ^ , 291 d-e, ^; 292a, . . . ^ ; Charm. 165 d-e. 3 Cf. Charm. i74a-b : none of these skills makes for happiness. But at Prot. 324e it is Protagoras who says that one thing is needed for life in communities, and this is not building or metal-work or pottery but justice, moderation and piety. There were Sophists who were not frauds, and P. does them justice. 4 291b $ *. . . * . So at Charm. 174b $ .
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The man described b y Crito and Socrates at 30500*. has been variously identified with Isocrates, Antisthenes, Antiphon, Thrasymachus, and Poly crates, and also said to represent a type rather than an individual.3 O f the
1 At Rep. fio d -e it is explained that geometers are not thinking of the visible figures which they draw, but are seeking (^*) to discover the realities (cf. here) which can only be seen by the mind, the perfect square itself* and diagonal itself*. The inclusion of astronomy is explained by Rep. 529c-53ob: the astronomer should treat the visible heavenly bodies not as the final objects of his study, but, like geometrical diagrams, as instructional models of reality, and give his attention to the problems in pure mathematics to which they point the way. 2 The relationship is well and simply explained by Jackson in J . of Philol. 1881, i43f. See also pp. 509-12 below. 3 Some reff, are in Friedlnder, PI. 11, 338 n. 25. Thrasymachus was Winckelmanns choice (Gifford 17).
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last opinion were W ilam owitz, Bluck (Meno 11 5 n. 4) and Friedlnder (PL ii, 194), who says that he represents the many, who do not know how to distinguish between eristic and dialectic and who scorn Socrates because Euthydemus is so contemptible. . . Th e Euthydemus is meant to clear up this confusion. W ilam owitz thought he stood for rhetoric in general, both forensic and political, which were never united in the same person.1 On the other hand, the description has touches which certainly sound individual, as when Crito quotes a very artificially constructed sentence and emphasizes that he is giving the mans own words.2 The majority o f scholars favour Isocrates, the case for whom has never been presented better than by Thom pson.3 Taylor rejected this ( P M W 10 1) on the ground that at the date at which the conversation was supposed to take place, Isocrates was only a boy. Apart from the fact that he probably put this date too early (p. 267 n. 1 above), his point is in effect answered by Jowetts editors when they say (Dialogues 1, 202 n. 1) that Isocrates could not have been named in a dialogue which is evidently supposed to take p la c e .. .when he was still a b o y . It can hardly be doubted that in defending the Socratic philosophy Plato took account o f the criticisms o f his own contemporaries, but as Field put it (P. and Contemps. 19 3) he avoids the formal anachronism by not mentioning any name in connexion with them ; and one may agree with his further conclusion: W ould not anyone who read the Euthydemus when it was published have thought o f Isocrates when he read the passage? I f Plato realized, as he must have done, what his portrait would suggest to his readers, and yet took no steps to guard against it, we can hardly deny that the allusion was intentional.
1 PI. I , 304. (See also 299.) His arguments against identification with Isocrates are at 11, 165-7. 2 304e . This is made much of by Thompson, and with some reason, though Wilamowitz might have said that it would fit Gorgias as much as Isocrates and is merely a parody of rhetorical style in general. 3 Phaedrus 179-82. Gifford (17-20) follows Thompson, but adds some relevant quotations from Isocrates himself. He might have included Panath. 18, where I. speaks of three or four common-or-garden Sophists-the sort that say they know everything sitting in the Lyceum and slandering him. Some have seen a close relation between the Euthyd. and Isocr. In Sophistas (Gifford 32).
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Ztoe. Literary criticism has provided the usual contradictions.2 More promising seem the allusions to Pythagorean themes such as kosmos and the universal power of geometry (507e) and the fate of the soul after death (493a-c), and to a Sicilian or Italian as the possible ex pounder of the latter and Mithaecus who wrote a book on Sicilian cookery (518 b). These have been thought by many to point to a date soon after Platos first visit to Magna Graecia in 387 and acquaintance with Archytas. (As Geffcken says, Hermes 1930, 27, P. is hardly likely to have heard of Mithaecus outside his own island.) Others date it earlier, and Morrison takes it to reflect only the already existing interest in Pythagoreanism which formed a motive for the journey (p. 17 above).3 The later date seems more probable, and though there is no proof, what he says about tyrants might reflect his first personal ex perience of one in Sicily.4 Other historical data adduced are the obvious connexion with some expressions of Isocrates, especially in his In Soph. and Helen (which do not however settle the question of priority), a possible relation to the Accusation of Polycrates (open to the same objection) and the evidence of the Seventh Letter for Platos bitter disillusionment with contemporary politics, reflected in the Gorgias. 5 On the philosophical side Socrates the ignorant questioner has turned into a man of positive and strongly expressed convictions, and the dialogue contains the first of the great eschatological myths. The for mer might be explained by the intense personal antagonism between
1 No one can write on this dialogue without acknowledging his debt to the exemplary commentary of E. R. Dodds. For editions and works on text to 1959, see this work, pp. 392f. 2 A youthful w o rk .. .it drags . . .diffuseness betrays the hand of the prentice (Taylor, P M I V 103); among the greatest, from the point of view of artistic perfection, of the dialogues of P. (Lodge, Gorg. 25). I incline to agree with Taylor that the work is too long, but would attribute this rather to the emotional stress under which P. was writing. 3 Morrison in CQ 1958. Dodds, who takes the other side, comments in Gorg. 26 n. 3. Note that Morrison (p. 213) takes the unusual view that Phaedo too antedates the Italian visit. Burkert {Ant. u. Abendl. 1968, 100 n. 14), who favours the later dating, adds reff, to those in Dodds. Others who have put it before 387 include Croiset (Bud ed. 101 f.) and Treves ( R E x l i i . Halbb. 1742). Witte ( Wiss. v. G. u. B . 46) follows Dodds. Geffckens article in Hermes 1930 is devoted to the dating of the dialogue, which he put after the visit to the West but before the Meno. 4 510b describes very well the relations between Dionysius and Dion as P. saw them (Geffcken, Hermes 1930, 28). 5 For these points see Dodds 18-30.
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Socrates and Callicles, but that leaves the question why Plato chose to confront him with such a hostile interlocutor. Stylometry associates the dialogue with the early group, but only if that is allowed to include the Protagoras and Meno. It does not settle its relationship to the Meno, nor can that well be settled. Most probably it was written after, but not long after, 387. Dramatic date. Conflicting historical allusions (listed in Dodds, 17 f.) show that Plato was either indifferent to the dating of this conver sation or that, as Cornford thought, his vagueness was deliberate. In some dialogues he fixes the date with fair precision.1 Characters and setting. Gorgias, Callicles, and Socratess fanatical disciple Chaerephon (who has a tiny part) have met us in vol. i i i . We need only add that the views attributed here to Gorgias correspond closely to those expressed in his own Helen. Polus is a historical figure, a Sicilian like his master, teacher of rhetoric and writer of a handbook on it referred to at 462 b .2 The place of their talk is not mentioned, but since Gorgias has just finished an epideixis, and it is not in the house of Callicles where he is staying (447 b),3 it must be somewhere public like a gymnasium. The audience, or many of them, have remained for the discussion (458 b-c). It is constructed in three episodes, each marked by a change of interlocutor and progressing from mutual respect (Gorgias), through rudeness met with irony and disdain (Polus), to outbursts of ill-temper (Callicles).4
1 Cornford, Rep. xx. Internally dated works are Laches (p. 125 above), Charm. (155), Meno (236), Prot. (214) in spite of one lapse for the sake of a quotation, and, of course, Apol., Crito, Euthyphro and Phaedo. 2 For Gorgias see vol. i i i , 269-74 and index, Callicles 10 1-7, and Chaerephon 365 n. 1, 405f.; for Polus, Dodds 11, Nestle in R E x l i i . Halbb. 1424^ 3 Curiously, some people have thought that it is. L. Paul in 1869 devoted an article to this minor point, to refute their error. ( 1st die Scene fur den plat. Dialog Gorg. im Hause des .?) 4 For the dramatic structure of the G ., which some have compared to a tragedy, see J. Duchemin, R E G 1943, 265f., with notes. Many have discovered a real or thematic structure different from the dramatic, but as the same writer (who is one of them) says, chaque critique propose une structure diffrente, and we may leave them to the pastime.
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Is it the same with right and wrong? Or must G .s pupils either start with a knowledge of right and wrong or acquire it from G.? G. (who, be it remembered, laughed at those who undertake to teach aret\ Meno 95c) replies lightly that he will teach them it if they dont happen to know. On other subjects, then, the trained orator persuades without knowledge, but on right and wrong he is the expert, as a doctor on medicine. S. then carries the analogy with the arts a step further: knowledge of music makes a man musical, of building, an architect, of medicine a doctor and so on. Must not knowledge of justice by similar reasoning make a man just ? 1 So there can be no question of an orator taught by G. misusing his knowledge for bad ends, which G. had spoken of as a possibility. Is G. being inconsistent? Second round: Polus. Is it better to do wrong or suffer it ? (461 b 481 b). P. declares that S. has taken an unfair advantage of G .s natural reluctance to say that he does not understand and cannot teach the nature of right. He loves to trap people into seeming contradictions. S. is willing to retract anything he ought, provided they stick to the method of question and answer. Asked what art he thinks rhetoric to be, he replies that it is not an art, but the kind of empirical procedure which, as P. himself has written, precedes and gives birth to arts.2 It produces gratification and pleasure, being in fact one of the pseudo-arts to which S. would give the generic name of pandering.3 The genuine art to which it corresponds is a branch of the art of government, the political art. There are two arts concerned respectively with the wellbeing of soul and body. The former is the political art, which has two branches, legislation (which maintains wellbeing) and justice (which restores it).4
1 The Greek uses adjectives from identical roots, saying knowledge of architecture makes a man architectural etc. Behind this of course, though concealed from G., is S.s conviction that all wrongdoing is the result of ignorance. 2 462 b. At 448 c Polus, evidently quoting himself, had said that the arts were learned empirically, from experience or practice without theory. Aristotle agreed, holding that memories combine to form a single experience () which, though it may resemble knowledge and art, is in fact a prior stage leading to them. He quotes Polus by name ( Metaph. 980b29-981 a 5). 3 did not mean pandering in the restricted sense of procuring, but I adopt Hamiltons rendering here (Penguin trans.) to bring out its implication of moral baseness which flattery, the more usual translation, lacks. See Dodds on 463hl. 4 According to R. W . Hall (P. and I. 117) the description of politics as concerned with the welfare of the soul results in the little-noticed moral paradox that morality is attained not by
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and ugly* or base* by their opposites. But then if doing wrong is uglier or baser than suffering it, it must be either more painful or worse (more harmful). It is not (they both agree) more painful, therefore it is more harmful. On the second point, that it is worse for a criminal to escape punish ment than to endure it, if he deserves it his punishment will be just, justice (as P. agrees) is afine thing, and since what is fine must be either pleasurable or good, what he suffers must be of benefit to him. The benefit is to his soul. Corruption in the soul means such things as wickedness, ignorance, cowardice, and these are baser than harm to body or fortune. Then on the same argument, since to be wicked is not more painful than to be ill or poor, it must be worse for a man. Bodily ailments are cured by medicine or surgery, which though not pleasant are endured for the good they do, and the execution of justice performs the same function for the soul. The happiest man is the healthy, who does not need treatment, next happiest the man who needs and gets it, and unhappiest the man whose diseases go untreated. Since wickedness is not only base but the worst of all evils, the man who is punished for his sins is better off than an Archelaus. So the best use of oratory would be to ensure that anyone whom we care for, if he has done wrong, is brought to book, and the worst one could wish for an enemy is that he enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of wickedness. Third round: Callicles. How should one live ? (481 b 52j c ).1 C. breaks in to protest that S.s teaching would turn human life upside-down. Polus has only been defeated, like G., through a false shame. He ought never to have admitted that to do wrong is baser than to suffer it: that is the answer of convention, not nature, a low and vulgar answer. To be wronged and unable to defend oneself is unmanly and slavish. The convention that getting the better of others is immoral is an invention of the weak multitude. They preach equality as the best they can hope for, being inferior, but natural right is for the better and stronger to rule their inferiors. S. is corrupted by his addiction to philosophy, which is
1 ; 492c!; also 487e and 500c. But these dramatic divisions are artificial. In his exchanges with Polus, S. had already described their subject as knowledge or ignorance of who is happy and who is not (472c).
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health and sickness) cannot exist in a man at the same times and in the same part of him, and further that being fortunate and being unfortunate1 are opposites. Now hunger and thirst are painful, but C. maintains that eating when hungry or drinking when thirsty are pleasant, and only pleasant so long as the hunger or thirst is felt. Hence pain and pleasure can occur together, therefore they cannot be opposites and must be different from acting and faring ill or well, and pleasure is not the same as good. C. cannot stand S.s niggling little sophisms, 2 but is persuaded to continue by a rebuke from G., and S. passes to an argument dependent on his usual expression of predication in terms of nouns, and the presence of something in a subject. Good men are good by the pre sence of what is good,3 and vice versa. Brave and sensible men (says C.) are good, cowards and fools are not. But cowards and fools feel much the same amount of pleasure and pain as the brave and wise. When men feel pleasure, pleasures are present to them, i.e. (given C .s identification of pleasure and good) what is good is present to them, therefore fools and cowards are good. The exasperated C. now makes a shameless volte face . S. should have known he was not serious: of course he distinguishes good and bad pleasures like everybody else. Good pleasures, he agrees, are those whose results are beneficial, and since all action should be a means to the good, those alone should be chosen. But to know which pleasures are good and which bad calls for expert knowledge. At this point S. pleads earnestly with C. not to take the subject lightly: it involves nothing less than a choice between two opposed ways of living: the life of practical affairs, politics and public speaking, and that of philosophy. He reminds C. of his earlier distinction between a true art and an empirical knack. The latter proceeds in an unmethodical, hit-and-miss way, aiming
1 Again the ambiguous v, to act well and to prosper. 2 Adkins (M . andR. 280 n. 10) says the argument is fallacious. P. is cheating: it is drinking when thirsty that C. should have admitted to be pleasant - thereby destroying the argument not drinking per se.' I do not understand this. Eating when hungry and drinking when thirsty are just what C. does maintain to be pleasant (494b-c, 496c-d). Drinking per se, as Adkins says, cannot be called either pleasant or painful. C. would agree, which is why he says the pleasure lies in drinking when thirsty, i.e. (as S. points out) when drinking is a pleasure but coincides with the pain of thirst. 3 On this see pp. 307 f. below.
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absolute ruler oneself or a friend of the established government. (C., who has rejoined the conversation, for once agrees with enthusiasm.) To be friend to a dictator one must cultivate his ways, for he will fear his superior and despise his inferior. But this assimilation will expose one to the greater evil, that of injuring others with impunity and so corrupt ing the soul. C. thinks this utterly perverse, simply repeating after Polus that such a man will, if he wishes, kill or rob any of the other sort, and has to be reminded that to save ones life and goods is nothing great. Swimming is not among the noblest arts, though it often saves life. Sea-captains and engineers1 preserve life and goods, yet they are content with a modest social status, and C. would never allow his son to marry the engineers daughter. If virtue consists in being able to save ones own and others skins, he ought to hold such men in the highest esteem. In pursuit of his political ambitions, C. too must adapt himself to the sovereign power. This in democratic Athens is the populace, which likes to hear only what harmonizes with its own character, and he must bear in mind the distinction already arrived at between pandering to desires and aiming at genuine improvement. Did those whom he mentioned as good statesmen really leave the citizens better than they found them ? Some say Pericles debauched them by introducing pay for public services. At any rate, though respecting him at first, in the end they convicted him of embezzlement and almost condemned him to death. They seem to have become more vicious under his influence. Cimon and Themistocles they ostracized, and for Miltiades they actually voted the death penalty. If these had been good men, either in C .s sense or in S.s, they would never have come to this. Doubtless they were better than their successors at ministering to the desires of the populace, a thing which any merchant or manufacturer could do. Men say they made Athens great, when she is in fact swollen and ulcerous because they did not possess the genuine art of changing sick desires for healthy. They have been cooks, not doctors. Yet when the inevitable disaster comes, men will not blame their past rulers but those who are at hand, perhaps Alcibiades and Callicles himself. Finally, when C. recommends S. to enter politics, which does he advise him to be, doctor or cook ?
1 Military engineers who construct defence works.
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downfall, through leaving her sick and weakened by surfeit instead of using their power to institute a healthy regimen. Against Pericles Plato is especially violent, and perhaps he was right. One modem scholar at least (Peter Green, S. o f P. 1 6) says of Pericles that his entire public career was devoted to furthering Athens greatness, yet every step he took made his citys ultimate downfall more inevitable. This is pre cisely Platos verdict. Nor does he write with philosophic calm, but under the influence of an over-mastering indignation that shows itself in almost every line, culminating perhaps in that pronouncement which so disgusted Grote, where the rottenness of Athens is attributed to her being glutted with harbours, dockyards, walls, tribute and suchlike rubbish (519a). Socrates, in the eyes of the Victorian, not only con demns exorbitant and maleficent desires but depreciates and degrades all the actualities of life, among them effective maintenance of public force such as ships, docks, walls, arms etc. (PL 11, 130 f.) Nowadays we tend rather to reflect that under Pericless guidance Athens used these not primarily for defence but for self-aggrandisement, for turning her Greek allies into subjects, while much of the tribute intended for the joint defence of the Greeks against the Persians was used to adorn and glorify Athens herself.1 Many have seen the main purpose of the Gorgias as another defence of Socrates. There are indeed many echoes of the Apology, and the speeches of Socrates towards the end read like another Apology themselves. But it is a transformed Socrates. The ironic self-depreciating inquirer (not of course completely absent; cf. 4 6 1c-d, 486d~488b) is overshadowed by the man who knows. The departure from the mood of the previous Socratic dialogues begins early. He starts by asking characteristically what rhetoric is ; but instead of declaring that he does not know, and inviting and rejecting definitions one by one until all have proved inadequate (or as in the Protagoras and Meno regretting in his final words that they have all the time been trying to decide on an attribute of the subject before they know what it is) he here declares (463 c) I shall not tell him whether I think rhetoric fine or base until I have answered the question what it is, and straightway answers it. This Socrates is not so much a man as a symbol of the philosophic life,
1 But for Pericles see also the fuller note of Hamilton in Penguin trans., p. 131.
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works, rhetoric in the Phaedrus, knowledge and belief in the Republic, pleasure in the Philebus. Pleasure is also one of those already met with, in the Protagoras, and the relation between the two accounts is thought by some to pose a problem (pp. 302-5 below). The Socratic method and its aims. We have often seen Socrates in action, but only in this dialogue does Plato describe his aims in general terms. Without necessarily accepting his own estimation, we ought to know what it is, and a few quotations will show us.1 Unlike Callicles, Gorgias is a reasonable man who deserves this kind of consideration, and to him the explanations are addressed.
453 a. I f ever any man made it his object in conversation to know exactly what the conversation is about, I am quite sure - and you may be sure too - that I am such a m a n .. .1 w on t say that I haven t a suspicion o f your meaning on both points, but that suspicion w on t prevent me from asking you what you believe to be the nature o f the conviction produced by oratory and the subject o f that conviction. Y o u may wonder w hy, if I have this suspicion, I ask you instead o f answering the question myself. I am moved to do so not by any consideration personal to you but by consideration for the argument, which I wish to proceed in such a w ay as to place before us in the clearest possible light what we are talking about. 454b. That is just what I suspected you meant. But don t be surprised if later on I repeat the procedure and ask additional questions when the answer seems to be already clear. M y motive, as I say, is not in the least personal; it is simply to help the discussion to progress towards its end in a logical sequence and to prevent us from getting into the habit o f anticipating one anothers statements because we have a vague suspicion what they are likely to be, instead o f allowing you to develop your own argument in your own w ay from the agreed premises. (T o which Gorgias replies: A very proper procedure, Socrates.) 457e. I am afraid that if I probe the matter further you may suppose that my purpose is not so much to elucidate the subject as to win a verbal victory over you. I f you are the same sort o f person as I myself, I will willingly go on questioning yo u ; otherwise I will stop. I f you ask what I mean, I am one o f those people who are glad to have their own mistakes pointed out and glad to point out the mistakes o f others, but who would just as soon have the first experience as the second; in fact I consider the
1 I quote the Penguin translation by Hamilton.
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One can well understand the irritation caused by this habit o f asking questions when the answer seems already clear, when unaccompanied by the polite explanation vouchsafed to Gorgias. Rhetoric and morals. Critics have used up a lot of ink on the question whether the subject of the Gorgias is rhetoric or morals. Thus J. Duchemin saw two themes and found it necessary to ask which is the principal one, and Taylor distinguished the ostensible subject (rhetoric) from the real. The dichotomy dates from antiquity. Olympiodorus wrote: some say its aim is to discuss rhetoric, others that it is a conversation about justice and injustice. He rejects both views as partial, and his own conclusion could hardly be bettered: Its aim is to discuss the moral principles leading to the happiness of a political society. The fact is, of course, that in Platos Greece rhetoric itself was a tremendous moral and political force, and to treat it in isolation would never occur to a Greek and would involve a quite illegitimate separation of form from content.2 The art which according to its own most famous exponent gives men not only freedom for themselves but the power to rule others in their own city (452d) can hardly be discussed in abstraction from either ethics or politics. The subject of the dialogue is best described by its author: The subject of our discussion is this. . . what life should one choose, the one to which you invite me, doing what you call a mans work, speaking in the Assembly, exercising oneself in rhetoric and practising politics in the way that you presentday politicians do, or the life of philosophy; and how does the one differ from the other? (500c). Nothing could express better the per sonal dilemma of Plato in the years after 399. He could not approve of the Athenian type of democracy. The lover of Demos, shifting to every
1 Cf. 470c, 505e~506a, 5o6b-c. 2 A mistake not made by S. and Gorgias. See 449 e. If the moral and political power of rhetoric in Athens has not emerged from vol. in of this History, it has indeed been written in vain. Reff, for the above paragraph are: Duchemin in R E G 1943, 273; Taylor, P M W 106; Olymp, in Gorg., Prooem. p. 2 Norvin (quoted by Friedlander, PL 11, 353 n. 1).
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wind of public opinion, is contrasted with the lover of sophia. But tyranny (dictatorship or despotism) was even more repugnant. The populace, like the tyrant, seeks to satisfy its own selfish lusts, and the man who would gain power in a democracy must pander to those lusts. The good statesman, on the other hand, like any good craftsman, would pride himself on turning his material (in this case the citizens) into a good product, and to this end would work on a principle of geometrical proportion, not indiscriminate equality but treating each according to his deserts. Moreover if he really understands the art of statesmanship he will be able to train others in the same ideals. If this is not expressly stated in the Gorgias, we know it from the end of the Meno, where the man who could do this appears as a Tiresias in Hades, the only one with sense among the leaping shadows of actual politi cians. Moreover Gorgias is emphatic that the rhetorician both practises and hands on his art (449 b), and rhetoric is in Platos eyes a counterfeit of true, or philosophic, statesmanship, just as in the Phaedrus philo sophy is the only true rhetoric. But Plato has known only one Tiresias, the only man to practise the true political art - the man who took no active part in politics and in modern Athens had been put to death as a corrupter of the young. He deplored the breach between the man of action (whom the world called sophos) and the philosopher, and de scribed in detail in the Republic the ideal combination of philosopher and ruler. But in the emotional crisis which produced the Gorgias, he seems to have had no hope that it could ever be realized. Mathematics, proportion and order. Mathematical and semi-mathematical illustrations, though less technical and complex than in the Meno, do occur and have suggested a Pythagorean element. At 465 b Socrates says that for the sake of brevity he will speak as the geometers do,1 and produces a double statement of proportions in the form a\b\\c\d and e :f::g :h . More striking is the argument at 503e ff. The aim of craftsmen (artists, builders, shipwrights) is to introduce order (taxis) into their material, making one part fit and harmonize with another
1 The Greek mathematicians treated proportion as a part of geometry, not of arithmetic (Dodds ad loc.). One is reminded of the use of proportion in the Divided Line of Rep. 6. Schuhl has a short article on this passage in R E G 1939. 299
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feeling his way beyond the simple virtue is knowledge of the Socratic dialogues, to which no one but Socrates himself could aspire, towards a deeper psychology with something approaching a recognition of the role of the will. The commendation of geometrical equality is a clue to Platos political ideas. It relates things by equality of proportion, whereas arithmetical equality relates them by equality of amount. (See also vol. hi, 151.) In the Laws he wrote:
There are two sorts o f equality. . .O n e is within the reach o f every city and legislator in their distribution o f privileges, namely equality o f measure, weight and number, granting equal distribution by lot. But the truest and best equality is not so obvious. . .It distributes more to the greater and less to the lesser, apportioning its gifts to the nature o f each, greater privileges to men o f more merit, and to their opposites in merit and education whatever is their due. . . For us the essence o f statesmanship is always justice, and if that is our present aim we must take the second kind o f equality as the model in founding our city.1
To make some use of the lot, he concedes, is unavoidable for the sake of public relations, but it must be as little as possible. Obviously Plato could not have approved of democracy as under stood at Athens, and his chief complaint against her men of power is that they pandered to the whims of the demos instead of disciplining and educating it. But he loathed tyranny far more, indeed his worst fear concerning extreme democracy and the degeneration of freedom into licence, expressed in Rep . 8, is that it inevitably leads to dictator ship. His advocacy of geometrical equality is addressed not to a demo crat, but to Callicles who despised the demos and would simply use it to further his own ambitions. The incurable sinners in Hades, we learn (525 d), have mostly been tyrants, kings and potentates. But for an adequate exposition of Platos political ideals we must await the Republic. 2
1 Laws 757bff. At Rep. 558c democracy is described as distributing equality to equals and unequals alike. Aristotle describes the distinction as that between arithmetical equality and equality according to worth (Pol. 1302a6). Cf. Plut. Qu. conv. 7i9 a -b : Lycurgus banished arithmetical proportion because of its association with democracy and mob-rule, and introduced the geometrical, suited to a moderate oligarchy or a constitutional monarchy. The one distributes an equal amount, by number, the other an amount corresponding to worth, by proportion etc. 2 Vlastos has an interesting note on the Gorg. passage in . . . . 301
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constitutes true virtue and happiness (491 e-492 a, 492 c). When Callicles is forced to abandon his insistence on the identity of pleasure and good, and admit the existence of bad pleasures and good pains (499 b), Socrates keeps the lead. He does indeed deny that good is identical with pleasant and bad with painful (49yd, 500 d), but immediately connects this with his own equation of good with beneficial: good pleasures and pains are those which benefit us, bad are those which do us harm . Pleasant activities, like all activities, should be a means to good, and to recognize these needs a genuine art ( techn), not the kind of empirical knack that panders to pleasure alone (499d~5ooa, 501b). The thesis argued in the Protagoras1 is that pleasure in itself, leaving aside its consequences, is good (351 e), and conversely good is pleasure (355 a), so they are identical. In spite of this, it is possible to make a wrong choice of pleasures (35yd). Although all pleasure is good, the phenomenon which the multitude call doing evil by yielding to plea sure, or losing ones self-control, does exist, but their explanation of it is wrong. They have in mind that a man may be led to indulge his desire of ordinary pleasures - eating, drinking, sex - to an extent which will lead to disease, poverty or other pains. All pleasure being good, our aim must be to secure the maximum amount of it over the whole span of our lives, and there are some pleasures which, though good while they last, are outweighed by the pains (evils) that result from them. To achieve the aim then, we must learn to measure or weigh the total amount of pleasure and pain, future as well as present, which our action will produce, and we end up satisfactorily with the Socratic teaching that right living depends not on strength or weakness of will, but solely on knowledge. It should be obvious that the difference between this and the ethic of the Gorgias is one of terminology, not substance. I have already stated (pp. 232 ff. above) my view that in the social gathering at the house of Callias we are not given the full teaching of the Platonic Socrates, but shown (by both Protagoras and Socrates) the highest ethic to which a believer in man the measure could aspire. Socrates says nothing
1 We need not for the moment ask whose the thesis is. Protagoras at first demurs, and it is argued only as the logical conclusion to be drawn from popular opinion, but Socrates nowhere suggests an alternative, and argues it convincingly enough for all the Sophists present to agree in the end that it is their own view too (358 a).
303
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part of us must be our chief concern, and we would be wise to suffer rather than commit wrong and welcome punishment as the surgery of the soul. All this Plato believed, but neither the deliberate incom pleteness of the Protagoras nor the angry confrontation of the Gorgias gives us his mature and considered philosophy of pleasure. For that we must wait till the Philebus. The mythical element. The Gorgias is noteworthy for containing the first of Platos epilogues describing the fate of souls after death, a pre liminary to the more elaborate eschatological schemes of the Phaedo and Republic (though judgement in Hades by Minos, Rhadamanthys and Aeacus, the true judges, has been mentioned in the Apology, 41 a). A growing interest in the old stories as imaginative representations of religious or philosophical truths is also shown earlier in the dialogue, when Socrates mentions the conception of the body (soma) as a tomb (sema) and of the lustful soul as a leaky jar. The former he has learned from one of the wise and the latter he thinks the invention o f a clever mythologist, perhaps an Italian or Sicilian, which suggests a Pytha gorean or Orphic source.1 The carrying of water in a broken pitcher was depicted by Polygnotus as a punishment for the uninitiated.2 The sources of the final myth have been carefully and thoroughly explored by Dodds in his dissection of it (Gorg. pp. 372-6). I would only plead, as against his last paragraph, that the Orphic writings be not too quickly dismissed. The difficulty about identifying them as a source is that they did not so much invent mythological motifs as give them new significance in a fairly sophisticated theological synthesis. Doddss feeling that, for example, the motif of the water-carriers in Hades was
lot in the next world. This will be better discussed in connexion with the Republic, which gives us in book 10 an elaborate myth of posthumous judgement and retribution, but in book 2 a trenchant criticism of those who hold out the bliss or torments of the next world as an inducement to good behaviour: justice ought to be commendable for its own sake, whether or not it is rewarded, or even known, by god or man. 1 For as Pythagoreans, see Dodds, Gorg. 297f. In G. and G. 311 n. 3, I have tried to defend against Dodds and earlier critics the view that the phrase - is ascribed to the Orphies by name at Crat. 400 c. See Dodds, G. and I. 148, 169 n. 87, Gorg. 300. 2 In his picture of the underworld at Delphi, described by Pausanias (10.31.9 and 11). On the relation of this myth to Orphism, see my OGR 16 1-3, and f r possible original meanings of the myth Dodds, Gorg. 298 f. P. liked to compare philosophers to the initiated (Phaedo 69c-d), as here he assigns them to the Islands of the Blest (526c).
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Callicles, says Socrates (253 a), will think the myth a mere tale (mythos) but he offers it as the truth. He reaffirms his belief in it at 524 a, and at the end (527 a) remarks that it might seem an old wives tale not worth attention, if they could find anything better and truer; but they have failed to prove that any other life is better than this one, which is also to our advantage in the other world. The truth lies not in a literal interpretation of the details of the story, but in the lesson it conveys, that the Socratic ethic is not only morally superior to the Calliclean but leads in the end to greater happiness for the individual. It is an extension of the argument into regions beyond the reach of dialectical discussion. Plato believes in immortality and even (in Phaedo and Phaedrus) that it can be proved dialectically; but what happens to the soul after death ? In our ignorance we cannot do better than rely on the ancient and sacred stories (Ep. 7.335 a) as symbolic expressions of religious truths like divine justice. Platos attitude here will be the same as that which he expresses in the Phaedo (1 i4d) : Now to maintain that these things are exactly as I have narrated them would ill befit a man of common sense; but that either this or something similar is the truth about our souls and their dwelling-places, that (since the soul has been proved to be immortal) does seem to me to be fitting, and to be a risk worth taking for the man who thinks as we do. 1 Forms in the Gorgias ? In his Paideia Jaeger wrote (Eng. tr. 11, 14 3, referring to 4 9 8 d): as the Gorgias unmistakably teaches, the good is that through whose presence good things2 are good ; that is, it is the Idea, the ultimate shape of every good thing. There are two errors here. First, it is people, not things (to ccyccO oO masc., 498 d 2), that are made good, and secondly, it is not the good through whose presence they are good, but good things (pi.).3 The word parusia (presence) suggested to Jaeger its use with a form or quality (white things are white through the presence o f the white or whiteness, etc;
1 P.s use of myth is dealt with at greater length in OGR 239-42. 2 I have altered the published translation ( the good ) here to make it clear that J. mistranslated at 498d 2 as neuter. He wrote die guten Dinge. 3 The significance of the plural is pointed out by Dodds on 497e 1. Neither he nor J. seems to have noticed the phrase at 46767, which would have served J.s purpose better, for it is a familiar phrase both in P.s doctrine of transcendent forms and in Aristotles criticism of it.
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related to Platos in the Gorgias and elsewhere.1 Both called their teaching philosophia, which immediately puts them into competition, since for Isocrates it meant above all rhetoric, which he actually equated with it at Nie. i and Antid. 183. Over-addiction to discussion, and the niceties of astronomy and geometry, he says (Antid. 264 ff., reminding us of Callicles at Gorg. 484 c ff.), are well enough as training for boys, but they should beware of lingering too long over them and letting their talents become ossified.2 (At Panath. 27 he condescends to say that even if these subjects do no positive good, at least they keep the young out of mischief.) One should not give the name philosophy to what does nothing to assist immediate speech or action. People blame oratory, he says (Nie. 1), as aiming at pleonexia (that getting more than or getting the better of others which Callicles so unscrupulously advocates). Deeds lead to more pleonexia than words, but in any case we reverence the gods and practise justice and the other virtues not to be worse off than others but to enjoy the good things of life. Blame wrong action and deceitful speech but not self-interest virtuously pursued. There is a moral tone here which was lacking in Callicles. Pleonexia can be good or bad (Antid. 281), and to seek advantage by robbery, cheating and other malpractices is not even successful: the reproach it incurs makes life a misery. True pleonexia is to serve the gods, maintain good relations with friends and citizens, and have an honourable reputation. Almost a Socratic paradox, but not quite. The misery of ill-doing comes from external pressures, not internal disharmony, and honourable ambition is to be rewarded by society. This is what he means when he says (De pace 31 f.) that justice and virtue are not only approved but contribute most powerfully to happiness. Whereas others (Antid. 84 f., presumably men like Plato) preach a kind of sophrosyn and justice known only to themselves, he boasts of preaching the virtues as universally recognized, and seeking to convert not just a few individuals but the whole city to act in a way which will bring happiness. Like the
1 Some of these are cited by Thompson in his essay, Phaedr. app. 2, 170 83. 2 Thompson p. 172 suggests that P. would have agreed about mathematics, since he too prescribed them not as ends in themselves but as part of a larger discipline. But Isocrates would hardly have approved of a curriculum that kept the students at mathematics for ten years, until the age of thirty, and did not consider them ready for public office until after five further years of Platos dialectical philosophy.
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themselves ill-provided, claim to know the future (? life after death) but have no practical counsel to give, who claim to have knowledge but make more mistakes than those who rely on opinion (doxa). Their occupation is rightly accounted mere petty quibbling, certainly not care for the soul ( ). To have knowledge in practical matters of speech and action, he says (Antid. 271), is humanly speaking impossible, and the truly wise are those who can in general hit on the best opinions. At the beginning of the Helen he contemp tuously dismisses those who say that courage, wisdom and justice are the same and there is one knowledge of them all. It is likely too that, as many have believed, he applied the opprobrious term eristic to Socrates himself and Plato as well as to other Socratics like the Megarians. At Antid. 261 ff. he damns eristics with a condescending tolerance, coupling them with astronomers and geometers, and a little earlier (258) he has complained that out of sheer jealousy they pour vulgar insults on the useful art of public speaking: he could easily return the compliment were he not too high-minded. This not very edifying excursus should help us to remember that Plato saw the choice between the philosophic life and the life of active participation in public affairs, not only as a matter of theory, or even of the generally distasteful political atmosphere at Athens, but also in personal terms. No wonder that his expression was not always that which one traditionally expects from a philosopher.
ADDITIONAL
NOTE. W A S
POLUS
REFUTED?
( 4 7 4 cff.)
In an article under this title in A J P 1967, Vlastos has denied something that every other commentator believes, namely that once P. had admitted that inflicting injury was than suffering it, he had given away his case (as Callicles says at 482 d -e ). The main burden o f his acute and subtle argument is that has been defined as what either is useful or gives pleasure to him who contemplates it ( , 474 d 8), the viewer o f visible beauty, hearer o f music and so on, and is what either is harmful or gives pain. But then S. maintains that because the injured suffer pain and those who injure them do not, therefore, since inflicting injury is agreed to be , it must be . W hat he should have asked is not W hich is the more painful to those immediately concerned as actor or
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(5)
TH E M EN EX EN U S
Authenticity. Everyones first thought on encountering this strange production must be that it is not by Plato, and it was rejected by several in the nineteenth century, including Zeller. O f the present generation almost everyone accepts it,1 regarding two references in Aristotle as decisive. (Both are in the Rhetoric and refer to 235 d. At 1367 b 8 he
1 Momigliano is (or was in 1930) an exception. In his article in Riv. di filol., he concluded that it conflicts with Phaedrus and was produced in the Academy after Platos death, inspired by a Menexenus which appears in D .L .s list (6.18) of the works of Antisthenes. It is an attack on improvisation, mentioned at 23 5 d. He mentions the Aristotle passages on p. 50.
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ascribes the dictum to praise Athenians before Athenians is not diffi cult to Socrates, and at 14 15 b 30 to Socrates in the epitaphiosV ) It appears in the canon of Thrasyllus (p. 39 n. 2 above) and was uni versally accepted in antiquity,2 and we should accept these testimonies to its genuineness rather than seek an easy way out of our difficulties by declaring it spurious. Date. The work consists largely of a speech to rival the public eulogy of the dead in the Corinthian War which was due to be pronounced after the Peace of Antalcidas in 387.3 It therefore dates itself precisely (Wilam., PL 1, 269) on the assumption that it would be pointless unless published at the time.4 It should be noted how close this brings it to the Gorgias. Dramatic date. This is the shock. It is Socrates who recites the speech, but the Peace of Antalcidas was concluded twelve or thirteen years after his death. It is also unlikely that Aspasia, the supposed author of the speech, was still alive. She bore a son to Pericles about 440 or earlier (Judeich in R E 11, 1716 f.). Conversationalframe (.Direct dramatic form) Meeting the young Menexenus on his way from the Council-hall, Socrates infers that he is already following the family bent for politics, believing himself finished with education and philosophy.5 Yes, he will seek office if S. allows and advises it, but his present purpose was to find out who is to pronounce the oration over the war-dead. In fact the 1 See Menex. 235 c!. On the omission of Platos name see Grote 1, 209f., n. h. Contra, Zeller 2.1.461 n. 5, 480 n. 2. Aristotle too wrote a Menex. (D.L. 5.22), but as with Antisthenes we know only the title. 2 Procl. in Tim. 1 p. 62 Diehl is not rejection by Proclus, as Loewenclau 10 n. 3 calls it, nor necessarily by anyone else. Some, says Pr., claim that S.s style was precise and dialectical and he never attempted encomiastic speeches: they seem to me, he adds, to be both rejecting the Menex. (i.e. they virtually reject it?) and to be insensible to the eloquence of the Phaedrus. 3 245 e. See Raeder, P P E 127 with n. 3. 4 The only dissentient to this that I know is Dies, who thought the date suggested by the Peace dj plus flottante than that provided by the allusion to the dioecism of Arcadia in Symp. (Autour de P. 246 f.). s In this respect taking the advice of Callicles and Isocrates (p. 309 above).
31 3
Platos contempt of rhetoric is as obvious here as in the Gorgias. It is attacked both directly and with sarcasm, nor is it pretended (as often in Plato) that the hearer does not see through the sarcasm. Rhetoric is 1 The humour lies in rating Antiphon, perhaps the best orator of his day (Thuc. 8.68), well below Aspasia as a teacher of rhetoric.
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untruthful (aiming at persuasion not instruction, Gorg. 454 e), easy (no art but a mere empirical knack, Gorg. 462 b-c), beguiling the soul. In the Phaedrus (261 a) it is given a name, psychagogia, which means just this, and in the Gorgias its injurious effect on the psyche is one of the main themes. When besides all this we are told that Pericless intellec tual consort ghosted the most famous speech in all Greek literature and moreover that we are to hear another containing leftovers from it,1 we are hardly in the mood to take it seriously. What Plato has pre pared us for is a pastiche containing all the clichs, formal divisions, figures of speech and other technical rhetorical devices enumerated in the Phaedrus (266d-26yd) and in content full of the topoi or commonplaces of the platform. And this is what we get. At the same time, some of the sentiments expressed, especially in the latter part, are such that many scholars believe they must be Platos own, put forward in all earnest ness. In fact to reconcile the introduction with the content of the speech has proved the crux of interpretation, and led to endless controversy.2 The speech The speech begins with the praise of the dead. Their goodness is due first to their noble birth, which they share with all Athenians through being autochthonous. The earth is literally their mother.3 So we pass to
1 A connexion between S. and Aspasia is also to be found in the Aspasia of Aeschines the Socratic. For its contents see Field, P. and Contemps. 1 50 f., and for further study Dittmar, Aisch. 17-59. D. was convinced that the Menex. was written to ridicule (pp. 4of., 52, 56) or attack (55) Aeschines. 2 Momigliano in Riv. di fil. 1930 rightly calls it la maggiore difficolta and il vero problema. The champions of a satirical and of a serious interpretation of the speech are listed by Herter in notes 3 and 2 respectively to his article in Paling. 1969. (See also v. Loewenclau, D. plat. Menex. 10 -13, Gesch. der Deutung.) But the latter, as he says, though seeing a deeper Platonic background, have differed markedly as to its extent and nature. Kahns five puzzles to be solved (CP 1963, 220) do not include this one. Nearest to it is the question why, if it is a joke, parody or satire, Cicero can say that in his time it was declaimed annually at Athens, and this he does not answer very adequately (p. 229). Herter considerably underestimates the ridicule in the prologue when he merely says (I.e. no) that by it the validity of the speech (which he believes to have been intended seriously) in Frage gestellt wird. There can be no question about it. 3 For the Athenians belief in their autochthony see Guthrie, In the B . 23 f. The closest parallel in oratory to this ne plus ultra of nationalism (or racialism) is Isocr., Paneg. 24 fr. and Panath. i24f. After the claim of autochthony he tells us that it is solely due to Athenian generosity that the rest of mankind have corn to eat and the mysteries to assure them happiness after death, Demeter having granted these gifts to Athens alone.
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forget. Moreover it will honour the dead in perpetuity, combining the annual rites with athletic and musical contests. T o the dead it constitutes itself heir, to their children father, to their parents guardian. N o w let each pay his lawful due o f mourning and depart.1
Comment
The account in Thucydides (2.34) o f how these public burials were conducted is impressive, not to say moving. T w o days before the ceremony the bones o f the fallen (the bodies having been burned after the battle, Jacoby in J H S 1944, 37 n. 1) were put in a temporary structure where people brought offerings to their own dead. A t the funeral procession cypress-wood sarcophagi were carried on waggons, one for the bones o f each tribe and an empty one for the unknown soldiers whose bodies could not be recovered. Female relatives o f the dead raised a lament, and anyone who wished, whether citizen or foreigner, might join the cortge, which proceeded to a state tomb in the citys most beautiful suburb, where the bones were laid. A fter their committal, a man o f high reputation, chosen b y the city, delivered an oration which closed the proceedings. W e may not like to think o f Plato making fun o f the orations pronounced on such an occasion o f public mourning, but the prologue leaves no doubt that he did. It is, I should say, an outcome o f the same mood o f bitter disillusionment with Athens which provoked the
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could be a mere pastiche, but are impressed by the apparent earnestness of the second. Unless it is to be supposed that Plato was mocking in the first half and serious in the second (and some have not even shrunk from that), they feel bound to look for a serious Platonic message throughout. Here too Mridier seems (if we keep the prologue still in mind) to have an adequate answer (71-3). He points out the features that recur in one or more of Thucydides, ps.-Lysias, ps.-Demosthenes and Hyperides. They include the concern of the city for its war-dead, the prayer of the parents for brave, not immortal, children, the conscious ness of the dead in Hades, the mention of funeral games, and the closing formula. Some of the so-called Platonic sentiments are little more than commonplaces,1 and in style the consolatio offers an equally rich treasury of rhetorical figures. That the general tone should be grave and solemn is hardly surprising in view of the occasion and the models whom Plato is copying. Socrates, Mridier concludes, made it clear that the speech would be a badinage, and that far from wishing to provide the orators with a model, he would speak comme nimporte lequel entre eux ; the speech when it comes fulfils this promise. He adds some telling quotations from the Gorgias : To which kind of service do you call me? To withstand the Athenians for their own good or to speak to them obsequiously in a way that will please them? (521 a). Whenever I speak, it is not to please. I aim at the best, not the most agreeable, and since I will not use these clever tricks which you advise, if I am brought to court I shall not know what to say (521 d). Every form of pandering, whether to oneself or others, is to be shunned (527c). The author of the flattery of the Athenians in the Menexenus would not have lost his life like the man who called himself their gadfly and set himself to wake them up, persuade them and reprove them Apol. 30e). The seriousness with which the speech was taken in antiquity has been felt as an objection to this view. We are invited, says Huby
1 For instance 246 e, All knowledge divorced from justice and the rest of aret is rascality, not sophia. As Mridier points out (72), Gorgias himself recognized that an orator ought to serve the ends of justice, and we may add the views attributed to Protagoras at Prot. 324 e (p. 281 n. 3 above). And would Socrates or P., who believed that knowledge cannot be separated from virtue, have put it in just this way? The sentiment is rather like the oxymoron in the Bacchae, 5 .
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(not of course for the first time) here, as to which one strange testimony from a later century has still to be mentioned. Cicero, speaking of hiatus (Or. 44.151), says that not only Thucydides, but even Plato, a greater writer, allowed it, and not only in the dialogues, where it was needed for a purpose, but in the public speech in which it is Athenian custom for the dead in battle to be eulogized at an open meeting; which was so well thought of that, as you know, it has to be recited on that day every year. It is not surprising that some scholars have regarded the last clause as an interpolation,1 and they may be right. If not, one may still sympathize with Jacoby who, though he thought it likely that the custom of annual rites and speech was revived in the second century, added that it is more difficult to decide what to do with Cicero. 2 He may (as Jacobys note suggests) have got his facts wrong. Other wise I can only suppose, again with Mridier, that the Athenian public was still much as Plato knew it (and in its fallen state it was probably even more nostalgic over its past glories). Always greedy for praise, it was not inclined to be over-critical - and, one might add, was as ready to ignore or belittle the effect of the prologue as many modern scholars. Difficulties will remain, but the one insurmountable difficulty in the way of looking for any positive Platonic message in Aspasias speech is the clear warning given by Socrates himself. That and the Gorgias must be the determining factors in our judgement.
A D D IT IO N A L
N O T E : SO M E M O D E R N V IE W S
It would be impracticable to list the contradictory verdicts of scholarship with any degree of completeness, but to give the reader a glimpse of their variety, and direct him to the means of estimating alternatives to the view taken here, I append a brief statement of a few of the more recent inter pretations (which should, of course, be judged in the context of the
1 For their names see Mridier 77, Huby, Phron. 1957, 105. On the slipshod illo die see next note. 2 J H S 1944, 65 with n. 137: It might', he goes on, be a confusion with an annual lecture for the epheboi. The lecture may have been established by a clause in the decree assumed above. (My italics.) This does not sound a promising explanation. Illo die presumably does not mean that the Athenians still celebrated the anniversary of the Peace of Antalcidas, but refers to a general Remembrance Day . Nevertheless, for a self-conscious stylist like Cicero, it fits oddly into the sentence, having no expressed antecedent.
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7. von Loewenclau (Der plat. Menex. 1961). The glorification of Athens must not be thought of as falsification of history, because what Plato has in mind is not historical Athens at all, but her ideal archetype (p. 90). She is the true home of the philosophic man, the pure inner essence of Athens seen as Idea (p. 57).
C. H . Kahn (CP 1963). Essentially an almost Demosthenic appeal to the Athenians of 386 to prove themselves worthy of the noblest traditions of their city (p. 226).* A kind of political pamphlet, written out of deep loyalty to the noblest traditions of Athens, but out of heartbreak, shame and fury at the present policy of the city.
1 Levinson has published a reply to Popper in Defense App. ix, The Political Import of the M ' I had intended to mention these views without comment, but must point out an error on Poppers p. 256. Plato does not say of S. that he was a pupil o f . . .Antiphon. He says that as a pupil of Aspasia he was better trained than any pupil of Antiphon (236 a). 2 K. was especially impressed by the unmistakable earnestness of the final passages, which Wilamowitz (PL 1, 267) found remarkably cold and conventional : Thucydides, he thought, spoke in much more moving terms.
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G. Vlastos in 1964 (Isonomia 22-32) returned to the view that Plato is parodying the glorification of Athens in patriotic oratory (24-5). On any other hypothesis the performance would be inexplicable. H. Herter (Palingenesia 1969, nof.) thinks that von Loewenclau went rather far with her Idea of Athens but was on the right lines. The speech is seriously meant, and Athens is idealized as far as is possible in the realm of doxa, to which she belongs*. So Plato created his primeval Athens ( Urathen), admittedly at the cost of giving out as true what had only inner truth and no historical reality/
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VI
PHAEDO, SYMPOSIUM, PHAEDRUS
IN T R O D U C T O R Y
Each dialogue of Plato is a self-contained, organic unity, yet each is bound to its fellows by a subtle web of interconnecting threads. The Phaedrus might be said to be closely linked with the Gorgias and Menexenus because its professed subject is rhetoric and it includes two speeches composed by Socrates himself in avowed competition with Lysias. It also contains some remarks on philosophic method which some see as looking forward to the Sophist. But as Socrates would say, a speech must be about something, and the subject of the speeches in the Phaedrus is the same as of those in the Symposium, namely love. The Phaedo and Symposium, again, could not be further apart in mood, since the one shows Socrates discussing immortality with intimate friends in his last few hours on earth and in the other we see him some seventeen years earlier, un-Socratically spruced up, at a celebration dinner-party where there are plenty of high spirits and conversation both philosophical and unphilosophical. What unites all three to each other more closely than to any other dialogue, except perhaps the Republic, and has led me to group them together here, is their preoccupation with the eternal world of transcendent being, and the progress of the soul from earthly desires and ambitions, and beliefs derived from bodily sensation, towards the true and lasting happiness which lies in the apprehension of knowledge by the mind alone, and the vision, or possession, not of good or beautiful things and people but of the unchanging essence of goodness and beauty themselves. All culminate in this, yet each remains unique. With Diotimas talk of beauty and goodness we must take the realistic portraits of Socrates and his friends in their cups, not forgetting that it is immediately followed by the entry of the drunken Alcibiades, with his wreath slipping over his eyes; and in the Phaedrus we pass, with the ease of two friends conversing by a stream in the heat of a
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Greek summer day, from the souls flight to the Plain of Truth beyond the heavens to the technicalities of rhetoric and the methods of dialectical inquiry.
(i) THE PH AEDO
Date. The variety of opinions on the relative dates of the Phaedo, Symposium and Republic shows how difficult it is to separate them, though Phaedrus is now generally thought to be the latest. Of the Phaedo and Symposium some say they are so close that no one can tell which came first. Of the five lists given by Ross ( P T I 2), only one puts Phaedo earlier, but more recent opinion has veered the other w ay.1 Its absolute date is even more uncertain. Most would put it after Platos first sojourn in the West, and if (as can hardly be doubted) it was written later than the Gorgias, then not immediately after, but even this is doubtful.2 For a summary of stylometric evidence see Hackforth, Phaedo 8. Scene and characters. Those present are listed in vol. h i , 489.3 Some of them are already old acquaintances. Crito revealed his character in the Crito and Euthydemus, Ctesippus his in Lysis and Euthydemus, and we have met Menexenus in Menexenus and Lysis. Hermogenes we shall hear in the Cratylus, Euclides is narrator in Theaetetus and the emotional Apollodorus in the Symposium. Simmias and Cebes, pupils of the Pythagorean Philolaus,4 had offered money to help
1 Wilamowitz (P/. I , 320) and Robin in the Bud Phaedo (1926, p. vii) thought them too closely related for a decision, though in his Symp. (1929, viii) R. infers from the mentions of Apollodorus that Symp. came first. Leisegang ( R E 2431) quotes Wilamowitz but considers J. Hirschberger has shown that Phaedo is the earlier. Among recent edd., Hackforth (p. 7) and Bluck (144 f.) are cautious, but think Phaedo preceded. 2 The reason of course is its Pythagorean flavour, but Morrison in CQ 1958 put it before the western journey, claiming that Pythagoreanism was still reaching P. through Phlius and Thebes; in Rep. and Phaedr. it is different in detail because learned by direct contact with Italy. He may be right, and it is true that the Pythagoreans named in Phaedo all belong to the main land; but it is a bizarre suggestion that if P. had just come back with his head full of Italian ideas he might have given it a West Greek setting. Whatever else he aimed at, he wanted above all to describe the last hours and death of his hero in the Athenian prison. 3 For some views on Platos absence see ib. n. 2, Wilam., PL 1, 235, Jowett 1, 403, Friedl., PL in, 36. 4 See 61 d-e. Grube ( P.'s Th. 294) argues that they were not Pythagoreans. They were certainly not very understanding pupils, and sometimes speak from the popular rather than the Pythagorean conception of the soul. But on the point that Sim. brings forward the - doctrine as an objection to survival after death, see vol. 1, 309 ff.
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execution (vol. in, 3 84 f.), and describes his own strangely mixed feelings at the death of a man who seemed so happy in the knowledge of a better lot awaiting him. After naming the others present, he narrates the conversation. A mention of Aesops fables reminded Cebes to ask S. why he has been writing poetry, including a versification of Aesop and a hymn to Apollo. It was in response to a repeated dream in which he was ordered to make music. He had supposed this to refer to philosophy,1 but in case the divine injunction had been intended more narrowly thought he would spend the time before death in this way. His last message to Euenus (for whom C. is speaking) is that if he is a philosopher he should follow him to death as soon as he can, short of actual suicide, which they say is wicked. Asked to explain the paradox that death is a blessing but suicide wicked, he is surprised that C. and Simmias have not learned this from Philolaus. He can only repeat what he has heard, but it is fitting enough for one in his position to inquire into and tell stories about () our migration from here to there. The idea is that the gods are our keepers and have put us here, and we must not try to escape the lot to which they have called us. But if a god is our master, and caring for us, why should an intelligent man want to run away? Simmias adds that this is a gentle reproach to S. himself, who seems to take so lightly his departure from his friends and his masters the gods. Well, he must try to defend himself more convincingly than he did in court. His attitude is based on a sure faith that he will still be with gods, and a hope that he will also meet good men; that there is a life after death and a better one for the good than the bad. Philosophy, in fact, rightly pursued, is a preparation for death. (The agreement of this with the popular notion of philosophers makes Sim. laugh in spite o f his sadness.) To explain. Death (they agree) is the separation o f psyche2 from
1 Cf. Apol. 33 c ( ), 28e. The Greek musik of course includes poetry. Merlan in J H I 1947, 425, is interesting on this. 2 Usually translated soul, as it will usually be rendered here; but for S. (and P. so long as he treated it as a unity) it was rather mind or intelligence. See vol. i i i , 469 with n. 3, and cf. 6703, where is used for what is elsewhere called . This however will not do as a regular translation, because in discussing its immortality S. and his friends have in mind
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that our souls do exist in the next world and are in due course reborn in this? Well, it is a general rule that opposites are generated from opposites: what becomes just or beautiful must have been unjust or ugly, what becomes bigger must have been smaller and so on. There are then two contrary processes at work, growth and diminution, heating and cooling, falling asleep and waking up. Life and death may be compared to the waking and the sleeping state.1 The process of passing from life to death is as familiar as falling asleep, and must there not be a contrary process corresponding to waking up ? If so, and the living come from the dead as the dead from the living, the dead must continue to exist in the meantime. Moreover, if there were dying but no rebirth, life would ultimately cease, just as if falling asleep were not succeeded by reawakening: Endymions lot would be that of all mankind. (ii) The argument from recollection (.j 2 e - j j e ). This reminds C. of S.s claim that learning is really recollection of things previously known. The evidence is that people if skilfully questioned, particularly about geometrical problems, will produce the right answers out of their own heads. S. elaborates. When something reminds us of something else because of a resemblance (e.g. a portrait of Sim. recalls Sim. to our minds), we are aware of any imperfections in the resemblance (because we know the original). Now take two things - sticks or stones, say-called equal. We know that equality2 exists, in and by itself - not simply in its physical manifestations - and we do not believe that the so-called equal objects are identical with it. We may dispute whether they are equal, and we know that they are never perfectly equal, whereas no one could think that equality was in equality. Nevertheless it is from these physical objects that we acquire our conception of equality. If however we recognize that certain things are striving to be like something else but only imperfectly succeeding, we must have had previous knowledge of that something else; and since our acquaintance with the individual copies, by which
1 For a criticism of this argument see J. Wolfe, A Note on P.s Cyclical Argument in Dialogue 1966, 237f., and T. M. Robinson in same journal (1969-70), i24f. 2 Here lit. the equal ( ) and a few lines lower down the noun equality (). For P. these expressions were equivalent. Cf. p. 119 above.
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So the soul of the philosopher, whose life has been a training for death, having made itself as independent of the body as possible, will gain, on leaving it, that pure and invisible region and live with gods, freed from the tribulations of human existence. Those on the other hand who have indulged the body and its lusts and shunned the invisible and intelligible, depart so polluted and weighed down by the corporeal that they must haunt the visible realm (perhaps even visible themselves, if the ghost-stories are true) until reincarnated in a body suited to their character. Philosophy, finding the soul looking at the world through the bars of an ingenious prison so designed that the prisoners own desires make him cooperate in his imprisonment, helps to release it by showing the deceitfulness of the senses and of all desires and emotions, which make the man take for real and true what is not so. Pleasures and pains are like nails fastening soul to body and cutting it off from communion with the divine and pure and simple. This is why philosophers resist the bodys lures, not like the rest through fear of poverty or disgrace.1 Two objections (84C-88U). A long silence ensues, then S., observing Sim. and C. whispering together, tells them to speak out if they are not satisfied: doubtless there are a number of weak points. Thus encouraged, and relieved of the fear that the subject may be dis agreeable to S. in his present circumstances, they state their doubts in turn. Sim. is bothered by the theory that soul (life) results simply from the blending in a particular proportion (harmonia) of the physical properties - hot and cold, dry and moist - that characterize the bodys elements. It cannot therefore outlast the dissolution of the body any more than the melody played on a lyre can outlast the strings and frame, though in comparison with them it could be called invisible, incorporeal, beautiful and divine. C. reminds them that the body is constantly being renewed, so that in a way the soul has outlasted many bodies in a normal span of life.2 It is in fact the soul, both
1 Cf. Prot. 3 53 d-e and pp. 2 19 ^ , 234 above. 2 This point about the periodical renewal of the body in this life is made by Diotima Socrates in Symp. (20yd), who however applies it also to the psyche itself. See pp. 390 2 below.
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specious but unproved, whereas the doctrine that learning is recollection rests on a premise worthy of acceptance. Secondly, if the strings of a lyre can be more or less precisely tuned, the result is more or less of an attunement, but every soul is equally fully a soul. And how can one explain virtue and vice in a soul ? By saying that virtue is a second attunement, and vice a non-attunement, within the basic attunement which constitutes the soul itself? If soul is an attunement, then logically every soul should be good. Thirdly, an attunement, literal or figurative, being an epiphenomenon, can only reflect the properties and powers of its parts: the melody of a lyre depends on the physical tension of the strings. But soul takes the initiative, controlling and often opposing the body and its desires. Reply to Cebes: the argument from the Forms (g S a -io y a ). S., after recapitulating C .s argument, paused for a long while in thought. C/s demand, he said, to be shown that the soul is essentially in destructible, opens up a very large prospect, for it involves investi gating quite generally the cause of becoming and perishing. It may help if he tells them something of his own intellectual history. As a young man he was an enthusiast for natural philosophy and its claims to know these ultimate causes, eagerly weighing the rival materialist theories of the origin of life and mind, or the nature of earth and sky. The only result was to make him feel he no longer understood what he thought he knew before he began, e.g. that a human being grew by absorbing food and water and transforming them into flesh and bone, or that two comes about by bringing one to one, when the division of one produces the same result. When he heard of Anaxagoras positing Mind as first cause, he thought he had found what he needed, namely a teleological explanation. Mind would certainly have ordered things for the best, so if one wanted to find out, e.g. the shape and situation of the earth, one would simply have to ask how and where it was best for it to be. He found, however, that Anaxagoras ignored Mind in the rest of his work, and alleged only material factors like the rest, confusing necessary conditions with causes, as if to say that S. is actuated by mind and then explaining his present position by the physiological mechanism
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choosing a higher hypothesis as seems best until a satisfactory one is reached. Next: (i) An individual can possess contrary properties, e.g. tall ness and shortness according to the object of comparison; but a Form, whether by itself or in a particular, can only be qualified by itself. (The earlier doctrine of 70 e, that things are generated from their opposites, applied, we are reminded, to particulars.) On the advance of its opposite, it must either retreat or perish.1 (2) There are other things which must always be characterized by a certain Form, though not identical with it. Thus snow, though not identical with coldness, must always be cold, and on the approach of heat will either withdraw or perish, as fire on the approach of cold. Again, three and five, though not the opposite o f two and four, must possess the Form of oddness: they cannot become even and remain themselves. There are, then, besides opposite Forms, things which always bring with them one of a pair of opposites and therefore cannot survive the presence of the other. We may now substitute for the previous safe answer a cleverer one. Asked what makes something hot, we shall say, not heat but fire . On these lines, we say that what makes a body alive is not life, but soul. Whatever soul enters, it brings life with it, and cannot therefore entertain its opposite, death. Now we said that anything which is approached by an opposite which it cannot admit must either retreat or perish; but what will not admit death will not admit destruction, so only one alternative is left. Soul is both deathless and indestructible. At the approach of death, the mortal part dies, but the immortal part withdraws safe and sound to the other world. C. is satisfied. Sim. can find no fault with the argument, but confesses that the greatness of the subject and his consciousness of human weakness compel him to retain some inward doubt. S. commends his attitude and advises further study of their premises. T o analyse these adequately will be the best way to pursue the argument and complete the search. The myth. The soul being immortal, we must cherish it with a view not only to this life but to all time. They say that the dead are taken
1 For this as a military metaphor, and its effect on the argument, see Hackforth 1 5 5 f.
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creating seas, lakes, rivers and springs.1 When they sink again below the ground, they rejoin Tartarus by more or less circuitous routes, always nearer the earths centre than when they left it. There are many of these streams, but four in particular: Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus.2 Oceanus is the largest and outermost. Acheron runs through desert places, then below the earth to the Acherusian lake, where many souls wait an allotted time before being reborn. Pyriphlegethon flows through a burning region and forms a great boiling lake, and after many circuits3 beneath the earth falls back into Tartarus. Its lava streams bursting out account for volcanoes. Cocytus flows first into a fearsome, wild place called Stygian, forming the Stygian lake. Both it and Pyriphlegethon skirt the Acherusian lake, but do not enter it. After standing trial, average souls go to the Acherusian lake to be punished and purified o f their sins and rewarded for their merits. Incurable sinners are cast for ever into Tartarus. Evil but still curable souls spend a year there, then are cast up through Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, and if as they pass by the lake they can obtain forgiveness from those there whom they have killed or wronged in life they may join them. Until that happens they are condemned to repeat the same round. The outstandingly righteous are set free to dwell on the true surface of the earth, and any souls among them which have been purified by philosophy attain an even fairer home, not to be easily or briefly described. Without vouching for every detail, one may say, since the soul has been shown to be immortal, that something like this is the truth about its fate. To believe it is, at the lowest, a venture worth making, and must reassure anyone who has renounced the body and clothed the soul in its proper adornments, self-control, justice, courage,
1 It is not clear to me why, on this explanation, our rivers, seas etc. do not periodically dry up. No commentator seems worried by this, not even Robin, though he confirms that it is ces sources, ces fleuves, ces lacs, ces mers que nous voyons that are in question (Bud ed. lxxiii). P. may be thinking of seasonal changes, more obvious in a country where rivers, springs and lakes completely dry up in summer, but the cause of this seems too obvious, nor does it apply to the sea. Aristotle criticizes the passage as a serious piece of geophysics ( Meteor. 35 5 b 33 ff.) 2 All the names come from Homer. See Od. 10 .511-14 . 3 113 b. Robin suggested (lxxvi) that these circuits are to account for the fact that (as the theory demands) it discharges only water into Tartarus - a kind of cooling system in fact.
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are reiterated throughout. The lying in mud is an Orphic feature. So is the notion of the body as the prison o f the soul, said here (62 b) to be the explanation {logos) given in the mysteries ( ). In the myth, besides Homeric features we find the forks and diversions on the road to Hades and verbal parallels with an Orphic poem in the description of Tartarus. The doctrine of reincarnation is attributed to an ancient logos, as in the Meno (81 a) it comes from priests who render a logos9 for their actions.1 Plato, then, quietly transfers to philosophers the benefits which the mysteries promised to their initiated, but this does not mean that he treated them with irony or disdain. Here and elsewhere his writing is saturated with their language of purity, sanctity and initiation, and his conception of the philosopher is coloured by theirs of the initiate. They must be accepted as a major influence on his thought, especially the Orphies, whose hostility to the body was so pronounced. If I may quote myself,2 Some of the finest parts of the dialogues give the impression not that he despised the body, but that, although the soul was the higher principle and must maintain the lead, soul and body could work in harmony together. Yet this unnatural dualism of the Orphies, which divides the two so sharply and makes the body nothing but an encumbrance, the source of evil, from which the soul must long to be purified, permeates the Phaedo. . . I would go so far as to name the Orphies as at least one of the influences which went to form the most characteristic part of Platonism, the sharp separation of the lower world of sensa from the heavenly world of the Ideas. It is often puzzling to see how this doctrine, which in itself leads naturally to a lack of interest in the sensible world and a concentration on the higher, seems to be at war with Platos inborn longing to interfere effectively in practical matters. I believe in fact that it was the teaching of the hieroi logoi that set the feet of the philosopher on the upward path from
1 For the mud cf. Rep. 363 d and Guthrie, OGR 160, 194. For the body as prison see Crat 400 c (OGR 156, G. and G . 3 11 n. 3). The forked road to Hades is also mentioned at Gorg. 524 a, Rep. 614 c. For its recurrence in the instructions buried with a dead initiate see OGR 176; for Tartarus and Orph.fr. 66 Kern, OGR 168 f., and for reincarnation as Orphic ib. 164 fi. In OGR I tried to show that all these tenets were represented in the Orphic literature and precepts, but at present the important point is that P. was profoundly impressed by the mystery-religions with their common promise that there is something for the dead, and as has been said from of old, something much better for the good than for the bad (63c). How much he owed to leusis or the Orphies or his Pythagorean friends is of minor interest. 2 OGR 157. On P.s relation to Orphism see also 238-44.
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Popular or political virtue. At 69 a-c comes the passage about the popular conception of virtue which I quoted earlier (p. 234) to point the contrast between conventional morality, accepted by the Sophists, and Socratic. Here it is characterized as being brave through cowardice and temperate through profligacy (68d-e). It is not wickedness and does not lead to a bad life. Later it is described as the popular and political virtue which they call1 justice and self-control acquired by habit and training without the philosophic mind, 2 and in his fantasy3 of the incarnations of those who, not being made perfect by philosophy, have to submit to further lives on earth, Socrates sees its upholders as more fortunate than the rest: they will be born into a social and harmless species, bees or wasps or ants perhaps, and later rejoin the human race as men of moderation (82a-b). It is the virtue of those whom Callicles despised. He and his like will for their stupidity and lusts be reincarnated as asses, while the tyrants whom they admire and envy will enter the bodies of wolves or scavenging birds. The argument from alternation (70 c ff., often referred to by its Greek term antapodosis), that our souls exist elsewhere, and come back here again and are bom from the dead, would, if unmodified, be an unsatisfactory one for Socrates, for whom immortality meant escape from the body, not an endless repetition of incarceration in it. But later on he carries further the lesson of the mystery-religions. The soul of the philosopher, as is said of the initiated (81 a), having been purified in this life, at death takes nothing of the body with it but departs at once to the invisible, divine, immortal and wise and is released for all time from the cycle of birth, at rest from wandering
people would reply yes to the question Is there such a thing as justice? Similarly if asked (as one might be in a political or economic discussion) Well, do you believe there is such a thing as equality?, an ordinary non-philosophical man might well reply, O f course I do: otherwise I couldnt even say these two sticks are equal. P. took these apparently existential statements, whose implications had never been thought out by their users, and wanted to know, since they are obviously not meaningless, in what sense justice and equality can exist; and being P. he concluded that they must be metaphysical entities of the sort he describes here. A different philosopher in the same situation might have decided that the statements only show there is a correct, because accepted, use of the words in question. 1 Emphasis seems the only way of rendering , the word forsooth having gone out of use without leaving a substitute. 2 Like the vo of Meno 88 b (p. 260 n. 1 above). 3 The repeated (8id and 6, e2, 82a 1 and 2, b) may justify calling it so.
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sensible particulars, differing from the Form Equality in that there are more than one of them, and from equal sensibles in their absolute perfection. And in fact Aristotle credits him with just such a view {Metaph. 987b 14 -18 ): Besides the sensibles and the Forms he posits mathematical objects in between, differing from the sensibles in being eternal and unmoved, and from the Forms in that there are many alike, whereas the Form itself is in every case unique. Again at 997b 1 we read o f the Forms and the intermediates, with which they say the mathematical sciences are concerned. 1 Geometers need to speak of identical triangles, of two circles intersecting and so forth, and they do not mean visible figures drawn or modelled (p. 251 above); nor when we say 2 + 2 = 4 do we mean that two cows are exactly equal to two other cows.2 But the Form, by which as he would say all circles are circles, and which can be called either the circle itself or circularity, obviously cannot be more than one. Backed by Aristotles evidence, it would seem natural to take the equals themselves in this way, as intermediates, yet in fact their status has led to a discussion o f scarcely surveyable proportions. 3 Cherniss wrote that the complete absence of the intermediate class from all the dialogues has been positively proved over and over again.4 The alternative, originally proposed by Heindorf (d. 1816) and revived in recent times, is that in the particular case of equality, which is essentially a relation between two or more things, when Plato asks does the idea of equality seem equal or unequal? , the implied comparison compels him perforce to use the plural; not that he thinks there are more ideas of equality than one, but because to ask whether one thing is equal or unequal is sheer nonsense.5 When he says, 1 These and other passages from Aristotle, as collected by Bonitz, are given in Adam, Rep. i i , 160. 2 Cf. p. 523 n. i below. 3 zu einer kaum mehr bersehbaren Diskussion, Mittelstrass, Mgl. v. IViss. 428f. And that was in 1965. 4 Riddle 76. He refers to two of the briefer and more dogmatic treatments (Shorey, Unity 83-5 and R. Robinson, P E D if., 192, 197), and counts the long and well-reasoned argument of Hardie {Study ch. vi), who deals fully and carefully with his opponents, among the failures. (These scholars are dealing with the question as it arises in Rep., not the present passage.) 5 Archer-Hind ad loc., expanding Heindorf whom he quotes verbatim. This is at least as clear as the later statements of Crombie ( E P D 302f.) and Wedberg ( P P M 94-9). Geach puts it briefly in Allens S P M 270, and Owen supports the same conclusion by a different argument in Ar. on Dial. ii4 f. Vlastoss solution { S P M 289, with additional n. on 291), that the pi. can be
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into account that equality is only being used here as an example of Forms in general (75 c-d), the balance is slightly in favour of concluding that in mentioning the equals themselves Plato did not have here in mind any class of intermediates between Forms and sensibles.1 This does not of course settle the question whether they are to be found in the dialogues at all, for the dispute has concentrated even more on the simile of the divided line in the Republic.2 Anamnesis and the senses. The theory of knowledge as recollection has met us in the Meno, to which there is a pretty clear reference in the mention o f good questioning at 73a. The second argument for it is new,3 namely that we obtain our knowledge of the Forms in this life through acquaintance with the sensible manifestations which resemble them, but that the resemblance is never complete. As the knowledge of the Form re-emerges into consciousness, we recognize the sensible object as an inferior copy of it, and one cannot say x is an inferior copy o f y 9 unless one has had previous acquaintance with y (74d-e). I do not find anywhere what Cornford called the statement that we make such judgements, implying acquaintance with perfect equality, as soon as we begin to use our senses, i.e. in infancy ( Princ. Sap. 52). On the contrary, at 75 e Socrates says that we lost at birth what we had a hold of before it, and that later, by using our senses, we recover the knowledge which we once had, a process rightly called recollection. It is a process, and takes time (p. 257 above), and many men never complete it {Rep. 476 bff.). This was Platos consistent view,4 to which in the Timaeus (43 c ff.) he added a semi-scientific
1 See also the series of articles by Mills, Bluck, Haynes and Rist in Phron. 1957, 1959, 1964, and Tarrant in J H S 1957 (1). This is the conclusion (tentative) of Wedberg, P P M 98. 2 P. 509 n. 2 below. A valuable contribution to the problem of equality in Phaedo is M. Browns excellent article The Idea of Equality in the Phaedo {AG Ph 1972). He offers a convincing explanation in terms of contemporary mathematics, with special reference to Brysons definition of equality ( ocC rro ^ ) and his attempt to square the circle by the method of exhaustion, constructing a series of polygons inside it and another series outside it. The polygons are always approaching equality with the circle, and equal is defined by enclosing it within the two limits of the greater and the less. 3 But not, I think, inconsistent with the other or internally, as Gulley claims ( CQ 1954, 197 f.). In Meno, not only is it the sense-experience of seeing the diagrams that enables the boy to give the right answers; the questions could not even have been put without them. Nor does Phaedo imply that the senses are to be always trusted . See Hackforth, Ph. 75 f. 4 Cf. Tht. i86b-c: Some things it is natural for both men and animals to perceive immediately
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and elemental, synonymous with intelligence, and emotions and desires (66 c), as well as sense-perception, are assigned to the body. This is well brought out at 94 b, where the resistance o f a thirsty man to the impulse to drink is given as an instance o f soul opposing body, whereas at Rep . 439 c it exemplifies one element o f the soul opposing another.
Soul and harmony (85 eff.). Simmiass objection that the soul might be a harmonia o f the bodily parts, and therefore unable to survive the
b odys dissolution, and its relation to Pythagorean thought, have been discussed in vol. 1 ( 3 0 7 - 1 9 ) . 1 B y choosing for his analogy the
harmonia o f a lyre, i.e. inviting comparison not only with the formula or ratio uniting material elements but with a melody (and both senses o f harmonia were well established), Simmias laid himself open to a
reply o f which Socrates does not avail himself. Y o u might, he said, say that the harmonia is invisible, bodiless and divine, and so ought to outlast the composite, earthy body o f the lyre (8 5 e -8 6 a ). Indeed you might, for so it does, bodiless and imperceptible like the soul, and can be reincarnated many times in the human voice or pipes or another lyre. The analogy o f a tune might well have been used b y Socrates himself. The ethical argument against Simmias, bringing in the extraordinary idea o f a harmony within a harmony, has been analysed b y H ackforth.2 T he fatal step is taken at 94 a: every soul is as much soul as any other, i.e. if soul is a harmonia it admits o f no disharmony, therefore every soul should be equally good , admitting no evil, which is untrue. N o w Simmias was reproducing in substance a doctrine o f Alcmaeon and the medical writers that soul (life) depends on a balance o f the physical opposites (wet and dry, cold and hot etc.) in the body, and as Alcmaeon said, a disturbance o f this causes disease - not vice. Simmiass argument depends on the same assumption.3 Plato, pre1 E. Frank attributed the doctrine to Democritus, but on this see J. Bernhardt, P . et le Mat. Ane. App. i i i , pp. 2 12 -14 . 2 92e-94b, Hackforth pp. 118-20. See also W . F. Hicken in CQ 1954. 3 For Alcmaeon see vol. 1, 313. There are striking linguistic similarities. Both mention hot, cold, wet and dry, and cf. Ph. 86b-c .. . .. .v. . . with Alcm. fr. 4 (via Atius) .
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Socrates was whether knowledge arises from sense-perception, through the intermediate stages of memory and belief, when belief has become stable. It sounds like the teaching of the Meno (976-98 a, p. 240), but there what secured the memories was an understanding of the reason w hy, equated with recollection of the Forms and their causal function. Unless we use the senses simply as pointers to the Forms, our opinions remain unconfirmed opinions, not knowledge. (Cf. Phil. 38b.) Since Aristotle abandoned the Platonic Forms, it is not surprising to find his account of the origins of knowledge much the same as that rejected here. (See An. Post. iooa3-8, and Metaph. A ch. i.) Cause and aitia. The whole section being about causation, it is important to understand the meaning of the noun aitia with its adjective aitios.1 We translate it cause, but its scope was wider. Very commonly it meant a man who was guilty of, or to blame for, a misdeed, and in general whatever was in any sense responsible for the existence of a thing or the performance of an action. Aristotle analysed the concept into four (using also the neuter aition), all of which are necessary if anything is to come to be (as opposed to being eternally). First, there is that out of which it comes to be, its matter: there cannot be a statue without bronze, clay or marble. Secondly, the agent: we need a sculptor. Thirdly, the form or pattern, which departs most from our notion of a cause. The sculptor has a model, either a sitter or other external object, or at least an image in his mind of what he wants to produce. And the model precedes the creation. In nature (which is what Aristotle is interested in) an adult man must exist to beget a baby: the hen comes before the egg.2 Fourthly there is the final cause, or end in view. Creation is not motiveless. There may be plenty of wood, and a carpenter with the idea of a table in
1 See also Vlastos, Pl. i, 134-7, whom however I do not follow completely. For instar ce, I think it a considerable exaggeration to say that the mere fact that Plato speaks of the Forms as aitiai in our passage is not of itself the slightest evidence - not even prima facie evidence that he wants them to be causes. 2 Metaph. 1049 b 19-27 etc. Actuality is temporally as well as logically prior to potentiality universally speaking though not in the individual. Since Aristotle believed that the world had always existed, and there was no evolution of species, the hen-and-egg riddle did not worry him.
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which Plato would never let him apply seriously to the doctrine of Forms. This is made plain when he objects to his own analogy between logoi and reflections that one who studies reality through mental processes sees it no less directly than the empirical observer. That Forms are formal causes, responsible for the character of a generated thing, is inherent in their name and endlessly reiterated in the dialogues; and that they are final causes or ends in view, the perfect Being towards which all becoming is struggling but ever falling short of it, has been shown at 74 d -e .1 Platos Socrates extended his speculations into mathematics. When 8 become 10, is it because ( ) 2 are added to them ? Is an object 2 feet long longer than one of a foot because it exceeds it by half its own length ? Is the cause of 1 becoming 2 the fact that it approaches another ? Here we are far from anything which we should call a cause, and Vlastos (I.e. 13 1, using an example that is not Platos) protests vigorously against the use of cause in translations. But aitia does still mean what is responsible for a situation, and Plato is thinking of the days, not far back, when mathematics was a mystery and thought ful minds still had difficulty in separating mathematical number from physical objects.2 At this stage it did not seem absurd to ask, if one cow in a field was joined by another, what had made one become
a second-best, and this is what it seems to mean elsewhere in P. and Aristotle (Plato, Pol. 300 c, Phil. 19 c; Ar. E N 1109334, Pol. 1284b 19). I incline to the first interpretation (with Matthews, P.*s E . 59f.) The question becomes unimportant if one believes, as I do, that the phrase is used ironically here, but this has led to much discussion. See for a start Goodrich in CR 1903 and 1904, Murphy in CQ 1936, Bluck, Ph., suppl. nn. 11 and 16 and reff, there. Among those who claim that second-best is not ironical are Murphy (p. 42), Archer-Hind (Ph., App. 11), Ritter (.Essence 370), Ross ( P T I 234^), Cherniss (A C P A 451 n. 395), Hackforth (Ph. 137, 146). Some of them rely on 99 c 8-9, which however, as I read it, plainly means that S. was denied the teleological cause so long as he followed the methods of the natural philosophers and Anaxagoras. The verbs are in the aorist tense, but scholars continue to translate (as Vlastos in Pl. I, 138 n. 15) I have been denied... and have failed (as if .. . ). Burnet (ad loc.) was one who held that S. does not believe for a moment that the method he is about to describe is a pis aller\ I agree. 1 That the Forms in Platos eyes should not provide a teleological cause, as recently Vlastos (Pl. I, 138 n. 15, 141 f.) and Burge (Phron. 1971, 1 n. 2) have written, is impossible. Cf. also the arguments of Crombie, E P D 11, 165-9. Rose in Monist 1966 speaks of them as formal but not final causes as if P. already had the systematic Aristotelian analysis in mind. In any case Aristotle himself taught that in natural generation the formal and final causes coalesce (see vol. I, 236): his main criticism of the Forms was that they lacked the efficient element (Metaph. 9 9ia8-n). 2 For this characteristic of early Pythagoreanism see vol. 1, 2 12 f., 225 f., 229-38; and on the confusion of physical with logical aitiai, Vlastos, Pl. 1, 152-6.
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hypothetical method is that it is deductive : what Socrates renounced was empirical inductive methods. But inductive argument is precisely what Aristotle attributed to the real Socrates. Is Plato going against him here ? In emphasis perhaps, but (a) in the dialogues which there is good reason to call Socratic, though we are given lessons in extracting a universal from a number of particular instances (or rather a genus from particular species), it is assumed that the general form exists, and is that by which the particular instances are what they are: we seek to define it, not to prove that it is there; (b) induction and deduction are not mutually exclusive, but two halves of a single process. The initial premise is not chosen at random, but because one believes it well grounded, and whence can the grounds come if not from experience, whether or not an inductive argument is expressly and formally set out ? Socratess own inductions were of an elementary sort perhaps better described as arguments from analogy,1 and the upward process from particulars to Forms is fully set out in the Symposium (p. 377 below). Platos emphasis on deduction may, as Burnet suggested (on iooa3), t>e connected with his interest in geometry and extension of its methods beyond the mathematical sphere.2 Immanent Forms. At 102 d we are told that besides the transcendent Form ( tallness itself), there is the tallness in us, which like its external counterpart can never be anything but tall (102 d-e), though tall individuals can also be short3 (these being relative terms), through admitting the contrary Form. Are these immanent Forms a separate ontological class, or simply the familiar Forms entering into particulars ? Even if there are difficulties in both views, one can hardly doubt that the latter is correct.4 Ever since the Lysis (2i7d, p. 151), the presence
logoi, cling to it like a raft and risk your whole life on it. (But see also Patterson, P . on /., 91-106.) 1 On Socratic induction or analogy see vol. h i , 425-30, especially the second quotation from Ross on p. 428. 2 For this interest see pp. 251 f., 299 f. above. 3 This point too, about an individual exhibiting contrary qualities, has been made in the Socratic dialogues and was probably Socratic. Cf. H. Maj. 289 c, and see pp. 179 k above. 4 So D. O Brien in CQ 1967, 201 f. He thinks immanent form a confusing term, but it is difficult to give any other name to what P. himself calls etc. At p. 201 n. 1 he gives a list of scholars who have regarded immanent forms as a distinct class.
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(one would think) in no way imperfect. Ross however supposed the immanent qualities to be themselves imperfect copies, and more recently Rist has written that the largeness in the particular is of an ontologically defective kind. He adds later that Whiteness is the cause of white in white particulars; it is not itself the whiteness in those particulars. 1 Yet the Phaedo says it is by its presence in particulars that the Form can act as a cause. With the proviso that Plato himself may not yet be quite clear on this point, the nearest approximation to his thought at the present stage seems to be as follows. Whiteness is an Intelligible (not visible) Form.2 When it enters a material object (say a face) its combination with body produces visible whiteness, an imperfect imitation of the transcendent Form in the only medium in which material objects can reflect it. The face, which was never perfectly white, may turn red by receiving (Phaedo 102d-e) Redness instead of Whiteness, but Whiteness, whether by itself or in us, will always be itself and nothing else. Plato, it may be, has not clearly worked out in his own mind the implications of presence or association of the Form with the particular. He criticizes the present position himself in the Parmenides, and it is right to remember that Socrates is now speaking on the last day of his life to an audience of sympathetic friends. His beliefs are not to be subjected to the rigorous examination of an Eleatic visitor or the father of the Eleatics himself. As Aristotle rightly saw,3 the theory of Forms as employed in the Phaedo cannot be expressed without recourse to poetic metaphor. T o speak of its methodological sterility for natural science (Vlastos, PL 1, 164) is inappropriate. Socrates is not trying to help scientists, but to strengthen his own and his companions faith in the immortality of the soul. Yet Aristotle
1 Ross, P T I 30, Rist, Philol. 1964, 221 and 223. Likewise Cornford says (P. and P . 78) that the tallness in a person is not exempt from all change. This directly contradicts what S. says in the Phaedo. It is its possessor who is not exempt from change. 2 Cf. the contrast between a colour or shape and its at Crat. 423 d-e. A namegiver will not imitate their sensible appearance - that is the artists job - but try to express this nonsensible essence. It is one of the things described in Tht. (186 b) as grasped by the mind alone, not the senses. 3 Metaph. 991 a 20. The military metaphor of the Forms advancing, holding their ground' or retreating has often been remarked on, and one must sympathize with Tarrant when she speaks of the crudest spatial conceptions which it brings in (H. Maj. lvii).
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speaking of the Forms of such substances. In the language of Forms ( io ia i- 5 as paraphrased by Ross, p. 32), if a Form [e.g. Snow] brings with it one of two contrary Forms [Cold or Heat] into every thing into which it enters [in this case visible, tangible snow], it never receives the contrary of that Form. There is no inconsistency here,1 and if Plato had gone straight from this analogy to the soul (also a substance with attributes, though not a physical one), things might have been easier. Unfortunately he thinks he will make his meaning clearer (10365-6) by adding the example of numbers, in which the three (n.pl.), the triad, and the Form of Three all figure, causing confusion among his commentators.2 In any case the lesson of the analogy is that, besides accidental attributes (Forms) like Simmiass shortness, there are essential ones - the coldness of snow, the heat of fire - which their possessors cannot lose without forfeiting their identity.3 Snow, as snow, though not itself the contrary of heat will perish when heat is brought near it, unless it gets out of the way. Soul is by definition what gives life to a body. Life always accompanies it, is an essential attribute of it. Soul therefore cannot lose life, admit its opposite death, and still remain soul. It is essentially deathless, as snow is heatless and three, being essentially odd, evenless. According to the analogy, on the approach of death it will either withdraw or perish. But the analogy is not complete, because whereas there is no reason why what is essentially without heat should not be destroyed, what is essentially deathless cannot, since to die is to be destroyed. The soul therefore, being deathless, is indestructible, and the qualification so long as it exists (103e) is no longer applicable.4
1 Commentators regularly put the question Is snow a Form? Would it not be more Platonic to ask Is there a Form of snow?, as Parmenides asks at Parm. 130 c 2 whether there is .. . ? 2 E.g. means three objects according to T. M. Robinson {P .'s Psych. 28), as to Archer-Hind earlier, the character threeness according to Hackforth {Ph. 156); and cf. Schiller, Phron. 1967, 57. Opinions and their authors are listed by D. O Brien, CQ 1967, 219. On p. 221 he himself says that probably fire is now thought of to some extent as form. What can to some extent mean? On the whole argument of 102-6, note Crombies discussion, E P D i , 318 -23, i i , 3 11-19 . 3 In logical language the one entails the other; but for P. the problem was ontological rather than logical. This indeed is what creates the difficulties in his argument. 4 The Peripatetic Strato, in an often-quoted passage (e.g. Hackforth, Ph. 163), argued that it did apply to soul: just as fire, so long as it exists, is uncooled (unfortunately is ambiguous as between uncooled and incapable of being cooled), so soul, so long as it exists, is
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perfect models which particulars in this world endeavour, with in complete success, to reproduce. Here is the fatal innovation which Aristotle and many since have found so objectionable. Not only are the Forms in things, imparting their character by their presence or association or whatever it may be ; they exist also separately and by themselves. 1 Existence is divided into two categories, the visibleperishable contrasted with the invisible-eternal, also called divine (79a, 80a). Forms belong to the latter, grasped by the mind not the senses, eternal and changeless, simple and uniform, and it is only to their realm that the term being properly belongs (78d). On the extent of the world of Forms Plato is still vague, and we cannot tell whether he was ready to state, as he did in the Republic, that we are accustomed to postulate a Form for every group o f things called by the same name. (But cf. pp. 55of. below.) In the Phaedo Forms of sensible and moral qualities, relations and numbers largeness, equality, life (106 d), health, strength, justice, piety, and three - are clearly recognized, with the generalizing formulae every thing on which we set the seal reality itself (75 d) and the reality to which we refer everything that comes from the senses (76d).2 The latter certainly sounds like the doctrine of the Republic, but one cannot be sure. As Plato later realized, once one seriously tries to delimit the range, one is in difficulties. In the Parmenides (i3ob-c) Socrates doubts whether there are separate Forms of fire and water, and though I believe that the argument here assumes Forms as well as physical instances of snow and fire, this is not a problem to which Plato is yet giving attention. The important thing is that there should be a Form, all by itself, of beauty and goodness and all things like that ( Parm . ib.). The doctrine never lost the marks of its Socratic origin. A Form, whether as manifested in particulars or in its independent
1 Arist.s statement that P. and his school separated Forms from particulars ( Metaph. 1078 b 31) has been challenged (most recently by Ebert in Mein. u. IViss.), but is confirmed not only in Phaedo, Phdr. and Symp. passim but at Parm. 130 b, where S. admits to believing that there are . 2 See 65d, 74a> 7 5 c-c^ 7^d, 100b, io4d5~6. Ross says (.P T I 24) that Ideas of substances (like animal itself) are not mentioned in the Phaedo. This assumes that there is no mention of Forms of snow and fire, though his quotation of 105 a 1-5 on p. 32 would seem to make this doubtful.
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tells us: Forms are invisible, eternal, constant, divine. Soul too is invisible, and is most truly itself when it has left the body behind and through its own (intellectual) activity achieves contact with them. It therefore belongs also to the realm of true Being, it is like the Forms and of their kin (78c-8ob). The myth. Most editors give very little space to this splendid bit of imaginative writing, though Robin has a full account.1 Combining traditional elements from Homer, the teachers of teletai, and popular belief, and Ionian and Pythagorean scientific theory, Plato has created a marvellous picture not only of the underworld but of the whole exterior and interior geography of the earth. The ingenious way in which he makes the rivers of the underworld appear also above ground2 acknowledges the fact that some had an actual as well as a mythical existence. Acheron, its tributary Cocytus, and the Acherusian lake through which it flowed were in Epirus, Styx in Arcadia. Yet in the confusion of popular superstition Styx, which was a waterfall, played a second, mythical role as the river across which Charon ferried the souls of the dead. Only Oceanus and Pyriphlegethon3 (the former being in general belief a river encircling the earths disc) are wholly mythical, and even Pyriphlegethon is given a natural function in connexion with volcanic eruptions. At 109 b Plato introduces the heavenly element, breathed by the fortunate creatures living on the true surface of the earth, as what is commonly called aither . This is on the one hand linked with widespread beliefs about aither as both a divine substance and the substance of the human soul, which rejoins it at death; and on the other with what became the scientific doctrine of a fifth element, probably adopted by Plato in his later years, and firmly established by Aristotle.4 Commentators are on slippery ground when they ask
1 For this reason I have summarized it fairly fully with some notes. Even Frutiger, writing a book on P.s myths, had no interest in its content. But Robin may be strongly recommended. 2 Robin lxxv: Il ny a aucun fleuve qui soit entirement intrieur ou extrieur. Hackforth distorted the description of Acheron at I i 2 e 8 - i i 3 a i by ignoring the words . It flows through desert places and also beneath the earth. 3 Blazing with fire. Milton (P L 11, 577-81) is accurate on the meanings of the names. 4 For evidence of current beliefs about aither see vol. 1, 466 with n. 2, 470 f., 480, and for a fifth element in P., 270-3.
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myth is a delicate fabric which may be destroyed by any attempt to separate its woven threads. Friedlnder has probably gone as far as one should, and has certainly achieved considerable clarification of the two main lines of thought, physical and eschatological, with which we are presented. Platos own clues can be interpreted according to individual pre dilections. Socrates cannot prove what he has learned about the earth, but will describe it according to his conviction (, io8d-e). To Friedlnder (i, 265), Plato here and elsewhere insists upon the scientific nature of the first part of his account, whereas other critics concentrate on the impossibility of proof. The summing-up of the whole myth, though in irritatingly clumsy syntax, perhaps gives more of a lead (1 i4d) : Now to insist that these things are just as I have described them would not befit a sensible man; but a belief that this or something similar is the truth about our souls and their habitations - since the soul has been shown to be immortal - is proper and worth banking on () for one who thinks as we do.1 The venture is a splendid one, and one must, so to speak, sing such things over to oneself like a charm. That is why I have been telling my story at such length. The moral of it all, as he says in the next sentence, is that a man need have no fear for his soul if he has throughout life rejected bodily pleasures and ornaments and decked the soul with her own adornments : self-control, justice, courage, freedom and truth. The metaphor o f charming away ones fears has been used before (77e), and goes with the religious language which is such an essential part of the dialogue. Conclusion. Whatever people may say,2 the Phaedo is about the immortality of the soul, and the posthumous blessedness of the wise
1 , which literally yields the unsurprising statement that to believe this is right for someone who thinks it is so. Robin takes it to refer to the souls immortality, which is perhaps just possible. In general translators tend to dodge the words and editors to pass them over, though Bluck has a note. 2 Hackforth, Ph. 3 : the purpose is not, of course [ ! ], to prove that the human soul is immortal . . . it is not to pay a tribute of admiration to a beloved friend and master, it is not to expound and propagate a metaphysical doctrine. . . Archer-Hind, x: the demonstration of immortality is neither the express purpose nor the most important philosophical result. To J. P. Anton (Arethusa, 1968) the ultimate theme is neither immortality nor the Forms but the existential demonstration of the Platonic ideal of the good life.
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central doctrines appear later in a changed form which takes account of some of the reasoned objections to which they are here open. As dialectic progresses, the field of mythical expression is reduced, and the philosophers aim is to reduce it as far as possible; but unlike his greatest pupil he would never deny that there are some truths, and those the greatest, which can never be demonstrated by the methods of dialectical reasoning. At no stage would he have called myths sophisms and dismissed them as not worth serious consideration. 1
(2 ) T H E S Y M P O S IU M 2
Date. A terminus post quern is generally thought to be furnished by the words as the Arcadians were split up by the Spartans (193a), regarded as an anachronistic reference to the dispersion of the Mantineans in 385. To put it soon after this accords with another general impression, that in feeling it is close to the Phaedo. This depends, however, on what one thinks of Platos attitude to immortality in the Symposium (pp. 387-92 below). In subject-matter it is closest to the Phaedrus, and almost certainly earlier. Xenophons Symposium is a very different work, and there is not much point in prolonging the controversy over which came first.3 Dramatic date. The scene of the main narrative is the dinner given to his friends by the tragic poet Agathon when he won the prize
1 Arist., Metaph. ioooai8. These remarks on P.s attitude to myth are amplified in my OGR 2 Extensive bibliographies will be found in Capelles revision of Apelts ed. (i960, compiled by Wilpert) and Rosen (1968). 3 Wilamowitz (Pl. 1, 372 n. 1 ; 11, 176-8) argued, against the general assumption of an anachronism, that 193a referred to events of 418. This view, revived by Mattingley in 1958, was again opposed in detail by Dover, Phron. 1965. For earlier views see Robin, T P A 55-63. Because he thinks Symp. excludes immortality, Morrison ( CQ 1964, 43-6) would even put it before Gorg., Meno and the first Italian visit, which I find improbable. On its relation to Phaedrus (Robin, T P A 63-109) Bury changed his mind between his first and second editions. Apart from their general subject-matter, he noted over a dozen more or less similar short passages in both dialogues (p. lxvii n. 2). There is something to be said too for the view expressed by Bernhardt as le Banquet prlude au Phdon (P. et Mat. Ane. 211). Tredennick (Xen s. Mem. and Symp. 19) thinks Dover in Phron. 1965, 9-16, has settled the priority of P. over Xen. (See also vol. hi, 342 with n. 2.) This would settle a controversy of (on Dovers own statement) over 160 years, on which e.g. Robin (Bud ed. cix -cxv) could only pronounce a non liquet. On Xenophons Symp. in general see vol. hi, 340-4.
2 3 9 f*
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is described by Xenophon as an irreligious man whom Socrates converted with the argument from design. He always went barefoot, presumably favouring the Cynic side of Socrates. Agathon the prize-winner and host was introduced in the Protagoras as a mere boy, the favourite of Pausanias as he is still (193 b; also in Xenophon, Symp. 8.32). Ostensibly there is a gap of some sixteen years between the dramatic dates of the two dialogues, and he must now be thought of as about thirty. Yet he is called young and almost b o y ( and , 175 e, 198 a). When it suits Plato that someone should be the handsomest of the company (213c), he is not too scrupulous about such epithets. Agathons urbanity, tact and other characteristics have been well described from the dialogue itself by Robin (lxv) and Bury (xxxivf.). Five years after his present victory, his effeminacy was pilloried by Aristophanes in the Thesmophoria^usae. Phaedrus is sole interlocutor with Socrates in the Phaedrus, and was mentioned in the Protagoras as sitting at the feet of Hippias. His character is beautifully drawn both here and in the Phaedrus. (See Robin xxxvixxxviii for this and mentions in Lysias and Alexis.) Eryximachus the doctor is one of those listening to Hippias in the Protagoras (315 c), and both here and in the Phaedrus (268 a) appears as a friend of Phaedrus, but is known only from the pages of Plato.1 O f Aristophanes and Alcibiades nothing need be said here.2 All the speakers except Aristophanes were present as eager listeners at the gathering of Sophists in the Protagoras, and although too much has sometimes been made of this,3 no doubt we are intended to remember it as we read their speeches, which certainly show Sophistic influence. The speakers speak in their seating order, from left to right starting
1 But Xenophon tells a story of his father Acumenus {Mem. 3.13.2). To one who complained that he found no pleasure in eating, Socrates replied that Acumenus knew a good prescription for that. Oh, what is it? Stop eating. 2 But on Aristophaness presence at the party see vol. hi , 375, and for Alcibiades and his relations with S., the index to the same volume. 3 See Bury lvii with n. 1. Though the speakers are all historical characters, each has been given a double. Phaedrus is Tisias, Pausanias Protagoras or Xenophon, Eryximachus Hippias, Aristophanes Prodicus, Agathon Gorgias. For Brochard on the other hand (.tudes 68-71), Phaedruss speech is a parody of Lysias, Pausaniass of Prodicus. Only Socrates and Alcibiades are allowed by these critics to be themselves.
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being agreed, Eryximachus proposed that they dismiss the flute-girl and entertain themselves with talk. Each in turn shall deliver an encomium on Eros, god of love, beginning with Phaedrus (who is the real father of the proposal through his constant complaints to Eryximachus that Eros never gets his due).1 Socrates ( expert in matters of love alone) enthusiastically agrees, as do the others, and Phaedrus begins. Speech o f Phaedrus ( ij8 a -i8 o b ). Eros is the oldest and most reverend of the gods, and brings out all that is best in a man. There is no one by whom a lover would be so ashamed to be seen in any cowardly, mean or disgraceful action as by his beloved. Only lovers will sacrifice life itself for another - women as well as men, as witness Alcestis, whereas Orpheus failed to regain Eurydice because his love was not strong enough to face death. Such sacrifice is even more admired by the gods if it be offered by the beloved, as when Achilles accepted* death to avenge and join Patroclus, for he has not, like his lover, the inspiration afforded by divine possession. Speech o f Pausanias ( i 8 o c - i 85 c). Which Eros am I to praise? Since there are two Aphrodites of different parentage, the Heavenly and the Vulgar or Popular (Pandemos), there must be two Eroses. Love, like every other activity, is either good or bad according to the way it is practised. The son of Aphrodite Pandemos is indeed vulgar, standing for physical rather than spiritual love, of women as much as boys, and even preferring the object of its passion to be stupid. The other Eros comes from Heavenly Aphrodite who, being motherless, has nothing about her of the female. He presides over love of males, not wanton or promiscuous sensual desire but an attachment to those already reaching years of discretion, based on intellectual sympathy and forming the foundation for a lifelong association. Connexions with young boys, which can only be for passing pleasure, should be forbidden by law. Some Greek states encourage love between males, others like the Ionians forbid it, under Oriental influence; for Oriental rulers are
1 On the justice of this complaint see Gould, P L 24.
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in love and harmony the most hostile elements in the body - that is, the opposites hot and cold, bitter and sweet, wet and dry etc. Similarly music exhibits understanding of love in the sphere of high and low notes and slow and fast rhythms (which is probably what Heraclitus meant to say, though he put it badly). The same is true of physical training and agriculture, and the weather too.1 Under the influence of the good Eros the elements are temperate and health-giving, but when the wanton Eros controls them, their disorderly arrogance brings plague and sickness on animals and plants alike. In religion too Eros is at work, indeed he is everywhere omnipotent. The good Eros is the greater, who brings self-control and justice and is responsible for our happiness and harmonious relations with each other and the gods. The lower one should only be indulged cautiously and without excess. Aristophanes had now cured his hiccups by the last of Eryximachuss prescriptions, the sneeze, and after asking Aristophanically whether it can really be the good love in his body that demands such noise and irritation, and being warned against making such jokes if he wants his speech to be taken seriously, he began. Speech o f Aristophanes (189 a -19 3 d ). To understand the power of Eros, and how much we are indebted to him, one must know the nature and history of mankind. Originally there were three sexes, male, female and hermaphrodite. Individuals were round in shape, back and sides forming a circle - with four arms and four legs, one head with two faces and four ears, two sets of reproductive organs and everything else to match. They walked upright, but to run fast they simply turned cartwheels, using all eight limbs. Males sprang from the sun, females from the earth, and hermaphrodites from the moon-hence the circular2 shape-and in the pride of their strength they attacked the gods. In this dilemma (for to destroy the race would
1 The effect on character of the various musical modes (), in which P. strongly believed, is elaborated in the Rep. (398 cff.). On E .s quotation here of Heraclitus fr. 51 see vol. I, 436 f. 2 Round is , circle , circular . Morrison in Phron. 1959, 108f., argues with some plausibility that these beings were not spherical as editors and translators have usually assumed (though this does not prove his case against the sphericity of the earth in Phaedo, for which see p. 366 n. 1 above).
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after the latters splendid display of eloquence in the theatre, and Agathons response that he finds a small but intelligent company more formidable than a crowd, tries to lead him into a question-and-answer discussion: if he had done something to be ashamed of, would he feel shame before the many as he would before the wise? But Phaedrus knows his man, and soon puts a stop to this. If A. lets himself be inveigled into a Socratic argument, it will be all up with their plan. Let each pay his tribute to Eros, then they can converse as much as they like. A. agrees and begins. Speech o f Agathon (i9 4 e-i< )je ). We must praise Eros himself, not only his gifts. O f all the blessed gods, he is most blessed and fairest. First, he is (pace Phaedrus) the youngest, the very antithesis of old age. If he had, as Hesiod said, been there from the beginning, none of the early quarrels and violence among the gods would have occurred. Since his coming among them, they have lived in peaceful accord. Tender he is too, dwelling in those tender spots, the hearts of men and gods (for he shuns the hard-hearted), and supple.1 How otherwise could he insinuate himself, unperceived, into - and again steal out of - those hearts? With this go his gracefulness, shapeliness and blooming beauty: he is the enemy of all ugliness, and settles only where there is blossom and fragrance, be it in body, soul or elsewhere. Besides beauty, he possesses all the virtues. He is just, for everyone serves him willingly, and in mutual consent is no wrong; self-controlled, for that means mastering pleasures and desires, and no pleasure is stronger than love; brave, for he overcame the god of war himself.2 As for his genius,3 to copy Eryximachus and take my own craft first, he is a poet and can create poets: anyone touched by love turns poet. That he can create living creatures everyone knows, and it was under the guidance of love and desire that every other skill was 1 For the meaning of y p (lit. moist or liquid) see vol. I , 6 if. 2 A reference to the story of Ares and Aphrodite in Homer, Od. 8.266 ff. 3 Sophia, regularly, as we know, accounted one of the cardinal virtues. Wisdom is scarcely appropriate in this context. For the connexion with practical skills see vol. in, . Genius (M. Joyce) is perhaps the best choice.
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state between knowledge and ignorance, namely guessing right with out being able to justify your conviction. Similarly it is wrong to call him a god, for gods are happy and beautiful, and Eros cannot be happy if (as is now admitted) he lacks goodness and beauty. Nor is he mortal. He belongs to the spirits (< daimones), who mediate between gods and mortals, conveying upwards the prayers and sacrifices of men, and downwards the commands and answers from the gods. Without them, heaven and earth would fall apart, for there is no direct intercourse between god and man. Prophets, and those skilled in rites and charms, are spiritual men who can ensure this communication. The spirits are of many sorts, and Eros is one of them. His birth came about thus, At the feast of the gods to celebrate the birth of Aphrodite, Poros* got drunk and was found by Penia (Poverty) asleep in Zeuss garden. She lay down beside him and conceived Eros. First then, begotten on Aphrodites birthday, he is her follower in loving beauty. As son of Poverty he is not tender and fair as usually supposed, but tough, barefoot and homeless, sleeping rough in doorways and streets; but from fyis father he inherits all sorts of plans to acquire the beauty and good that he longs for; is enterprising, vigorous, full of devices, seeking wisdom ( philosoph izing) always, a wizard and a sophist, dying and reviving, losing what he gains, midway between wisdom and ignorance. Those who suppose him good and beautiful confuse him with the object of love, whereas Eros is the lover. Eros then represents love of beauty. The question And what advantage will possession of beauty give anyone ? is easier to answer if we substitute goodness, 2 for we agreed that to possess what is good is to be happy, and that is a final answer. It is senseless to ask why anyone wants to be happy. This then is what love means, though the name is commonly applied to what is only one species (eidos 205 b) of it, just as poetry ( poiesis, lit. making) has usurped a more general term. We do not call all craftsmen poets, nor do we call
1 Poros means finding a w ay, resourcefulness. Whoever has it enjoys , plenty (Democr. fr. 101 DK). So Spenser calls Love begot of Plentie and of Penurie. Penia on the other hand is resourceless ( 204by). 2 On this substitution cf. p. 247 n. 1 above.
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children are finer and more immortal.1 Were not the laws of Lycurgus and Solon a finer progeny than any mortal children could be ? These are the lesser mysteries of love. The final revelation might, she thought, be beyond my grasp, but she would speak of it never theless. The candidate for full initiation must first fall in love with one fair body and beget noble thoughts. Soon he must see that visible beauty is everywhere the same, and despise the passion he felt for a single manifestation of it. The next step is to rate beauty of soul higher than bodily beauty, and loving it even in an ill-favoured frame, to bring forth the sort of ideas which make young people better. This will lead him to look at the beauty in ways of life and laws,2 and seeing that all this is related, to think little of mere physical beauty. From there he must be guided to the beauty of knowledge in all its forms, and so will no longer be devoted to one boy or man or activity but gazing on the whole sea of beauty will bring forth magnificent thoughts in the abundance of philosophy until, thus fortified, he catches sight of a knowledge of beauty such as I shall now describe. Try, said she, to follow me closely. All that went before has been preparation for the sudden glimpse of this amazing beauty. It is eternal and changeless, never in any respect, in any part, or by any standard other than beautiful; not physical, not reason or knowledge, not in anything, but absolute and unique. All other beauties share it, yet so that their birth or passing away leave it unaffected. This is the true progress of love, to start with a fair body and climb as by a ladder to the vision of Beauty itself, pure of all flesh or colour or other mortal rubbish. Only by intercourse with that will the lover bring forth true, not counterfeit, virtue, for truth is his consort. Such a man the gods love, and to him if anyone will immortality be granted. Such was her teaching, and, believing it, I try to persuade others to honour Eros in practising love as I do, for none will help us more to gain this supreme gift.
1 Can one be more immortal ? Yes, according to Diotima (). 2 We must remember that beauty, beautiful, here simply stand for the Greek kalon, on the wide meaning of which see pp. i77f., i8 if. above. To speak of activities and laws as kala is a perfectly natural way of commending them.
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but open him up and you find glorious treasure1 within, and a miraculous self-control. He thinks nothing of good looks, any more than of wealth or rank. I speak from experience. I was proud of my good looks, and supposing him serious in his passion for me,2 I thought that by giving him what he wanted I would get his knowledge in return. After several indirect attempts, I got him to dine and spend the night with me and told him frankly what was in my mind. He replied with his usual irony that if I really thought he could make me a better man, the beauty of that so much surpassed my own that the bargain savoured of sharp practice; but that I should think it over, because very probably I was mistaken in him. Some day we should talk it over and do whatever was best for both of us. So I spent the night with him as if with a father or elder brother. After that I was in a worse state than ever, torn between my own humiliation and admiration for his strength of mind, unable either to forgo his company or make him do what I wanted. His courage and endurance I learned to know on campaigns, in a freezing northern winter and in battle at Potidaea, where he saved my life and ought to have had the award that was made to me, as well as in the retreat from Delium.3 There simply is no one like him, hence my resort to the Sileni for a comparison. I forgot to say that it applies to his talk too. On the surface its absurd, all about black smiths and cobblers and tanners and always repeating itself.4 But open it up and you find inside the only arguments that make sense, together with divine images of virtue and everything one needs to study to be a proper man.
1 This is the word (, 2i6e6) used earlier for images of the gods, but literally meaning anything conferring honour, glory or delight. 2 For S.s supposed passion for Ale. see vol. i i i , 395 (where in n. 1 the fr. of Aeschines should be lie , not 10 c). 3 The stories Ale. told to illustrate S.s indifference to his surroundings and power of with drawal have been told in vol. i i i , 389 and 404. How he saved Ale.s life at Potidaea is also told by Plutarch in his life of Ale. (ch. 7, 1940-195 a, where we learn that the award in question was a wreath and a suit of armour), and his service there is mentioned at Charm. 153a. Laches praises his conduct in the retreat from Delium at Laches 181 b, and he himself mentions the campaigns he served on at Apol. 28 e. 4 221 e . For the charge of harping on banausic occupations and always repeating the same things cf. Gorg. 4900-4913 and Xen. Mem. 4.4.5-6. S.s stock reply ( Yes, and on the same subjects) amounts to a boast of consistency. Cf. Thuc. 1.22.3 f r the opposite fault: even eye-witnesses of an event . 379
Many of Platos works baffle the pedestrian commentator with their wayward brilliance, but none is so deeply embedded in the ethos of its time as the Symposium . Apart from the attitude to sexual love, the after-dinner symposion, with its rules and arbiter bibendi, has no precise modern parallel. Later it became a literary vehicle for imaginary exchanges of views and information, but the comparative lifelessness o f these productions only shows up by contrast the dramatic realism of the characters in Platos original.2 As usual, Platos aims were complex, but one of them was certainly to round off his portrait of Socrates by showing him in a relaxed and convivial mood,3 and
1 At Rep. 395 a P. makes him say the opposite. Adam ad loc. suggests a plausible explanation, and Bury (Symp. p. 171) professes to tell us the point of S.s argument. Since we are not told what S.s argument was, this seems a little bold. No classical poet wrote both tragedies and comedies (presumably the reference is not to satyr-plays), and most probably the remark is simply a humorous final comment on S.s character: talking and listening throughout the whole night, and drinking gallons of wine, could never quench his ardour for arguing the most paradoxical theses. 2 And, to do him justice, Xenophons. For the error of regarding these two simply as members of an existing series, see vol. i i i , 34 4 n. 2 (where I fear I have attributed Breitenbachs contribution to Treu; see R E , 2. Reihe, xviii. Halbb., col. 19 2 8 ). For the symposion as an institution see Robin, Symp. xii f., and for extant Symposia ib. xiii n. 3 ; or, more fully, J. Martin, Symposion: Gesch. einer lit. Form. 3 Like Xen., but Xen. had to say he was doing it {Symp. 1.1).
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through the mouth of the disreputable Alcibiades himself to refute the charge that Socrates had been his evil genius. But to Jowett this was one of those writings which hardly admit of a more distinct interpretation than a musical composition. . . and can with difficulty be rendered in any words but the writers own. Plato also shows his versatility (as in the Phaedrus) by writing not only dialogue but a series of set speeches reasonably characterized by S. Rosen as rhetorical exercises rather than complex philosophical statements. 1 First Phaedrus, 2 in a brief trifle, shows himself the admirer of both Love and Lysias that he is in the dialogue named after him. His is an artificial affair of literary allusions and rhetorical tricks of style and content, notably the conceit about the beloveds loyalty being finer than the lovers. Its most remarkable feature is that, while accepting the convention of love between males as normal and right, he actually chooses a woman as an example of supreme devotion. Pausanias introduces the dual nature of Eros, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and physical, confines heterosexual love to the latter and defends pederasty if it goes with intellectual companionship. His account of the complex Athenian attitude to homosexuality is of sociological interest,3 and the double Eros is a small step on the way to Diotimas teaching. Socrates could also have agreed that many actions at least are in themselves neutral and depend for their value on how they are performed, for it tallies with his view that the worth of both material goods and spiritual gifts lies not in themselves but in how they are used.4 In Diotimas speech the value of Eros is determined by its object. This and the notions that spiritual love is
1 Jowett, Dialogues4 I, 488; Rosen, Symp. xxxvi. 2 For fuller appraisals of the early speeches, not always in agreement, see Bury xxiv-xxxvi, Taylor P M W 2 12-23, and (more imaginative) Friedlnder, PL i i i , 1 1-2 3 . (Bury lists the technical rhetorical tropes in those of Phaedrus, Pausanias and Agathon.) For a modern reader Goulds P L ch. 2 is one of the best introductions. 3 Vol. i i i , 391 f. Some passages of Aeschines in Timarch. (9-12, 16 -2 1) are often quoted as evidence that the laws against pederasty at Athens were particularly severe, but in fact they deal only with offences against children, and prostitution or procuring for gain, thus endorsing Pausaniass standards. 4 Meno 87e-88a, Euthyd. 280e, 281 d-e.
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Aristotle, was assumed by the earliest thinkers because of the need of a first cause to get things moving and make them combine.1 One of the eulogists obviously had to celebrate Eros in this widely attested universal aspect, and the medical man was best qualified to do so. Contemporary medical practice relied largely on general theories about the basic opposites hot-cold, wet-dry, bitter-sweet etc., theories of which the attainment of a harmonious blend in a healthy body was only a special application, and the Hippocratic treatises range widely, and often critically, over the whole field of natural philosophy.2 So Eryximachus has no difficulty in finding Love at work as the reconciler of opposites in medicine, music and climate. Religion is seen rather in terms of the antithesis between good and bad Eros, which in the earlier examples played a minor role. In fact the claim to have taken this antithesis from Pausanias is artificial (as connexions in after-dinner speeches often are), for in this speech the second member is not Love at all but an anti-Love which could much better be called Strife as by Empedocles. But having retained it, he can use it when he returns to the theme of love in the narrow sense (i87d-e). Morally Eryximachus is on a lower level than Pausanias, for he does not condemn the vulgar love outright, but in contrasting it with the heavenly recommends indulging in it cautiously, so as to enjoy its pleasure without excess, as a doctor limits indulgence of the desire for rich food only to the point of avoiding disease (i87d-e). The analogy is invalid, for unless disease is caused only the good love is at work (186b). The contribution o f Aristophanes, wild extravaganza though it is, has also some roots in existing mythology and natural philosophy, which
1 Aesch. fr. 44, Eur. fr. 898, Ar. Birds 699-702, Aristotle, Metaph. 984 b 23 ff. For Emped. see vol. II, 155 ff.; for Love as moral force in the Purif 248f. In the extant frr. he calls it Aphrodite not Eros, though Plut. (De facie 927a) speaks of friendship, Aphrodite or Eros, as Emped. says. For the Orphic Eros see Guthrie, G. and G. 319, OGR ch. 4. I should add that neither Aeschylus, Aristophanes nor Empedocles, whom I have introduced as background, is mentioned by Eryximachus, but only Heraclitus, as to whom see vol. 1, 435-7. 2 E.s speech has been thought of as a parody of Hippocr. ir. (Pfleiderer; see Bury xxix n. 2), whereas Edelstein was reminded rather of ir. . . See also Rosen 95 f. In this article in 1945 Edelstein has in my view vindicated P.s portrait of the doctor as no caricature but realistic and sympathetic, though Dover ( J H S 1966, 49 n. 44) thinks differently. See also Rosen 95 f.
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Agathon lives up to his reputation as a poet1 (the most amusing touch in his speech being the ingenious arguments to show that Eros possesses all the virtues), and only Socrates remains. He is allowed a brief exercise of his own dialectical method to establish the preliminary point that Agathon was wrong because Eros stands for desire itself and not its object, and then throws his own speech into the form of a conversation between himself and a wise woman, Diotima. Whether or not anyone of the name existed, she is here simply a double of the Platonic Socrates, while he himself takes the part of a Charmides or Lysis.2 The question-and-answer method is her speciality! (201e.) This fiction enables him, first, to keep up the pretence of Socratic ignorance, like the imaginary boorish relative in the Hippias Major or Aspasia in the Menexenus (who scolds Socrates as does Diotima at 207 c). Secondly it enables him to retain the dialogue form while nominally adhering to the rules of the symposium.3 Leaving aside the poetry and religious fervour of Diotimas message (which though integral and essential to it must be sought in Platos own words), it amounts to an extension, in the light of the developed doctrine of Forms, of two points made earlier in the Lysis . First, the loving or desiring subject is an in-between, neither good nor bad,
1 For contrasting aesthetic judgements on his speech, see Taylor, P M W 221, and Grube, P.'s Th. 100. 2 Some regard the mention of her postponement of the plague at Athens (201 d) as evidence of historicity, e.g. Blte in R E xxvm . Halbb. 1321, Taylor, P M W 224, and see Friedlander, PL I, 365 n. 14. Kranz (Hermes 1926) believed her historical, but thought the question of no importance for understanding the Symp. Robin (Bud ed. xxii-xxvii) argued against Taylor, and Bury (xxxix) also thought her fictitious. Another Socratic trick is her assumption of agreement by the interlocutor, to his own astonishment: neither she nor he thinks Eros a god. (Cf. Gorg. 466e.) Also, she has apparently listened to Aristophaness speech (205 d). I cannot support the opinions of Wilamowitz (PL 1, 380) and Neumann ( A J P 1950) that D .s teaching is not Socratic but in fact a kind of sophistic with no absolute worth, tempting though it may be to find such an easy way out of a difficulty like that of her views on immortality, - ol at 208c simply gives the effect of like a real schoolmistress (or perhaps a finished orator ; cf. Crat. 403e), implying nothing about the content of her teaching. S. himself, of course, is never didactic, but he can report the lessons of someone else! See also vol. i i i , 31. 3 These seem sufficient reasons for D .s presence. Some, like Cornford (U . Ph. 71), allege courtesy to Agathon, but if, as he says, she was an invention, the company would know, and the courtesy be somewhat hollow. O f course some entire dialogues are, in form, continuous narrations by S.
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Spiritualpregnancy and parturition. Diotimas references to intercourse, pregnancy and birth sit very lightly to the facts of nature. Bringing forth in beauty (206b) is sometimes passed by without comment, sometimes taken to mean begetting on beauty as the male on the female;1 but Beautys role is that of Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth who gives easy delivery (206 d). Pregnancy is not the result of love excited by the beautiful, but a universal state which causes excitement at an encounter with beauty (206 d). The young man seeks beautiful bodies and souls because already pregnant in his own soul (209 b).2 Then in contact and association with the beautiful he brings to birth what he has long been pregnant with. This universal pregnancy stands for a longing to bear offspring, whether of body or mind. Every adult is potentially a creator, of children or great deeds or ideas, and unless he becomes so in reality, feels baffled and unfulfilled. Beauty provides the environment in which delivery can take place. In another dialogue it is Socrates himself who assists, as midwife, the delivery of other mens thoughts.3 Plato saw both the Eros which is philosophy, and the Beauty which it seeks and which will help it through its pangs, summed up in a person. Immortality. In this part of her speech Diotima claims that the ultimate impulse behind erotic desire is the natural mortal longing for im mortality, which can never be literally satisfied. Has Plato then given up (or perhaps not yet reached) the belief in immortality which is one of the keystones of his mature philosophy? Has he become an Aristotelian? Aristotles view is astonishingly like Diotimas (De an.
1 So Joyce, to bring forth upon the beautiful. Burys in the sphere of the beautiful (xliii) is comfortably vague. Better Bluck, Ph. 4, in a medium of beauty, does mean to impregnate in Aristoph.s speech (191 c), though the preceding els is commoner. L S Js examples suggest that neither v nor is commonly used with this meaning. 2 If the sentence 206c 5-6 is genuine, D. does refer once to literal conception as the result of coition between man and woman, but many edd. from Ast to Bury have rejected it. In any case it is men pregnant in body who are attracted to women, and for the most part refers to males and their mental pregnancy. See further on this Morrison, CQ 1964, 51-5 . 3 Being himself barren. See Theaet. 150 c-d (vol. i i i , 444). One should not say with Bury (xxxviii) that S. deposits the fruits of his pregnant mind in Agathons soul. He has, he would claim, only asked questions, thereby eliciting, as he did from Menos slave, truths with which Agathons mind was already pregnant. Alcibiades takes him at his word (21 6 d): he is utterly ignorant and knows nothing .
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that they may partake as far as possible in the everlasting and divine. . . Since they cannot do this by actual continuity (for nothing perishable can remain one and the same), each partakes in it so far as it can, some more some less ; it persists not as itself but in something like itself, specifically one though not numerically.
On the face of it this passage seems to deny the immortality of the soul of which Socrates is persuaded in the Phaedo and Phaedrus, and Hackforth maintained that the Symposium shows a lapse into temporary scepticism on Platos part.3 He pointed out that when immortality is defended in presumably later works (Rep. 10, Phaedrus, Laws 10) it is by quite different arguments, suggesting that those in the Phaedo had ceased to satisfy him. The majority who think differently point (rightly in my view) to the contrast, certainly a Platonic one, between immortality in time (everlastingness) and eternal life.4 Most men can only conceive of the
1 It does not do to say (with e.g. Wippern) that even for Aristotle, though the rest of psyche as the form of the body was inseparable from it, nous was still immortal and divine (De an. 4 13 b 24 and bk 3, chh. 4 and 5, G A 736b 27f.), for the immortal part seems to be something completely impersonal. Ar. had no use for doctrines of individual survival, anamnesis and reincarnation. 2 The last clause in the MSS and Oxy. Pap. 843 is . Bury and Burnet (not Robin) adopt Creuzers emendation . In either case it means that the mortal cannot put on immortality as the immortal (i.e. divine) does. 3 Hackforth in CR 1950. Morrison ( CQ 1964) agreed with the fact, but accounted for it by supposing that Symp. was written much earlier than is generally thought. It shares, he thinks, the cheerful humanism of the Prot., a judgement difficult to reconcile with Diotimas speech. See also Crombie, E P D 1, 361 3. Hackforth was answered by Luce in CR 1952. Wilamowitz, Gomperz, Gaye, Shorey, Bury, Robin, Taylor, Bluck, Wippern, and, I believe, everybody else, have taken Symp. to presuppose immortality in the Phaedo sense. See especially Blucks additions to Luces arguments, Phaedo 28 n. 1. 4 See Luce, CR 1952, 139 and Cornford U. Ph. 75. The distinction between everlasting and timelessly eternal is most clearly made at Tim. 37c~38b.
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former, which, like the animals, they pursue through physical or spiritual procreation. The philosopher achieves his immortality through contact with the divine, eternal Forms. But this contact, vision or knowledge, so graphically described in the Symposium, is only reached through anamnesis which in turn implies reincarnation and immortality. The doctrine o f Forms and the immortality of the soul by itself ( Ph. 79d, i.e. the mind) are inseparable. When Diotima speaks of reproduction as the only means of im mortality, and Socrates in the Phaedo of our souls as genuinely immortal, they are speaking of different things: the substituteimmortality of the mortal part of us, which is dissolved at death, and the true immortality of our divine psyche, that is, reason.1 The point is made clear in the Phaedrus (246c-d). The soul has been declared immortal. It can, however, lose its wings, then sinks down and takes to itself an earthy body, which seems by reason of the souls power to move itself. This composite structure of soul and body is called a living being (^coov), and is further termed mortal. It is commonly overlooked that vicarious immortality is expounded as part of the lesser mysteries of Love. As such, it is sought through physical procreation, ambition for lasting fame, poetic creation, technological inventiveness, and good sense and justice in the political sphere perpetuated in constitutions and other laws (208e-209e). That is, the means to it do not go beyond what in the Phaedo is designated popular and political virtue, which is not true virtue and is practised for the wrong motives (82 a, 68b-69d). As in the Symposium, philo sophic virtue is there contrasted with it and compared to the state of the fully initiated.2 Hackforth claimed that even the immortality of the philosopher, when he has received the final initiation and seen the divine Form of Beauty itself, was vicarious like that of others, because it springs from the begetting of true virtue (sc. in anothers soul). This is a point not met by his critics. First, however, the words in anothers soul are not in Plato, and Hackforth seems to
1 See especially Luce, I.e. 140 and Wippern, Synusia 134. 2 Neglect of this point vitiates such criticism as that of Gomperz ( G T 11, 394), who declared that a chasm yawns between the justification of ambition in this dialogue and its rejection in the Republic\ This is part of his case that P. in the Symp. placed himself in fundamental contradiction to the views expressed both in his earlier and his later works.
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This possession, I submit, is the immortality to which the philosopher looks forward in the Phaedo. Immortality is not the main theme of the Symposium, and Plato has no wish to go over the same ground again. One might wonder, for instance, if only the philosopher is immortal, how there can be, as there is in the Phaedo, an appropriate fate after death - good, bad or indifferent - for every one. Plato has not said, but he would never dignify with the title of immortality (which he, like all Greeks,4 equated with divinity) the continued existence in the wheel of births of a soul not yet purified of the bodys weight.5 There remains a curious passage in which Diotima seems to
1 & 20903. Cf. the next sentence: . 2 I.e. intellect (voO). See the parallel passages in Bury, ad loc. 3 * , i.e. those of the lesser mysteries\ Similarly in Phaedo popular is contrasted with * as t i (69 b ) . 4 Guthrie, G. and G. 115 f- This I find the chief obstacle to agreement with Bernhardts thoughtful interpretation of immortality in the Symp. ( P . et le M .A . , app. 11): it involves supposing that, there and in Phaedo as well, not only voO but the whole soul as it functions in bodily life, even (because of transmigration) in animals, is immortal. 5 As is often pointed out, Laws bk 4 (721 b-c) also speaks of procreation as the only immortality attainable. Yet in bk 10 of the same work individuals last on to experience either terrors in the underworld or if through intercourse with divine virtue they have become divine , translation to somewhere better (904c-e).
toiotou
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enunciate what Crombie has called a Humian conception of a mans self as a succession of mental states. 1 The problem may be insoluble, but let us see what she says (207d-208a). A man retains his identity throughout life, although not only is he constantly wasting and being renewed in body (as Cebes said in the Phaedo, 8yd), but even in his personality ( psyche), his character, habits, views, desires, pleasures, pains and fears never remain the same. Even more surprising (as Diotima calls it and some may agree), in our knowledge too we are never the same. Items of knowledge come and go: we lose them through forgetfulness and regain them through recollection. The first list of characteristics and emotions raises no difficulty, for all belong only to the soul in its embodied state: this is expressly asserted in the Phaedo (65 d, 66c) of pains and pleasures, desires and fears, and is obviously true of the rest, so that their undeniable mutability has no relevance to the immortal intellect, which, while incarnate, must act to some extent with the body (Ph. 66e) but will employ it as little as possible. As for knowledge, forgetfulness and recollection are equally undeniable facts to illustrate the changes in our mental life. We (our psychai) forget and remember because association with the body in this life prevents our knowledge from being perfect, and Diotima is talking of living human beings. The Phaedo is really the best commentary on this passage (66 d):
I f we are ever to know anything clearly, we must rid ourselves o f the body and with the soul itself contemplate things in themselves. Then, when we are dead, as the argument shows, we shall get what we desire and claim to love, namely wisdom, but not while we live. I f we cannot know any thing clearly while with the body there are two alternatives: either we can never acquire knowledge or we can acquire it after death, since only then is the soul by itself, apart from the body. W hile we live, we shall be nearest to knowledge if we have only the minimum possible converse or association with the body - the barest necessity - and keep ourselves pure and un infected by its nature until God himself releases us. Then in full purity and freed from the bodys folly, we shall, we may be sure, join our fellows and know by our own powers the full unadulterated truth.
1 E P D i, 3 6 1-3 ; cf. i i , 23 and 323. The label of a philosopher who lived many centuries later, in a very different climate of thought, is always an invitation to take a second look. For a dicussion of the Humian position see Patterson, P . on I. 66 ff.
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'Sublimation . Since Freud, this word must inevitably occur to a reader of the Symposium. Cornford remarked (/. Ph. 78) that the ancient and modern doctrines of Eros have been compared1 and even identified. He himself regarded them as opposed in one essential respect, that the concept of evolution, dominant in modern science and known to earlier Greek thought, was deliberately rejected by Plato. It is true that he is the enemy of any form of reductionism. He would never say that sexuality on a physical level is the most deeply rooted instinct in human nature. We share it with the beasts, and it is a Platonic axiom that what is most truly our own nature is what is peculiar to humanity. The soul (mind) is each of us, and the body, essentially alien, the instrument through which we must express ourselves in this temporary state. Freud2 expressly preferred the Aristophanic view of the erotic instinct as a desire for regress to an earlier state of things. Nevertheless, to borrow an Aristotelian tag, if in the species perfection is prior, the individual has to start from the bottom. Cornfords view might lead us into the error of Taylor, who called Eros a cosmogonic figure whose significance is hopelessly obscured by any identification with the principle of sex : 3 Diotimas speech has left sexuality far behind. At its climax of course it has, but even the philosopher can only reach his goal through an appreciation of beauty at its visible, physical level, indeed in a single handsome male body (2 11c). Only later will he learn to recognize beauty o f
1 He gives no reff. We may mention Dodds, G. and I. 218: Plato in fact comes very close here to the Freudian concept of libido and sublimation/ There is also S. Nachmansohn, Freuds Libidotheorie verglichen m. d. Eroslehre Platons, Ztschr.f. artt. Psychoanalyse 1915. The best full account of Platonic eros in the light of the psychological knowledge of its time (1926) is Lagerborgs Plat. Liebe, whose theses are summarized by Levinson, D. of P . 124^ (n. 129). Levinsons own chapter, though frankly a defence, is also well balanced and should be read by everyone who wishes to understand this side of Plato in his historical setting. For Cornfords view see also his article in Hibbert J . 1930, 218 f. 2 Quoted by T . Gould, P L 3 3 f. For the relation between P. and Freud see also pp. 2 3 f. 3 P M IV 209. In fact Eros is a cosmogonic figure simply because in early belief the world was produced by sexual generation. Similarly Moravcsik (Reason and Eros 289, 291) regards it as impossible for P. to have meant either (a) that nobody can appreciate the beauty of mathematics without having appreciated bodily beauty, or (< b) that one has to overcome ones sexual desire towards one person and direct it towards many. So difficult is it (as I mentioned at the beginning) for a modern man to understand what philosophical eros meant to P. : ([b) he expressly states at 2ioa-b. In general M.s is an article curiously out of touch with the mood of the Symp. See also Rosen 225 n. 79 and 265 n. 143.
393
There are many indications that Socrates belonged to the mixed type, and did not rise without a struggle from the popular to the philosophic E ros;2 but the progress becomes easier as it continues, for as Diotima hints and the Republic asserts, when the stream of Eros is channelled in one direction its force is lessened in others.3 For this progress sublimation is a temptingly convenient term,
1 2 and 3 Laws 838 e and 837b-d (trans. Saunders with one small alteration). See vol. i i i , 393-8, especially the quotation from Charm, and the story of Zopyrus (pp. 394 397). Rep. 485 d. Cf. Cornford, U. Ph. 7 2 f.
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provided we understand the different philosophical backgrounds against which it is being used: the purification of Eros is achieved by conscious effort, whereas Freudian sublimation is an unconscious re-channelling of unconscious (because repressed) impulses. But how much Freud had in common with at least the Lesser Mysteries appears from this sentence about his teaching: The world of cultural achieve ment is won only by denying to the instincts the direct gratifications which they seek and by using the energy so released in sublimated forms for the tasks of art and science. 1 Alcibiades. When Alcibiades knew Socrates (some twenty years his senior), the internal conflict was long over, and Socrates could talk to him as he does in Platos First Alcibiades and exhibit the super human self-control which Alcibiades so shamelessly and inimitably describes here. Diotimas last words were that the man who has seen Beauty itself, having brought forth and nurtured true goodness, will have the privilege of being beloved of God, and becoming, if ever a man can, immortal himself (trans. Hamilton). This lofty conclusion is the climax of the whole work, and a lesser writer might have made it the end. But Plato will not have us forget that we are at a party. The convivial is as important as the serious, and any difference of emphasis between the treatment of sex here and in the Laws is fully accounted for by the fact that in the latter three elderly gentlemen are solemnly discussing legislation in the middle of the day, whereas the theme of these after-dinner improvisations over the wine bowl is the praise of Love. We are not to remain on the heights of philosophy, and the sudden appearance of Alcibiades swaying and shouting in the doorway effectively brings us back to earth. His way of complying with the rule of the house is to offer an encomium on Socrates instead of Eros. The meaning is plain. He is not evading the rule, for Eros is made visible in Socrates, the daemonic2 figure not to be compared to any other man who ever lived, but only to the demigods (221 d). The greatest Socratic paradox is Socrates himself: the ideal statesman
1 A. MacIntyre, art. Freud in Ency. Phil, i i i , 251. 2 Cf. 203 a, the who is in the art of bringing man and god into communication.
395
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TH E PH AED R U S
D ate.' The opinion that the Phaedrus was Platos earliest work was expressed in ancient times and survived into the nineteenth century. In both periods it was mainly based on the supposed youthful freshness of subject and treatment and lyricism of style. It was even suggested by Pohlenz that in his fifties Plato could not have written of sensual passion as he did! Nowadays it is placed fairly late in the middle period. Most would say it was written after the Phaedo, Symposium and Republic, a few after the Parmenides and Theaetetus or even the Sophist. Stylometric evidence is said to have cumulative weight (de Vries 1 1 , i.e. in favour of a fairly late date), but must surely face peculiar difficulties in a work containing a speech allegedly (and perhaps actually) by the orator Lysias, another in competition with it, and long sections in a highly lyrical vein. The Phaedrus is out of the general line of Platos development, and its metre has a logaoedic character (Shewring, CQ 1931, 14). As for its philosophy, Platos refusal to confine one dialogue to a single subject has upset his critics, who do not always see connexions where he did. His enthusiastic talk of love, of the soul and its immortality, of the Forms and anamnesis and a place above the heavens would relate the Phaedrus closely to Phaedo and Symposium, but some think that he has intro duced a completely new dialectical method which recurs in Sophist and Politicus, thus putting it firmly, and perhaps even late, in the critical group. It certainly introduces without warning a proof of
1 For full orientation see Robin, T P A 63-109 and Bud ed. ii-ix, Hackforth 3-7, Jowett i i i , 107 n. i, de Vries 7 - 1 1 . (Reff, to Hackforth and de Vries are to their editions of the dialogue.) The ancient testimonies (D .L. 3.38 and Olympiod. V. Plat. 3) are quoted by de Vries, 7. In addition note (a) that Levinson in 1953 still championed a fairly early date on the familiar psychological grounds (D . of P. 96 n. 48: certain features all bespeak a younger and less tranquil psyche than P.s when he wrote Rep.), b ) that Runciman ([ P L E 3) would put Phdr. between Parm. and Theaet. on the grounds that the former marks P.s renunciation of the hypothetical method and paves the way for the method of diairesis, but cf. p. 431 n. 1 below. Gulley ( [P T K 108) and Robinson ( Essays 58) follow von Arnim in putting it after the Theaetetus.
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immortality unconnected with those in Phaedo or Republic and turning up again in the Laws. Added to all this, its ostensible subject is rhetoric.1 Truly, as Stenzel said, the brilliant argument of the Phaedrus turns to ridicule all our ideas of chronology. In my own view the novelty of the method of collection and division has been exaggerated, and the Phaedrus is much more in the spirit of the middle group than of the Sophist. (Cf. pp. 430 f. below.) Time, place and characters. If we wish to press Plato on the date of the conversation, a number of facts must be taken into account which are not easy to reconcile.2 But in view of the magical air of unreality which is shed over this ideal summers day, we may be content to place it, with Robin, en dehors de toute histoire. Not that this applies to the scene of the conversation. The spot in question, said Thompson in 1868 (p. 9), is easily discovered by the visitor at the present day; there is indeed but one place answering the conditions, and it answers them perfectly ; and Robin accompanies the dialogue with an archaeological description and sketch-map, while admitting that the neighbourhood is sadly changed (ed., x-xii). To its ideal character we shall return later. Here I will content myself with a quotation from Cornford ( Princ. Sap. 66f.):
This is the only Socratic dialogue o f which the scene is laid in the open country. Socrates remarks that such surroundings are strange to him: he never leaves the city, because fields and trees have nothing to teach him. On this occasion, however, he breaks out in admiration o f the trees and grass, the fragrance o f the flowering shrubs, and the shrill music o f the cicadas. The place, too, is consecrated to Achelous and the nymphs. Socrates gradually falls under its inspiration and speaks in lyrical language, which, as the astonished Phaedrus notes, is very unlike his usual manner. Throughout the dialogue, up to the prayer to Pan at its close, we are not allowed to forget the influences o f nature and o f inspiration which haunt the spot. This singularly elaborate and beautiful setting is symbolic. Socrates is taken out o f the surroundings which he never left. W ithin the limits o f his dramatic art Plato could not have indicated more clearly that this poetic and inspired Socrates was not known to his habitual companions.
1 For its relation to other dialogues see also p. 324 above. 2 For a succinct statement of them all, combine Hackforth 8 with de Vries 7.
397
The dialogue ( Direct dramatic form ) A preliminary note on its unusual structure may be in place. Phaedrus reads S. an epideixis by Lysias on the offensive2 thesis that a boy should yield to the advances of a cold sensualist rather than to a lover. S. criticizes it as bad rhetoric and offers a better one on the same thesis. Then, warned by his divine voice that he has committed blasphemy, he delivers a palinode in praise of the genuine Love that raises the soul to its true, immortal stature. A slight but charming mythical interlude leads to a general discussion of the nature and aims of rhetoric which occupies over a third of the whole. S. meets Phaedrus setting out for a walk after sitting all morning indoors listening to Lysias. If S. will come with him, he will tell him what he can remember of L .s speech; but S. has spotted the
1 Grote (Pl. ii, 242), Thompson (Phdr. xxvii) and Shorey ( Unity 72) assumed he was alive, Wilamowitz, Robin and Hackforth (see H., 16 n. 5) that he was dead when P. wrote the Phaedrus. The only argument offered for supposing him dead is that the severity of P.s attack on him makes it probable. 2 Offensive even to Athenians who approved of pederasty, as Taylor remarked ( P M W 302). None of the earlier speeches of the Symp. sank to this level.
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actual text tucked under his cloak, so he has to agree to read it. As they walk along by the Ilissus Ph. remembers that the rape of Oreithyia by Boreas is supposed to have occurred in the neighbourhood, and asks S. if he believes the story. S. replies that he has no time for the fashionable pursuit of allegorizing myths away. He prefers to accept them, and get on with the more immediate business of learning to know himself. Arrived at the spot, S.s raptures over its beauty cause Ph. to rally him on behaving more like a tourist than a native. S. agrees that it is only the carrot of a manuscript dangled before his nose that could persuade him to leave the city. His interest is in men, not trees. Speech o f Lysias (230 e-234 c). Lovers repent when passion departs, regretting their material losses and the displeasure of their relatives. The non-lover, having acted prudently, has nothing to regret, and concentrates on pleasing the other. Lovers are sick, they cannot control themselves, and when they come to their senses will regret their folly. Non-lovers, too, offer a much wider choice. As to a boys reputation, a lover will be much the more indiscreet. If you fear the consequences of an estrangement after all you have sacrificed, the lover is more likely to take offence; indeed his jealousy isolates a boy from his friends, whereas the other likes him to make friends. The lovers infatuation seeks physical satisfaction before he knows the boys character; he will spoil him with foolish flattery, whereas the sober man can be a friend, not flattering but considering the boys future good. One should show favours not to the most importunate (we invite our friends to dinner, not beggars), but to those who can make the best return, not to those who will desert when passion wanes, but to friends for life, who will prove their goodness when the bloom of youth is past. The aim must be mutual advantage.1 Asked to comment ( 2 3 4 ^ 2 3 7 ^ , S. prefers to pass over the matter of the speech, but thinks poorly of its literary merits. Its repetitiousness suggested either carelessness or a need to pad out inadequate material, or perhaps a childish desire to show virtuosity by saying the same
1 This summary gives only a faint idea of the repetitiousness to which Socrates justly objects.
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399
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and will even grudge the youth possessions, as making him harder to capture. His society is not only harmful but disagreeable, especially considering the difference in their ages. Driven by passion, he will not let the younger man out of his sight or touch, will keep a suspicious watch on him, alternate fulsome praise with reproaches, and in his cups use openly coarse language. When the fit leaves him he runs away, forgetting the fine promises for which the younger man put up with all this. The former favourite pursues him in anger, not realizing that it was his fault in the first place for giving in to someone not in his right mind. The attentions of such a one do not arise from goodwill, but from sheer appetite. S. ends by breaking into verse, and stops abruptly. The genius loci is being all too effective. The advantages of the passionless suitor he will leave to be inferred as simply the other side of the coin. The disappointed Ph. begs him at least to stay till the heat has abated and discuss the speeches, and his divine sign forbids him to leave until he has purified himself with a palinode, like Stesichorus when he had abused Helen.1 Love is a god, and to call him evil, as he and Lysias have done, is blasphemy.2 It must be cleansed by another recital in favour of the lover. The palinode o f Socrates: form s o f divine madness (244a 245 c). What has been said about the madness of the lover would only be true if madness were always an evil; but there are divinely given forms of madness which bring the greatest benefits. There is prophecy, o f which the frenzied sort, as of the Pythia, Dodona and the Sibyl, is far superior to the rational craft of telling the future from signs and omens. Secondly there is the madness and possession which by means of prayer, worship and purificatory rites can relieve an individual or
1 For S.s divine sign, or voice, see vol. i i i , 402-4. In Stesichorus Howland (CQ 1937, 154) and Ryle (P .s P. 268) saw an allusion to Isocr. Hel. 64-6, but as Hackforth says (p. 54), a reference to the well known tale was only natural, and the parallel is not all that close. Stesichorus was punished by blindness, and after writing the palinode regained his sight. See de Vries on 243 a. 2 I see no need to excuse S. for calling Eros a god here and a daimon in Symp. (Hackforth 54f.). There it suited his purpose to make Love an intermediate and intermediary, and he adapted popular mythology accordingly; here he can accept it unaltered. Such playing with the myths was a common literary device, freely employed by the other speakers in Symp.
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go marshalled in eleven companies, each led by one of the twelve gods with Zeus at the head, Hestia remaining at home.1 Any soul which can may follow them, and within the boundary of heaven see many blessed sights; but on feast days they mount to its very rim, an easy ascent for them, but hard for the others, whose bad, heavy horse struggles to pull them down towards earth. The souls called immortal come right out on to the back of the heaven, and, carried round in its course, gaze on the things outside it. In that region lies true reality, invisible and intangible, discernible only by reason. The gods, nurtured on reason and pure knowledge, are strengthened and refreshed by the vision of truth, and complete the circuit, seeing on the way Justice itself, and Temperance, Knowledge and the rest - not the knowledge which varies in the various things that we call real, but true knowledge of true being. Having feasted on the sight of reality, they return home. O f the others, the best follow right round with the charioteers head above the rim, though troubled by the horses and only with difficulty seeing the realities. Others rise and sink, seeing only some of them, and others fail to reach the summit and trample on each other in their efforts. In the struggle many are maimed and their wings broken. They miss the sight of reality and depart to feed on opinion, whereas the pasturage on which the souls wings thrive grows on the Plain of Truth. The fates o f souls (248 c-249 d). A soul that has followed the gods and seen something of the truth completes the circuit unharmed; but when it can no longer follow and loses the vision, and by some mischance becomes forgetful and inadequate, it sheds its wings and falls to earth. Its first incarnation is as a man, one of nine types depending on how much of the truth it has seen: 1. follower of wisdom, beauty, culture or love;2 2. constitutional monarch or leader
1 Hestia, goddess of hearth and home, was also the earth (Eur. fr. 944), thought of as stationary in the centre of the universe. The twelve gods were those familiar in Athenian cult (Guthrie, G. and G. n o - 12), though P. perhaps links them here with the signs of the Zodiac. See Koster, Mythe de P. etc. ch. 2, v. d. Waerden, Hermes 1953, 482, Hackforth 7 3 f. (but also Wilam., PL 1, 465). 2 I.e. philosopher. For philosophy as see Phaedo 61 a. 403
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In doing so, he will discover the same traits in himself, and become possessed by his god, while attributing it to the beloved, who will be fired in his turn. So through the madness of love both are made happy, once the beloved is captured. To see how he is captured we must return to the image of the tripartite soul. When the driver sees the beloved his desire warms the whole soul. Then the good and obedient horse restrains itself for shame, but the bad one, ignoring whip and spur, plunges and struggles to drag them near the boy and remind them of the pleasures of sex. After a desperate battle (described by Plato with unsurpassable ima ginative force) he is subdued, and the lovers soul follows the beloved reverently. In his turn the loved one feels a growing affection, as of one good man to another, which leads him to ignore the common opinion that association with a lover is shameful. The strength of this friendship amazes him, and in the end he comes to feel love in return, without recognizing it as such, and his wings too begin to grow. Seeing this, the lovers bad steed wants more. The beloved does not know what he wants, but embraces the lover out of gratitude, and is inclined to gratify him in any way he likes. But the driver and the other horse resist, and if the higher parts of the mind prevail, the life of the pair is happy and harmonious, and at its end they become winged and have won the first of the three rounds of a contest truly Olympic.1 If the pair are less philosophical, and in unguarded moments, but rarely, yield to the base horse, they will remain friends, and will leave the body wingless indeed, but eager to be winged, and have their reward. They will not go to the subterranean darkness, for they have begun the way to the place beneath the heavens,2 but will be happy together, and in due time become winged. Association with a non-lover, on the other hand, contaminated with worldly wisdom and grudgingly offering worldly goods, will give a boy the illiberal outlook which most people praise as virtue, and his soul will then wander mindlessly around and beneath the earth for 9,000 years.
1 This refers of course to the three earthly lives which philosophic lovers must live (249 a). The struggle is truly Olympic* because (a) in the Olympic games a wrestler had to win three throws, (\b) in this case the prize is a life with the gods. 2 According to the provisions of 249a for the others.
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might agree that it is better for a man to know the truth, but would claim that even if he does, without their instruction he will never acquire the technique of persuasion. This might be true if rhetoric is a genuine discipline ( techn), but what if it is only an unmethodical knack?1 He proceeds to show that effective speech (in the widest sense: forensic, political or in private discussion) can never be the subject of a genuine discipline, or even achieve its avowed ends, without a knowledge of the truth. Both in the courts and in politics rival speakers aim at making the same actions seem now right or expedient, and now the reverse, just as in philosophy Zeno2 could make the same things seem like and unlike, one and many, at rest and moving. The only art of speaking (if it is an art) consists in making everything as like everything else as possible, and showing up an opponents attempts to do so. Deceit is easiest where two things are nearly alike, and to lead someone on, unsuspecting, from one view to its opposite, is easiest if one proceeds by small steps than if by great. So to deceive others and not be taken in himself, a man must understand precisely the degree of resemblance and difference between things;3 and since one cannot know how much x differs from other things without knowing what x is, he who has not the truth but chases after beliefs has a ridiculous non-art rather than an art of speech. Dialectical method (zGzc-zGgc). The speeches we have just heard may illustrate the point.4 The meaning of some words is not in dispute,
1 P. is repeating points made in Gorg. There too S. calls rhetoric an empirical knack (462b-c, 463b) and Gorgias lightly assumes, when driven into a corner, that his pupils, if they happen not to know what is truly right and wrong, can learn it from him (460a), though he has previously agreed that an orator cannot teach the difference, but only persuade men to an opinion (455 a). On parallels with Gorg. cf. Friedlnder i i i , 2 33f. The two dialogues should be read in close connexion. 2 The Eleatic Palamedes, 261 d. Friedlnder ( i i i , 234^, changing his mind from earlier editions) claimed that this is Parmenides, but since his argument involves denying not only originality but also ingenuity to Zeno, it is not strong. 3 A familiar Socratic ploy. The man who knows the truth is the best liar (H. Min., p. 193 above), the just man is the best thief (Rep. 334a). 4 S. in fact says they will show how both speakers used a knowledge of the truth to mislead their hearers, but it soon emerges that L. had no idea of the truth and therefore no techn, a lack which he also betrayed in other ways. S. himself has of course no rhetorical skill, and his success is attributable to the local deities, or perhaps the cicadas ! 407
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it needs a combination of natural talent with knowledge and practice.1 Lysias and Thrasymachus are unlikely to show the way to it. All great arts must be rounded off by a raising of the mind through cosmological chatter about nature; Pericles reached the peak of perfection because he could bring to rhetoric, besides his own gifts, what he learned from Anaxagoras about cosmology and the nature of mind. An orator needs a knowledge of mind and character (psyche) as much as a doctor does of the body, if either art is to be applied scientifically and not simply empirically, and Hippocrates said that even the body cannot be understood without a knowledge of nature as a whole. To understand, for practical ends, the nature of anything, one must first decide whether it is simple or complex; then consider what it can act on, and by what means, or by what and how it can be acted upon, if simple; and if complex, ask the same question about each part. The orators object being to work upon the mind, he must grasp its nature in this way, then classify the types of mind and of speech and their affections, account for them, and fit each to each. Some characters will, for certain reasons, respond to one kind of speech, others to another. The orator must grasp this both in theory and by observation, until he can recognize a type and the arguments which will appeal to it, and moreover understand when to speak and when not, and when to use brevity, pathos, attack, or any other of the handbook devices. Only then can he be said to have mastered the art of rhetoric. No short cut to success (.z jz b -2 j4 a ). This seems to Ph. a tremendous task, and S. suggests that, to make sure there is not some short cut to success, they had better return to the point made by the teachers and originating with Tisias, that an orator is not concerned with truth, but only with the probable or persuasive.2 But this has really been answered already. What appears probable is what is like the truth, and the likeness can only be achieved by one who knows the truth. Hence the laborious dialectical process, of learning how to
1 For the relative roles of natural gifts, teaching and practice as a commonplace of th-cent. discussion, see vol. i i i , 255 7. 2 For Tisias and the argument from probability see vol. i i i , 178 f. 409
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possessor as happy as a man can be. Those who like Lysias write speeches, or as law-makers become political authors, are wrong if they think their productions of lasting importance or perfect clarity. Not to distinguish between true and seeming justice, goodness, beauty or their contraries deserves reproach, though all the world praise it. The man we would wish to be is the one who knows that no composition in verse or prose (or for that matter spoken just to persuade, without question or teaching) is of serious weight; the best of them merely jog the memory of those who know. Only if written in the soul does teaching about what is just and fine and good attain clarity, completeness and serious import. Only such lessons should be called a mans legitimate offspring - first those that are his own discovery, and secondly such sons or brothers of these as have grown worthily in the minds of others. If however an author of written works composed them with knowledge of the truth, and can defend them by standing up to examination on what he has written, and by what he says demonstrate the inferiority of the written word, he does not deserve a title taken from his writing - speech-writer, law-writer, poet - but one that indicates his serious pursuit, namely philosopher (lover of wisdom). The other titles belong to those who spend all their time polishing and revising literary works, and have nothing more valuable to offer. Charged to tell Lysias this, Ph. asks: But what about your own friend Isocrates? Well, he is still young, but S. thinks he surpasses Lysias in both natural gifts and temperament. He may well beat all previous writers in his own field, if he sticks to it, and go even further if some divine impulse leads him to be dissatisfied with it, for there is a strain of philosophy in his make-up. It is now cooler and they leave, after S. has uttered a prayer to Pan and the other gods of the place for inward beauty and outward circumstances to favour it. May he count the wise man rich, and possess no more wealth than befits a sober man. Ph. asks to be associated with the prayer.
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(pp. 504-8 above), and both aimed at training political experts; but there is more to be said. I see no real evidence that Plato taught rhetoric. It is not mentioned in Fields excellent chapter on the Academy and its curriculum (P . and Contemps. ch. 3), which takes full account of the authorities. Political theory he did teach, but of his own peculiar kind, dependent on knowledge of the absolute, transcendent G ood.1 He himself had turned his back on political activity as impossible for a philosopher in the contemporary situation. The way in which a philosopher might influence the course of government was not by gaining power himself but by being accepted as adviser to those who held it; and this influence would not be exerted through rhetoric, but through personal contact allowing of dialectical argument. The philosopher-kings of the Republic, whether or not the world might some day be ready for them, were certainly not intended to operate in contemporary society. This is borne out not only by the dialogues but by what we know of his pupils, whose activity was advisory and legislative rather than executive.2 In the Gorgias Plato condemned contemporary rhetoric and politics (the two were inseparable) with anger and contempt. Now that crisis is over, and rhetoric is discussed calmly, with detailed knowledge, and ostensibly as something that could be developed into a genuine and worthwhile art. Hence many have thought, like Ryle (o.c. 259), that in the Phaedrus Plato recants and goes back on what he had said in the Gorgias. All he has in fact done is to recover his balance after that emotional experience and deal with rhetoric in the more typical Socratic-Platonic way, not by direct denunciation but by pretending to take it seriously, to find out what it really is and how it may best achieve its aims, only to discover that true rhetoric is philosophy and must employ the methods of Platonic dialectic. It is in fact (as Phaedrus saw, 266 c) not rhetoric at all as practised, taught, and expounded at Athens, any more than true love is ordinary pederasty
1 if, as some good scholars have thought (e.g. Joseph, K. and G. 4, Burnet, Platonism 102, apparently forgetting that he had denied it on p. 46), the curriculum of Rep. 6 and 7 represents that of the Academy, the question is settled. 2 For contemporary society as not prepared for philosophic rulers, see Rep. 489 a-b; for the activities of P.s pupils, p. 23 above. Pytho and Heraclides were exceptional, if Plut, was right to call them Academics (Adv. Col. 1126 c).
413
O f course Plato knew all about what was to him the pseudo-art of rhetoric. Not for nothing had his master spent hours of discussion
1 504c!, trans. Hamilton. No English version can properly convey the force of the words in bringing out the point that for S. the good orator (i.e. master of the technique of his art) is also a good man.
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with Gorgias, Polus, Thrasymachus and the rest, and he too had all the wrinkles of the handbooks at his fingertips. To justify his low opinion of them he must show that it was not due either to ignorance or to the inability of his Socrates to outshine them in practice. So we have our three speeches: one of Lysias, shown to be open to scathing criticism on purely rhetorical grounds of expression and arrangement (2346-235b, 204a-e); one of Socrates as a model exposition of the same plea; then, after castigation of the plea itself on moral grounds, an example of true rhetoric, which is nothing less than a soaring philosophical flight revealing what truth is, where it is to be found, and the effect of its discovery on the potentially immortal soul of a true lover. And the dialogue is so composed that when we return to assess the rhetoricians and their teaching on a more mundane level, we have already listened to the words of true oratory and have them ringing in our ears. We start with the need for a sense of kairos - of when and before what audiences this or that school device will be effective - of which Gorgias could thoroughly approve.1 To fit the speech to the hearer demands a thorough knowledge of the psyche and its varieties. This sounds like sensible practical advice to a young politician or advocate, but with the words of divine philosophy still echoing in our minds we notice things that might otherwise have escaped us. What Socrates says is (271 a-b):
O bviously then Thrasymachus and anyone else who seriously imparts the art o f rhetoric will first o f all describe the psyche with the utmost accuracy, and make his pupil see whether it is one and uniform or like the body complex. This is what we call demonstrating its nature. Secondly he will show what it naturally affects, and how, or by what it can be affected. Thirdly, having classified the types o f speech and o f soul and the ways in which the kinds o f soul are affected, he will expound all the reasons, fitting each kind o f speech to each kind o f soul, and teaching through what sort o f speeches and from what cause a soul o f a particular kind will be persuaded, and another will not.
Obviously Thrasymachus will do nothing of the kind. To recom mend paying attention to the individuality of the person one was trying to persuade may be good empirical, Protagorean advice;2 but
1 See vol.
28
iii
272.
2 And was so taken by Stenzel, from whom the quotation comes ( [P M D 21).
4I 5
G HO
4i 6
The Phaedrus
that his whole aim is to improve rhetoric by turning it from a hitand-miss empiricism into an art ( techne) and so help it to achieve its own purpose. Exactly the same language is used in the Gorgias (jo o e -jo ib , 502d-e): the distinction between philosophy, aiming at the good of the soul, and rhetoric which seeks only to titillate it with pleasure, is expressed as that between a techne and an unscientific knack, ignorant even of the causes of what it seeks to produce. Socrates may say towards the end of the Phaedrus that he is only showing Lysias and others a better rhetorical method, but his prayer for him has been that he be converted to philosophy (257b). Contemporary rhetoric relied on acceptance of the fact that all human action is motivated by the desire for pleasure, gain or honour (Isocr. Antid . 217). This was not the way of the Platonic Socrates. Divine madness and its forms. Dialectical method, whether by example or precept, permeates both the mythical and non-mythical parts of this skilfully woven dialogue. Madness is first divided into two, then the relevant half into four, as preliminary to defining the madness of the lover. Plato has elsewhere called poets and prophets inspired, but with more or less obvious irony: their divine afflatus explains the fact that they do not know what they are saying, and in this they are on a level with politicians.1 Here they are said without irony to be far superior to writers or diviners who rely on human techniques alone.2 We have seen something of Platos attitude to poetry in connexion with the Ion (pp. 204-11 above). His objection was to the poets claim to knowledge, to the contemporary fact that, both in his own eyes and in those of his hearers, the poet was an educator in morals and all sorts of practical arts. If only he and others would admit the influence on him of divine frenzy, which debars him from understanding, they
1 Apol. 22b c, Meno 99c-d, pp. 26if. above. 2 For the distinction between sane and ecstatic prophecy see Guthrie, OGR 67 or G. and G. 199. It was not confined to Greece. Rowley in M R K , ed. Hooke, 246, gives evidence of it in Babylonia. We need not doubt P.s belief in divination. Cf. Tim. 71e yp vvou /, and Cornford, P .'s C. 289, Bouch-Leclercq, Hist, de Div. i, 50.
417
28-2
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The Phaedrus
It is in fact a remarkably complex experience. In an early book of the Republic (403 a-b) the pleasure of love is condemned precisely because it is manic, and contrasted with right loving which can have nothing to do with the manic but is disciplined and intelligent love of the orderly and beautiful. Yet the god-maddened lovers of the Phaedrus too, if the better parts of the soul win the struggle over the lower, are self-controlled and orderly. 1 The Republic, in the first mention of love as manic, uses the word ( ) commonly meaning sexual intercourse (which it expressly forbids), and eros only for the non-manic. The madness it condemns is the left-hand madness of the Phaedrus dichotomy, arising from human ailment, not divine intervention (265 a). Yet both had the same origin, which we must not try to conceal. As Grote rightly said: Personal beauty (this is the remarkable doctrine of Plato in the Phaedrus) is the main point of visible resemblance between the world of sense and the world of Id e as...T h is was the first stage through which every philosopher must pass. 2 This remarkable doctrine springs to life under Platos hands when we are shown the startling effect on Socrates of Charmidess beauty, and his resistance to Alcibiades in spite of his susceptibility.3 Nature and functions o f the soul. All soul is immortal (245 c).4 This is confirmed by a new argument (assuming the generally accepted priority of Phaedo to Phaedrus); new in Plato, that is, but he has adapted the old conception of the arche, which to the Ionian thinkers was both the original state of things and the permanent substance of
1 The contrast was pointed out by Verdenius, AG Ph 1962, 137, though without the above explanation. 2 Grote, PL 11, 209. Cf. pp. 393f. above. 3 Charm. 155c (vol. Ill, 394), Symp. 2i6dff. 4 Does mean all souP or every souP? Soul in all its forms Skemp ( T M P L D 3), the soul in her totality Solmsen ( P.'s Th. 93). Hackforth (p. 64) is undoubtedly right in saying that the distinction is not here before P.s mind, though irv at 24564 seems to me (not all would agree) to demand, in its context translation as every body. Rohde (Psyche 480 n. 22) simply said: Plato here and throughout the Phdr. is speaking of the individual soul. On whether the argument is relevant to the immortality of individual souls, in which P. believed, see Hackforth 64 f. Its primary concern is certainly with a world-soul like that of the Timaeus, but it is surely unimaginable that for P. soul in its totality could remain if all individual souls were perishable. In any case the rest of the story is about the fates of immortal individual souls. Cf. Patterson, P. on Immortality, 115, 116. See also T. M. Robinson in Anton and Kustas, Essays, 350 nn. 1 and 3.
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The Phaedrus
widest sense it is, as desire for the good (Symp. 204e), another name for self-motion of the soul and so of all motion and change in the universe.1 The connexion between the immortality of the soul as self-moving, and the doctrine of eros which is the ostensible subject of the speech, is closer than appears on the surface. Though Aristotles theory of motion excluded the idea of a self-mover, the operation of the Unmoved Mover which is his First Cause owed more to Plato than his criticism in the Metaphysics ( 10 7 ^ 3 7 ) suggests. What moves without being moved is the object of desire and thought. The primary objects of both are the same. . . but desire follows judgement [that something is good] rather than judgement desire, for thought is the arche (ib. 1072 a 26-30). The composite soul. In the Phaedo the soul was simple and unitary, and its immortality depended on this (cf. p. 346 above). In its pure state it was identical with nous, the faculty, shared by man with divinity, by which truth is grasped, and for which reason is such an in adequate translation. All sensations, with their accompanying pleasures, pains, and desires, are ascribed to the body, and the soul is affected by them only through its association with the body. It is body that hinders the soul in its quest for truth and reality (65 b, 66a), not a lower part of its own nature. Language is used very like that of the Phaedrus myth, but applied to the body, not to the souls own lower impulses. Thus at 81 c the body is heavy and the soul that consorts with it is weighed down and dragged back to the visible world. 2 In the Phaedrus Plato has begun to see it as illogical to ascribe emotions and desires solely to the body. The conception of soul as ultimate cause of all life and motion excludes this, for without soul any body is simply inert and lifeless. (Cf. Phil. 3 5 d.) Somehow soul must be not only nous but the source of passions and desires. Its nature can only be illustrated by simile or metaphor, for as Plato
1 The problem of the origin of the evil in the world, and whether or not P. changed his ideas about it, can only be examined later in the light of other dialogues, notably Tht. 176aff. and Laws bk 10. It is not always in his mind, but in this dialogue moral evil at least is due to soul's contamination with body. 2 .. . iri . Must not P. have had this passage in mind when he wrote at Phdr. 247b of the bad horse, yp...iri ?
421
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The Phaedrus
believed to be the case. There are two difficulties in supposing it simple, consisting of nous alone: first, its triplicity is not confined to the incarnate state; second, it applies even to the souls of the immortal gods. They too are compared to a charioteer driving two horses. On the first point we must note that even in the Phaedo the appetites and passions due to a souls association with the body do not necessarily leave it after death. Unless it has lived the philosophic life, it is still contaminated with the corporeal and must wander in lower regions until, through the desires of that which accompanies it, the bodily, it is again imprisoned in a body (8ia-e). The contrast is not between incarnate and discarnate, but between souls still caught in the cycle of births and destined for reincarnation as man or beast, and the fully purified which depart to the divine and immortal,1 quit of wandering and folly, fears and wild loves and the rest of human evils, and as is said of the initiated, dwelling with gods for the rest of time (81 a). Can it be said that in the Phaedrus too it is only souls in the cycle of births, whether in the darkness beneath or on the sub-heavenly journey (256d), that are tripartite? Against this is usually cited the second difficulty, that even the souls of gods are included in the chariot simile.2 About this it must first be said that the simile is introduced with full consciousness. What the soul is we cannot say, but only what it is like (246a). It is mainly used to explain, by means of the unforgettable picture of the struggle of the driver and good horse against the bad horse, how a soul can fall from the heights and be imprisoned in an earthly body. But gods are in no danger of a fall, so their drivers and horses are alike good, and of good stock. 3 Can one really press the imagery here? Has Plato really gone back on his belief that it is the nature of the composite to be dissolved, and
1 I made this point in Entretiens Hardt i i i , 1 1 1 3, noting that in the simpler Gorg. myth also (524d-e) the soul retains its blemishes after death, without knowing that E. Groag had written similarly (IV. Stud. 1915, 193), along with much on which I shall differ from him. 2 Thus e.g. Crombie, E P D 1, 357: It can be argued that we should not take the divine horses seriously. The souls of the gods it may be said need a means of locomotion, and so they are given horses. This is possible but I do not find it convincing. Had Plato wanted to avoid the natural inference that all souls are propelled by feelings and desires it would not have been beyond him to have given the gods some other means of transport/ 3 246 c. If we are to find a truth corresponding to every detail of the simile, perhaps we should be asking who were the parents of the horses of the gods.
423
2 That
424
The Phaedrus
of God and man alike were each a charioteer driving winged horses. Since the nature of God, as we know, is pure and simple, we must imagine that in his case driver and horses are completely at one; but in other souls a flaw appears, for the horses have not the perfection of the driver, and one of them brings the whole equipage to the ground.1 Without the image, the relation between men and gods could not be brought out. The belief that the three parts of the soul, when they reach the divine level, are not merely in harmony but merge into one, namely nous, becomes easier when we reflect that, as James Adam put it, nous in Greek philosophy is never the merely siccum lumen, the clear, cold light which we are sometimes in the habit of calling reason (Camb. Prael. 36f.). A reader of the Phaedrus can hardly be mistaken over this. The driver himself feels the pricking of eros (253 e), which incidentally shows that the horses of the gods are not necessary to represent something comparable to desire (Crombie, E P D 1, 357). The soul moves, as we have seen, through the power of eros and eros is a single stream of force directed at different objects of three main sorts - bodily pleasures, social and political influence, truth and goodness. When channelled in one direction it is weakened in others, and those who will not have it that the souls of the gods are unitary may perhaps agree on this, that their eros is set in one direction only. It may be that the word parts (), which Plato applies to the soul in the Republic (not here), can be too rigidly interpreted.3
, 2
1 Entretiens Hardt i i i , 1 5 . I s h o u l d n o w p r e f e r t o w r i t e g o d s a n d m e n . 2 It is Eros that gives Psyche her wings (Cornford, P .'s C. 354; cf. Verdenius, AG Ph 1962, 141 n. 43). Perhaps one should say that and Ipco are the same. This is the thesis of M. Landmann in Ztschr.f. ph. F. 1956. Cf. also Groag, I.e. 191. 3 In the 77m., where the parts of the soul are most markedly separated (e.g. by locating them in different parts of the body), does not occur, though (unusual in this sense) once. (Cf. p. 476 n. 3 below.) There P. uses or yvo, or most frequently the convenient Greek idiom of article and adj. According to Groag (I.e. 193) P. intends no mere conceptual difference between sides or powers of a unitary being, but independent parts, each a being with its own logically separable attributes. He points to the fact that they can exist separately, voO without a body, the lower two parts without vo in animals (Rep. 441 a-b, Tim. 91e), and the lowest alone in plants (Tim. j j b - c ) . He quotes Aristotles denial of of the soul (De an. 4 3 2 h l; more clearly at 4 13 b 27 ), without mentioning that, while calling it a unity with different which were only he too held that a living creature could possess one or two without the others (415310). E N 110 2 32 7-32 shows how c 3n hsve 3n 3nd 3 without necesssrily being divided into sep3r3te p3rts.
425
426
The Phaedrus
body as itself to the eye of the soul (25ob-d); and it must be beauty of a person, not (as Wordsworth or we might think more appropriate) of nature, music or anything else, because the heights of philosophy can only be scaled by two going together, lovers who have sub limated their desire in a common pursuit of dialectic (conversation or discussion). Beauty ranks with wisdom (truth) and goodness as supreme Forms, or rather aspects of a single supreme Form. But as Beauty it provides a link with the sensible world which was lacking in the more austere setting of the Phaedo. Symposium and Phaedrus present another side of the upward impulse, not merely intellectual curiosity but eros - a passion, even a madness, but a divine one. How knowledge is acquired: collection and division. At 249 b c, e it is said that only souls which have seen the truth (i.e. the Forms) can be born as men. This is because (in a sentence difficult to translate but of clear general purport)1 only men have the power to reason, that is, to form a general concept from a number of acts of perception,2 and in doing so they are in fact being reminded of the realities which they saw on their journey with the gods. These concepts are tokens, or means of remembrance (), which the philosopher uses in his progress towards complete initiation (full knowledge). They are not Platonic Forms but called after them (249by), and to acquire them is to exercise not a philosophic method but a universal human faculty, possessed by an untutored slave, as the Meno showed. Without it men could not even use terms like horse, triangle, piety, let alone convert our beliefs about them into knowledge as the philosopher does. We should not therefore, as some have done,3 identify the use of this faculty with the dialectical act o f collection (). It is a mark of our common humanity, of which no more can be said in
1 It is probably best to keep the received text with Burnet than to adopt the emendations <> and for with Hackforth. (For details see his and de Vriess notes.) If were to be inserted, it would be a question where to put it. . . or . .? The latter gives H.s version ( by way of what is called a Form), the former would to my mind make easier that of Verdenius ( Mnem. 1955, 280, in spite of the parallels offered\ in which is subject of and means what is said in generic terms (de V .; Verd. does not offer a translation). This is doubtless right. 2 The gift of humanity is precisely that, unlike the animals, we form concepts (J. Bronowski, Identity o f Man 48). 3 E.g. Thompson p. 10 7 , Adam, Rep. vol. 11, 1 7 3 . 427
428
The Phaedrus
its fundamental aspect. We also see that other phenomena, as diverse in themselves ( widely scattered) as ordinary lunacy, inordinate passion (upig), prophecy and poetry, share this essential property. We have defined the general field within which love is to be found. (b) Division follows, to distinguish which form of madness is to be identified with love, and so define it by genus and differentiae. This is a process or method, though intuition must still play a part in discerning the natural joints, selecting the specific differences and ignoring inessentials. Thus madness is first divided into two main varieties, left-hand and right-hand, due to human ailment and divine possession respectively. Both are further subdivided, until the left-hand side isolates a definition o f sinister love, and the right-hand side of divine love, thus making clear (a) how the two kinds of love, though sharing the same name, are quite different, (b) how divine love differs from the other members of its sub-class, divine madness. These are the processes, says Socrates (205c-266b), illustrated by his two speeches. As rhetorical set pieces, they would hardly succeed First speech Desire
of food (gluttony)
of drink (drunkenness)
if they simply took the form of philosophical analyses, but allowing for this, and for the fact that, although the genus selected in the first speech is desire, the lovers desire is repeatedly shown to be a form of madness,1 they keep pretty closely to the pattern.
1 The lovers desire is irrational ( 238b), he is sick (238e), driven by a frenzy ( 240), his love is madness () and he is ruled by folly (241 a). On the difficulties seen by Hackforth in reconciling the speeches with the method, see Ackrills review, Mind. 1953, P 279.
429
human ailment
divine possession
prophecy
telestic
poetry
love
The instantaneous, collective, upward leap from love etc. to desire or madness naturally does not appear on the tables. We see again that the smallest units with which the philosopher deals are infimae ( indivisible 277 by) species. The experience of making the lowest generalization from the infinity of individual cases is pre supposed, as an activity of ordinary, non-philosophical man in virtue of his humanity. This is perhaps the biggest contribution of dialectic at its present stage to the emergence of a purely formal logic under the hands of Aristotle.1 In these passages Platos aim is the Socratic one of definition, and the dual method itself is a development of the Socratic as it appears in earlier dialogues, particularly in the need to follow collection by division, not mistaking statement of the genus for full definition. Thus in the Euthyphro 1 2 d-e (pp. 113 . above), piety is justice is followed by the question what part of justice? and at Gorg. 462 cff., to define rhetoric the genus empeiria (empirical knack as opposed to techne) is selected, a part of this is first cut off as pandering, which in turn is divided into four sub-species - cookery, cosmetics, sophistic, rhetoric - and the specific character of the last is described. Here in
1 I still think that it is legitimate to speak of genus, species and differentiae in connexion with Platos method, and that Sayre ( P A M i86ff.) exaggerates the difference between it and Aristotelian logic. The differences he points out seem rather (though he would not agree) criticisms of P. for not having thought the matter through. P. always had other things in mind, and evolved a method only so far as it was useful for his main aims. It therefore remained embryonic, to be systematically developed by Aristotle. The great difference is the ontological one that for Aristotle only the individual has full substantial existence and classes as they widen grow progressively further from reality, whereas for Plato the highest, most all-embracing Forms are highest also in the scale both of being and of value. But this belongs rather to a discussion of the Sophist. 43O
The Phaedrus
the Phaedrus (269 b) Socrates says that, through ignorance of dialectic, rhetoricians cannot even say what rhetoric is. Polus was an example, and in showing him how to do it Socrates had to give him a lesson in dialectical method.1 Cosmological chatter . O f the dozens of points offering themselves for comment in the Phaedrus, I choose one more,2 the reference to airy cosmological chatter about nature at 270a. Here Socrates calls this occupation, in the uncomplimentary terms which had been commonly applied to himself3 but emphatically rejected in the Apology, the indispensable adjunct to any worthwhile art. The perfection of rhetoric achieved by Pericles was partly due, he says, to what he learned from the cosmologist Anaxagoras and his insight into the nature of mind. An orators immediate aim is to understand the psyche, and that demands a knowledge of nature as a whole, as does, according to Hippocrates, a physicians understanding of the body.4
1 The common opinion that the method of dialectic in Phdr. is a complete innovation has already been challenged by Levinson in Anton and Kustas (p. 270), and Morrison (Phron. 1963, 42f.) thinks that at least the second part (division) was current in the 5th century. (See vol. i i i , 204.) That it was Socratic is suggested by Xen. Mem. 4.5.12 (vol. i i i , 440; on Xenophons independence of P., Stenzel, R E , 2. Reihe, v. Halbb. 859-64). Gulley however in 1962 ( [P T K 108) still thought of it as linking Phdr. with Soph, and later dialogues. See now J. M. E. Moravcsik in Exegesis, 324-48. 2 The story of Theuth, and the comparative value for P. of the written and spoken word, have been discussed on pp. 57ff. above. 3 . See vol. Ill, 374 and 364 (for S. as $). Hackforths high-flown speculation conceals the meaning of the latter term. It is talk about, or study of, the things in the sky, including, but not confined to, astronomy. 4 To say that refers only to the whole soul or body (as Hackforth, followed by de Vries) makes nonsense of the need for . (Jones has it right, Loeb Hippocr. vol. 1, xxxiii.) I take it that in mentioning Hippocrates Phaedrus has in mind the medical writer or writers against whom the author of Vet. Med. (ch. 1) insisted that medicine had no need of empty hypotheses on subjects like $\ Medicine, they claimed, demands a knowledge of what man is, and this in turn a knowledge of the elements of which he like everything else was composed. But this, says V .M ., belongs to natural philosophy, and has no more to do with medicine than with painting. Such people talk of opposites, and of illness as simply due to a preponderance of the hot, the cold and so on, to be treated by the application of its opposite a gross over-simplification according to V .M . One cannot apply the hot in abstracto, but only this or that hot substance, which will have other properties and effects. From medicine we can learn what man is, but not vice versa. (See chh. 15 and 20.) This does not of course end the search for an actual work of H. making the point, for which see Dies, A. de P. 30ff.; Jones, Ph. and Med. 16-20; Hackforth and de V. ad loc. But if I am right, the work cannot be V .M . itself, as Littr thought.
29
431
GHO
The Phaedrus
nature or essence () of his subject, is none other than the (Platonic) philosopher.1
A D D IT IO N A L
NO TE
A speech by Lysias? The question whether Plato has given us a genuine work of Lysias or a pastiche of his own has naturally aroused much interest, but the details concern students of the orators rather than of Plato. Also a decision must remain more or less arbitrary*, as de Vries rightly says. He gives a survey of opinions (Pl. 12-14), and a few others are in Hackforth, ij{ . One may add in favour of genuineness Thompson (Gorg. iii), Brochard (tudes 67), Plbst (R E, xxvi. Halbb. 2537). Cornford (unpublished) thought it genuine and necessarily so if Lysias was still alive. For Platonic authorship one may add Dis, Aut. de P. 419, Jo wett (in, 119). Dover (Lys. 69-71) is extremely cautious, but stylistic evidence inclines him to put the onus of proof on those who would ascribe it to Plato. According to Morton and Winspear (Gk. to the C. 47 f.), the com puter shows it to be a Platonic exaggeration of the difference between himself and Lysias. This is based on the repeated occurrence of , which in itself, according to their own criteria of significance, should be an unconscious difference.
1 For the usual view of this passage, different from that given here, see Thompsons long and informative note on pp. 12 1-3 of his ed.
433
29 -2
VII
THE RE P UB LI C
IN T R O D U C T O R Y
The Republic, besides being Platos greatest work, is almost five times as long as the longest dialogue so far considered, and a chapter on it must be even more of a Good Food Guide (see preface) than the others. By itself it appeals to all the classes mentioned on pp. xiv f. Even the literary critics, suppressing their wrath at Platos uncom promising stand over poetry, will usually acknowledge it as one of the worlds greatest literary - and in parts dramatic - masterpieces. The need to direct a reader, therefore, both to a study of the text itself and to others who have written about it from a variety of motives, becomes even more pressing. Subject. The Greek title of the work (misleadingly represented for us by the English form of the Latin Res publica) means The State or On Justice, 1 and its subject, not merely ostensibly but in reality, is the nature of justice and injustice and their consequences for the just and the unjust man. This is stated at an early stage, and despite digressions and subordinate themes (of which the establishment of the imaginary state is the chief), Plato in this most skilfully constructed work is always bringing us back to it.2 Justice is the traditional
1 Or rather On the Just Man*, (Thrasyllus ap. D .L. 3.60 and some MSS). The double title may just possibly be Plato's own. Hoerber, Theme of P .'s Rep. ch. 7. 2 At 369 a the reason for constructing an imaginary state is that it will show up the origins of justice and injustice, and reminders of this aim come later in bk 2 at 371e, 372e and 376c. After the full description of the state in bk 4 (427d and 434d; cf. 420b) they must, says S., immediately examine it to discover where in it are justice and injustice and which will bring happiness to the one who chooses it. In bk 5 (472 b), when Glaucon asks whether such a state is feasible, S. reminds him that their real aim is to find out what justice and injustice are. Cf. also 6.484 a and 8.5 48 c-d, where it is said that better definitions could have been found of the philo sopher and of the timocratic state, had they not been more concerned with discovering the difference between the just and the unjust life and individual. Proclus gives a good and balanced discussion of this question (In Remp. 1, 7 -1 4 Kr.) and for full treatment in modern times see Hoerber's Theme and cf. Nettleship, Lectures 68 f. Many more reff, will be found in Maguires article in C J 1965. He takes the opposite view.
434
Introductory
rendering of dikaiosyn, but it approaches the wider of the two senses of the word defined by Aristotle, of which he says (E N 112 9 b 25) that it is the whole of virtue (aret) as it affects our relations with others.. .(1130 39 ) and its opposite injustice is not a part of badness but the w h ole.. .(a 12). In its social aspect it is justice, but regarded simply as a characteristic, it is virtue. One may compare the Euthyphro (i2d -e, p. 106 above), where piety is said to be a part* of justice. It accords of course with the Socratic doctrine of the unity of the virtues, and though in the Republic Plato deals with them separately, the perfectly just man (who turns out to be the philosopher) is for him the perfectly good man in every w ay.1 So our subject becomes to determine the whole course of life which we must follow if we are to live to the best advantage (344e). It is Platos full and final answer to the question in the Gorgias, how to live. 2 The rest follows from this. The good life can only be lived in a community, so it must be seen in its communal aspect; it calls for an understanding of human nature, that is, of the psyche (for without that one cannot know what is good for it), and most difficult of all, of the nature of goodness itself; and for all this the paramount need is the right sort of education. Many topics from other dialogues will recur, for basing himself on Socrates as he still does, Plato has written them all with the same object in view - the good life - which he here treats more comprehensively than in any other. Most indeed of those so far considered maybe regarded as from one point of view preliminary studies for the Republic. Virtue is knowledge throughout, the doctrine of Forms is central, the soul is immortal and its fate is described in another eschatological myth. That the just man is the best thief (334a) recalls the paradox of the H. M in. (367c), democracy is criticized in Book 8 (558b) on the same grounds as in the Protagoras (that no one cares whether a politician has expert knowledge), poets are arraigned on moral grounds as at Gorg. 50ie~502d and on grounds of ignorance as in the Apology. Many other touches recall the Gorgias, especially in the characterization of the tyrannical man in Book 9: he
1 Cf. the description of the philosopher at 487 a.
2 ; Gorg. 492d; cf. 487a. The phrase at 500c ( 3v) is repeated
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The Republic
does not do what he wishes, he is unhappier with power than without, one must not be dazzled by outward appearances but look for the man within, and it is better to be punished for wickedness than to escape (591a). The idea that a craftsman looks towards the Form of the utensil he is making, and that he must be instructed by the user, because the goodness and beauty of an artefact or anything else depend on its usefulness (10.596b and 6oia-6o2a), recall both the Cratylus (389b, 390b) and the H. M aj. (295 c-e). Many more examples could be quoted, and this absorption of much of Platos other work in the Republic may mitigate slightly the necessary brevity of its treatment here. One further point before we proceed. Ethics as a philosophical subject has been said to be the logical study of the language of morals an analytical discipline unconcerned with recommending one course of action rather than another: moral or political arguments aiming at such recommendation are different and do not belong to philosophy. Perhaps a philosopher would find it useful, if he could, to separate for his own purposes descriptive from prescriptive aspects of the discussions in the Republic, but besides being very difficult, it would lead to a caricature of Plato. His question What is justice? did not simply call for an analysis of current usage. It meant also What must we get men to see that they should mean by justice if they are to use the concept as a guide to right living? For to him it was an existing changeless Form, and the variety and inconsistency of current notions of it were simply evidence that no one yet understood its essence. He could never, like Aristotle (E N 1103 b 27), have contrasted theoretical study of the nature of virtue with the practical aim of becoming good.1 The Socratic Virtue is knowledge was still his guide.
1 Hence the criticism of a philosopher like Flew, who sees it as a vitiating fault, running right through the Rep., that P. failed to appreciate *the fundamental distinction between what is the case and what ought to be. See his essay in Carters Scept. and Moral Principles. Perhaps he did, for Hume, who first drew attention to it, claimed to have observed this fault in every system of morality which I have hitherto met with ( Treatise, bk 3, 3, p. 177 of Every man ed.). Humes famous distinction is still avidly discussed. The symposium on The ls-Ought Question (ed. Hudson, 1969) contains by no means the latest contributions. See for instance F. G. Downing, Ways of Deriving Ought from Is (PAQ 1972), and two articles in Ethics 1972: R. F. Hannaford, You Ought to Derive Ought from Is and G. O. Allen, The Is and Ought Question Reformulated and Answered. Cf. also L. Versnyis assertion in Philosophy 1971 : Nothing but an is can justify an ought . (P. 519 with n. 2 below.)
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Date1 and dramatic date. Neither the date (or dates) of composition nor the supposed date of the conversation can be fixed with certainty. A number of theories have had their day. According to Rohde and others the dialogue was an amalgam of different chronological strata many times re-worked.2 Then came the idea of two editions, one published c. 390, the other c. 370. All that remains of these earlier views is the suggestion that book 1 is an early dialogue (christened by Dlimmler Thrasymachus) which Plato had the idea of using, perhaps twenty years later, as a beginning for his great work. Fried lnder called this an assumption which few would question today, whereas to Taylor it was inconceivable* and to C. H. Kahn is wildly implausible. 3 If such critics do not always pay attention to the stylistic arguments which weighed so heavily with scholars like Ritter and von Arnim, it yet remains difficult to conceive of book 1 as ever intended for any other place than that which it now occupies. Other wise only book 10 has features which might suggest changes of plan, with rough edges not entirely smoothed down.4 Doubtless a work of the size and scope of the Republic took a long time to write, but the prevailing view at present is that it was finished c. 374, a long time after Platos first visit to Sicily but before the second. However, as Dis wisely said, Toutes ces dates sont conjecturales et sont donnes comme tels (Bud cxxxviii). As to the dramatic date, I will simply mention two points which emphasize its uncertainty. First, Taylor (P M W 263) rejects 4 11 because Cephalus is still alive. He actually refers to ps.-Plut. Lysias 835 e, yet himself favours 421, whereas according to that perhaps dubious authority Cephalus was dead by 443. Secondly, both Taylor and Adam invoke the mention at 368 a of Glaucon and Adeimantus having distinguished themselves in battle at Megara, but whereas Taylor quotes Thuc. 4.72 for a battle there in 424, Adam, quoting
1 For a general survey of opinions see Dis in Bud ed. cxxii-cxxxviii. 2 Cf. E. Groag in W. Stud. 37 (1915), 190. 3 Friedl., PL i i i , 63 f., 11, 50-66, Taylor, P M W 264, Kahn in J P h 1967, 368. Kahn refers to K. Vretska in W . Stud. 1958, 30-45, for a detailed argument against the thesis. For earlier views see Friedl. 11, 305 f., Leisegang, R E 2405. Field (P. and Contemps. 67), Gauss (Handkomm. 1, 2, ch. 6) and Ryle (P.'s P. 11) may be added to those in favour of the thesis. 4 See Nettleship, Lectures 355.
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Diod. Sic. 13.65, says perhaps in 409*. Neither mentions Jowetts conjecture of 456.1 Fortunately, though steeped in the moral and political atmosphere of Platos lifetime, the Republic can be appreciated without a precise knowledge of the year or years in which he wrote it, or when he imagined his fictitious conversation to have taken place - a matter about which he was by no means always particular. On the whole, Taylor has made it likely that most of the time he had a date about 421 in mind. Scene and characters. The Athenians, hospitable to gods as to everyone else as Strabo says, had just instituted a festival of the Thracian goddess Bendis, and Socrates went down to the Piraeus with Platos brother Glaucon to see the show. As they started for home, a slave of Polemarchus, brother of Lysias the orator, ran up from behind and asked them to stop. Turning round, they saw a small group approaching them: Polemarchus, Platos pther brother Adeimantus, Niceratus son of Nicias (p. 126 above) and others. Polemarchus insisted that they come back to dinner with him: later there was to be a relay torch-race on horseback and an all-night carnival. (Con sidering the length of their subsequent discussion, it is to be feared that they missed these delights.)2 Arrived at his house, they found a varied company, including Polemarchuss aged father Cephalus, a wealthy Syracusan settled at Athens, his brothers Lysias and Euthy demus, the Sophist Thrasymachus, Charmantides a pupil of Isocrates ( Antid, . 93) and Clitophon. Niceratus, Euthydemus, and Charmantides take no part in the conversation and Clitophon only interrupts it briefly at 340 a-b, though it may have been from listening to it that he got his adverse impression of Socrates as going around exhorting
1 The introduction of the Bendideia, if its date were known, would of course be decisive, but as far as I can see the repeated statement that it was in the time of Pericles (e.g. Knaack in R E i i i , 269; Stengel, Gr. Kultusalt. 246) rests on nothing more than a presupposition as to the dramatic date of Rep. ! (Adam suggested perhaps 410 .) Even Strabo (10.18 names Plato as his authority for the Bendideia at Athens. 2 Some have thought this an indication that bk 1 was not originally a part of the whole work (v. Arnim, Jugendd. 73). However, once caught up in the search for justice, they may well have been willing to forgo such trifles more suited to the * of 475 d than to .
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The holiday-makers: Cephalus (3 2 3 -3 3 1 d). We begin with a group of spectators returning in holiday mood from a festival and procession, engaged in fact in the activities of the most ordinary citizen, the lover of sights and sounds. An invitation is issued and the host is a very old man. What more natural than that Socrates should engage him in conversation on the subject of old age, its drawbacks and compensations? Is it perhaps his wealth that enables him to face it more cheerfully than others do? Well,that has at least this advantage, that he can pay all his due debts to gods and men and face the next world with the comforting reflection that he has lived justly, never deceived anyone or robbed him of his due. So the moral argument begins, from the credo of an upright old gentleman with no pretensions to philosophy. Socrates cannot resist the opening. Is this really the meaning of justice (or right conduct), simply to tell the truth and return what we have received? Does it cover the case of a friends knife if the friend goes mad ? 2 Refutation o f the unsophisticated: Polemarchus ( 33 1 d 336 a). Here Polemarchus breaks in, and the old man thankfully turns away to the more congenial task of seeing to the sacrifice. What follows is an exhibition of that elementary Socratic sparring, not too scrupulous in its means, with which the earliest dialogues have made us familiar. Polemarchus thinks that justice consists in serving friends and hurting foes. Socrates ripostes with the somewhat worn analogy between a moral quality and a techn (professional skill) which so justifiably annoyed some of his critics (vol. in, 442). His arguments are:
1 See the little dialogue Clitophon, There at 410 c C. threatens to desert S. for Thrasymachus, who makes the same criticism here at 336 c-d. 2 This purely debating point is rightly ignored by S. when in bk 4 (433 e) he says that the magistrates in the good city will rule that no one shall possess anothers goods or be deprived of his own, because this is just.
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(a) To give friends and foes their due in a matter of health and sickness a doctor would be best qualified, on a sea-voyage a ships captain: the skill of either is of more use than justice. Nor has justice any useful product as have farming and shoemaking. How then can it help? In money matters, suggests Polemarchus. Well, money is used to buy and sell, but in buying a horse one would rely on a good judge of horseflesh rather than on a just man. (That Polemarchus should let this pass, without remarking that the horsey mans expertise will not benefit the buyer if he is dishonest, is almost incredible.) Justice, or honesty, in fact is only useful when we want to put any thing in store, i.e. when we are not using it, which suggests that it is not of great use itself. b) In general the man most able to help can also do most harm: a physician makes the best poisoner, the art of defence is also that of attack. So if a just man is good at keeping money safe, he will be good at stealing it. (c) A mans enemies are those he thinks bad, but he may be mistaken. I f he is, justice will mean harming a good man. (d) Even if he is right, to harm anything - say a horse - is to make it a worse horse. Similarly if a man is harmed he becomes worse by the standards of human excellence, and justice is human excellence, so he becomes less just. But as musicians cannot by their art make anyone unmusical (the techne analogy again), so a good man cannot by his goodness make anyone bad. Neither then will he ever harm anyone, and that definition of justice falls.1 On the argument that dialogues which show Socrates arguing unfairly must have been written before his death,2 this brush with Polemarchus would have to be dated very early. Moreover the fallacy of equating technai and virtues was shown up by Critias in the Charmides, and we had enough of the paradox that the truthful man is the best liar in the H. M inor.3 Yet the meticulous planning of the Republic as a whole forbids us to suppose that these episodes in book i are just bits of Platos early work which he found lying about and
1 Cf. the similar argument at Apol. 250-e, and Adkins, M . and R. 268 f. 2 See pp. 191k (H. Min,) and 213k (Prot.) above. 3 Charm. 165C-166C, p. 160 above; H. Min. pp. 192^, 196.
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them, or simply to earn wages. S. replies that, qua shepherd, his job is the welfare of the sheep and nothing else: whatever his other purposes, they are not relevant to his shepherds art, any more than the fact a doctor is paid for his services invalidates the statement that the aim of medicine is the health of the patient.1 Satisfied that justice is not to be identified with the interest of the stronger party, S. turns to a further claim of Th., that the unjust man has the better life. Rejecting moral categories, Th. has called the just man a simpleton and justice common sense or good policy ( 348 d). (a)2 No association for a common purpose, from Moral Rearmament to the Mafia, can succeed if each member acts unjustly towards the others, pursuing his own selfish ends by hook or crook. Honour among thieves is necessary for any united action, and even within the individual injustice does not lose this power of paralysing through internal conflict. ([b) Everything has its proper function, e.g. tools and bodily organs like eyes and ears. Consequently each has its own excellence (arete)3 which enables it to perform that function (sharpness in the knife, keen sight in the eye). The psyche of man is no exception: it has its function (human living), and the aret which enables it to perform this function in the best possible manner is justice. So the just man, not the unjust, lives well and therefore is prosperous and happy.4
1 This account (amplified in vol. i i i , esp. 95 f.) differs radically from that of Adkins in M . and R. pp. 273 ff., which in my opinion overlooks the opening given to S. by Th.s insistence that a ruler should only be considered qua ruler, i.e. as an ideal. He also calls Th. Callicles redivivus, whereas I say ( i i i , 97) that Th.s theory is essentially different from that of Callicles. The reader must judge. (There is also T . Y. Henderson, In Defense of Th.*, in Am. Ph. Q. 1970.) .Sparshott ( Monist 1966, 436) objects that a shepherd aims not at the welfare of the sheep but at their marketability, but this distinction sounds anachronistic. Ancient Greece was innocent of battery hens or factory farms. The healthiest, happiest sheep would also fetch the highest price. (Since writing this I see that the same point has occurred to Penner, Exegesis 145 n. 12.) 2 S.s first argument, omitted here, depends again on the techn analogy, and its effect is gained by playing on the different connotations of words like sophos (technically trained and wise) and agathos (morally good and good at anything), which we know already and which are hardly reproducible outside contemporary Greek. Cornford omits it in his translation but gives a clear explanation of it (p. 32). 3 For aret see vol. i i i , 2 52f. 4 S. plays on the ambiguity of jfjv (cf. Prot. 351b ; as elsewhere of v) which in ordinary Greek idiom could mean to live in prosperity and happiness, even ease and luxury (Od. 17.423, Soph. Ph. 505), as well as to live a morally good life. On the argument from function one may mention Thayers article in PQ 1964.
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(2) THE SEARCH F O R J US TI CE BE G I NS : ORIGIN AND ELE MENTS O F SOCIAL ORDER ( 2 . 3 6 8 C - 3 7 4 E )
The state as the individual magnified (368 b 369 c). The task is formidable. S. suggests that since, as they agree, justice is to be found in communities as a whole as well as in individuals, it may be easier to conduct the investigation first on the larger scale. Are they prepared for the considerable task of imagining a city1 being built up from the beginning, to see at what point or points justice enters into it? They are. The facile assumption here that justice can belong to a single man and to a whole city (368e), and is the same in both, has naturally come under fire. The parallel is maintained in detail in book 4, but certainly not to the extent of rendering otiose the criticisms in Grotes splendid chapter on it (PL in, xxxiv), which should still be read. Modern philosophers add the linguistic point that a word may mean different things to us in different contexts, e.g. Torquay is a healthy town and Jones is a healthy man. 2 But as Cross and Woozley go on to say, the present case can hardly be dismissed as no more than a linguistic fau x pas, for Platos belief in the literal congruity of individual and state is the basis of his whole political philosophy. In defending Plato against Grote, Adam (1, 92) used *the historical argument that Plato was concerned to cement the union between citizen and state, which was rapidly dissolving in his day. A better historical explanation is the wider one, well expressed by Jacques, that for the Greek, ethics and politics were one and the distinction we make between them would have seemed artificial to him. The goodness
1 It is as well to use this word occasionally to remind us that the state* being discussed is the polis, the autonomous city and its agricultural environs, counting its population in thousands; and politeia - polity, state - is the organization of this compact unit. We all know this, but it is easy to forget it and assess P.s statements as if they applied to the modern nation-state with its millions. 2 Cross and Woozley, Comm. 75f. I have emphasized elsewhere that S. and P. were not unaware that men attached different meanings to the same words; they simply thought it harmful. Nor can it well be denied that if in every country men meant the same thing by, say, democracy, the world would be a happier place. But that was in cases where the reference was the same, e.g. justice means taking all you can get* (Callicles) or justice means obeying the laws* (Antiphon). The way in which the meaning is altered through a change of reference may well have been something beyond the linguistic philosophy of S. and P.
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historical. Its order is rather logical. That is to say, he takes society roughly as it is and begins at what seems its lowest point, at that aspect of society in which it is an organization for the satisfaction of certain physical wants/1 This seems certain from its extreme schematic brevity, and is also suggested by the use of normative rather than factual language: each man must () perform his own job (369e), a man would do better to stick to one job (370b), we shall need. . .(371a). To discover where in this elementary city lie justice and injustice, we must first consider their way of life. O f this S. paints an idyllic picture. They have corn and wine, houses and clothes, and he sees them reclining with their children on natural beds of fragrant boughs, eating loaves and fine cakes off clean leaves, then when the wine goes round, wearing garlands, hymning the gods, and enjoying one anothers company. They live within their means and avoid poverty and war. Urged by Glaucon he allows them some relish with their bread - salt, olives, cheese, vegetables - as well as a country dessert with the wine, of figs, peas, acorns and the like. So after a healthy and peaceful life, they will die old and bequeath the same existence to their children. The inflamed city (,3 J2 d -3 J4 c ). At this point occurs the first of many carefully contrived interruptions to the main argument. Before S. can proceed with his search for justice, Glaucon exclaims that what he has provided is fit only for a city of pigs, lacking the recognized comforts of life such as couches, tables to eat off, and civilized food. S. replies that in his opinion what he has described is the true and healthy city. 2 It seems that what they have to study is not that, but a luxurious city, one suffering from inflammation. This may be no bad thing, for such a city may well reveal the origin of justice and injustice in communities. It at once becomes a much larger affair, for in addition to necessities and simple pleasures it demands - besides furniture - delicacies, cosmetics, courtesans, the fine arts and precious
1 Nettleship, Lectures 69. See also the rest of what he has to say on pp. 69-70. 2 This disposes of the surprising statement of Cross and Woozley (Comm. 79) that he does not object to the suggestion that what he has described is a city of swine'".
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that the city is perhaps laid up as a pattern in the heavens (pp. 543f. below). How has this change come about? J. P. Maguire writes that Plato proceeds to complete the ideal state first by evolving the luxurious society from the primitive society, in order to introduce an army; and then by evolving the purged state from the luxurious society, in order to introduce a specifically ruling element which will be able to organize the whole. 1 He does not quote, but presumably has in mind 399e, where S., after his drastic curtailment of poetry, drama and music, exclaims with his favourite oath, By the dog ! Without realizing it we have been re-purging the city which a little while ago we called over-luxurious. Lets go on and complete the process. The process is never complete however, if only because they never get rid of war. We can hardly call the introduction of an army a step towards the ideal state, when the reason for it is aggression prompted by greed. The cause of war, says Plato, whatever its effects, is the desire for unlimited material possessions, the same that is at the bottom of most evil in cities, individual and social (373 d-e). As he put it bluntly in the Phaedo (66 c), All wars are made to get money. Yet in the ideal state it is the military class which has the highest character, combining fierce courage with philosophic gentleness, and from which the rulers are selected. The whole population of the city of pigs has become the third class, which has no part in the government. This is no reflection on the earlier society, in which government was evidently unnecessary. Unity and concord do not have to be imposed on the simple, but only on the complex. We have seen that in later books Plato describes as a pattern of goodness the city which began in book 2 as one unhealthy through luxurious excess. That it has meanwhile undergone purgation only explains this in part, for it is only partly purged. Plato effects a change o f ground, accomplished dramatically by the contrast between the over-simple Socrates and Glaucon the apostle of modern culture and elegance.2 Socrates describes a society of innocents, peaceable and
1 C J 1965, 148. Italics mine. 2 For G .s character see Jowett, n, 9. The simple intellectualism of S.- is no doubt historical; for an example of it see vol. i i i , 458.
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(a) Selection (374 e 3 j6 c) We have already noted that, in spite of their unpromising introduction, the military (now called guardians) represent the highest type of citizen. Indeed, given the qualifications demanded, it is obvious that the statesmen could be chosen from no other class. As the citys defenders, they must be physically strong and quick, and of high
1 In P/s Com m onwealth', Unwritten Phil. 58f.
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courageous spirit. Yet characters of this sort are apt to be fierce and aggressive. What if they should tend to attack both each other and the people they are supposed to protect ? Let us call them the watch dogs of the city, and we may take heart from their canine counterparts. There are creatures who are savage to some and gentle to others, and the criterion is knowledge, for dogs will attack a stranger even if he has done them no harm, and welcome anyone familiar even if he has shown them no kindness. In this the dog shows the rudiments of a philosophic nature,1 for philosophy is nothing but love of knowledge and learning, and this our guardians must have if they are to behave peaceably towards their neighbours. The good guardian then must combine these qualities: physical fitness, a high spirit and a philosophic nature. This passage contains in a tight bud much of what will unfold into flower as the talk proceeds, when its full import will appear. Briefly, it implies that the perfect guardian is the perfect man, for his character must be a delicate balance of what will later be described in detail, the three main types of impulse in the psyche, physical, spirited (for which Plato already uses the same term, , as in the systematic account) and intellectual. (Jb) Education o f the young (2.3J6C-3.412C) How are these paragons to be brought up? That is the next question - provided, S. reminds them, it will assist the purpose of the whole investigation (376c), namely the discovery of how justice and injustice are engendered in a city. Adeimantus expects it will, so they proceed, as S. rather strikingly puts it (376d): Like people engaged in telling stories (mythoi\ in story form and at leisure, to educate these men in words (i.e. in talk, in imagination not reality). 2 The education outlined follows the traditional Greek division into physical (gymnastik) and cultural (musik), most attention being paid to a reformation of the latter. The principles on which it is based, summed up by Plato at the end (400C-402e), represent a characteristi1 I hope it is unnecessary to remind that P. had a sense of humour. 2 To render the Greek, with words like , 06, in modern language is not easy, but I have tried to represent it as closely as possible.
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(/) Cultural education (2.336 e-3.4 0 jc) (a) Stories ( poetry) (3jya-3S>8b) Subject'matter ( ) (377 a 392 c). Children receive their earliest education by being told stories, mostly (in Greece) through
1 400d-40ia, 401 c-e, in Cornfords translation. (My italics.) Some readers may be relieved to hear that, though not mentioned here, sums and geometry will also be begun in childhood (7.5 36 d-e, p. 526 below). But in a later book P. explains that this education was aimed at moral excellence rather than knowledge. Purely intellectual disciplines are reserved for adult guardians who have passed further tests (p. 521 below).
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poetry. With many examples from Homer downwards, Plato shows how they must be purged, to have a good effect on character at this most impressionable age. First, their theology is bad. The divine nature is good and cannot be the source of evil, nor can it change, for any change could only be for the worse, so stories depicting gods as immoral and cruel, and as adopting various disguises, must go. Nor must heroes, regarded as models of nobility, be seen to indulge unsuitable emotions such as fear of death or immoderate grief or mirth.1 The stories must inculcate truthfulness, self-control, courage and endurance, and discourage avarice and arrogance. This section ends with another reminder that the main aim is to uncover justice and injustice. The discussion so far has been confined to gods, demi gods and heroes, because in applying it to human conduct our natural instinct is to forbid the poets to suggest that injustice pays and justice does not; and yet we cannot do that until we have decided the point ourselves by discovering the true nature of both. Form (obs ) (,3920-398 b). Here Plato contrasts the narrative and dramatic, or mimetic, methods of presenting a story. They can be mixed, as in Homer, whose tales are told in his own words inter spersed with what purport to be the actual words spoken by his characters. Tragedy and comedy consist entirely of direct represen tation (in Greek mimesis). The principle on which he bases his hostility to the mimetic arts (acting, miming, clowning etc.) is enunciated at 395 d : Acts of mimesis, if persisted in from youth onwards, entrench themselves in ones habits and character - of body, voice and state of mind alike. One comes to resemble what one
1 Nettleship (p. 96) observes that if P.'s censorship is not to seem absurd we must remember how prone to violent emotions, lack of self-respect and a tendency to forget themselves his fellow-Greeks were. Is it not rather a question of the difference between a heroic ethic and that of a later age? W e too do not find Achilles a very edifying spectacle when on the death of his friend he weeps, lies writhing in the dust, pours it over his head and face and tears his hair (//. 24.10f., 18.23-7, partly quoted at 388a-b). W e do not expurgate Homer on this account because we do not regard his heroes as models for our own conduct. What we do have to remember, to understand P.'s outburst, is the survival in his time of the conception of poets as moral educators. (See pp. 205 f.) If every child was made familiar with stories like the castration of Kronos by Ouranos, it is not too far-fetched to compare the protests made nowadays against the portrayal of violence and sex in the cinema and on television.
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elaborate stringed, and all wind-instruments (associated with orgiastic rites) are rejected.1 This section ends with an emphatic rejection of the pleasures of sex, whose violent and frenzied character is at the opposite extreme from the discipline, moderation and superiority of intellect which we look for in our guardians.2 (ii) Physical education, with appendix on doctors and lawyers (403 c 41 ob). A sound body does not of itself produce a good psyche, whereas a good psyche will look after the excellence of the body. This is S/s excuse for giving only rough guide-lines and leaving details for those whose minds will have already been trained. The supreme importance of the psyche is again emphasized at the end (410c): the established duality of education, cultural and physical, is not really aimed at mind and body respectively, but entirely at the mind. Drunkenness3 and recourse to prostitutes are forbidden. Diet must be simple, but not that of a professional athlete, which induces hebetude and danger of ill health when strict training is relaxed. Soldiers must be sturdy to withstand changes of food, water and climate. Austerity in physical things produces health of body as simplicity of musical harmonies and rhythms produces a disciplined character. Moral licence and disease go hand in hand and crowd the law-courts and doctors surgeries - a sure sign of bad education. It is disgusting to see people committing wrongs and then resorting to law to escape the consequences. Similarly medicine should be for wounds and minor, unavoidable ailments, not for those whose habits
1 On this subject there is a book by M. Moutsopoulos, La musique dans l'uvre de P. 2 The context makes it clear that this refers to the current fashion of homosexual relations. P. certainly does not mean to prevent the guardians from breeding, though their intercourse with women is very strictly regulated (pp. 481 f. below). 3 The word (403 e) may mean either drink or drunkenness. If P. is enjoining total abstinence he changed his mind in the Laws , where he advocates drinking-parties, properly supervised, as an educational device and test of character. Yet even there, if the alternative were unrestricted indulgence, he would forbid all strong drink to magistrates in office and serving soldiers (the equivalent of the guardians) and certain other classes (674a-b). Other translators however confine the ban to intoxication, and this is more likely because at its previous occurrence (398 e), to which P. himself refers us back, it goes with two other abstractions softness and idleness.
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Nevertheless there is never any possible doubt of Platos intention. That the pupils are to be guardians is not only made clear at the start; it is repeated many times throughout the section.2 Doubtless
1 Murphy notes ([Interpr. 29) that compassion is not to be found among the Platonic virtues. I suppose the nearest to it is that quality of gentleness which the guardians must display towards the rest of the citizens, and for which Plato uses the words irpaos and . 2 To be precise, the word guardian itself recurs ten times, at 378c, 387c, 388e, 394e, 395 b, 398e, 401 c, 402c, 403a, 410a; and 404a uses the periphrasis soldierly athletes*. In addition reference is made to their behaviour in, and training for, battle (386 b, 404 b), and they are said
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there will be an overlap : Plato could not have viewed with indifference the prospect of the children of artisans and businessmen being stuffed with false and harmful notions about gods and heroes, and in fact it is guardians who will oversee the education of all the rest.1 Hoerbers main argument, that Plato speaks of the poets and others being kept out of the whole city, whereas if he were only concerned with potential guardians it would be sufficient to specify the areas specially set apart for them, is not very cogent. Even after these areas are assigned to them (which is not yet), it is never said that they will be confined to barracks all the time, and indeed some of their duties (e.g. in education and discipline, 4i5d-e) would seem to compel the presence among the other citizens at least of those who become rulers; and a city full of poets and rhapsodes declaiming their heresies might be dangerous even for a guardian. Plato is only too conscious of their seductive power. And certainly the guardian would hear the forbidden types of music, so the relaxation of the ban on wind instruments in favour of the shepherds simple pipe (Hoerber p. 58) does not mean that the whole educational scheme is intended for every citizen. In favour of his thesis Hoerber also mentions 389b-d, where Plato says that guardians must have a high regard for truth. Falsehood may only be used by the rulers in the interests of the state. For another citizen to lie to a ruler is as detrimental as for a patient to lie to his doctor about his condition or a sailor to his captain on matters of importance to the voyage. If then a ruler catch one of a craft, seer or healer or worker in wood, 2 lying, he will punish him. The rulers, of course, will be chosen from the guardians, and must naturally be taught both their own standards of truth and those which they have to impose on the populace. The answer to our question, then, remains as given by the passages quoted in n. 2, p. 455, in spite of a consideration which, though not mentioned by Hoerber, might be thought even more serious. The
to be those who must have nothing to do with manual work (396 a-b). Hoerber says nothing of these references. Neither does Vlastos, who also claims that the education (or psychological conditioning* as he calls it) is directed at all the citizens (Plato 11, 93). There may be a lack of decision here in P. himself. 1 424b-e, o - *. The reference to proper conduct in private business transactions shows that here the whole citizen-body is meant. a A quotation from Homer, Od. 17.383.
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The Republic
and deceit. . . for the good of the ruled : we did say that all such practices were useful as medicines. 1 These passages have naturally led to a lot of moral headshaking.2 The most interesting comment is that of Alvin Gouldner, who as a sociologist has no classical or Platonic axe to grind. The following extracts may stimulate a reader to read the rest (E P 332):
Even if the scholar is concerned with truth alone, it is conceivable that its pursuit at any one time can impair its continued pursuit at later times. . . If, however, he accepts other values as transcending the truth, such as human survival or social cohesion, then is he not under pressure, as Plato is, to conceal truths that are at variance with these other values, and perhaps even to assert things untrue because they foster such values? Insofar as the scholar takes responsibility for maintaining or furthering any social system, be it one already in existence or one contemplated, his commitment to the truth must be limited and conditional. Truth cannot then be an absolute value. Insofar as the scholar makes an unconditional commitment to truth, however, he must be prepared to loosen or surrender his attachment to any given society, to limit or reject his responsibility for its welfare, and to reduce or liquidate his investment in his other social roles.
Gouldner mentions the modern dilemma of the physicist whose search for knowledge may result in the development of weapons which will annihilate his society, and with it the opportunity to pursue his research. Plato was spared that moral problem, and would never have admitted that the philosophers undoubted responsibility to society could limit in any way his own devotion to the discovery of truth. It is this that he has in mind when, much later (6.485 c) he says that the philosopher-ruler is characterized by truthfulness3 and an unwillingness to tolerate falsehood, which he hates just as he loves truth. At 490 a-c it is repeated that his passion for truth will make him hate falsehood, that he must pursue truth everywhere and in every w ay, and that where truth leads no evils can follow. Plato
1 5.459c-d. The noble fiction or grand myth of 4i4b -c is in a different category (pp. 462 ff. below). 2 For an outright and forceful condemnation of Platos attitude to truth, see Popper, OS vol. I, esp. p. 50 and ch. 8. 3 Actually , complete absence of pseudos, which is even more forceful than its counterpart .
458
459
The Republic
o f Forms, but Adam was for (b).1 We must not, he said, interpret book 2 in the light of book 7, where in any case the doctrine of Forms is reserved for philosophers. The images or copies (eikones) are representations of the virtues in poetry and the fine arts, so if eid are the Forms, poetry must be a direct imitation of them, which contradicts book 10 (595 c 598 d).2 Without necessarily following Adams arguments, we must agree that Plato cannot here be talking about the Forms of his own philosophy. I doubt if he even intended a double entendre, though this is possible. The great majority of the guardians (let alone the poets and craftsmen) will never recognize Forms in the full Platonic sense. That is to be the goal of a highly select minority after a rigorous fifteen-year training in mathematics and dialectic (537c, 539e and pp. 521 if. below). Platos present topic is the sort of work that poets and artists must produce for the edification of children of the whole guardian class. They must not portray bad character or ugliness but must be able to recognize and reproduce beauty and goodness in all their varieties (eide). These must be reflected in their work, that the young guardians may learn to appreciate them. This is plain, comprehensible language, and I submit that it is all Plato intends us to see in his words. If he were conducting a seminar on the theory of Forms, and a pupil asked him how a mere poet or sculptor could recognize beauty, he would have said of course that they had only a true belief about the many beautiful things, not knowledge of the Beauty in which they all shared. But we are not at a seminar and for present purposes that is enough.
1 Cornford, Rep. p. 86, Adam I , 168. According to Adam, Zeller (2.1.560 n.) also understood here as the Platonic Ideas, but what he said is that P. when he wrote the earlier books had already evolved the theory (as no doubt he had), but does not definitely refer to it here because this was not the place for it. It is remarkable how often one scholars reference to another needs to be checked by first-hand inspection. 2 Apparently it is all right to interpret bk 3 in the light of bk 10. (Grube does the same.) Weaknesses in Adams note are his reliance on the clause in which they inhere as showing that the forms in question are immanent not transcendent (cf. pp. 116 f. above), and his refusal to grant its natural meaning (kinds or varieties) which it has for instance at 424 c, , without giving any reason why a virtue should not appear in more than one variety. That it does is just what causes the downfall of S.s interlocutor in some of the early dialogues, who mentions a variety (or species) when asked to define the whole (or genus), , e.g., may be physical or moral (see Laches) ; in general may show itself differently in man or woman, ruler or subject, while remaining susceptible of a single generic definition.
460
(4)
G U A R D IA N S A N D
A U X I L I A R IE S .* (
P R IN C IP L E S
OF G O VER N M EN T
3.412B-4.427C)
So far the guardians functions have been limited to defence and internal security, but since they are the finest characters in the city, it is natural that its government should be chosen from them. At any rate S. simply says (412b) that the next question is which of them shall rule. They must be older than the rest, wise and capable, and satisfy us that they will all their lives regard the citys interests as their own. To this end the guardians will from early childhood be tested for their resistance to violence, persuasion and the beguilement of pleasures and fears. Those who preserve their balance in these trials through childhood, youth and manhood will be given authority and honoured in life and death. It is they who should be called Guardians in the full sense (41436 and b i ) ,3 and their function is to defend the
1 Or the divine. P. uses sing, and pl. with an indifference startling to the modern monotheist (Cornford, Rep. 66). Both this practice and a disbelief in the quarrelsome, immoral Olympians were probably widespread among his acquaintance. Glaucon agrees at once. 2 The question of whether there are Forms of evils is mentioned on pp. 498 and 507 f. below. As noted earlier, the subject of evil is more prominent in later dialogues (esp. Tht. 176 a ff., Laws 10, and Tim.), and fuller discussion will be more appropriate when we come to them. 3 And will from now be frequently so called here, with capital G. Alternatively Plato refers to them as the rulers (). For the meaning of (auxiliaries) see Taylor, P M W 276.
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state against external enemies and to preserve internal unity, so that no motive for civil strife ever arises. The rest of those hitherto called guardians are more properly auxiliaries who assist the rulers to carry out their decisions. The grand myth. We now need, says S., one of those necessary falsehoods spoken of earlier. Though it will be quite in the tradition ( nothing new, 414c), he is understandably doubtful of the chances of getting it believed, but he would like to persuade first the Guardians and soldiers and then the other citizens of two things. First, their nurture and education at our hands was all a dream. In reality they were formed and reared, and their arms and other possessions prepared, within the earth, which only sent them to live on her surface when completely formed. In practical terms they must regard their native land as a mother to be cherished and defended, and their fellowcitizens as brothers. Secondly, the myth will say, though all are brothers, the god who moulded them put gold in the rulers, silver in the auxiliaries and iron and bronze in the farmers and craftsmen. So their different capacities are innate and in general will persist, but since all are so closely related, golden parents may have a child alloyed with silver or bronze, and vice versa. This must be watched for, and transfers between classes arranged by the rulers when necessary. This pseudos (414b) in mythical form (415 a) satisfies Platos condition for an acceptable myth, namely that, though itself fiction, it should illustrate a truth; for he himself was convinced (as he will show in detail later) that the classification symbolized by the metals reflected human nature and was psychologically correct. The essentials of the myth are, as S. himself says, rooted in Greek tradition. The epithet Phoenician which he gives it (414c) suggests that he had especially in mind the story of Cadmus1 and of the Thebans as descendants of the men born, adult and fully armed, from the earth in which he sowed the serpents teeth. But the idea of men as literally born from the earth (ggeneis) was widespread in Greek literature, and in the more general form of the origin of all life from the same source
1 Son of the King of Tyre. The earliest reference to the story of the dragons teeth is Eur. Phoen. 657-75. Eislers alternative suggestion (quoted by Popper, O S 272) is highly speculative.
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keeping with the ethos of the whole conversation. As he truly said about an earlier question (394d), I dont know yet: we must go wherever the argument blows us/ Transfers on merit. Each half of the myth has its moral attached. The moral of the metals allegory is not that it is necessary to keep the classes apart as castes based solely on birth. The first and chief commandment of the god 9 is that the Guardians watch more carefully over their own children than over anything else, and if they detect signs of bronze or iron in their composition, dismiss them without compunction to the farming and handworking class; and if a member of that class prove to contain silver or gold, he must be elevated to the auxiliaries or Guardians. This important proviso is often belittled as not seriously meant1 on the grounds that either Plato makes no provision for carrying it out in practice or, as others think, he expressly rescinds it, or allows only for degrading, not promotion. Here are some texts, which show at least that he did not forget it.
4.423 c -d . A s we mentioned before, if a Guardian has an unworthy child he must be sent away, and if a good one is born from the others, he must be admitted to the Guardians. The idea behind this was that each o f the other citizens too should be assigned to the one single job that is properly his own, and so be one man not many, and the city as a whole be by this means welded into a unity.
This formidable task, they agree, should be manageable for the Guardians once they have had the education planned for them. 5.468a. Cowards and deserters in war are to be made workmen or farmers. As to the feasibility of these operations, one is apt to forget how tiny, in modern times, the whole city-state will be, and this would make them easier. In fact however, if lack of detailed planning is a sign that Plato was not in earnest, then the examples in Hoerbers Theme o f the Republic, ch. 2 (and they are not exhaustive), are sufficient to show that none of the political proposals in the Republic are seriously 1 Not by Taylor (P M J V 275), Cornford (P .'s C U . Phil. 61) or Grube (P.'s Th. 269). Aristotle criticized it as a seriously meant proposal (Pol. 1262 b 24), and P. himself includes it in the very brief summary with which he begins the Tim . See further pp. 481 f. below.
464
8.546a-547a. Here Plato describes how decay (inevitable in any thing generated) will invade even his imagined city-state. It will be through mistakes in breeding. The Guardians control times and partners for mating (5.458dff. and pp. 480f. below) and there are certain periods when body and soul are at their best for reproduction. These are calculable, but a time will come when even the wise Guardians make a human error,3 resulting in less gifted offspring, whose rule and education of their successors will be less careful. In the end a generation will arise who have lost the true Guardians capacity to judge the citizens metal aright, and their mixture will produce inferior alloys containing the seeds of dissension and war. I do not see how the first of these passages could be thought to rescind the provision for transfers. It emphasizes that the classes must be based on differences of natural aptitude physis), which makes it even more important to have some machinery whereby anyone born
1 Popper (O S 141) and Benson (in Nettleships Lectures 135 n. 1) for 8.546-7; Popper 225 n. 31 for 4.434b. 2 Eidos, not of course in its full Platonic sense of a reality outside particulars; but it is a reminder that for Plato being a soldier or Guardian meant possessing a certain stable, definable character. It does not refer to ones parentage. Natural fitness is called for again at 443 c, . 3 Being human they must still rely on fallible sense-perception as well as the certainty of reason (546b 1-2).
465
31-2
The Republic
into one class whose aptitudes fit him for another may be detected and assigned to his proper place. Plato certainly believed in the hereditary transmission of character and intelligence: there will be no intermarriage between classes and mating among the guardians themselves will be strictly controlled.1 Even so, there can be no absolute guarantee that a child will always resemble its parents, and in view of the dire consequences to the community of unsuitable classing, provision for transfers is absolutely essential. The metals distinguish character, not parentage. Though Platos plans for human breeding may be repellent, grading according to natural ability is not the same thing as closed hereditary caste. If there would be no unstreamed comprehensive education in his state, neither would a feeble-minded prince obtain the throne by right of birth. Nor does the second passage deny transfers. In fact it speaks of the capacity to test and detect (^) a citizens metal as essential to a guardian, whereas if it were settled by birth this would be unnecessary. Normally, as Plato has said, misfits will be rare, and such as occur can be put right by the watchful Guardians. But here the case is different. The only way I can read 546c-d is as meaning that a whole marriage-festival has been wrongly timed,2 and the result is a confusion beyond even the rulers powers of redress. Finally, the reason for the states decay is the general law that everything that is not eternal, but has a temporal beginning in this world of change, must some time perish. All that is explained here is the manner of it in this particular case. (Cf. p. 528 with n. 2 below.) Life o f the guardians. The three-tier structure of the state is now established, and little more is heard of the lowest tier.3 The military
1 That even among the guardians some are superior and others of less worth, was admitted at 459 d. The rulers () are a section of the best among the older of them, who rule in turn (7.540 b). 2 Unions are only allowed at stated times when religious festivals are organized for the purpose (459 e). 3 Historically minded readers may like to know that the germ of P.s functionally tripartite society has been thought to lie in a system originally common to all Indo-European peoples and surviving among the Mycenaeans, thus justifying Poppers claim (O S 49) that P. is reconstructing a city of the past. Dumzil ( Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, N R F 1942) saw in all peoples of I.-E. origin the three classes of priest-kings, warriors and farmers, and added: Si les plus vieilles traditions des Doriens et des Ioniens gardaient le souvenir dune division
466
467
The Republic
must not be idle voluptuaries, but true guardians, and the last men to harm the community. Third class: the state and war. The third class includes all - workmen, farmers, owners of businesses, bankers and so on - who are allowed private property, but here too the Guardians must prevent extremes of wealth and poverty, of which the first produces luxury and idleness, the second meanness and bad work, and both have a revolutionary tendency (422a). Adeimantus interposes again. With so little wealth in the state, how can it stand up to a rich and powerful enemy? Well, for one thing tough professional soldiers can take on many times their number of wealthy, ease-loving men. Secondly, if two cities attack us, and we say to one: If you join forces with us, you can have all the spoils, for we are not allowed to possess gold and silver, we shall soon have it on our side. But is it not dangerous to allow one state to amass the wealth of all the others? No, for it will no longer be one state but at least two: the rich and the poor will be at each others throats within it.1 Our own Guardians must ensure that the city never grows too large to remain a unity. Unity o f the state.2 Platos scorn for the idea of the Two Nations seems to many startlingly at variance with his own thesis that the only way to engender the spirit of harmony and unity was to divide the state rigidly into three classes. But these classes are based neither on wealth nor birth, but on his conviction (soon to be elaborated) that individual men fall naturally into three basic psychological types, to which the classes correspond. The same qualities (or kinds, eide) must exist in the state as in each single one of us. Where else could they have come from ? (435e). And each type finds satisfaction in the occupation best suited to it, one in commerce or good craftsmanship and material goods, another in army life.3 I f any have cause for
1 This theme recurs in the description of the oligarchic state, p. 530 below. 2 P. enlarges on this in bk 5, 462 a ff. (p. 481 below). 3 This has never been put so well as by Cornford in U. Phil. 61 f., for instance (p. 62) : *Now if it be true that men can be roughly grouped according to these temperamental varieties of dominant motive, and if society can avail itself of this natural fact, then there is a possibility of these divergent types pursuing each its own satisfaction, side by side, without competition and conflict. This is the key to Platos solution of the social problem.*
468
469
The Republic
persuasive defence of Plato is undoubtedly Cornfords in Plato s Commonwealth, where he writes (/. P hil. 58):
The principle that guided him was this. A social order cannot be stable and harmonious unless it reflects the unalterable constitution o f human nature. More precisely, it must provide a frame within which the normal desires o f any human being can find legitimate scope and satisfaction. A social system which starves or thwarts any important group o f normal human desires will, sooner or later, be overthrown by the forces it has repressed, and, while it lasts, will warp and pervert them.
Unfortunately it is possible to think of a number of normal human desires which the Guardians will have to repress. But the truth is that Plato is not devising a society with a view to its ever coming into being. He is telling us what it would be like i f philosophers came to power, not because he seriously believes that they will, but in order to reveal his conception of human nature at its best, or in his phraseology, justice in the individual. 1 So he tells us that there must be no extremes of wealth and poverty in the city, but gives no hint of how this admirable end is to be attained,2 and goes on to say that the Guardians must keep the population down to the size at which a city can preserve its unity, again with no mention of means or even any guide to determining what sort of size this may be.3 Glaucon makes a joke of this, remarking ironically that the Guardians are being given a nice easy task, but S. replies that it all comes down to education. With the advantage of the system proposed, each generation will be better than the last, and they themselves, as founders, can confidently leave such legislation to the Guardians, as well as many other matters, from commercial, criminal and civil law, market and customs regulations (425 c-d), to social behaviour and decorum, and above all the paramount duty of allowing no innovations whatsoever in the charter of foundation1 That this is the view taken here has been indicated under Subject (p. 434 with n. 2 above). The evidence is cumulative, and will be more fully considered later (pp. 483-6 below). 2 Evidently not by taxation, which would keep down individual wealth but not that of the community for such purposes as war. Cf. 422 a. 3 The statement at 423 a that a well-run city will surpass others even if it has only a thousand men to defend it, sometimes quoted in this connexion, is obviously not an answer. The means' suggested by the marriage-festivals (460 a, p. 481 below) are hardly more specific.
47
Discovery o f justice
all on the principle that Good men need no instructions: they will easily discover most of the necessary legislation/1 The section ends with an onslaught, in the Gorgias manner, on cities which uphold the present corrupt order of society at all costs, raising to power anyone who panders to their desires, and the irresponsibility of the politicians who humour them; and finally a brief mention of religious laws and institutions, all of which will be referred to Delphi.2
(5)
D IS C O V E R Y
OF JU S T IC E : CH ARACTER
STRU CTU R E
OF
IN D IV ID U A L
(4.427D-445 b )
Justice in the city. Having founded the city, S. returns methodically to his prime objective of discovering where in it lurk justice and injustice, and which will bring happiness to the one who exemplifies it, setting aside all question of rewards or punishment. He proceeds by elimination, on the assumption that the city as they have planned it, being completely good, must contain all the virtues, enumerated by S. as wisdom, courage, sophrosyn and justice. If therefore they can identify the first three, what remains will be justice. This un expected procedure is dismissed by Cross and Woozley (104.) as worthless, mainly on the ground that Plato has not shown the four forms of excellence to be the only four, which robs the argument of all validity. He may, of course, have been repeating a generally accepted classification or one with which he himself had familiarized his associates, but there is an argument ex silentio against this.3 Anyway it gives S. a chance of telling us where the others too are to be found. If it is a wise (soph) city, guided by good judgement, it must have
1 425 d-e. The legislative duties of the Guardians are surely to be wider than Cross and Woozley allow (pp. 101 f.). Notice, by the way, a later obiter dictum of P.s, that the Guardians must have the same conception () of the polity as Glaucon, the original legislator, had when he devised it (497 c-d). 2 In spite of the importance of these in a Greek state, P. was not here shirking his (or the Guardians) responsibilities, for this was normal practice, and he was quite correct in describing Apollo as the (427 c; cf. Guthrie, G . and G . 186 f.). 3 For the evidence see Adam 1, 224. The strongest candidate for a fifth place would seem to be (Prot. 329c, 330b, cff.), but at Euthyphro 12a it is a subdivision of and at Laches i99d the two are rather ostentatiously bracketed together (not ... but ).
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The Republic
knowledge, not any technical or specialized knowledge like the skill of carpentry, ironwork or agriculture,1 but knowledge whereby it can take thought not for some particular interest but to ensure for the state as a whole the best possible relations both internally and with other states (428c-d). The contrast between special skills and the knowledge of the philosopher (which for Plato is also the art of government, that most difficult and greatest art 2) is a familiar development of the Socratic virtue is knowledge. The Republic will answer the question of the Charmides ( 17 3 dff., p. 162 above): To live well we need knowledge - but what knowledge? There the answer eluded them, as (I believe) it eluded Socrates.3 It is knowledge not of means but of ends, for Plato a grasp of the Forms and ultimately of the supreme Form of the Good which only the philosopher can approach. In our imagined state it is obviously confined to the smallest class (428 e), the Guardians. Equally obviously its corporate courage resides in its fighting men, not because they alone possess it, but because the courage or cowardice of the others is not decisive for the character of the state as a whole (429b). This is a timely reminder that every man possesses in some measure all the psychological characteristics: the only question is which is dominant. We also notice that courage is given the wide coverage which it had in the masked conclusion of the Laches. It is the power to retain in all circumstances a right and lawful judgement about what is and what is not to be feared.4 The sophrosyn5 or self-mastery of the state is not confined to one part, but consists in a harmony of will between all classes as to which is to be in control. This will prevail in our city because the divisions correspond to psychological reality, the subject class consisting solely of those who do not want to rule, but simply to engage in a trade or
1 The original and still current meaning of (vol. i i i , 27). 2 Pol . 292 d, where P. repeats the point that only a small minority can attain it. 3 See especially vol. i i i , 464-6. 4 Pp. 129, i32f. above. The distinction between and is not being stressed here, but the army will of course be instructed by the Guardians. That is why S. speaks of , and says they may go into this some other time, when they are not looking for justice (430 c). In its strictest sense, courage must be based on knowledge, which only the Guardians can have. 5 For the meaning of the word see pp. 156 f. above. Here (430e) S. explains it as mastery of ones better self over ones worse.
472
Discovery o f justice
profession, make money and enjoy themselves.1 On the practicability of this I have already commented. As for justice itself, it suddenly dawns on S. that it has been under their noses the whole time, in the original principle that each should do his own work and not anothers,2 each performing the one function in the community for which he is by nature best suited (433 a). This seems to make it very like sophrosyn, but in fact it has a more exalted station. This last virtue is that which gives all the others the power (dynamis) to spring up in the community and by their presence preserve it. Justice is the very essence and source of virtue itself.3 Nettleship draws attention to the fact that for Plato the virtues are dynameis, powers to do something, thereby con forming to the Greek aretl, so pitifully translated by our virtue ; a man of great virtue in Greek means a man with a great power of doing certain things.4 This principle then, it seems, is the supreme safeguard of the city, and its contrary, interference by the members of one natural class in the work of another, constitutes injustice. Justice in the individual (4 35d 444a). So far so good, but the state was only constructed, and justice sought there, because we thought that if we tried to see it first in something larger, we should more easily perceive its nature in the individual man. 5 The next step therefore is to transfer our findings to the individual and see if they
1 Cross and Woozley (107) note with some concern that their agreement seems to imply the attribution to the subjects. . .o f some degree of rationality. O f course. Like the others, is a universal human characteristic. Cf. p. 474 n. 3 below. As for understanding of how the city should be run , this need amount to no more than a shrewd idea which side their bread is buttered. C. and W . speak differently on pp. 12 3^ 2 433a-b. P. in fact adds, and repeats, a qualification: this behaviour or one kind of it ( ) is justice, and if it happens in a certain w ay ( ). It is difficult to see what he could have had in mind except what Murphy suggested (Interpr. 10 -12), that doing ones work is justice i f it is not arbitrarily imposed but is that for which each is by nature best suited. This weakens the doubtful claim of Cross and Woozley (p. n o) that P. has shifted from sticking to ones own job to sticking to ones own class, confusing the economic principle of division of labour and the political principle of the division of classes. For Plato the classes consist of individuals doing the work for which they are fitted. 3 See p. 435 above and cf. 444 d 13, where is suddenly substituted for . So Nettleship ( 15 if.): Though spoken of as a separate virtue, justice is really the condition of existence of all the virtues; each of them is a particular manifestation of the spirit of justice, which takes different forms according to a mans function in the community . 4 Lectt. 149. For courage as a see 429 b, 430 b. 5 434d; cf. bk 2, 3686-3693.
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fit, with a warning that the present methods will lead only to an interim, approximate answer: a final one would need a longer way round. In book 6 (504b) S. returns to this proviso, and explains that the longer route is that towards the Form of Goodness itself, something even higher than justice, which is followed in detail in books 6 and 7 .1 The present inquiry starts from the Socratic principle, so vulnerable in logic, so essential to S.s belief in stable moral values, that if we give two things, different in other respects, the same epithet, then that epithet stands for something identical in both.2 It is first said that individuals must exhibit the same characteristics as the state, because a state is nothing but the men who compose it. This would seem to settle the question in advance, but the point to be decided (says S.) is whether the three main forms of psychological activity - intellectual, spirited and appetitive - can be exercised by a single unitary psyche, or each presupposes a distinct faculty or element. This is resolved by appeal to a principle of non-contradiction, stated thus: A thing cannot at the same time act or be acted on in opposite ways in the same part of it with relation to the same object. Now thirst in itself is simply an appetite for drink as such, yet there are circumstances where the same man is thirsty but unwilling to drink. Since we cannot attribute both the desire and the restraint to the same psychological source, there must be at least two elements in the soul, appetite controlled by reason.3 Again, reason by itself is not always enough to secure resistance to an appetite which it may tell us is wrong or harmful. If we yield to it we feel anger or remorse, suggesting a third element, the spirited or passionate, which normally fights as reasons auxiliary, but is not identical with it; bad upbringing may corrupt it into taking the side of appetite.
1 See on this Cross and Woozley 1 12 -15 . Some of what they say on p. 114 is questionable, at 435 d cannot possibly in its context refer to anything but the question of three elements in the soul, and the contrast between bk 4 and bks 5-6 is not between being more intelligent and of sound judgement and possessing knowledge. Knowledge () is the keyword of both passages, and the nature of (428 d) is nowhere specified in the earlier one. C. and W . rightly characterize the two methods as respectively psychological or empirical and philosophical, but some difficulties remain. See Adam, 1, 244f.; Murphy, Interpr. y{. 2 435b. Cf. p. 444 with n. 2 above and vol. i i i , 43if. 3 Reason as a universal human characteristic is here called and . In Phdr. similarly it is , and consists in the power to form general concepts from snsexperience (249 b, p. 427 above).
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Discovery o f justice
Given that the soul has these three elements, S. feels justified in concluding that the virtues of the individual citizen () are the same as those of the state as a whole. His wisdom resides in his reasoning faculty, which, like the Guardians in the city, takes thought for the well-being of the whole man, and his courage (physical and moral), of course, in the spirited element, whose proper part is to obey and assist the reason. Their alliance will be ensured by education. His sophrosyn consists in willing agreement that reason should be in control and keep the appetites within the bounds beyond which they are no longer doing their proper work and spoil a mans whole life. A character so ordered by nature and training will be just and will manifest itself outwardly in the sort of life commonly called just or moral, for it is unthinkable that such a man should embezzle money, betray friends or city, commit theft, sacrilege, perjury, adultery and so on.1 Justice itself, however, is not a mode of action but an inner state. It is now said to be, not identical with the principle of division of labour but analogous to it ( , 443 c), and the principle itself is an image or reflection () of justice. As health results from a harmonious relation between the various constituents of the body, the right ones being in control, so a right relationship between our psychological elements is the condition of justice. The quest is ended, and a final answer given to Polemarchus, Thrasymachus and his brother-sophists alike. All, from Protagoras to Callicles, looked for justice in outward behaviour alone, and their suggestions, if not simply wrong, were bound to be incomplete. Moreover, given that virtue is a kind of psychological health or sanity, and vice a disease, deformity or weakness (444c), the further question of which pays better fades into irrelevance, for no one (says Glaucon) would willingly sacrifice health for some external end like wealth or power.2 The essential mark, and internal motive force, of soul is eros, the stream of desire which may be directed into different channels (p. 425
1 442d-443b. Some have seen a problem in connecting P.s conception of justice as a condition of the soul and the ordinary conception of it as abstention from wicked action. Articles have been even written gravely discussing the problem without reference to this passage. Evidently it was no problem for P., nor, in the light of the Rep. as a whole, is there any reason why it should have been. 2 On the ubiquitous Socratic (and Sophistic) analogy between morality and health see also p. 164 above.
475
The Republic
above). Consequently reason itself is a form of love (as its more usual name, the philosophic element, suggests), described in book 2 as that in man which makes him fond of what he understands, and again makes him want to understand what he is attracted to. 1 The spirited () element covers three things, (a) fighting spirit, (b) what makes a man indignant at injustice and a coward when he feels himself in the wrong, (c) ambition and competitiveness.2 For appetite Plato uses the term (epithymia) which he sometimes applies to desire in general. Thus in book 9 he attributes a separate epithymia to each psychological impulse, while confirming that it applies especially to the lowest owing to the intensity of the desires for food, drink, sex and the like, and for money which is the chief means of satisfying them (580e). So as Nettleship says (158), the real conflict is not between reason as such and desire as such, but between different kinds of desires. In what sense is the soul tripartite ? 3 This subject is of some importance as bearing on Platos belief in immortality. In the three psychological elements, as I have said (p. 422 above), it is not hard to recognize the charioteer and horses of the Phaedrus, and I have argued that these did not represent any division within the soul itself, which as in the Phaedo was immortal and akin to the divine, but resulted from its association with earthly existence and the wheel of birth (pp. 422-5). This rested largely on the conception of the soul as motivated wholly by eros, a single stream of desire capable of being channelled in three main directions, only one of which is conceivable of it in its purity. In the Republic itself (bk 10, pp. 5 56f. below), Plato repeats that in its pure state the soul is not at all as we see it now, cumbered with the body and other evils. Such an imperfect compound could hardly,
1 Nettleship 157. This description of the parts follows N. closely. We remember that in Phdr. the driver of the horses himself feels the desire for the beloved (pp. 405, 425 above). 2 Cross and Woozley 123 have a good account of it, incidentally replying to the view that P. only put in a third element to balance the three classes in the state. 3 For what most scholars call parts of the soul, Plato most commonly uses either the article with relative clause ( , 439d) or an adjective ( the spirited) or the nouns and , kinds or varieties, , usually meaning part, is used at 442b-c, but is the only noun in the full summing-up of the doctrine at 443c-e. Cornfords article The Division of the Soul in Hibbert J . 1930 is enlightening on this point.
476
Discovery o f justice
he says, be immortal, and only when we see it by itself shall we know whether it is composite or simple. This would seem to settle the matter, and scholars can only retain the conception of a soul tripartite in its own essence by claiming an irresolvable contradiction between book 4 and book 10 (Cross and Woozley 120). This is not my impression of how Plato composed the Republic. Cross and Woozley quote bk 7, 518e, where it is said that the virtues other than reason are not far removed from the body, and even wisdom may be adversely affected by the souls temporary conjunction with it, as evidence that Plato saw the difficulty without recognizing its extent. But they quote the text only in part. O f the other virtues Plato also says that they were not there before, but are implanted by habits and practice, and of wisdom that it is a quality of something more divine. He could hardly have stated more clearly that it is only association with the body that calls for the virtues connected with the lower parts of the soul. For Cross and Woozley, Platos psychological talk is metaphorical (p. 128), as, they add, psychological talk nearly always is. Similarly Patterson, though he concludes correctly that the tripartite division ...concerns only the functions of the embodied soul; whereas, in itself, the soul is simple, calls it for that reason figurative (P . on /. 88). This might give a wrong impression. Here Nettleship had the answer. When Plato asks whether we seek knowledge, feel anger, and have physical desires with each of three faculties respectively, or the whole soul is involved every time, the question is important to him because of the close connexion in his mind between individual and society. For him the character of a nation or a state is the character of individual men in it . . . If it turned out that the whole soul was equally involved in each of these various activities (each of which is specially characteristic of the functions of one social class), the question would arise whether any one soul could not equally well be employed upon any one of these social functions, and whether any one man could not equally well be a governor or a soldier or a trader. The whole structure of society, as Plato conceives it, is based upon the fact that the activities in question are activities of different parts* of the soul, and that though each of these parts is present
477
The Republic
in a degree in every man, the different parts are very differently developed in different m en.1
If to put parts between quotation-marks seems question-begging, the conception of the soul as moved by eros, if not eros itself, a single motive force which by association with the body is diverted into three main channels, may come to our aid. By itself it is of course a unity, a divine passion for wisdom alone (bk 10, 6 n b -e ), and on earth it may achieve earthly unity by bringing the three drives into harmony or concord, just as the state achieves its unity: ...th a t each individual by doing one work, his own, may become not many but one, and thus the whole city may grow to be one (423d). Taking the Phaedrus also into account, it should now be plain that when Plato wrote book 10 he had not forgotten what he said in book 4. The one change came after the Phaedo, where passion and appetite were attributed to the body, not the embodied soul.2 Essentially the soul remains what it was there, simple and akin to the divine. Note on moral responsibility. Cross and Woozley (128-30) raise an interesting point on the doctrine of the tripartite soul in its relation to moral responsibility. If a mans soul or self is composed of these three elements, how can he be anything over and above them ? And if he is not, how can he be held responsible, let alone morally responsible, for his actions? The question, they say, is unlikely to have been in Platos mind, because the idea of personal responsibility was hardly, if at all, current in Greek thought. I suggest that, as Socrates maintained (see vol. in, 469 f.), the self is the reason, often referred to by Socrates himself, and Plato after him, simply as the psyche. The philosophic part of the living man, the only immortal part (as I have just argued), is, when within the cycle of incarnation, distracted by feelings and desires implanted in it by the needs and importunities of the body (and actually ascribed to the body rather than the soul in the simpler doctrine of the Phaedo). In general the rational man is responsible
1 Lectt. 154^ For the character of a state as nothing but that of the individuals within it, see 435 e and 8.544d. 2 Pp. 346 f. above. For the reason of the change, 421 f.
478
(6 )
W OM EN AND
C H IL D R E N )
IN T H E P L A T O N I C OF
S T A T E (W IT H
A P P E N D IX
ON T H E C O N D U C T
w a r f a r e
(4.445 B -5.471c)
Having settled with justice, S. was about to complete the original plan by turning to the question of injustice in state and individual, and had got as far as naming four inferior types of constitution for investigation, when his friends pulled him up short.2 Among legis lation that could be left to the Guardians, he had airily mentioned women, marriage and the production of children as matters which they would settle on the proverbial principle all things in common between friends (423e). I f he thinks he can get away with that, he is mistaken. What did he mean, and how is this vital aspect of society to be organized ? He protests vigorously that such a vast and difficult subject will lead to endless discussion, and anyway he is by no means
1 Cf. S.s explanation o f being ones own master at 4306-431 a, and the description of the philosopher-king as at 9.580c. Andersson points out that psyche and self () are often used interchangeably (Polis and Psyche 92 f.), though without explicitly noting that this implies a separation of one element of the (incarnate) psyche from the rest. 2 This section is therefore sometimes said (even by P. himself, 8.543 c) to have been a digression, but is no more so than the establishment of the state itself, to which it is a return. On the question whether bks 5 -7 are a later insertion see reff, in Anderssons footnotes to Polis and Psyche 123. That this should be true of 6 and 7 at least seems incredible.
32
472
GHO
The Republic
certain about it. His plan may not be feasible, or if feasible, desirable. But the others are adamant: he is not to be let off. This insistence on returning to discuss the why and how of a radical social reform perhaps suggests that Plato did think of his state as within the realm of practical politics; but if so, he might have done better to leave it in the air like other proposals. The principle of equality of the sexes is evidently meant seriously, which is startling enough for a Greek,1 but the arrangements proposed (except perhaps for mixed physical exercises) are wildly impossible. The first is that women should share the duties, and therefore the education, of men. A simple syllogism suggests that this contravenes his pet principle: Different natures suit different jobs, men and women have different natures, therefore men and women should have different jobs. This is one of the difficulties that made him fight shy of the sub ject, but he gets over it by a sudden passion for precision which has not always been conspicuous hitherto. The question is, he argues, do they differ in the relevant aspect, 2 as doctor from builder, not as long-haired from bald ? That one sex bears and the other begets is irrelevant, and though women are weaker, there is no natural difference with respect to social and political competence. Women, like men, may or may not be good at medicine or music, may be athletic, spirited or philosophic, and some will be fit to be guardians, just as some men are.These can share all a guardians duties, including fighting, though theirs must be lighter than the mens.The proposal is desirable as well as possible because, as a guard ians education produces the best men, so it will give us the best women. Next S. proposes abolition of families in the guardian class,3 and
1 That is, alien to Greek practice and conventional belief, though perhaps neither this nor the idea of communal sex was foreign to the leaders of the Enlightenment and their successors. See Adam, I, 354f. Aristophanes in his Ecclesia^usae ridiculed communism in both property and women, in terms very like those of P. Adam lists parallels on pp. 3 50f., and for theories of the relationship between Eccl. and Rep. see his app. 1 as a whole and Hoerber, Theme 117. Interestingly enough, P. the advocate of equality speaks twice of the possession of women ( 423e and 451c). Even softening the translation to acquisition of wives hardly suits the system he proposes. Old habits die hard. (This apart from the loose zeugma of 423 e, as if had preceded .) In bk 8 (563 b) freedom and equality for women are a mark of the excessive licence of the democratic state. 2 The logical distinction between (in P. , 454c). and (or ) became a favourite with Aristotle, who however did not agree with P.s application of it here to men and women. See E N 1162 a 22 and 26. 3 All these women will be shared by all the men, and none shall privately set up house together (457c-d).
480
A D D I T I O N A L N O T E .* T R E A T M E N T O F U N W A N T E D
C H IL D R E N
The question whether Plato advocates infanticide or only relegation to an inferior class has aroused interest and different opinions. The relevant passages in this section may be translated thus:
1 Aristotles commonsense criticism of this watery () affection at Pol. 1262k 15 is well known.
481 32-2
The Republic
459 d The offspring o f some must be reared (), o f others not. 460c The offspring o f inferior parents, and any o f the others that is defective,1 will be put away in a secret and obscure place/ 4 6 1 c (o f conception among over-age couples) T h ey must do their best to ensure that the embryo does not see the light, or if it does, deal with it on the understanding that there is no rearing () o f such. The arrangements for relegation already discussed (pp. 4 6 4 -6 ) certainly seem designed for such cases, especially the order at 4 15 c that inferior children o f guardians must be dismissed to the craftsmen and farmers, and , Cornford claims (Rep. 155 n. 2), do not in horsebreeding (Platos own analogy) signify rearing as opposed to killing, but only keeping in the select herd. The secret place in 460c is indeed obscure, and in Adam s view a euphemism. A strong point on Cornfords side is that in the Timaeus (19 a ), where he summarizes some o f the Republics conclusions, Plato himself writes, W e said that the children o f good parents must be reared, but those o f the bad must be secretly distributed among the rest o f the citizens. Y e t Adam (Rep. 35 7-6 0 ) remained convinced that to Platos contemporaries at least he would appear to intend infanticide. T h ey would not have been shocked, for it was practised in Greece, and perhaps as Lee suggests (Rep. 2 4 4 -6 ) he intended both methods to be used as appropriate. Aristotle enjoins exposure for deformed children, but for mere family limitation regards abortion before sensation and life begin as the only permissible means (Pol. 1335 b i9 ) .2
Conduct o f warfare 466e~4Jic ). The need for women to join in military service leads naturally to a wider discussion of this topic Children will be taken to the battlefield as soon as they are strong enough, to learn as any other trade is learned from watching their seniors practising it, appropriate measures being taken for their safety. Cowards will be expelled from the guardians, the brave rewarded (among other things by kisses) and the dead reverenced. No corpses should be robbed except of arms. Hostilities between Greek states are family quarrels in comparison with wars against the non-Greek (the Greeks natural enemy 470c) and the hope will always be for
1 ; handicapped as they might be called today. 2 For evidence concerning exposure of children in Greece see H. D. Rankin, P. and Indiv. 4 7 f. with nn., and on the Rep. and Tim. passages idem, P.s Eugenic and , Hermes 1965.
482
(7) I S T H E P L A T O N I C C I T Y I N T E N D E D A S A P R A C T I C A L P O S S I B I L I T Y ? ( 5.47I C -4 7 3 b )
At this point (471c) Glaucon refuses to go on until S. has faced the question, hitherto evaded, whether this state, granted its virtues i f it existed, could ever become a reality, and if so how. It is a good moment to ask ourselves seriously the same question.3 1 have already expressed an opinion,4 but there is more evidence to be considered. S., we have seen, throws out the most radical proposals with the minimum of practical detail about how to achieve them. There remains what he has to say directly on the subject. He first reminds them (472 bff.) that their primary purpose was not to found a state but to define justice. In doing so they were thinking of justice as an absolute or ideal, a standard by which to live, and as such none the worse because in practice we can only approximate to it. So then the state, if it cannot be fully realized in practice, remains to shape our own political
1 From this passage alone it is obvious that there will be slaves in the Platonic city, and it is strange that this has been a matter of dispute. The slaves will be non-Greeks (as the majority were in existing Greek cities) and, as at Athens, there will also be free citizen labourers working for wages (371 e). Reff, for the controversy, and discussion of other passages, are in Vlastoss article Does Slavery Exist in P.s Rep.?' ( C P 1968). There have also written on the other side (in my opinion unconvincingly) S. Ptrement in R . de Mtaph. 1965 and C. Despotopoulos in R E G 1970. Cf. also Ritter, Essence 329. 2 373 d-e, 422d (pp. 447 , 448 and 468). 3 On which opinions have differed widely. Here are a few. For an extreme (and amusing) rejection of practicability see Randall, Plato 16 2ff. On the same side are Friedlnder ( i i i , 138-40, an interesting and subtle exposition), Nettleship 184f., Jaeger, Paid. 11, ch. 9, Levinson (Defense passim, see e.g. 576), Versnyi (Philos. 1971, 234: an unattainable ideal.. .unrealizable because the establishment of the aristocratic state presupposes itself ), Hoerber, Theme, Saunders, Laws 2 7 f. On the other side are Zeller 2.1.914-23 (following Hegel), Popper ( O S , e.g. 153: meant by its author not so much as a theoretical treatise, but as a topical manifesto ), Crossman ( P T ) and Cornford ( He is too much bent upon the reform of Greek society to be ready to postpone it to the millennium, and the rest of his essay in U. Ph.). For the Sicilian adventures see below. 4 Pp. 457 n. i, 468, 468-70.
483
16-2
The Republic
thinking and guide our actions.1 The reminder of the Republic in the Laws is in keeping with this. There (739 c-e) Plato speaks of a city where wives, children and goods are common and the words my own abolished. Complete unity of feeling results, and nothing could be better, whether it exists anywhere now or even will exist \ If gods or their children inhabit such a city they are indeed happy. One need look no further for a pattern for a state, but should hold to this and seek one as like it as lies in ones power. The one planned in the Laws, he concludes, is such a one, second only to the ideal. It is important to remember what in Platos eyes was real. To be real an idea does not have to be transformed into a phenomenon of- this mutable and imperfect world. The intelligible Forms are real in contrast to such phenomena. Plato may not have the Forms in mind at the moment, but he makes his standpoint clear by saying (to us surprisingly) that it is the nature of practice to be further removed from truth (or reality, ) than theory () is (473 a). Some, without committing themselves to the full blue-print con ception of the Republic, conclude, like Field after devoting a chapter to Plato on contemporary politics , that he meant what he wrote to apply to the problems of his own time. So too von Fritz: whether or not the Republic was an unrealizable ideal, it had the practical importance of giving the direction in which attempts at improvement on existing conditions should move. And Barker, after emphasizing the practical aims of the dialogue, ends up : that there should ever be a state according to this manner, Plato hardly expects; it must be an ideal to which men may approximate as closely as they can, but not a copy of what must be imitated line for line. Much of Fields and Barkers evidence consists in showing that Plato in his dialogues attacks contemporary trends; but from this negative fact that he is criticizing the evils of his own time it does not follow that his positive ideal was one for immediate (or even ultimate) realization. What these scholars are saying, indeed, is very like what S. himself says here in book 5.2 Others have laid stress on the fact that the city was to be a Greek
1 Cf. the important article of Versnyi, P. and his Liberal Opponents, in Philos. 1971. 2 Field, P. and Contemps. 13 1, von Fritz, P . in S i 14, Barker P T P A 160.
484
485
The Republic
ever did. No wonder that in book 7 (536c), S. checks himself in a tirade against the present neglect of philosophers with a reminder that they are not in earnest,1 and finally agrees that his city is not to be found on earth but perhaps is laid up in the heavens as a pattern for a man to see and, seeing, establish it in his own s e lf9 .2 We end as we began. The search is less for a city than for personal righteousness. In Plato the word myth has many different applications. Myths may be stories told to children, fictional in content but, if good myths, illustrating moral truths, or transparent allegories like the myth of the metals. They may be his own great eschatological myths, which, though he will not vouch for the details, convey his belief that the soul is immortal and is treated after death according to the life it has lived on earth. Again, he applied the word to the whole cosmology, physics and physiology of the Timaeus, which he puts forward as the most accurate account possible of the natural world, mythical only in the sense that supersensible reality alone can be the subject of exact knowledge. In yet another way the Republic too is a myth.3 It is not the Platonic Idea of a city, which would be composed of ideal men (and would certainly not go to war; Cornford was right to say that Plato takes human nature as it is and tries to construct a social order that will make the best of it). But it is still a paradeigma or model of the order which, given mens need for communal life and their diversity of character, would be completely good for them (427 e), and towards which political thinkers should strive.4
1 v. Cf. p. 60 above. 2 592b. Literally translated it is to found himself like a city. On this see Jaeger, Paid. 11, 347-57, The State Within U s. 3 Cf. , 501e; also bk 2, 37<>d. 4 This is sufficient justification for the more prosaic Aristotles criticism of it in the Politics as seriously meant. After calling one of its provisions impracticable he complains that we are nowhere told how to take it (12 6 1314 ), and a little later (126435) he says it would be clearer if one could see the city in course of construction. But his main criticism is of P.s aims, especially his conception of unity in a city.
486
O R D E R S O F R E A L IT Y .* W H Y P H IL O S O P H E R S M U S T
(5.473C-6.487A)
In answering Glaucons question, how his city-state could be realized, S. says he is facing a wave bigger than any he has yet breasted, which may drown him in floods of ridicule. (Glaucon thinks physical violence more likely.) The simple answer is that society must be governed by philosophers. Only then can a state such as his own arise, or humanity1 have rest from troubles. This calls for a definition of a philosopher, which S. introduces in an unexpected way presumably designed to lead on to the epistemological and ontological distinctions that Plato now wishes to draw. He says (with a facetious reference to Glaucons supposed amatory propensities) that whoever loves something loves the whole of it, so a philosopher (lover of knowledge or wisdom) must be omnivorous, a man with an insatiable appetite for learning everything 2 (475 c). To Glaucon this suggests enthusiasts for theatre, music and the minor arts who rush round the country never missing a festival, but would never dream of entering on a philosophical discussion. Are they the sort that S. has in mind? No, though there is a certain resemblance. This needs explaining. Glaucon agrees at once to a basic tenet of the doctrine of Forms, that aesthetic and moral qualities, like all Forms, are each in themselves one thing, though associated with many sensible actions and physical objects. His aesthetes and artists enjoy beautiful colours, sounds and shapes, but are unaware of the Forms. Like dreamers, they mistake an appearance for the reality which it resembles. The philosopher on the other hand sees the Form as well as the phenomena that share in it, and does not confuse one with the other. His state of mind S. calls knowledge, in contrast to the first, which he will call belief (doxa).
1 yvo, which Cross and Woozley (137), following Popper, call an ambiguous phrase which could perhaps be extended in this w ay. It is not ambiguous, nor is the above translation an extension. When Plato means Greeks he says Greeks, as in the passage on warfare which they cite. Here the words bear their plain meaning, as at Phaedo 82 b. 2 So Heraclitus (frr. 35 and 40), criticizing Pythagoras, said that philosophoi must be inquirers into very many things, and condemned polymathy as not teaching sense (nous). P. plays on earlier current usage of philosophos and his own. See vol. 1, 204, and for sophia as knowledge p. 265 above. 487
The Republic
Others believe appearances to be fully real, the philosopher knows that this is only true of the Forms. Now knowledge and belief are different faculties (dynameis, lit. powers), and our different faculties - e.g. sight and hearing-have different objects.1 Knowledge is of what exists, of what does not exist there can only be ignorance.2 The nature of belief, as just defined, shows that there is another sort of object, tossing about somewhere between being and not-being, namely phenomena. After all (re-using an early argument from H. M aj. and elsewhere, pp. 179, 183 f. above), anything we call x as sharing in a certain quality, relational or other wise, can also appear not to be x. What is beautiful or large becomes in other contexts ugly or small.3 These intermediates are what the lovers of sounds, colours and the like believe to be real, in contrast to the man who sees and loves the unchanging realities themselves, philosophos not philodoxos. On the basis of this distinction S. concludes with little further argument that only philosophers should be the Guardians of his state, because only they, in embodying in their constitution notions of right and goodness, have in their minds eye as models the true nanire of these virtues. This section raises two related problems: (1) Did Plato retain a consistent view of the relation between knowledge and doxa and
1 Empedocles had offered a physical explanation of this, and it had already been used by his follower Gorgias to support his thesis of the impossibility of communication. 2 W e are already involved in the ambiguities of the Greek , to be. Here P., though taking it in the full existential sense (his statements that one can neither know nor believe what is not come straight from Parm. 2.7), avoids Parmenidess either-or dilemma by denying that the duality existence and non-existence exhausts the possibilities. In Soph, he extricates himself from a rather different puzzle, how false and negative statements or beliefs are possible, by defining as not non-existent but other than. He is not ready to do that yet, and Grote (11, 455-7) pointed to a difficulty here in reconciling the two dialogues. 3 Cross and Woozley ( 15 iff.) in a long discussion distinguish relational (large, small etc.) from non-relational (beautiful, ugly etc.) properties, and make rather heavy weather of the point that for P. these are not different groups: both sorts are comparative properties. Just as a dog is large in comparison with a mouse and small in comparison with an elephant, so a girl is beautiful in comparison with a monkey but ugly in comparison with a goddess. (For a criticism of this use o f ugly in P. see Vlastos in Bambroughs New Essays i4f.) As for double and half (479b), of which they make much, in P.'s mind to call a sensible object beautiful without mentioning the object of comparison is as incomplete as to call it double -without saying what it is double. Epithets like white, and substantives like snow (not mentioned here by P.), do admittedly cause more difficulty unless one believes in the doctrine of Forms. (Cf. Brentlinger in A G P h 1972, 141 f.) See further Scheibe in Phronesis 1967.
488
489
The Republic
in Meno what made it knowledge was working out the reason . (See pp. 386, 261 above.) The Republic view becomes even more uncompromising in the Timaeus (27d-28a), where Plato distinguishes what exists (or is real) and never becomes, apprehended by thought with a rational account, from what becomes and perishes but never is \ which is judged by doxa with unreasoning sensation . Nevertheless I believe that our Republic passage provides a bridge between the two apparently contrasting descriptions, and shows how, although in different dialogues Plato emphasizes one or other feature of his theory of knowledge and being, no real contradiction is involved. His talk here of different faculties is misleading, but soon dropped.1 The analogy of sight and hearing is faulty, but he himself corrects it to the true one when, later on (484 c), he compares the states of mind of the philodoxos and philosophos with those of the blind and keensighted. The only argument offered in favour of knowledge and doxa being different faculties is Glaucons remark that one is infallible and the other fallible, for which the obvious analogy is perfect as opposed to dim sight. If we look ahead to the line of cognition, it is a con tinuous one, whose parts differ only in degree of clarity or obscurity, and the objects of doxa are to those of knowledge as a likeness of something to that which it resembles (509 d, 510 a), though in that connexion too, as in the Timaeus, doxa is about becoming, intellect about being (534a). The clue is in the resemblance, insisted on again in the dream simile, between the objects of doxa and of knowledge. Other ways of putting it are that the sensible world, as he has often said and reminds us here (476d), shares in the nature of the Forms, or as the Phaedo has it, sensible things try to be what Forms are but do not quite succeed. Elsewhere they are images or likenesses (, ). To add yet another analogy to Platos, imagine a house on the edge of a lake. One man looks at it through a mist, and gets a rather hazy impression o f it. Another looks not at the house at all, but at its reflection in the water on a still, clear day. He is looking at a different object, but he too (even if he were so chained, like Platos prisoners, that he could
1 If, as Gosling argues (Phron. 1968), here are not faculties at all, so much the better.
49
491
The Republic
We must remember that in the Phaedrus (a work which most scholars put later than the Republic) Plato says that only those souls which have seen the Forms ( the truth) can be born as men.1 Every man has had the vision of them, and to recollect them is in theory possible for all. Moreover the first step must be through the impact of the likenesses in the sensible world. This is insisted on in Phaedo, Symposium and Phaedrus, and in the latter two it is precisely from the appreciation of beauty in earthly creatures that the philosopher recovers the vision of Beauty itself. It is unlikely therefore that Plato denied this in the Republic, where again he is contrasting the many beautifuls with Beauty itself. He agrees that, beset by the demands and temptations of life in the body, the great majority see many beautiful things, or just actions and so forth, but do not see Beauty or Justice itself.2 But this is very different from saying that doxa in the Republic cannot be converted into knowledge. Plato can only be understood in his own setting. He is still haunted by the primitive logic of Parmenides, the first to distinguish the two modes of cognition, doxa and knowledge or intellect. For him as for Plato knowledge was of what is, and inevitably true, but doxa was a hopeless confusion of being and not-being, and equally inevitably false.3 There was no middle way between being and not-being. But for Plato doxa may be correct. His way out was to posit a middle stage between knowledge and blank ignorance, and conceive the advance to knowledge as a gradual recovery of truth stored in the subconscious. The object of this intermediate form of cognition is the world of ordinary experience, to which Parmenides had boldly denied any being at all. Platos belief in Forms enabled him to give it a quasi-existence, between being and not-being, as a set of copies of Forms or sharers in their nature, a doctrine none the less firmly held
1 249 b. I have never seen this passage cited in this connexion, yet it is relevant to statements like Gulleys ([P T K 66) that P. considers images (perceptibles) to be of no value as an aid to knowledge because only with prior knowledge of the Forms is it possible to recognize whether anything is an image and what it is an image o f . My illustration of a reflection in water may be rounded off by P.s brief mention of the same parallel at 402 b. 2 479 e, where and give a further hint that in spite of 478 a the difference between and is one of degree rather than kind. 3 Frr. 6.8 and 1.30 ( als ).
492
493
The Republic
world had no reality at air but at no stage assigned to it total reality/1 More recently however it has been vigorously challenged by Vlastos,2 who puts forward a clear and simple alternative. Real can mean one of two things, exemplified by (i) Unicorns are not real, (2) These flowers are not real. Unicorns do not exist, but the plastic flowers exist no less than natures. Plato, Vlastos claims, observed this distinction though he never stated or discussed it. That the double meaning is not a peculiarity of English but shared by its Greek equivalent v (lit. being) he illustrates by four passages.3 Real in the sense of genuine, he continues, does admit of degrees (between pure gold and brass is an alloy, between a real saint and a hypocritical villain the indifferent run of mankind), but real in the existential sense does not.4 No doubt this is what we all believe, but did Plato? The question is difficult, and probably needs more lengthy treatment than can be given here. But a reader may be made aware of it, and an opinion may be ventured. That in Vlastoss examples being means genuine, not existent, is plain from the fact that Plato does not use the word absolutely but attached to an adjective or noun: the real sophist, the really good. And it is the same in the Republic. At 479 b, after mentioning things fair and foul, just and unjust, great and small, light and heavy, and claiming that each may equally well be called the opposite, he says: Then can we say that such things are, any more than that they are not, any o f the many things we say they areV And it is after that that he goes on to speak of them as between not-being and pure being . There is, then, certainly evidence for the view that Plato is not here asserting that physical objects with their apparently contrary properties are intermediate between existence and non-existence as had been too easily assumed.
1 Murphy, Interpr. 126-9, 1 5> 200 > de Vogel, Proc. 11th Int. Congr. of Phil., vol. 12, 63 n. 12 ; Runciman, P L E 66, 21 and elsewhere. 2 (a) Degrees of Reality in P., in New Essays ed. Bambrough, 1 -1 9 ; (\b) A Metaphys. Paradox, Proc. and Add. Am. Ph. Ass. 1966, 5-19 . Rist has followed V . in Phoenix 1967, 284: there is no question of a degrees of existence theory in P. 3 Soph. 268d , the real sophist ; Rep. 396b, Phaedr. 238c, Prot. 328d. 4 The contrary supposition is even more cavalierly dismissed by Crombie (E P D 11, 66), who rejects a certain interpretation of Rep. 5 on the grounds that by adopting it we should have to find a place for the objects of doxa between existence and non-existence - and that means nothing.
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doxa, any solution must take account of the historical situation. To the principle of the modern philosopher, that Plato can only have made certain presuppositions if they make sense (i.e. make sense to one with twentieth-century presuppositions), may be opposed the rhetorical question of a French scholar.1 Et de quel droit, je me demande, refuser un auteur antique, et-il, si possible, plus de gnie encore que Platon, la permission de sarrter des thories qui, pour nous, sont fantastiques? Que seront donc beaucoup des ntres dans deux mille ans? Granted that he did not share all our presuppositions, Platos theories may not seem so fantastic after all. The Greek verb to be ( < einai), in ordinary speech, had even more uses than its counterpart in modern English. It could signify existence, predication, identification, class-membership, definition, truth of a statement. (God is, God is good, Jones is the Prime Minister, Jones is a man, man is a rational biped, you have said what is not.) These uses had not been sorted out by Platos time. He did much analytical work on them himself, especially in the later dialogues, but it was only completed by Aristotle. It is not surprising, then, if even he, when he wrote the Republic, was not completely free of the confusion initiated by Parmenides and exploited by the Sophists; and indeed it is obvious that much of his philosophy is the outcome of a real struggle to free himself from the consequences of the simple but devastating assertion that what is, is, and cannot not be; what is not is not and cannot be. Nothing therefore can change or come into being, for what is does not become (since it is already) and nothing could come to be out o f what is not.2 No one disputes that Parmenides was confining the word to its existential sense,3 and we have to consider what would have been a natural reaction to his dilemma, and what would have seemed an adequate solution. Somehow the changing world must be saved from complete non-entity,4 and so the inter1 See Crombie, E P D ii, 156; Dis, A . de P . 265. 2 Cf. Ar. Phys. 19 1330. For a summary of Parmenidess influence on P. see pp. 34f. above. For Parmenides himself, vol. 11, 20 ff. 3 Some have said that he was confusing the existential with the copulative use, but I think we mean the same thing. He reduced all senses of einai to the existential, and on this depended the effectiveness of his paradoxes. 4 There is historical truth in the dictum that the object of the doctrine of Forms was not to abolish the sensible world but to save it.
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and a source of light.1 As a final point, while we are right to draw a logical distinction between the existential and other uses of the verb to be, yet as H. W. B. Joseph said, A thing to be at all, must be something, and can only be what it is/2 Two further points which occur for the first time in this passage can be best discussed in the light of evidence from later dialogues. First, at 476 a injustice and badness are mentioned as Forms along with justice and good. Did Plato really believe in Forms of (a) negations and (1b) evil? We are accustomed to thinking that he associated being with value, Forms being perfect in both respects. (The Form of Good is the sustaining cause of all the rest, p. 506 below.) Another difficulty (which I have not seen mentioned by scholars) is that a Form is a unity, and at 445 c Plato has said that there is only one kind3 of goodness {arete) but innumerable kinds of evil. Secondly, at 4 76 a again we have the first mention of the association of Forms not only with actions and physical objects but with each other. This is not explained or mentioned again until the Sophist,4 where it acquires great importance.
(9) T H E P H I L O S O P H E R A N D S O C I E T Y ( 6 .4 8 7 B -5 0 2C )
In sum, the philosopher is an amalgam of all good qualities : companion of truth, justice, courage and self-mastery, o f good memory, quick to learn, dignified and gracious. All are necessary if he is to see reality as it is.5 This stings Adeimantus into saying what very many must have felt about S. There is a fear that by his method of question and answer he leads them on by small steps, each one seeming incontro1 The above owes something to a letter from Professor F. H. Sandbach. 2 Introd. to Logic 408. 3 . At the moment P. may only have in mind the weaker sense of form or kind, but even so the word seems to make it impossible that there should ever be . 4 Which has made some unnecessarily suspicious of the received text. For Kotvcovic Badham wanted to read , Bywater . But see Adam, App. vii to bk 5, Rep. I , 362-4. On a difference here between Rep. and Soph, see Anscombe, Monist 1966, 406. See too Grube, P .'s Th. 22 n. 2 and opinions referred to there. 5 And this is one reason for the rarity of the philosopher, for these qualities do not commonly go together (503 c-d). 498
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combines his recent language with the Symposiums terminology of love and procreation. Not content with the many objects of doxa, he will not cease from his passion (eros) until he makes contact with the essential nature of each thing. This he will approach with that part o f his mind which is akin to it, and having intercourse with it will bring forth nous and truth and so, released from the birth-pangs, will find knowledge and true life and nourishment. To complete this picture of the Platonic philosopher (and it is important to distinguish him from most of his counterparts in other ages), S. adds at 500c-d that by his acquaintance with the divine and orderly he himself becomes divine and orderly so far as a man may. (Like knows like, as older philosophers had said.) Such a character is extremely rare, and its very virtues, especially if combined with material advantages like wealth, influential connexions, good looks and strength, will lay it open to corruption. It is a biological law that in unsuitable conditions of climate, soil or food, the choicest specimens - plants or animals - suffer worst. In the same way the most gifted natures are most affected by the lure of popularity and success in our corrupt society, which flatters them because it wants to use them for its own purposes. If in spite of this such a one should show signs of being converted to philosophy, his friends will resort to any kind of intrigue to prevent it, even to prosecuting his good counsellor. The vivid realism of this account points to particular cases, and is generally thought to refer to Alcibiades. One may compare the words attributed to him at Symp. 216b (pp. 378 f. above), and the description o f how such a man will react on being told the truth (494 d). Is there not also an element o f autobiography ? Plato himself had felt the lure o f politics and the importunities of highly-placed relatives, seen the prosecution of his mentor in philosophy and agreed with him that there was no place for a philosopher in public life. ( < c) At the same time, because the name of philosophy still wins respect and position, an inferior crowd, whose proper place is in the banausic occupations, invade its territory like criminals taking refuge in a temple. It is these impostors who have given philosophers the reputation of being not only useless but wicked. They exemplify the
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their prejudice will evaporate.1 And what is he about ? Knowing the realm of reality, where all is reason and order, he will use it as a pattern for his remodelling of society. He will not introduce piecemeal reforms but make himself a clean canvas by wiping out existing institutions and habits,2 then sketch and fill in the outline of his own constitution, with frequent reference to his divine model, to make human ways acceptable to God. When these aims are explained to the people, they will surely give up their resentment against philosophers, and if even one can be found uncorrupted, grant him power and obey him. There is one curious point about the philosophers fitness to rule. It may sound logical (even if we remain sceptical) that because his mind is fixed on the immutable realities of the divine order, he alone can order human affairs according to the highest standards. But it is freely admitted that for the same reason he will despise the world of men and be most unwilling to take an active part in it. Plato frequently says that he will only govern under compulsion (500d, 519 c et al.), and it even becomes an advantage that he would prefer a different life (52od-52ib). Stranger still, he has no time to look down at the affairs of men 3 and therefore will be good at implanting in society the divine pattern of justice and civic virtue as a whole (500b). This is one of the points at which philosophy becomes autobiography (if indeed it is not that all the time), for surely this mirrors the conflict in Platos own psyche. Unwilling himself to enter politics, he yet felt ashamed of his reluctance (pp. 25 f. above), and so evolved the remarkable idea that a philosopher could not take part in the politics of any existing society, but only in an ideal one (cf. esp. 9.592 a), and at the same time that the ideal one would never be realized until the philosopher agreed to take part in politics.
.* This good-hearted but misinformed crowd sounds very different from the great beast of 492b-493d, the real cause of trouble, whose whims the Sophists merely follow. No doubt Platos attitude to the demos was in fact ambivalent. 2 At present, as the context shows, the philosopher is only supposed to be producing a paper scheme to convince the people of his fitness for power. How he will get his clean canvas in practice, namely by banishing everyone over ten years old, is told at 5406-541 a. 3 500b-d makes the same point as Phdr. 249c-d : the man who remembers the divine vision stands aside from human concerns, draws near to the divine, and is abused as mad by the multitude who do not know that he is inspired. 502
So ends what was, formally at least, a series of digressions, or elaborations, demanded by the other parties to the discussion: relations between the sexes in the Platonic city, its practicability, and the reasons why philosophers are failures in existing societies. S. now returns to the few who have so far survived the tests for future Guardians. They must next be tested for ability to stand up to the severest intellectual disciplines, for they have to rise to an under standing of the greatest of all objects of knowledge, higher even than the Justice which S. and his friends have so far sought: they must grasp the Form of the Good. Without it all other knowledge is useless, for what do we gain from any possession or course of action unless it conduces to our good? Others may make their choices by doxa alone, but for the Guardians nothing short of knowledge of the Good will do, for it is their responsibility to guide the beliefs of the many and to govern for the good, and happiness, of their society. The Socratic heritage. This is a sharp reminder that, as we know, agathon for a Greek did not coincide in meaning with the English good, and in particular that it had not necessarily any moral force.1 To say that morally right actions are not necessarily good, but only if they bring usefulness and advantage (are , 505 a), sounds shocking. It is rather the other way round. Yet though Platos point is Socratic, it would not have seemed paradoxical. In the Meno too, sophrosyn, justice and courage are among activities of the soul which may be harmful unless guided by superior knowledge. Without that they are only the popular conceptions {doxai) of these virtues. He can also say (505 d) that whereas in the case of justice many prefer the appearance to the reality, they would certainly not be satisfied with the appearance (doxa) of good, but only with the real thing. The good is what we most want, or think worth having, either in a particular sphere or more generally. The good for a com mander in the field is victory, for a boxer to achieve a knock-out, for
1 Nettleships Lectures pp. 2 18-33 are excellent, and indeed essential reading for anyone who would understand the Greek and Platonic conceptions of good. 503
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a miser money, for a surgeon a successful operation. The good for a ships captain is to get his passengers safely to their destination. It does not concern him if for one of his passengers drowning would be preferable to continuing a life of disease and unhappiness.1 The Good, then, is, in Platos words (505e, trans. Lee), the end of all endeavour, the object on which every heart is set, whose existence it divines, though it finds it difficult to grasp just what it is; and because it cant handle it with the same assurance as other things, it misses any value those other things have. Whatever a man desires so strongly that he would put it before everything else is for him the good, and if you believe, as Socrates and Plato did, that there is an absolute good, mans chief end, then obviously no other knowledge can be so important as the knowledge of what this is. S. believed that not only man, but everything in the world, had a function to perform, its fitness to perform it was its virtue, and the performance was the good for it.2 For human beings it was the key to happiness. So far Plato is Socratic, but in the light of his theory of Forms he went further. A cause is prior to its effects, and since, for particular enterprises or life as a whole, the Good was the cause of their good ness, it was in itself not only an eternal, changeless Form by which good particulars are good (as just acts are dependent on the Form of Justice) but stood at the head of the hierarchy of Forms. What this means he will try to explain. As a follower of S. Plato is now at the crucial point o f his philosophy. He is going to tackle the ultimate question which S. left unanswered: What is the nature of absolute goodness? S.s continual equation of good with useful or beneficial, even in its most general form as conducive to the chief end of human life, did not determine what that chief end was. Unlike the Sophists, he had an unshakable faith that there was such an absolute end, or objective standard, and he went far beyond them in his teaching that the object to be benefited was
1 So P. himself in Gorg. (vol. m, 409). In Xen. Mem . 4.2.32, S. showed how (one of the recognized goods) might lead to harm, and the case of Theages in was one where sickness proved a blessing. 2 S.s notion of goodness emerges at many points in the second part of vol. i i i , and 462ff.; also p. 90 n. 1. Nettleship claims, probably rightly, that the teleological characteristically Greek. good health Rep. (496b) esp. pp. 442 outlook was
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writings.1 Since then the stream of rival interpretations has flowed steadily on. The Good and the sun (S o yb S o g c). He begins with a comparison of the Good to the sun. After a reminder of the basic distinction between visible particulars and intelligible Forms, he says that what the sun is to the visible world, the Good is to the intelligible (508 b-c). The points of resemblance are four. (1) As the eye can only see a visible object if a third element, light (derived from the sun) is present, so the mind can only grasp an intelligible object (Form) if both are illuminated by the Good. (2) As the sun not only makes things visible but is responsible for their generation and growth,2 so the Good not only makes the Forms intelligible but sustains their being. (3) As the sun, besides making visibility possible, is itself visible, so the Good is intelligible; but (4) as the sun provides for () birth and growth without being these processes itself, so the Good is not itself Being but superior even to Being in worth and power. In the Good, then, Plato combines three conceptions: the end of life, supreme object of desire and aspiration; the condition of know ledge, which makes the world intelligible and the human mind intelligent; and the sustaining cause of the Forms, which are in their turn the creative causes of natural objects and human actions.3 The union of these apparently disparate ideas is explained not only by general Greek patterns of thought (as Nettleship showed) but also by the special problem with which Socrates and Plato felt themselves faced in the Sophistic equation of intellectual scepticism with moral
1 Ferguson, CQ 1921, 13 1. For the enormous literature on the Form of the Good, Adam (11, 51) refers to Zeller, 2.1.709 if., 718 n. 1. References to some of the later discussions will be found in my notes and bibliography; and a summary up to 1954 is given by Ross in Fifty Years of Class. Schol. 136. 2 The Greeks emphasized this function of the sun much more than we do. The idea of the earth as female and mother and the sun as father was not confined to mythology. Cf. Aristotles dictum A man is generated by a man and the sun (Phys. 194b 13), and idem, G A 7 1 6 3 1 5 -1 7 and elsewhere. 3 In what sense the Forms are causes has been discussed already (pp. 349-51). The above description is largely taken from Nettleship 218, but I have modified the third feature. For P.s meaning cf. Phaedo 99c. The sun is not merely analogous to the Good. It is its offspring (506e, 508b), and this is not wholly metaphorical, for in the final analysis the cause of light in the world is the Good itself (517c).
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and destroys its goodness. . . The more real a thing is the better it is. A thing is evil in so far as it fails to be real/ 1 The D ivided Line (5 oc>d-5 i i e). The simile of the sun, says S., though it illustrates the main division of the sum of things into visible and intelligible, is incomplete, and on being begged to complete it, he does so by changing the symbolism in order to elaborate the simple twofold division into a fourfold one.2 Imagine a line divided into two unequal3 parts, and each part subdivided in the same ratio. The main divisions represent4 the visible and intelligible worlds as in the previous simile. The subdivisions in the visible world are (a) images, specified as shadows, reflections and the like, (b) actual objects of the natural and man-made world ( animals, plants and every kind of manufactured object ),5 and S. invites Glaucon to agree that as the two parts of the lower section stand to each other in respect of their reality ( , 51039), so are objects of belief (doxa) to objects of knowledge; that is, as copies to originals.
1 Jacques, Rep. 98. The question cannot well be decided without evidence from later dialogues. Perhaps, however, Thayer exaggerates (in P Q 1964, 6 n. 14) the duality of the concept of as either negative (lack of ) or a positive power opposed to good. When P. takes the trouble to add, after .. . (353 c, which gives the negative idea of absence of perfectly adequately), , this suggests that he thought of (e.g.) the bluntness (lack of sharpness) of a knife as something positively harmful. There is in fact no neutral state: absence of means presence of , an active power for harm. It is not true that the blunt knife, if used, will leave the vine neither better nor worse than it was before. 2 Before plunging into the welter of conflicting interpretations of the Line and the Cave, a student would be well advised to start with Nettleships readable account in Lectt. 238-61. It will help him to keep his head. 3 must be correct, for otherwise the words would be otiose, but P. makes no use of the inequality in his exposition. The common explanation (see Adam 11, 64) is that it symbolizes the proportion in clearness between the objects or mental states described, but (a) that should be obvious from their position on the line, and (jb) it would make the physical world equal in clearness to the objects of , since the two middle segments of the line must be equal. 4 Pace Murphy, Interpr. 156 f. I do not find his rendering of this conversationally-constructed sentence at all convincing. Cf. sense 11 in LSJ. 5 Raven, who attaches weight to his belief that is literal and not a label for in general, says it can hardly be disputed that P. is here describing objects of sight as opposed to other senses (CQ 1953, 24). Anyone who has bumped into a tree at night might be disposed to dispute it. I believe therefore that here is the same as at 5 32 c-d. Sight is in both passages said to be the keenest of our senses, and in the present analogy, certainly, advantage is taken of the fact that it requires a medium. It is noticeable how philosophers of later periods too (e.g. in the present century Price, Ayer and Austin) turn overwhelmingly to vision for their illustrations of sense-perception in general. 508
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Even the philosopher is reminded of Forms in the first instance through their copies in the physical world (pp. 345 f.), and mathe matics is only a systematic training in how to achieve this, which accounts for its usefulness as a propaedeutic to dialectic. In the Meno the slave, if he were capable of completing the process begun by S/s questions about a geometrical problem, would understand not only geometry but all other subjects, because the truth about existing things* (or realities, i.e. Forms) is always in the psyche.* This stage, then, called by Plato dianoia (thought or reasoning), is the recognition of Forms through sensible particulars. We remember that the Socratic hypothesis in the Phaedo was the existence of the F orms as causes (p. 3 52 above). Any testing of it by a higher hypothesis was omitted because all those present accepted it. It raises its user from the state of the ordinary man, who recognizes only the many transient and imperfect copies of reality, to an awareness of the separate Forms which each imitates. What he has not yet understood is the interrelations of the Forms themselves, and their ultimate dependence on the Good. This is the work of the highest stage, noesis, also called nous and knowledge (epistm). Whereas at the previous stage the mind could not rise above its assumptions, but accepted them as ultimate, it now takes them not as ultimate and unchallengeable principles but as genuine hypotheses (lit. things laid down), by which the mind rises as by a flight of steps through higher hypotheses to the self-authenticating principle and cause of all things. Having grasped this it can look back (in Platos simile climb down again) and see how it gives meaning and content to all other Forms and shows the intelligible world to be an ordered and organic whole. This is the goal of the dialectical method, which even Socrates, its inventor, did not reach. Short of it, Plato now believes, the philosopher lacks complete understanding (nous or noesis) of reality - that is the Form s-though they can be completely understood (are noeta) in
in the bibliography. It is with some reluctance that I have abandoned the intermediates in this context, but I believe it is right to do so. On the point that, if * and are different faculties they should have different objects (p. 488 above), pp. 489 f. may be helpful. For more on intermediates see p. 523. 1 Meno 85 e, 86b, where should not be confined to mathematical knowledge any more than in the Rep. where the Form of the Good is the (505 a; cf. also Symp. 2 1 1 c).
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world in which we live, should be sustained, harmonized and irradiated by Goodness is surely a religious rather than a rationally explicable truth, and it is no wonder if his attempt to describe the upward and downward paths lacks detail and leaves many questions in our minds. He himself repeatedly warns us that an adequate description of these ultimate truths would exceed his powers.1 He never tried again, and in later dialogues his thoughts take a different turn. But when in the Timaeus he offers a detailed cosmology, these truths remain: the teleological ordering of our world and its dependence on a higher, the nature of that higher world as itself a perfect kosmos, and the supremacy of nous. The first cause is not there called the Good, but God, the divine Mind. Some have thought that the Good in the Republic is itself Platos god, but so far as his words go there is no suggestion that it is personal, or anything but the final object of thought. Is it anachronistic to suggest that, as in the philosophy of Platos greatest pupil, Mind and its object are the same?2 I do not know, nor, I believe, does anyone else. But that it is godlike or divine is certain. So are all the Forms of which it is the chief, for by turning his mind to them the philosopher through his familiarity with the divine and orderly becomes himself orderly and divine so far as a man may be. The Cave (5 i4a-5ic>b ). Abruptly Plato turns to a different simile with the words: After this, compare our state in respect of education and the lack of it to the following experience. Only at the end does he say that the new picture is to be applied3 as a whole to what has gone before (jiy a -b ), and the mention of education introduces a
1 5 o 6 c -e , 50 9 c, 5 1 7 b , 5 3 3 a .
2 De an. 430 33: For in non-material things thought and its object are the same. So when he describes his own God, the Unmoved Mover which is pure vous, as the object of his own thought, he is only applying his general psychological principles. In Plato the Good appears as formal-final cause, and A. reproached him with neglecting the efficient aspect. Actually, when one takes into account the dynamic upward impulse of tipcos in man and nature, its action is curiously like that of the Unmoved Mover which moves as the object of love ( Metaph. 1072 b 3, cf. p. 421 above). But we have not heard P.s last word on the First Cause. 3 , which does not bear the mathematical sense of apply (Ross, P T I 72). Scholars have got into great difficulties by looking for this kind of one-to-one correspondence between images so different as those of the divided line and the progress from cave to sunlight and the sun. See also Lee, Rep. 320 n. 1.
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wisdom there, he feels pity for his fellow-prisoners and contempt for the honours and prizes which perhaps they awarded for clear vision of the passing shadows and a good memory for their order of succession, so as to guess correctly which would come next. If he then returned to his old seat in the cave, until his eyes got used to the darkness (which might take some time) he would be no good at their guessinggames. They would laugh at him and think that his journey to the upper world had ruined his sight; and if anyone tried to free them in turn and make them go up, they would want to kill him. Plato himself offers a key to this simile (, jiy a S - c j) . The underground dungeon corresponds to the visible world and the fire to the sun. The ascent to the upper world and viewing of things there correspond to the souPs ascent to the intelligible world, where the last and most difficult thing to be seen is the Form of the Good. Once it is perceived we must reason () that it is the cause of everything right and good everywhere, giving birth in the visible world to the sun and itself reigning over the intelligible world, providing truth and nous (that highest intuition, above the reasoning process, whereby truth is grasped); and that without the vision of it no one can act wisely in either personal or public affairs. The Cave, then, repeats the analogy of the Sun in distinguishing a visible from an intelligible realm and likening the Good to the sun in respect of its double power of making its own realm both true (real) and intelligible. In addition the work of discursive reason in tracing out, after the vision of the Good, its effect on everything beneath it, recalls the downward w ay of the Line. A later explanation (532a-d) emphasizes rather the prisoners progress from cave to sun light. First Plato compares dialectic to the prisoners trying, after he has emerged from the cave, to look away from shadows to natural objects, and finally at the sun itself. Whoever tries, by the use of reason alone without the senses, to reach the real essence of each thing (the Forms), and perseveres until by nous itself he grasps the Good itself, has reached his goal in the intelligible world as the released prisoner did in the visible. He then reminds us of the educational purpose of all this by adding that the release from bonds within the cave, the turning from the shadows to the models and the light, and
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mention at 516c of honours, praise and privileges bestowed by the prisoners on the man with keen sight and a knack of remembering which shadows come after which. Cornford aptly compares the inferior (but successful) type of politician who in the Gorgias (501a) makes no use of reason but only an empirical knack of remembering what usually happens. Also reminiscent of the Gorgias is the philo sophers contempt for such trifles and the suggestion that he will be despised by the crowd and if he tries to impart his superior knowledge to others will risk being killed, as S. was despised by Callicles and warned of his impending fate. (So the prisoner on being first turned round felt not gratitude but anger and dismay.)1 Another (not incompatible) possibility is that the shadows represent particulars, and the artefacts that cast them the general notions abstracted from them by the uneducated. All men have this power of generalization, as the Phaedrus taught (pp. 404, 427 above), and, as he says here (5i8b-c), education is not like putting sight into a blind eye but turning a sound one round from darkness to light. So this power needs at least some education for its right use, to see for example that a string of instances is not a definition. Even then, unless it is regulated by a knowledge of the Forms, the popular notion of, say, justice, will be very far from the true one.2 It is helpful to remember that Platos aim in constructing an ontology or theory of knowledge is always moral. Any just act can only be an imperfect image of the Form of Justice, but men like Callicles or the Thirty Tyrants do not even recognize just acts as just, let alone Justice itself. They have within them the power to do so, but the desires of the lowest part of the soul have grown too strong to allow them to use it ( j^ a - b ) . The whole field of mimesis would also be in Platos mind, which brings us close to the primary education in musik outlined in book 3
1 There is a Socratic touch in the prisoners ignorance of their ignorance, which accounts for their anger at being turned round and brought up. So at Phaedo 82 e the cunning of our prison (the body) lies in the fact that it works by desire and people collaborate in their own imprisonment. Relevant also is Menos irritation at being reduced to (Meno 79e-8ob), which is really the first stage of enlightenment, as the slave-demonstration showed. Note that (51432) means not only lack of educstion but positive fierceness or S3v3gery (Gorg. 510b, Thuc. 3.84.1). 2 Relevsnt here is 5 1 7 d-e, which speaks of the shadows of Justice or the images of which they are shadows, and the conception of them held by those who have never seen Justice itself.
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mystery-religions and the Orphic writings and teletai. (Cf. pp. 338-40 above.) In this allegory he combines the notions of life as a prison (cf. Phaedo 62 b) and as a cave. The former appears in Orphic tradition, as does the mire to which at 533 d he compares the ignorance out of which dialectic lifts the soul. At Phaedo 69 c to lie in mire was the fate of the uninitiated. The cave as a symbol of the sensible world in the ancient theologoi is discussed by Porphyry, who says that Plato (whom he quotes at some length) was anticipated by the Pythagoreans. He also quotes Empedocles, another philosopher in the Italian tradition, as calling the world (which he elsewhere describes as an alien and joyless place) a roofed cave to which certain powers conduct the souls. (See Porph., Antr. Nymph. 8.61 f. Nauck; Emp. frr. 120, 118, 119 ; and cf. Pherecydes fr. 6.) It looks too as if Platos Greece was familiar with puppet shadowshows like the modern Turkish Karagz playlets, reintroduced into Greece under their Turkish name. The audience does not see this Turkish Punch and his fellow-puppets directly, but only their shadows thrown on a screen (though in their case light and puppets are behind the screen, not behind the audience as in the Cave or a cinema). Finally, some think that Plato had a real cave in mind, the cave of Vari in Attica. See now John Ferguson in CQ 1963, 193. The practical lessons (y .5 ig b S z i b). Through all the foregoing ontological and epistemological mysteries (Plato would not reject the word), which have so fascinated and puzzled philosophers down the centuries, one is apt to lose sight of the fact that the ultimate goal, the self-authenticating source of being and knowledge, is simple Goodness (Agathon), the unfailingly and universally advantageous and beneficial. Plato has bestowed the status of absolute uncaused reality on the utilitarian1 ideal of Socrates, who himself had an
1 The use of this word in connexion with S. and P. is sometimes objected to. But P. would not have disowned Benthams definition of utility ( that property in every object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness) as a description of the Good (except of course that good itself must be excised). At 505a the Form of the Good is that which when added to acts of justice and the rest makes them useful and beneficial ( ), and at 505 e it is the aim of all action, which gives everything else its usefulness ().
5i 8
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to find mathematics the subject which leads through the Forms to the Form of Good itself. But that is looking ahead. First Plato gives the practical conclusions from his similes and allegories. Obviously no one who has seen the light will want to return to the cave, and whoever does will blunder helplessly until his eyes are used to the darkness, and if put on trial by those who know only the shadows and images of Justice will cut a ridiculous figure. (Plato never forgets.) Nevertheless government cannot be left to the others, who have no single aim in life to which all their actions, private and public, are directed (519 c), with the educated simply cutting themselves off from the world. The object, S. repeats, is to secure the happiness not of a single class, but of the whole community. Our job as founders is to compel the best minds first to make the ascent to the highest object of knowledge and then to return to the cave, to help the prisoners and share their lives. They cannot object, for unlike their equals in other states they owe a debt to the city which has brought them up in the best way to combine philosophy with action. They will therefore descend again in turn. As he says later, the finished philosophers (who will already be over fifty) will be allowed to spend most of the rest of their lives in philosophy but when their turn comes will shoulder for a time the unwelcome burden of politics for the citys sake (540b). Once used to the darkness, they will see far better than the others the images and what they represent, knowing as they do the truth about justice and goodness; and the best and most peaceful state is one in which there are no struggles for power because the destined rulers, knowing a better life, have no wish to govern, but do so purely from a sense of duty, combining knowledge of good government with an in difference to politics and its rewards. Here one feels that Plato is giving us a genuine glimpse of the ideals with which he founded the Academy. He did not believe in the establishment of an earthly city in which w e, as founders, by a mixture of persuasion and compulsion, would ensure that philosophers would become reluctant rulers, and those in whom ambition or material appetites predominated, though without knowledge of the real good, would acquiesce in a right opinion that they must stick peaceably
520
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HIGHER ED UCATIO N
OF TH E
GUARDIANS
(7 .5 2 IC -5 4 IB )3
(a) Mathematics (to S31 d). We have been told (p. 503) that the few still in the running must be capable of a stiff academic course in preparation for an approach to the Good. Since the Guardians are to be expert in war and government, S. notes first that they must choose subjects which have a practical application as well as inciting the mind to investigate the intelligible world of a priori necessary truths, i.e. truths that are independent of sense experience, that no experience could refute, that must hold always (Cross and Woozley 255). Both aspects, he says, were omitted from the early literary and physical education of book 3, which aimed at forming character
1 54oe-54ia. This is a quick change of mind from his claim that the general public are naturally free from envy and malice and will accept the rule of the philosopher once its nature is made plain to them (499d~502c). 2 For examples see p. 23 above. 3 Cornfords Mathematics and Dialectic in Rep. vi-vii* (Mind 1932) seems to me the only exposition which makes P.s educational programme coherent and comprehensible to a modern mind. Doubtless however it should be read with the criticisms of Murphy in IP R 188 ff.
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rather than imparting knowledge (522 a). He begins with arithmetic (counting and calculation, 5 2 2 3 - 5 26 c), with its obvious uses in military and other mundane spheres. These however soon fade into the background, for what interests him is obviously the unchanging and necessary character of their intrinsic subject - number. The general principle is that, to stimulate thought, a study must raise questions which sensation cannot answer. When sight says This is a finger that settles the matter (as G. E. Moore - may one say ? - repeated), but to the question Is it large*or small? it gives an ambiguous reply, e.g. it says the forefinger is both large (compared with the little) and small (compared with the middle one). Similarly touch reports the same thing to be both hard and soft, light and heavy, and these contradictions stimulate the mind to ask what these qualities are in themselves, distinguishing the separate intelligible Forms from the sensible manifestations which confuse them. The study of number passes this test, for the senses tell us the same thing is both one and many, whereas the mathematical unit is a pure unity and every unit is precisely equal to every other, and the same is true of all numbers.1 Thus calculation, besides its practical utility, leads the philosophic mind on to reason about pure numbers as opposed to collections of visible and tangible objects. He adds as minor advantages that those who are good at it are in general the most intelligent and that it is good training for everybody. When S. says that our eyes show us the same thing as both one and many, Glaucon agrees at once, so it is not further explained. For Plato it could mean made up of many constituent parts or possessing many qualities. The apparent paradox was solved by the doctrine of Forms and their participants, and later dismissed by Plato as simple or childish.2 The difference between numbers and sensibles in respect of one-to-one equality is illustrated at Phil. 56 d, where Plato distin guishes popular and philosophical arithmetic on the ground that the ordinary man operates with unequal units, e.g. cows, no two of which are exactly equal, whereas the philosophical arithmetician insists
1 Every number being only a collection of units ( ). See Adam ad loc. (ii,
113).
522
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The Republic
is said to be as yet undeveloped, because it gets no official encourage ment and no director of research has been found.1 Astronomy comes next, described as the study of solids in motion. In spite of their beauty and regularity, the heavenly bodies still belong to the imperfect visible realm, and their movements must fall short of the precision attained in the realm of reality. The stars, then, must be treated as a geometer treats the figures he draws, sensible aids to discovery of non-sensible, mathematical truth.2 Harmonics is introduced, with one of Platos rare references to the Pythagoreans by name, as a kindred study also concerned with movements, audible instead of visible, to be pursued in the same way. The Pythagoreans seek their numbers in audible concords only, but our Guardians must go beyond them to purely mathematical problems concerning numbers themselves, asking which of them harmonize with which, and why they do so.3 This, adds Plato, will be useful if employed in the search for the Good and Beautiful, but otherwise not. ( [b) Dialectic ( S ji d -S jS a ). The final step in mathematical studies is to discover the common features of the various branches and work out their mutual relationships. In this way they will form the proper propaedeutic to dialectic, which aims directly at a knowledge of beauty and goodness, for so seen, they reveal the underlying harmony,
1 Athens, in a word, would do well to encourage the Academy, and in Plato and his colleagues she has directors of research ready to hand. (Cornford, Mind 1932, 174.) 2 (< a) Simplicius gives an example of this (Cael. 488, 21). Plato, he says, set students the problem: What uniform and regularly ordered motions must be assumed to account for [lit. maintain, ^] the apparent motions of the planets? The Academys attempts to solve it may be found in Arist., Metaph. ch. 8. (jb) The accepted opinion that P. here advocates doing away with visual observation is false. The visible stars must be used as models ( ) of reality, and for this purpose the true astronomer will fix his eye on ( ) their motions. Only after this study is it right to leave behind () these finest works of the Creator. (c) The words v and at 529 d do not mean that Plato is introducing motion among the Forms. Elsewhere he makes a clear distinction between a perceptible phenomenon and its ( Crat. 423 d and elsewhere). When in Soph. (248 eff.) he raises the question of whether and where there can be motion in the real world, he approaches it from quite a different angle. 3 For an example of one may look at the numerical composition of the world-soul in Timaeus, on which see Cornford, P C 66 ff. For P.s relation to the Pythagoreans in this connexion see vol. 1, 2 12 -14 , and for Pythagorass discovery of the numerical basis of melody, and its effect on his philosophy, ib. 220 ff. His method, as P. complains, was empirical (p. 224).
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trained in mathematics, using its hypotheses as such and not as first principles, deals with Forms alone, and by studying them in the same way, that is, in order to grasp their interrelations as it earlier grasped the connexions between the objects of the various branches of mathe matics (themselves intelligible realities though on a lower plane), finally reaches the self-authenticating source of their existence and intelligibility: the Form of the Good. What this is S. will not say. In real life he never found it, and as for Plato, we are learning the truth of the remark in the Seventh Letter, that what he cares about most cannot be put into words. It is not revealed in the discussions themselves, but after them it suddenly springs up in the soul like a light kindled from a leaping flame.1 (c) Selection and time-table (5 j5 a -5 4 i b). A preliminary selection of guardians was made in book 2, and of the governing class in book 3 (pp. 449 and 461 above). Now, in the light of the complete training demanded of the philosopher-rulers, their numbers are further reduced. They will, as we know, be very few, perhaps only one (502b). The additional qualifications are obvious: intellectual stamina, zest for hard study, a powerful memory and a passion for truth. First, an addition is made to the primary education of books 2 and 3, for a grounding in mathematics should be given in childhood, not however as a compulsory subject but in the form of play, for compulsory learning never sticks in the mind \ 2 After the first stage, mental education will be suspended for two or three years of physical ( fatigue and sleep are the enemies of study/ 537b), lasting to the age of twenty. Those promoted at this point will devote the next ten years to developing their childhood subjects3 in the synoptic, coordinating manner which makes them a fit propaedeutic to dialectic, the synoptic study par excellence.4 At thirty, the best of this group (in war and other prescribed
1 E p . 7.341 b-d. See the discussion on pp. 46 ff. 2 Thus a far-reaching educational principle is introduced almost as an aside, and never developed. Elementary mathematical games are however described in Laws 7.819 b-c. Any admiration of P.s progressive ideas here is somewhat qualified if we look back at Rep. 424b-
425 b.
3 Presumably mostly mathematical, but although all commentators assume that mathematics alone is in question, P.s expression . . . (<? is wider. 4 yp , , ou (537 e)
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THE D EC LIN E
OF S O C I E T Y AND
We now return, after a brief summary of all that has gone between, to the point in book 4 at which S. thought he had completed his description of the good state but was disillusioned by Polemarchus and Adeimantus (445 c, p. 479 above). The problem set was to discover the nature of justice and injustice and whether the just or the unjust man was happier. Since it had been agreed to look for them first as
1 It is curious that P. should condemn outright the introduction of youth to dialectic, when he himself has given such brilliant examples of S. doing that very thing. What the earlier dialogues (esp. the Euthyd.) do show is that there is a right and a wrong way of doing it. Perhaps however the warning is not surprising when in his view everyone except S. (now dead) did it the wrong way.
35
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GH O
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magnified in the state, it was necessary to examine bad states as well as the one good one, and these S. had already enumerated as four. The good state he had named aristocracy ( rule of the best) or monarchy if only one philosophic ruler was found, and the others he now, on returning to the subject, calls timocracy, oligarchy, demo cracy and tyranny. Each is worse than the last, and Plato represents them as a historical series of degenerations from the first, good state.1 The genetic sequence is not meant to be taken literally, as is obvious from the fact that the Platonic state does not exist as a startingpoint.2 After each constitution he describes the kind of individual whose predominance in the state gives it its character, though as Hoerber justly remarks, the same stress on individuals and their characteristics permeates the discussion of the origin of each of the inferior states. 3 One may quote 544d-e: States are formed by the characters of their citizens, which as it were tip the balance and draw the rest after them. So if there are five types of constitution there must be five psychological types among individuals. Even the best state cannot last for ever, for it is a universal law that everything generated must decay.4 Since however its decay, like its construction, is imaginary, Plato amuses himself with a pedantic theory (probably owing much to the Pythagoreans but attributed by Plato to the Muses) of a certain eugenic number, arrived at by a
1 The story of the different types of degenerate constitution, and the corresponding individual characters, is in its dramatic realism one of the best things P. ever wrote. It has been too much neglected in favour of the philosophical central books, but some amends have been made recently by Andersson in Polis and Psyche, part 5. My own brief account was written before reading this book. 2 It therefore does not need argument, but see Barkers remarks, P T P A 176-8. He gives a logical and a priori picture of the course corruption would take, supposing that we began with an ideal State, a perfect product of a perfect mind, and that the degradation of that State proceeded from within, and not from the accidents of external impulse. But as B. goes on to say, if [these books] are not history, they explain history, and show why history is a record, not of the perfect idea of the State, but of its various and successive perversions. Aristotle, like some moderns, made the mistake of criticizing the progress of decline as if it were historical, but says some interesting things nevertheless (Pol. 1316a i - b 27). 3 Theme 49. H. uses this as part of his general argument that P. is writing less as a political than as an ethical theorist. 4 The difficulty of a perfect city decaying, that if it contains the germ of its own dissolution it is ipso facto imperfect, which Popper (O S 81) takes over from Adam, does not arise, for P. never says that if his city were realized on earth it would be perfect. A state depends on the individuals in it, P.s is the best that can be devised for men as they are, and most men are far from perfect. (Cf. pp. 447-9 above.)
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reader to the original. His father is a worthy man who, living in an imperfectly run state, prefers a peaceful life to all the bother and litigation involved in seeking office and honours. The son hears his mother1 complaining that her husbands lack of ambition and authority makes other women look down on her: he cares little for money and will not stand up for himself either with the neighbours or in the law-courts or Assembly, and though not actually neglectful, he is too wrapped up in his own thoughts to make much of her. He is, she says, only half a man, much too easy-going and so on as women do talk. Even the servants urge the son to show more spirit than his father when he grows up, and experience confirms the lesson. The quiet-loving are despised as fools, and the busy-bodies respected. At the same time he listens to his father encouraging the element of reason in him, and is torn in two. Not naturally bad, through bad company he yields to the second of the three forces in the soul and becomes arrogant and ambitious. Though not averse to culture, he is not fully educated, a ready listener but no speaker himself. Harsh to slaves and subservient to superiors, he will base his own claims to office on achievements in war and athletics. In his youth he scorned wealth, but as he grows older will welcome it, for the lowest, avaricious part of his nature is already beginning to have an influence now that the natural safeguard against it, reason backed by education, has abdicated. It is this man, and this society, that Plato the Athenian has called the Spartan type (545 a). Oligarchy2 is the constitution in which power is based on a property qualification, and it arises naturally out of timocracy as the avaricious element grows stronger. Social esteem is measured by wealth, envy is rampant, and the law is twisted for the sake of gain. Rich are set against poor, and the unity of the state is lost. It cannot defend itself, for the rulers cannot fight on their own yet are afraid to arm the
1 Though P. has not specifically mentioned it, it is obvious that the woman-guardian type, and the community of wives and children, would have disappeared with the introduction of personal property and houses for the ruling and military classes. 2 More understandably called plutocracy by Xen., Mem . 4.6.12, a passage interesting as giving the Socratic basis of P.s more idiosyncratic classification. S., says Xen., distinguished monarchy from tyranny as government by laws and with the peoples consent from lawless government according to the whim of the ruler. Aristocracy is government by those who fulfil the requirements of established law and custom, plutocracy demands a property qualification, and in a democracy all are eligible.
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The Republic
those who do, to fight for his country or to keep the peace. If you want to govern or sit on a jury, nobody questions your legal right to do so. Men condemned to death or exile stay on and walk the streets as if invisible. It is all very tolerant and forgiving, and has no use for the principles we were so proud of when we claimed that naturally good men were rare and needed to be brought up from childhood in an atmosphere of beauty and right living. Anyone can rule provided he calls himself the peoples friend. In sum, democracy is a pleasantly variegated society, impartially handing out equality of a kind to equals and unequals alike. What, then, of the democratic man? The mean, oligarchic type has a son, brought up to suppress all desires beyond what are necessary for life or tend to profit rather than expense. He meets some wild spirits and gets a taste of the drones honey, pleasures and licence of every sort. For a time family influence prevails and the new demo cratic desires are exiled, but taking advantage of his lack of culture and (like the demos in the state) with external aid, others spring up in greater strength and end by capturing the seat of government in his soul, deserted as it is by its proper defenders, education, good habits and reason. Shame and self-control in their turn are driven out, and he becomes a chaos of wilfulness and caprice, rushing from one craze to another: drunken parties one day and plain water the next, a spell of hard exercise, business, politics - even some dilettante philosophy. No use to tell him some pleasures are better than others: he sees no distinction. All must have equal rights and an equal chance to govern his actions, as if by lot. This life without order or discipline he calls free and happy. A social system perishes when its own ideals are carried to excess, material profit in an oligarchy, liberty in a democracy. The popular leaders denounce as oligarchic scum any government which enforces the slightest restraint, all authority is rejected and rulers and ruled change places. This spirit invades private life. Fathers are afraid of their sons, who no longer respect them, teachers fear their pupils. The young challenge and argue with their elders, who mix with them1
1 Literally sit down with them, suggesting school councils and participation. The modern ring of some of the above may arouse suspicion that I have been touching up P., but this is not so. Oligarchic scum translates .
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The Republic
the people poor and hard at work to prevent their plotting against him, and rids himself of any challengers by betraying them to the enemy. His popularity wanes, and among his former followers the more intelligent, courageous and independent have to be suppressed, until he has no companions but a worthless mob, who in reality hate him. His private army has to be enlarged with mercenaries and emancipated slaves, and he is reduced to the lowest shifts to pay them. Turning to the character who in any society corresponds to the tyrant in the state, S. finds in him the very type and pattern of the Unjust Man whom he needed to set against the picture of the Just. His father had not been too bad, better than his corrupters. He had reacted with all sorts of excesses against his own fathers meanness, but his heart remained divided and in his own opinion he had learned to enjoy both sorts of life, avoiding extremes of both illiberality and lawlessness.1 Now he too has a son, also divided at first between boundless licence and some form of restraint. But his passions are stronger, indeed he is dominated by the lowest of them all. Here Plato further refines his division of desires (at 5 58 d) into necessary and unnecessary. Not all of the latter are actually immoral, and though the immoral, bestial sort are present in all of us, they are normally suppressed by law, convention and our own better judgement, and reveal their existence only in dreams of incest, bestiality, murder, cannibalism and every kind of outrage. Some, however, the worst criminal types, have no inner censor, and translate these terrible dream-fantasies into reality. Such a man has a tyrant within him, and his mind gives way to the demands of lust. Having exhausted his own and his parents resources, still driven remorselessly by his addictions, he takes to robbery and violence. A few characters of this sort in a predominantly law-abiding state may do no great harm, but in a corrupt state this is the type that rises to the top. Notes on the imperfect types. The constitutions described in this section are those existing in Platos lifetime - as seen of course through his 1 P.s summary here (572 c-d) sounds rather more favourable than the original characterization of the democratic man.
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and a geometrician do not look for the same degree of straightness in a line: the one seeks it only so far as it is useful to his work, but the other is out to discover its essence and the sort of thing it is. 1 In book 8, despite his metaphysic, Plato is builder rather than mathe matician, and his material - human nature - does not allow of a strict division into classes characterized by one type of behaviour only, even though this classification is the indispensable basis for the inquiry. He is not going back on what he said before. There are three elements in the soul, but every man possesses and exercises all three, even if one predominates. Within this framework every sort of mixture and gradation of the three main types is possible. The predominantly appetitive type is not devoid of ambition, nor does either of the lower two types lack reason, the mark that distinguishes mankind from the beasts. In the just man, as in the just State, the philosophic element is in control, and this to Plato is the natural state of affairs.2 In the just (harmonious, orderly, well proportioned) state neither spirit nor appetite seeks to govern, but when, through a failure in genetics, its fabric is loosened and its equilibrium upset, anomalies arise. The spirited, fighting class have sterling virtues, combining courage and pugnacity with chivalry, generosity and gentleness. If they seek political power (though this can only happen when they are de generating by failing to control the element of material greed in their souls, 548 a), their action arises primarily from ambition and a desire to excel (548c). They differ from the third class in motive. These get their chance when the wealthy oligarchs become effete. What impels them to seek power is not honourable ambition but the sight of a rich prize coming within their grasp ( jj d ) ,3 nor do they do so until the oligarchs have thwarted their appetites by reducing them to poverty. Once in power, each one uses his new freedom to provide for his private life according to his pleasure. This, in Platos view, scarcely deserves the name of constitution, and to attribute this behaviour to the predominantly appetitive class would not be in1 Ar. E N 1094b23-25, 10 98329-31. Cf. 1 10433. 444 b vto , of the sppetites subservience to the ruling element. In the S3me sentence P. ssys that it may nevertheless rebel 3nd try to take control. 3 And cf. 581 d: the money-maker despises higher ambitions unless he can make money out of them.
2 Cf.
536
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W HICH
IS H A P P I E R , T H E J U S T
OR U N J U S T M A N ?
( 5 7 6 B -5 9 2 B )
At last we are ready to satisfy the original demand of Glaucon and Adeimantus which in book 2 started us off on this tremendous exercise in psychology, political theory and metaphysics. Can justice be commended not only for the external rewards which its reputation brings, in this world or another, but in its own right, as the best thing for the just man himself even if he gets nothing out of it and suffers what the world calls a terrible fate ? (P. 443 above.) The discussion which follows is unsatisfactory, said Nettleship (p. 316), because everyone is ultimately his own judge of the value of his state of consciousness and whether his own form of happiness is more worth having than another. Plato of course would not have agreed that the judgement of an ignorant man even on the question of his own happiness was worth as much as that of the philosopher, and would have claimed that by education the ignorant could be brought to see the poverty of their previous condition and how it could be enlarged and enriched. But in any case, as Nettleship goes on to say, in a case like this, where cthe arguer has practically prejudged the question before he begins his argument, its interest for us lies in observing the principle upon which he has formed his judgement, and the canons of criticism which he applies. Platos principle is that mental and moral health depend on a right relationship, or harmony, between the various elements in the psyche, so that the highest of human desires, that for philosophy, prevails, and the emotions and passions are gratified to an extent compatible with the welfare of the whole. It is not a repression of desire but a re-channelling of its
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The Republic
course.1 Right and wrong, justice and injustice, are not simply matters of the relationship between man and man; essentially they are inward, spiritual states of the individual, respectively a healthy and pathological state of the psyche. Given these premises, the arguments of a Polus or Callicles become irrelevant, and the question whether justice or injustice makes for happiness is no longer in doubt.2 Unhappiness o f the tyrannical man (5y 6 c 58oc). Taking the tyrannical man (that is, the pattern of the unjust) first, S. produces a strange argument: each type of individual resembles the corresponding con stitution, a city under tyranny is enslaved and unhappy, therefore the tyrannical type of man is enslaved and unhappy. A truly Socratic paradox, which we have met before in the Gorgias. How can the tyrant be identified with the city that he himself holds in thrall ? Is he not free to do as he likes, kill whom he will, help himself to anything that takes his fancy? (Gorg. 466bff., pp. 288f.) Then the reply was based on a distinction between ends and means, here on the doctrine of the complexity of the soul. We must be clear that a man of tyrannical character is not necessarily living in a city under tyranny, whether his own or anyone elses. The point is that he himself (his psyche) resembles that city. As the city is oppressed by the worst sort of ruler, the man is at the mercy of the lowest, most despicable part of himself. We remember S.s earlier comment on the expression master of oneself (4306-431 a): it was prima facie ridiculous, since if one was ones own master one must be ones own slave, but what people meant by it was that each of us has a better and a worse side, and self-mastery was the control of the worse by the better. In this sense the tyrannical man is certainly not free, being entirely, madly under the sway of his basest passions. Like the city, he is least able to do what he wishes (577e, a repetition of the Gorgias passage), is poor (because never satisfied), and lives in constant fear. This is true if he simply lives the life of a psychopathic criminal in an orderly society, but most of all if he is unlucky enough to be invested by
1 6.485 c!; and at 586e it is said that only by following reason can the two lower elements truly enjoy their own proper pleasures. 2 I have made this point before (p. 475), but it perhaps bears repeating.
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each will name his own. The businessman values his profits more highly than fame or honour, unless these too bring monetary reward; the chivalrously ambitious regard mere money-making as vulgar, and learning without fame as airy nonsense, whereas the philosopher finds all his pleasure in the search for truth and looks on public life and the satisfaction of material wants as regrettable necessities. How can one decide which is right? Surely the only permissible criterion is experience plus reason. Now the philosopher, like every man, has experienced the acquisitive pleasures since childhood, and like every successful man, the pleasures of respect, for honour is paid to the wise1 as well as the brave and the wealthy. His experience, then, includes theirs and goes beyond it, whereas they know nothing of the delight experienced in the contemplation of truth. He alone therefore is in a position to compare their respective pleasures, and as for his competence to do so, judgement and reason are his own special tools in the use of which he is trained as the others are not. On both counts, therefore, only he can speak with authority on the merits of the three kinds of life (58ic-583a). Unfortunately S. adds yet another proof, lengthy, tortuous and resting on somewhat peculiar premises. Briefly, there are pleasures which fill a want and are more accurately described as relief from pain (including hunger and thirst), and others which do not follow pain nor lead to pain when they cease, e.g. the pleasure derived from a scent.2 The former are not genuine pleasures but an intermediate state, and anyone who thinks them positive pleasures is like a man who is half way up an elevation, but being unable to see further, thinks he is at the top; or who, having never seen white, contrasts black with grey. Next (585 b-c) comes the basic premise of Platonism that the things with which we replenish the mind, and the mind itself, are unchanging, eternal and more real than material things, together with another that, literally translated, reads: What is filled with what is more real, and is itself more real, is really more filled
1 This may seem an odd remark in view of what S. said in bk 6 about societys treatment of philosophers, but cf. 495 c-d, pp. 500f. above. 2 Phil. 51b adds visual and aural pleasures. The most trenchant criticism of the pleasures of constant replenishment has already been made in Gorg. 492 eff., pp. 290 f. above.
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and S. is required to show which of the two men is happier (361 d). This word, or its Greek equivalent, is so much wider in its sweep than pleasure that both Plato and Aristotle used it as the name for the all-sufficient end of human life,1 whereas when asked whether he thought this supreme good was pleasure, S.s only reply was Dont be blasphemous! 2 Here however the climax of his reply is only to say that the tyrants life is the most unpleasant and the philosophers the pleasantest (.. ., 587b). I do not know why Plato chose to take this line,3 omitting all reference to his favourite concepts of the good, the beneficial, happiness; but it looks as if the problem of the nature of pleasure was already troubling his mind and he resolved to give it an airing. Dialogue is, after all, the ideal medium for trying out new ideas. For his maturer views on pleasure we shall look to the Philehus, where several of the points made here are repeated and clarified. Tailpieces and conclusion (58y b - 5^ 2 b). The comparison ends with a numerical fantasy or happiness-calculus according to which the philosopher-king is 729 times happier than the tyrant,4 and finally Plato supplements the argument with another of his picturesque similes. As in the Phaedrus the human psyche, that unity in variety, appeared in the form of charioteer and horses, here it is a composite creature like those of Greek mythology. (S. mentions Scylla, Cerberus and the Chimaera.) Take a beast with the heads of all sorts of animals, wild and tame, which it can grow at will, then a lion, then a man; combine them and give the result the external appearance of a man, though in fact the many-headed monster is the largest and the man the smallest. The claim of injustice is that it pays to pamper the monster and lion and starve and weaken the human being in us; our claim is that it pays to strengthen the man so that he can rear the
1 Symp. 205 a; cf. p. 507 above. For Arist. see E N 117 6 3 3 1-2 . 2 509 a, and cf. the whole argument of the Gorgias. At Phil. 11 d the aim of the discussion is said to be discovery of what constitutes happiness, and in the course of it some pleasures are excluded altogether, and the permitted ones relegated to the lowest place within it. 3 But see Crombies comments, E P D 1, 139-42. 4 Perhaps most clearly explained by Nettleship, p. 332. Cornfords difficulty, that it is not explained why 9 is to be raised to the third power {Rep. p. 308), seems to be met by Bensons note in Nettleship I.e.
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on high and all the planets in their turn, by their order and beauty ( and ) proclaimed the world to be the work of a divine Mind. That is the chief lesson of the Timaeus, and here in book 7 (530a) the heavenly bodies are the finest works of the Creator. That passage is a reminder that although no visible objects or their motions can be perfect, their study is part of the education by which the mind of the philosopher rises to the eternal and perfect realities by the contemplation of which he himself becomes divine and orderly so far as a man may (500c). These are the Forms, marshalled under the supremacy of the Form of the Good. The just city that Plato has described is not a Form, but like the stars, the best of its kind that could ever be realized in its own material: that compound of beast and god which is human nature.
N O T E ON B O O K S 9 A N D IO
The latter part of book 9 tries a readers patience severely. The characterization of the successively deteriorating types of society and individual has been a masterpiece of realism in which every age - certainly the present onemust recognize its own traits; but the rest drags on unnecessarily, repeating in different ways what has been said before, and some of its arguments lack relevance as well as cogency. This in turn is redeemed by the moving simplicity and directness of the close, which to a modern reader may well appear the perfect ending for the whole work. The resumption of the attack on art with which book 10 begins seems ill timed, and is commonly referred to as a sort of appendix (Crombie calls it a coda), and the second part of the book, on the rewards of virtue, is introduced abruptly and, it is said, shows signs of having been left in an unfinished state.1 However, the two parts are not on a level. The first may well seem self-contained and out of context: Plato himself had good philosophical reasons for putting it so late,2 but perhaps his philosophical and literary aims were for once at odds. But to crown his argument by a great mythos, in which nous takes wings and soars beyond the confines of logos into the regions of religious faith - to complete his exposition of the true nature of,the righteous and the unrighteous man by a revelation of the destiny awaiting each - that, it
1 Nettleship 355. 2 At the end of his first criticism of poetry in bk 3 (392 c) he says that we cannot confirm its harmful effects on human character and life until we have decided the main question of the true nature and effects of justice and injustice; and here at 595 a he notes that the need to exclude mimetic poetry from the city is clearer now that the different forms of soul have been distinguished.
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(14) T H E F E U D B E T W E E N P H I L O S O P H Y A N D P O E T R Y (10 .5 9 5 A - 6 0 8 B ) 1
Great, Glaucon, is the decision, bigger than we think, between becoming a good man and a bad; so that neither honour nor wealth nor political power-no nor even p o e tr y - should excite us into neglecting justice and goodness as a whole/ (608 b) (a) Argument from degrees o f reality (5c )5 a 602 b) Plato confines his attack to what he calls mimetic poetry, not here confined to drama but including epic and even lyric (607 a). In fact he is not using the epithet in quite the same sense here as in book 3. There it referred to the formal difference between dramatic and narrative verse (p. 452 above). Here it includes all poetry which represents or describes actions and events in the natural world.2 There his main objection was that our characters become assimilated to what we act or enjoy seeing and hearing acted, and the themes of poetry were unworthy. Here he starts with a more philosophical objection based on the doctrine of Forms, which recognizes three ontological grades: a Form, its imperfect copies in the physical world, and an artists copies or representations of these. Craftsmen make many beds, but each is an attempt to achieve the same single purpose, that is, in Platos terms, to reproduce in matter the perfect Form of Bed.3 Beds come in all shapes, sizes and degrees of comfort, they are made and fall to pieces, typical denizens of the world of becoming, not wholly real. Thirdly, an artist may paint a picture of a bed,
1 Let us add, to avoid the charge of insensitiveness and philistinism, that there is an ancient feud between philosophy and poetry (607b). 2 For the controversy over whether P. here misrepresents what he said in bk 3, see Tate in CQ 1928, Cross and Woozley 277-81. On the whole question of P.s treatment of poetry in Rep. add Tates second article (CQ 1932) and Grube, P T 182-94. 3 Cf. Crat. 389a, where the Form of a weavers shuttle is described as that which is fitted by nature to do a shuttles work*, and it is said that when a broken shuttle is to be replaced, it is not the broken one, but this Form, that the maker will look to as model.
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reproducing only its appearance as seen from one angle. No one would call it a real bed, nor is the bedstead of wood or iron real in comparison with the Form .1 The imitative poet is similarly a maker of representations, at two removes from reality. Now an artist could realistically depict, say, a shoemaker at work without any understanding of his craft, and this is all that poets do, though their admirers foolishly suppose that because they depict the work of craftsmen, generals, priests, and men behaving well or ill, they must themselves be skilled craftsmen and strategists and authorities on religion and morality.2 If Homer and Hesiod could command all this knowledge, they would hardly have remained wandering minstrels, but attained honourable positions as legislators, reformers, strategists, founders of a way of life like Pythagoras or leaders of practical thought like the Sophists. Again, take the three procedures of use, manufacture and repre sentation. The artist copies the look of, say, a bit and bridle without understanding the secrets of making or using them. The harnessmaker has a cright belief about how to make them because instructed by the horseman. Only he, the user, knows when they are right for their purpose. And (the old Socratic dictum, p. 186 above) the excellence and beauty of everything - implement, living creature or action - consists in its fitness to perform its proper function. Reading this in the light of the earlier books, we see that in his limited sphere the user of an implement is an analogue of the philosopher-king. He has direct experience of what is good and bad about a tool (6oid) and hence of what would be the perfect tool, because he knows what it is meant to do. The maker has a correct belief about the best way to fashion his materials, as the second category of guardians were educated by the philosophers to a correct belief in matters of law and
1 With further reference to the discussion on pp. 494 ff., there can, I think, be no doubt that Plato saw no difference between two senses of to be real : to be a real ( 59669) bed, and to be real as opposed to non-existent or semi-existent. Unfortunately his own words are practically untranslatable into any modern idiom. 597a, rendered as literally as possible, runs: Did you not say just now that the bed-maker does not make the Form, which we claim is the essential bed ( ), but a sort of bed? Yes. Then if he does not make what it is, he does not make what is, but something resembling what is. If anyone were to say that the work of a cabinet-maker or any other craftsman is completely being (), he would not be speaking the truth. The spirit of Parmenides was indeed difficult to exorcize. 2 This of course was true. Cf. Ion 537 a ff. and pp. 203-9 above.
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will not simply reproduce erroneous beliefs about them (such as are extensively documented in bks 2 and 3), but being composed with knowledge will tell the truth. Oddly enough the clearest statement of Platos point here was made by Aristotle in the days when he was still a Platonist. In the following fragment of his Protrepticus it is both easy and legitimate to adapt what it says about the philosopher-statesman to the poet who is not (in the pejorative sense used by Plato here) mimetic. Aristotle is arguing that theoretical wisdom is also of the greatest benefit in practical life:1 Other arts take their instruments and their most accurate reasoning not from the primary realities themselves, with a rough approximation to knowledge, but at second or third hand or even further off, basing their arguments on experience. Only the philosopher copies direct from realities,2 for it is realities that he sees, not imitations. . . If a man models his legislation and actions on other human laws and actions - of Sparta or Crete or any where else - he is not a good or serious legislator. An imitation of some thing not good cannot be good, nor an imitation of what is not divine and lasting be immortal. Only the philosophers laws are firmly based and only his actions right and good, for he alone models his life on reality and the divine. The three beds and the doctrine o f Forms. (z) Scope o f the doctrine. 3 An attractive trait of Platos Socrates (and no doubt of the real one), on which Adeimantus teased him at 487 e, is his fondness for concrete illustration and imagery. Nor is it fair, when he introduces something as an illustration, with his eye on something else (here the short comings of the mimetic poet), to press him on every detail. The beds make Platos three-tiered ontology absolutely clear: the ideal (that is, real) bed made by God, the material bed made by the carpenter, and the picture of it made by the painter. That is all they are intended
1 Arist. ap. Iambi. Protr. ch. io, p. 55 Pistelli; fr. 13 Ross. This union of the theoretical and the practical had to be abandoned with the belief in transcendent moral Forms. Cf. the reff, to E N on p. 536 above. The time has not yet come to argue against those who deny his Platonism in Protr. 2 Cf. Plato, Pol. 300c: written laws based on knowledge are . 3 See further Ross, P T I ch. xi and the work of Robin and Cherniss to which he refers.
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Form is the perfection towards which the particular instances are striving. 1 On the extent of the world of Forms there is what appears to be an important pronouncement at 596a: I believe we usually assume a single Form for every group to which we apply the same name. As it stands, this would make the existence of an eternal Form dependent on arbitrary linguistic usage, which is Platonically non sense. For Plato the kinds or classes (eide) into which particulars fall are objectively determined by their natures (eid or physeis), and it is to them that the eternal Forms (also eide) correspond. Things take their names from the Forms in which they participate (Phaedo 102 b). The expression here is very natural, but in the light of other passages must be read as referring to particulars which are rightly grouped under the same universal name. W e are Plato and his friends. At Phdr. 265 e (p. 428 above) he insists that class-divisions must be made at the natural joints , and at Pol. 262a-e he deprecates splitting off a part of a genus which has not a true eidos. As examples he cites first the Greek habit of dividing mankind into Greeks and foreigners, though the latter term includes a great many peoples unrelated by language or anything else, and secondly number. Anyone could arbitrarily separate the number 10,000 from all the rest, give the rest a name and call it collectively a single class just because it now has a name. Odd and even on the other hand are genuine definable species (eide) of the genus number.2 In the Cratylus (387b-d) S. admonishes Hermogenes that if a man speaks as things are intended by nature to be spoken of, and with the appropriate instrument [:, name], his action - that is, his speech - will accomplish something. Otherwise he will be in error and his action nullified. The purpose of names is to classify according to essence (388b-c), and this will not be achieved
1 Phaedo 74c!, 75 a, 75 c. I cannot trace where I read the remark about S. in Parm. 2 If P. did say that there are Forms of natural objects only ( , Arist. Metaph. 1070a 18, on which see Bluck, CR 1947, 75 f.), he may well have been using in the sense of ?j at Phdr. 265 e. So Ross, P T I 174. At 1078 b 30-4 Ar. says that by hypostatizing the universal classes or forms for which Socrates had sought definitions, it happened to the Platonists ( ), as it were () by the same argument, that there were Forms of everything spoken of universally. I take this to mean that they were logically com mitted to this position, not that they consciously held it.
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There are in fact three somewhat similar arguments, and a comparison may help to elucidate them. 1. Tim . 31 a 4. The Form of a genus (in this case animal) must contain all the Forms of the species subsumed under it. If there were two of them, each would contain some only of the relevant species, and there would have to be a more all-embracing Form containing both of these with the species which each embraces. They would be like the Forms of vertebrates and invertebrates, each containing a large number of species of animal but not all. 2. Rep . 597 c. This refers to a specific Form not further subdivided. All instances of a Form owe their character to participation in the perfect Form itself, e.g. beds to their participation in the Form of Bed. There cannot be two of these Forms, because they in their turn could only share the same character by participating in the nature of a higher, single Form. The unexpressed belief behind this in Platos mind is (I suggest) this: plurality is necessarily connected with difference, and that in its turn with the imperfection inseparable from realization in a physical medium. If we imagine a perfect, non material Form, it must be unique, for what could differentiate one Form from another identical in eidos? 3. Parm . 132 d j (the Third Man). Resemblance is a reciprocal relationship. If particulars resemble their Form, the Form must resemble the particulars. But it is claimed that things which resemble each other do so by virtue of sharing in the same Form. Hence there must be a higher Form (2) in which both the particulars and Form (1) will share. But Form (2) will also resemble its instances, and so on ad infinitum. Arguments (1) and (2) are arguments for the uniqueness of a Form. Argument (3) is introduced as an objection to the doctrine of Forms itself. If, as some think, the Republic passage is open to that refutation, this had not yet occurred to Plato. As the earlier books have shown, the Forms are still in part a religious conception. They are divine, and apprehended, after suitable preparation, by faith or intuition (). They are still, as in the Symposium and Phaedrus, the epopteia, the revelation vouchsafed to initiates in the intellectual mysteries of Platonism.
The Republic
societies, we shall all be in their debt. If not, we must renounce our love and repeat as a counter-charm our conviction that she is a stranger to the truth and endangers the balance of that polity which each man carries within himself.
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WE ARE
P L A N N IN G
F O R T H E W H O L E O F T IM E
(608C -62ID )1
(a) The soul is immortal (608 c -6 11 b) In the choice between justice and injustice, more is at stake than we might think. It will affect us not only during the little span of human life but through the whole of time (as at Phaedo 107 c), for the soul is immortal and never perishes. Glaucon is astonished, for as Cebes said in the Phaedo (70 a), the souls survival after death is a matter of widespread incredulity. It was not of course a novel idea. The possibility of a blessed immortality was familiar from the Eleusinian mysteries, an Athenian national cult, as well as the more esoteric Orphica, and Glaucons astonishment was rather that of an enlightened aristocrat at hearing it stated not as the climax of a moving and sometimes terrifying ritual2 but as a plain matter of fact acceptable to reason.3 S. must therefore defend his statement, and does so by the argument from specific evils. E vil may be equated with destructive, good with preservative and beneficial. For every thing there is a specific evil, which impairs and finally destroys it; and a thing can only be destroyed by the evil natural to it, as eyes by ophthalmia (and more generally the body by disease), crops by blight, timber by rot, metals by rust and so on. If there is anything whose specific evil, though it may harm, cannot destroy it, it must be indestructible. The soul has its own specific evil, namely wickedness,
1 It is an interesting sidelight on the difference in outlook between P. and his modern inter preters that Murphy does not think this section even worth mention, and Cross and Woozley dismiss the myth in a final half-page. In both commentaries the chapter on P /s criticism of poetry and art is the last. 2 Cf. the description in Plut. De an., fr. 178 Sandbach (Loeb ed.). 3 So Adam, Rep. 11, 421. Both here and in Phaedo it seems that S.s friends can accept the doctrine of Forms without hesitation or argument (Rep. 507 b, Phaedo 100b-c) yet be ignorant of its corollaries regarding anamnesis and immortality.
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that soul and body should be sharply separated, and that death as ordinarily understood - caused by disease, injury or the like - affects the body only. ( Even if the body were chopped into little bits, soul would not perish any more for that, 6iob.) Yet the argument is that because wickedness does not cause death it cannot destroy the soul. (This is especially apparent from the manner of Glaucons agreement at 6iod-e.) It is assumed, then, that if physical death were caused by wickedness, wickedness could destroy the soul, whereas it is also part of the argument that physical death, as the specific evil of the body, can destroy that and nothing else. How do we know that wickedness, the specific evil of the soul, cannot destroy it, when destruction of soul is something different from ordinary death ? () The soul not composite (6 i b 6iz a) 1 The soul being immortal, S. continues, it is necessary to guard against a possible misunderstanding of what has gone before, for nothing composite can well be immortal.2 He has described the forms it takes and the experiences it undergoes in this life, when marred by its association with the body3 - rather like the sea-monster Glaucus, whose pristine nature can hardly be seen through the damage inflicted by the waves and the shells, weed and rocks which cling to him (6 n c -d ). But if we would see it in its original purity, we must strip all this off and look solely at its love of wisdom,4 its longing to consort with changeless, divine Being, to which it is akin. Only thus can we understand whether its true nature is simple or composite, and what it really is. So Plato confirms explicitly that the pure and immortal soul is still the philosophical part alone - not simply reason, but eros totally absorbed in the quest for truth (pp. 475 f. above) - as it was in the Phaedo and Phaedrus. Physical desires and worldly ambitions are, as is only reasonable, properties that develop in conjunction with the
1 See also pp. 476-8 above. point made at Phaedo 78 c and Tim. 41b ( . . . ), and connected with (Rep. 8.546 a). Anything with parts must be a because the parts are prior to the whole. 3 So also in Gorg. 5246-5253. 4 , r is the highest of the three parts of the (incarnate) soul at 411e. The affinity of the soul to the world of changeless Being is a reminder of Phaedo 79 d.
2A
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between curable and incurable sinners. There follows a cosmological section, comparable to that in the Phaedrus and the elaborate geography of the Phaedo. Here however, in the fantastic form of the spindle of Necessity with its composite whorl, Plato describes the orbits of the fixed stars, five planets, sun and moon according to the geocentric system of his day, with reference to such scientific facts as the distances and relative speeds of the planets, the reddish colour of Mars, and the derivation of the moons light from the sun.1 All this imagery is, as Cornford says, mythical and symbolic, but as I have remarked on the Phaedo (p. 362), it is carried far beyond its relevance to what he calls the underlying doctrine of necessity and freewill. Its disguise as the spindle turning on the knees of Necessity (and Cornford believed that what the souls see is in any case not the universe itself but a model) cannot alter the fact that Plato is describing the structure of the universe as he seriously con ceived it to be, and indulging his delight in it as he did at greater length in the Timaeus.2 After the astronomical section comes another, lacking in the other dialogues, in which the moral is openly stated. Around Necessity, helping her to turn her spindle, sit the three Fates, of whom Lachesis holds a number of lots and samples of lives, and the souls must draw lots to determine the order in which they may choose their next life. There are far more types of life than souls to choose them, so that even the last comer, if he chooses wisely and lives it with all his powers, may pick an acceptable life. The responsibility is the choosers; God is blameless, says her herald, and Let not the first be careless nor the last despondent. This is the moment on which all depends, for which we must prepare ourselves by an understanding of good and evil, weighing up all the arguments in the previous discussion, considering the effect of various blends of wealth, poverty, power,
1 For details see Corn fords translation pp. 340-2 and Lees, pp. 460-3. On the localization of the other world in parts of the physical universe see also p. 432 above. 2 In his combination of astronomy and religion he relied much on the Pythagoreans (pp. 35 f. above) as well as their close relatives the Orphies. (On Pythagoreans and Orphies see Guthrie, O GR 2 16 -2 1.) They taught of the orbits of the planets, their various speeds and distances, and the harmonious notes given out by them in their revolutions, which P. also brings in here. (See vol. 1, 285, 295-301.)
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As for Er, whose part was to take back tidings of these things to the living, he returned to his body, suddenly opened his eyes and found himself on the pyre.
A n d so his tale was preserved from perishing, and, if we remember it, may well preserve us in turn, and we shall cross the river o f Lethe safely and shall not defile our souls. This at any rate is m y advice, that we should believe the soul to be immortal, capable o f enduring all evil and all good, and always keep our feet on the upward w ay and pursue justice with wisdom. So we shall be at peace with the gods and with ourselves, both in our life here and when, like the victors in the games collecting their prizes, we receive our reward; and both in this life and in the thousand-year journey which I have described, all will be well with us.1
C O N C L U SIO N
Platos city - purged of most of its inflammation though not of the evil of war - is an ideal of a special sort, an ideal which takes account of the fact that human nature is a compound of reason with potentially noble but dangerous passions, capable therefore of supreme selfsacrifice in an honourable cause, but also, if seduced by its third component, lust and greed, of the most bestial cruelty. It shows how all these elements of character might work together for the good of the community if each of the main human types to which they give rise were afforded a legitimate outlet for its aspirations while recog nizing, through the power of reason which all possess, that the reins of government should be in the hands of an elite both naturally fitted and specially trained for their task. It remains an ideal that could never be realized on earth, but Plato sincerely believed that earthly legislators will do better if they keep its principles - the truth - in mind rather than looking to the imitation constitutions of Sparta, Athens or Crete. If some of its positive provisions rightly move us to horror, they must be seen in the light of these considerations and also of conspirit whose cave symbolized the subterranean world of the dead, the waters of Lethe and Mnemosyne were drunk before the descent, though on the gold plates they were a part of the underworld. (Paus. 9.39. See Guthrie, G. and G. 225, 230.) 1 The last words of the Republic, in Lees translation. 560
Conclusion
temporary history. And in spite of them, the Republic contains political lessons appropriate to any age. They are to be found not so much in the character of the Platonic state itself as in the symbolic tale of its decay, in books 8 and 9, into successively worse types of government, society and individual citizens. One has only to think of the suggestion that the worst enemy of democracy is unchecked licence, leading by a natural swing of the pendulum to popularly supported tyranny, the extreme of authoritarian repression under a single dictator. Essentially however the Republic is not a piece of political theory but an allegory of the individual human spirit, the psyche. The city is one which we may found in ourselves by directing the stream of eros within us so that it flows most strongly towards wisdom and knowledge, under whose guidance the passions and appetites too can find fuller satisfaction than in the mindless alternation of want and surfeit which a Calliclean hedonist, Platos tyrannical man, regards as the ideal. Goodness and happiness (united in the phrase * , to do well) are found by carrying to completion the unfinished philosophy of Socrates. First, goodness is knowledge, knowledge that there are unalterable standards fixed in nature, inde pendent of mutable human thoughts and desires. This knowledge is taken to its highest level, and the method of its acquisition described, in the central books 5-7. Secondly, know thyself, that is, the psyche; and so the psyche is analysed, and its nature explained, in book 4, with its culmination in book 10. Finally, in the light of this knowledge, care only for the soul and its ultimate good, knowing that its best element, the philosophic, is what unites us with the divine and lives for ever. Act always in the knowledge that the souls association with the body is only a brief episode, or series of episodes, in its eternal existence. In that faith Socrates died, when without it he could have-J lived, and the whole force of Platos remarkable mind was directed at proving that he was right. Whether, in thus giving depth and content to the confessedly incomplete philosophy of his master (whose life was one of searching for a knowledge he did not possess), Plato also distorted it, may be left for the reader to decide.
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37-2
B I B L I OGRA P HY
The following list contains particulars of books and articles briefly referred to in the text or notes, together with a few additional works. For a plain text of all the dialogues see Burnets in the Oxford Classical Texts (n.d., prefaces dated 1899-1906). For a complete translation the one-volume Hamilton-Cairns col lection (q.v.) is most convenient, and many dialogues are easily and inexpensively available in the Penguin Classics series. The Loeb Classical Library provides texts and translations for English readers, as does the Bud series for French. Many books on Plato contain select bibliographies, e.g. vols. 11 and in of Friedlnders Plato (1964 and 1969) provide separate lists for each dialogue at the beginning of the notes to the appropriate chapter, and general works may be traced in his list of abbreviations. Among other bibliographical aids may be mentioned Chernisss well known survey in Lustrum, Gigons in the Bibliogra phische Einfhrungen, Rosenmeyers ten years of Platonic Scholarship and Schuhls Quinze annes. Manasses Bcher ber Platon is an excellent critical review of litera ture in German (1, 1957) and English (11, 1961). For details of these see below. Just as there is no ideal arrangement for a book on Plato, so there is none for its bibliography. Before compiling it I was convinced that it would be best to have a general section of works on Plato followed by separate lists, one for each dialogue, as in Friedlnder. For many readers interested in a particular dialogue it would be a convenience to have the literature on it grouped together. This however would make it difficult to trace a comment on, say, the Phaedo in an article mainly devoted to Meno or Phaedrus, and all things considered I concluded that an undivided bibliography (like an undivided index) would .be found the most generally useful. It has however been suggested to me that to append a separ ate list of editions and translations cited in the book might serve a useful purpose, and this I have done, again with a few additions, but the list is very selective. Commentaries without text or translation, such as Cross and Woozleys on the Republic or de Vriess on the Phaedrus, have been retained in the general section. The last few years have seen a large output of collections of previously published articles designed to make them more readily accessible than they were in their separate periodicals. These perform a most useful service, but do not ease the task of the bibliographer. Where I know of such a re-publication I have given both references, but some cases will certainly have escaped me. The same applies to paperback reprints. A section of addenda appears on pp. 58 if.
GENERAL
*Anamnesis in the Phaedo*, Exegesis (q .v .) , 1 7 7 - 9 5 . The Doctrine of the Celestial Origin of the Soul from Pindar to Plato*,
562
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1957R. D. The Phaedo o f Plato. Introduction, text, notes and appendices. London, 1894. B l u c k , R . S. Plato s Seventh and Eighth Letters, ed. with introduction and notes. Cambridge, 1947. B l u c k , R. S. Platos Phaedo. Introduction, translation, notes and appendices. London, 1955. B l u c k , R. S. Platos Meno. Introduction, text and commentary. Cambridge, 1961. B r o w n , M. (ed.). Plato's Meno. Guthries translation with essays by various authors. Indianapolis and New York, 1971. B u r n e t , J. Plato's Euthyphro, Apology o f Socrates and Crito, edited with notes. Oxford, 1924. B u r y , R. G. The Symposium o f Plato. Introduction, text and commentary. Cambridge, 1909 (2nd ed. 1932). C a m p b e l l , L. The Theaetetus o f Plato. Introduction, text and notes. Oxford, 1883. C o r n f o r d , F. M. The Republic o f Plato. Introduction, translation and notes. Oxford, 1941 (and reprints). C o r n f o r d , F. M. Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides' W ay o f Truth and Plato's Parmenides translated with an Introduction and a running Commentary. London, 939 . C o r n f o r d , F. M. Plato's Cosmology: the Timaeus o f Plato translated with a running Commentary. London, 1937. C o r n f o r d , F. M. Plato's Theory o f Knowledge: the Theaetetus and Sophist o f Plato translated with a running Commentary. London, 1935. C r o i s e t , A. Hippias Majeur, Charmide, Laches, Lysis. Introduction, text and French translation. Paris, 1921 (Assoc. Bud). C r o i s e t , A. Gorgias, Mnon. Introductions, text and notes. Paris, 1 9 2 1 (Assoc. Bud).
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1905. W . K. C. Plato, Protagoras and Meno. Introduction and translation. Penguin Books, 1956 (and reprints). H a c k f o r t h , R. Plato s Phaedrus. Introduction, translation and running com mentary. Cambridge, 1952. (Paperback repr. 1972.) H a c k f o r t h , R. Platos Phaedo. Introduction, translation and running commentary. Cambridge, 1955. H a c k f o r t h , R . Platos Examination o f Pleasure. ^ Translation of the Philebus, wwA Introduction and Commentary. Cambridge, 1958. H a m i l t o n , E. and C a i r n s , H . Plato, The Collected Dialogues including the Letters. (Translations by various hands.) New York, 1961. H a m i l t o n , W . P/aro, Mg Symposium. Introduction and translation. Penguin Books, 19 5 1 (and reprints). H a m i l t o n , W . /Yafo, Gorgias. Introduction and translation. Penguin Books, i960 (and reprints). H a r w a r d , J. The Platonic Epistles, translated with introduction and notes. Cam bridge, 1932. J o w e t t , B . The Dialogues o f Plato translated into English with analyses and introductions. 4th ed. by D. J . Allan and . E. Dale. 4 vols., Oxford, 1953. J o w e t t , B. and C a m p b e l l , L. Plato's Republic. Text, notes and essays. 3 vols., Oxford, 1894. Lee, H. D. P. Plato, The Republic. Introduction and translation. Penguin Books, 2nd ed. 1974. L o d g e , G. Plato, Gorgias. Boston and London, 1896. (Introduction, text and Commentary.) M r i d i e r , L. Ion, Mnxne, Euthydme. Introduction, text and notes. Paris, 1 9 31 (Assoc. Bud). N e s t l e , W . Platon, Protagoras. Introduction, appendices, text and notes. 7th ed., Berlin, 1931 R e i c h , K. Euthyphron. Hamburg, 1968. German translation with introduction and commentary. R o b i n , L. Phdon. Introduction, text and French translation. Paris, 1926 (Assoc. Bud). R o b i n , L. Le Banquet. Introduction, text and French translation. Paris, 1929 (Assoc. Bud). R o b i n , L. Phdre. Introduction, text and French translation. Paris, 1933 (Assoc. Bud). S a u n d e r s , T . J. Plato, The Laws. Introduction and translation. Penguin Books, 1970.
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S o u il h , ADDENDA
A. The Present Progressive Periphrasis and the Metaphysics o f Aristotle, Phronesis, 1973, 80-90 M o r t o n , A. Q. and W i n s p e a r , A. D. Its Greek to the Computer. Montreal, 1971. O w e n , G . E . L. , Proceedings o f the Third Symposium Aristotelicum, ed. S. Mansion, Louvain and Paris, 1971, 84-103. S c h e i b e , E. ber Relativbegriffe in der Philosophie Platons, Phronesis, 1967, 28-49. S t a n n a r d , J. Plato, Ep. II, 3 12 A , Phronesis,9 i960, 53-5. T a t e , J. Reply to Professor Taylor*, CQ , 1933, 15 9 -16 1. T h o m p s o n , W . H. The Gorgias o f Plato. Introduction, text, notes and appen dix. London, 1971.
C obb, R .
581
(28), 59 . 2
A lcm aeo n
Acharnians (441), 185 n. 1; (1090), 549 n. 4 Birds (699-702), 383 n. I Clouds (961-4), 165; (1089-92), 384 n. 5
A r is t o t l e
Anal . Post. ( i o o a 3 - 8 ) , 3 4 9 ; ( 1 0 0 3 1 3 ) , 428; (ioob4), 428 Anal. Pr. (70 a6), 137 De anima (413 b 24), 388 n. 1 ; (413 b 27), 425 n. 3 ; (415 a 10), 425 n. 3 ; (415 326 if.), 387-8; (43033), 512 n. 2; (432b 1), 425 n. 3 E E (1248b 18), 178 n. i E N ( 1 094b23-5), 536 n. 1; (1098329-31), 536 n. 1; (110 2327-32), 425 n. 3; (110 3317 ), 100 n. 1; (n o 3b 25), 436; (110433), 536 n. i ; (n o4b22), 260 n. 1 ; (1105328), 174; (no6b36), 100 n. 1; (1109334), 350 n. 3; (11 14 3 3 -7 ), 479; (1115 316), 137; (1123 32), 241 n. 1; (ii2 7 b i4 ), 196; (ii29b 25), 435; (1130 a9) 435; ( 3oai2), 435; (113 7 3 17 ), 100 n. 1; (1142b 16), 261 n. 2; (ii45b 27), 228 n. 2; (115 5 h l ff.), 137; ( 1 1 5 5 b4 7), 140 n. 2; (115 7 3 6 -16 ), 137 n. 2; (115 8 3 12), 137; (115 8 32 1), 145; (1159b 12), 154; (1161 b5), 154; (116 2322), 480 n. 2; (1162326), 480 n. 2; (1179 333 ff.), 445 n. 1; (i207b28), 178 n. 1
G A (7 16 3 15 -17 ), 506 n. 2; ( 7 3 ^ 3 1 - 5 ) , 388; (736b27 f.), 388 n. i G C (323b 11), 115 ^ 3 2 9 3 2 4 ff.), 356 n. 2; (335 19), 352 n. 3 Metaph. (980b29-981 35), 287 n. 2; (984 *>23 ff.), 383 n. 1; (985b29), 113 n. 1; (986b 12 -17 ), 35; (986b25-6), 35; (987 329 ff.), 32 n. 1; (987332-67), 118 n. 1; (987332), 13; (987b5), 118 n. 1; (987 b n ) , 2 51; (987b14 18), 2 71; (987b3i), 352 . 3; (9 9 13 8 -11), 351 n. i ; (991320), 355 n. 3; ( 9 9 ^ 3 ) , 352 n. 3; (997 *>), 2 7 i; (999324-9), 48 n. 1 ; (999326-9), 114 ; (1000318), 365 n. 1; (10 10 310 -15), 34; (10 22b 1 5), 113 n. 1; (1023b 17), 218 n. 1; (10 2532-8), 196; (102536), 191 n. 2; (1037329), 118 n. i ; (10 42326 31), 118 n. i ; (1049b 19-27), 349 n. 2; (io69b3~9), 356 n. 2 ; (1070318), 550 n. 2; (i0 7ib 37), 421; (1072326-30), 421; (io72b3), 5 12 11.2 ; (10 7 8 3 3 0 ,17 8 . i; (1078bi2 ff.), 32 . i; (1078b30-4), 550 n. 2; (i078b30-2), 118 n. 1; (i078b30), 32 n. 2; (i0 78b 3i), 32 n. 2, 359 n. 1; (108 6 3 3 1 ^ 1 3 ) , 118 n. 1; (io86b5), 117 bis Meteor. (355 b33 ff.), 337 n. 1, 362 Phys. (18 5b25), 119 n. 1; (191330), 496 n. 2; (19 2b 24), 17 1; (194b 13), 506 n. 2; (i99b2o), 19 n. 1; (20 2311), 186; (bk 8. 5), 171 n. 1; (257b9), 186 Pol. (1260325), 112 . 2 ,242 . 2 ;(i2 6 i 314), 486 n. 4; (1262b 1 5), 481 n. i;(i2 6 2 b 2 4 ), 464 n. 1; (126435), 486 n. 4; (1264326), 49; (127235), 300 n. 2; (1284b 19), 350 n. 3; (130236), 301 n. 1; (1312 34 ), 30; ( 1 3 1 6 3 1 ^ 2 7 ) , 528 n. 2; ( 13 2 3 3 14 19), 292 n. 2; (1323 b 29-32), 292 n. 2; (1335 b 19), 482; (139 031), 178 n. 1; (1403 b 22), 200 Rhet. (13 5 5 b 31), 113 n. 1; (i367b8), 312 ; (139937), 73; (1401324), 268 n. 1; (14 1339 ), 126; (14 1 5 b3o), 313
583
Soph. el.
268
( i b y f f .)
1 65
n.
2;
(i7 7 b i2 ),
Top.
4 5 6 8
(5), . ( 8), 312 . ; ( 22), 313 . (6), 274 . 2 (4), 250 . ; (88), 23
( 1 4 6 3 2 1 ) , 175
D io n y s iu s o f H a l ic a r n a s s u s 55
Pistelli,
fr. (61. 3 f.), 384 n. 1; (118), 518; (119), 518; (120), 518
n.
E p ic r a t e s
2;
n.
(2 17 a ), 366 n. i ; (2 i8 d ),
10 ( 4 1 9 c ), 2 0 n. 4 9
( 5 0 6 a f f .) , 18 n . i
2;
(50 6 c ),
40;
(50 7b ),
12
( 5 4 7 f.), 2 1
n. 3
C ic e r o
De div. De fin.
16
i (2 5 . 5 3 ), 9 4 n. i j (38 . 30 ), 20 7 n. 3 5 (29 . 57 ), 32 6 n.
Bacch. (395), 265 Cretans (fr. 472 N.), 338 n. 3 Hippol. (78-80), 158 Phoen. (657-75), 462 n. 1 Tro. (1051), 137 fr. (161 N.), 418 n. 3; (567), 2 1 1 ; (698), 185 n. 1; (898), 383 n. 1; (944), 403 n. 1
F a v o r in u s
2;
(29 . 8 7 ),
15 ,
n. i, 17 n. 3, 326 n. 2
De or. i ( 5 1 . 2 3 1 ) , 7 5 n . 1 2 (46. 194), 207 n . 3 Or. (44. 151), 321 Rep. i ( 1 0 . 1 5 ) , 1 5 ; ( 1 0 . 1 6 ) , 1 6 Tuse, i ( 1 1 . 2 4 ) , 3 5 8 n . 1 ; ( 1 6 .
C r it ia s
fr. ( 4 1 a D K ) , 1 6 7 n . 2 D e m o c r it u s
Palamedes (fr. 11 a, 30
H e r a c l id e s n. 1, 17 n . 3 39 ), 17 n. 3
D K ),
410 n. 1
fr (35), 487 n. 2; (40), 260 n. 1, 487 n. 2; (51), 371 n. 1; (92), 209; (107), 252 n. 2
H e r m ip p u s
ap.
D .L . i (5 7 ), 200 n. i
D io d o r u s
13 (65), 438
14 (5. 5), 12 6 n. i 15 (7 ), 10 n. i, 18 n. i, 19 n. 1
Vet. Med. (ch. ), 431 . 4; (ch. 15), 431 . 4; (ch. 20), 431 . 4
H o m er
D io g e n e s A p o l l .
fr. ( 5 ) , 1 1 5
D io g e n e s L a e r t iu s
Prooem.
i
(19 ), 326 n. 1
2 (4 0 ), 75
3 (2), 9 , . 2; (3), io; (4), 2 . ; (5), 5 6 ; (6), 13, 14 . 2, 15; (7), 2; (8), 13 . 3; (8), . ; (19), . ; (2), 19 . ; (23), 24 . ; (30), 29;
(3 5 ), 54J (3 7 ), , 49, 51 ; ( 3 8 ),
II. 2 (484-92), 207 5 (449), 151 . 2 9 (308 ff), 193; ( 363), 94 ; (650 ff.), 193 18 (23-7), 452 . 24 (10 f.), 452 . Od. 8 (266 ff.), 373 n. 2 10 (5 11-14 ), 337 n. 2 17 ( 347), 165; (383), 456 n. 2; (423), 442 n.4
H o race
A P (295-8), 207 n. 3
Ia m b l ic h u s
584
Is o c r a t e s
bis y
309; 309; (9 3), 438; (18 0 ), 310 , (18 3), (217 ), 4 17; ( 2 5 2 f.), ( 2 6 4 f f .) ,
(3 8 c -4 2 a ), 74 ;
Amid.
330;
( 8 4 f.),
( 3 8 d -e ),
( 3 9 e - 4 2 a ),
(4 1a ),
30 5; (4 1b ), 76
3 10 ; (258 ), 3 1 1 ;
( 2 6 1 f f .) , 3 1 1 ;
3 0 9 ; ( 2 7 1 ) , 3 1 1 , 4 16 . 3 ; ( 2 8 i ), 30 9
n. 2 , 3 7 9 n. 3 ; ( 1 5 3 d ),
56 b
-i
57 a
) , 296 ; ( i 11;
57 ;
( i
57d ) ,
156 ; 1
(158 a ),
(i5 8 d ),
12 4 ;
(158 e ),
1 5 1 . ; (15 9 a ) , 16 8 ; ( 1 5 9 c ) , 16 5 ; (16 0 e ), 16 5; (16 1b ), 276; 16 5; (16 3c ), 16 8 ; (i6 4 d ), 440 n. 1; n. (16 2 a ), 386 n. 159 2; n. 1;
(16 3d ), (16 4 c ), 12 4 ; 2 8 1; n. n. 2; 2;
(16 3e ), n. 1;
(16 4 b ), 16 9 ; 3;
170 ;
(16 5C -16 6 C ),
ap.
P o rp h . v.
Plot.
(20 ), 39 n. 2
( 16 5 c ), (16 5e ),
16 9 16 8 ;
(16 5 d -e ), 16 9 ,
L u c ia n
(16 6 c ),
Paras.
L y s ia s
O r.
(4 3), 13 . 3
(18 .
6 ),
12 6
n.
1;
(26 .
3),
16 7
n.
1;
(26 . 5), 16 7 n. i
M e l is s u s
fr. ( 8 . 6 ) , 2 7 7 . i
M enander
fr. ( 2 4 1
ff), 281
472; n.
(174 b ),
O l y m p io d o r u s
O 7 5 c d ) , 1 3 4 ; ( 1 7 6 c ) ,
VP
fr .
(3), 396
*5 ( 4) , 13
492 .
4 , 19
P a r m e n id e s
(i. 3 )> 35,
Clitophon Cratylus
. 2; (38 9 b ), 10 2, 305
y,
(2. 7 ),
488
(3 8 8 b -c ), 550 ; (38 9 a ), 13 4 . , 545 n. 3 ; 279, 436; (39 0 b ), 10 2 436; n. 2 ; 33; (39 < Sd ), (4 0 0 c ), (4 0 3e ), n. 2 ; n. 2;
(6 . 8 ), 4 9 2 3 i ( 7 4 f), 3 5 * .
P a u s a n ia s
10 2 . ,
n. 2 ; 339
(3 9 9 a), n. 1;
(30. 1) , 380
9
P lato
( 39 8 ) ,
(4 0 2 a ),
559
. 2
385
n. 2 ; (4 0 9 a ), 3 7 ; ( 4 2 3 d -e ), 35 5 524 n. 2; (4 2 8 c), 10 2
(4 2 3 d ),
Alcibiades / ( n i b ) , 4 0 8 . ; ( i 8 d - i 1 9 a ) 217 . 2; ( i 2 6 a ) , 1 5 1 . ; ( i 2 8 d ) , 9 1 . 2; ( 1 3 1 b ) , 1 6 9 . 2; ( 1 3 1 c - d ) , 3 8 2 . ;
0 3 3 e) ,
16 9 . 2 ; ( 1 3 5 b ) , 18 4 . 2 d ), 8 0 - 5 ;
(4 2 9 d ), 2 7 7 n. 2
Crito
( 4 4 d ),
9 9 -10 0 ;
(4 5 b ),
93
n.
2,
326;
( 4 5 e ), 10 1 ; ( 4 6 d ) , 9 9
bis,
10 1 ; (4 7 b -4 8 a ) ,
9 8 , 2 9 6 ; ( 4 7 b ), 9 9 ; ( 4 7 d f f ) , 2 9 6 ; (4 7 d ), 90, 9 8 ; (4 8 0 -4 9 3 ), 350 ; ( 4 8 d ), 9 9 , 10 1 ;
Apology ( 1 7 3 - 3 5
(17a), 7 5 ; (17c),
(4 8 e ), 9 9 ; (4 9 3), 99,
10 1 ; (4 9 b ), 90, 98,
(5 2 d ) , 10 1
( 2 4 c 2 8 a ) , 7 7 ; n. n. 1; 1; (2 5 a), 78
( 2 4 c ), 88; n. n. n. 1; 3; 3;
Epinomis ( 9 9 2 b ) , 6 3 Epist. 2 ( 3 1 4 3 - b ) , 6 6 ;
3 ( 3 !6 c ) , 25 n. 2 4 (3 2 1 b -c ), 30 n. 2 7 (325c), 19 12 ; ( 3 2 5 d ), n. 3 ;
( 3 1 4 b -c ), 66
(25 c -e ),
(25 d ),
(28 b -d ), 3, 327 . ,
18 0 379
19
n. 2 ;
(326 3), 17 3; n.
ii, 4;
88, 296;
(2 9 c -d ),
74 ;
( 2 9 d ), 9 0 ; 10 7
n. 2, 485 18 ;
(32 6 b ), 18
17, n.
(2 9 e -3 o b ) n. n. 9 3; 1; 2;
2 9 6 ; (2 9 e), 8 9 ; ( 3 o a -b ) ,
(326 e), 25
( 3 2 7 b -d ),
(328 3),
n. 2 ; (3 2 8 b ), 25, 25
n. 2 ; (32 8 c ), 485
n. 3 ; (328 e ), 30 ; (329 b ), 2 6 ; (335 (336 3), 26, 2 7; 3 1; (338 3), (34 1 b -d ), 26, 26 I, 526 n. n. 1; 1;
3),
30 7;
(338 d ), (34 2d ),
3 2 7 n. 1 ; (3 3 e ), 94
bis\
(3 4 a ), 10 n. 3, 1 1 ,
585
n.
1;
(4 6 ib -4 8 ib ),
2 8 7-9 ;
549 n. 2; (345 e), 27; (349-50), 10 n. 1; ( 35d ), 3 1 Euthydemus ( 2 7 1 c ) , 2 6 7 , 2 6 8 ; ( 2 7 2 b ) , 2 6 7 , 275 > (273 c), 2 6 8 n. 2 ; ( 2 7 5 a ) , 2 6 7 bis, 2 8 0 ;
(2 7 5 b ), 269 275; (2 7 5 d ), 2 5 7 ; ( 2 7 7 e 2 7 8 b ) ,
( 4 6 1 c - d ) , 2 9 5 ; ( 4 6 2 b c ) , 3 1 5 , 4 0 7 (4 6 2 b ), (4 6 2e ), 2 18 285, 2 18 i, 287
n.
i;
n.
1;
2;
( 4 6 2 c f f .) , 308;
430
n.
1;
(46 33),
(4 6 3 b ),:
n.
407
n.
(4 6 3 h l), 16 4 299;
287
n.
3 ;
(4 6 3c), (4 6 4 b ), 18 6 , 302; 30 7
295; 310 ;
n.
2,
296;
n.
( 4 6 6 b f f .) , ( 4 6 7 c d ) , (4 6 7 6 7 ), 302
(27 8 e -28 2d ),
n. 1; ( 2 8 0 e ) , n. i ; ( 2 8 1 d - e ) ,
266, 280;
n. 3 8 1 n. 3 8 1 n.
2; 5; 5 ;
538;
(4 6 6 e ), 14 8 ,
n. n.
2; 358; 3,
(4 6 7e ),
n.
3;
(4 6 8 c ), 296,
bis;
18 6 ;
(28 2 c ), a ), 2 6 8
(28 2 d ),
(4 6 9 b ),
9 1,
(4 70 3),
; (2 8 3 c - d ) ,3 4 ; (2 8 3 e ), n. 2 , 2 7 1 n. i ; ( 2 8 4 c ) , 2 7 6 , 2 7 7 ; ( 2 8 5 d ) , 2 7 7 ; ( 2 8 5 e ) , 2 7 1 n. 2; ( 2 8 6 c ) , 2 6 7 ; ( 2 8 7 d ) , 2 7 2 n. 1 ; ( 2 8 8 d 2 9 2 e ) , 2 8 0 ; ( 2 8 8 d ) , 2 6 5 ; ( 2 8 8 e ) , 2 8 0 n. i ; ( 2 9 0 c ) , 2 8 1 ; ( 2 9 0 e ) , 2 8 0 n. 3 ; ( 2 9 1 b ) , 281 n. 4 ; ( 2 9 1 c ) , 2 8 1 ; ( 2 9 i d - 2 9 2 a ) , 1 6 0 n. 3 ; ( 2 9 1 d - e ) , 2 8 1 n. 2; ( 2 9 2 a ) , 2 8 1 n. 2; ( 2 9 2 b f f . ) , 5 0 5 n. 3 ; ( 2 9 2 d ) ,
2 7 7 ; ( 2 8 4 b c ) , 1 5 9 2 8 1; (2 9 6 a -c ), 2 7 7 ; (29 6 e ), 2 7 7 ; (3o o d 266; 1; (30 1 a -c), 278; 278 (30 1a ), 18 9 , 30 1a ), 19 0 283
n. i ; ( 2 8 3
n.
31
1 ;
i ; (4 7 1 d ), 3 0 2 ; ( 4 7 1 e f f ) , 289
n.
1;
( 4 7 2 d ), 247 18 6 2;
302;
(4 74 c ff),
9 1 ;
n. n.
2; 1;
(474e ),
n. n.
(4 4 73 2, 30 2; ( 4 7 9 b )
n.
2, 296; (4 77
a),
247
n.
1;
(4 7 8 c ), 3 0 2 ); (4 7 9 3 -c ), 95 302; (4 79 e ),
9 1 ; ( 4 8 1 b 5 2 7 c ) ,
2 8 9 -9 4 ;
( 4 8 2 d e ) , 3 1 1 ; ( 4 8 4 c f f . ) , 3 0 9 ; ( 4 8 4 C - 4 8 5 e ), 499 289
n. .
i ; ( 4 8 6 d 4 8 8 b ) , 2 9 5 ; ( 4 8 7 e ) ,
n.
1; (4 9 0 6 -4 9 13), 379
n.
4;
(4 9 1a ), 156
n.
(3 0 13 8 -9 ),
n. 2;
(30 4 e ),
1 7 6 ,2 0 8
i ; (4 9 1 c -e ) , 1 5 7 ; (4 9 1 d ),
5K 49 1 e -4 9 2 3), 2 31
n.
2, 30 3;
(4 9 2c),
3 0 3 ; ( 4 9 2 d ), 28 9 540
n.
2;
i, 435
n.
n.
2;
(4 9 3 a -c ), 291
284;
(4 9 6 C 8 ),
n.
(4 9 6 d 5), 15 1
n.
2;
n. i,
18 6 , 2 78 , 30 7,
70;
15,
(5a ), 116 ,
10 8 ; ( 5 d ), 12 0 ; 116
n.
i,
112 , 12 0
114 -
30 7; 3 8 ;
(4 9 8 d 2 ), ( 499 b ) 18 6
( 5 d 1 5 ) ,
115,
n. 2;
10 8 ,
n.
2;
3 3 >
(5 d 1 - 2 ) , n o 112, (6 e ), (9 d ),
n. 2;
18 8
(5 d 4 ) , 114 ,
115 ;
(6 a -b ),
( 499 d -
5 03) ,
2, 289
( 499 d ) ,
n. n.
4,
n.
1;
(6 d -e ), 18 8 , 134
115 ; 18 9 , 18 4 ,
(6 d ), 225 18 4
n.
118 , 118 ,
n.
4,
n.
1;
(8 a ),
n. n.
1; 1;
n.
n.
i,
298, 4 16 ,
(5o o d ), 516 ;
303;
(5 o o e -5 o ib ), 30 3;
4 17;
259 n. 1 ; ( 1 0 a - c ) , 1 1 2 ; ( 1 0 b ) , 105 n. 2, 108; (n a ), 113, 115, 120; (n b -e ), 122; ( n c ) , 259 n. 1; (11 eff.), 106 n. 2, 1 1 3 ; ( n e -i6 a ) , 12 2; (n e ), 109; ( n e n ) , 113 n. 3; (12a), 471 n. 3; ( 1 2 c), 218 n. 1; ( i 2 d e), 430, 435 i (iad), 106 n. 2; (i2d 5~7), 114 ; (12e), 104. i; (13b), 106 n. 2; (i3 c -i4 e ), 119 ; ( 13 e 14a), 107 n. 1; (13e), 122 n. 1; ( ^ 3 ) , 123; (14c), 123; ( 1 4 C 5 ) , 119 ; (Md), 131 Gorgias ( 4 2 7 b ) , 9 1 ; ( 4 3 6 c ) , 2 4 4 ; ( 4 4 4 c ) , 1 6 4 n. 2 ; ( 4 4 7 3 - 4 6 1 b ) , 2 8 6 - 7 ; ( 4 4 7 a-c), 2 2 1 n. 2 ; (447b), 2 8 5 ; (447c), 2 8 6 n. 1 ; ( 4 4 8 c), 2 8 7 n. 2 ; ( 4 4 8 e), 1 0 4 n. 2 ; (4 4 9 b ), 275, 299; (449e), 2 9 8 n. 2 ; (4 52d ), 241 n. 2 , 2 9 8 ; (453a), 2 9 7 ; (4 54 b ), 297; (454c), 2 4 4 , 2 5 9 n. 1 ; (454e ), 296, 3 15 ; (455 a), 4 0 7 n. 1; ( 4 5 5 ^ c), 2 9 6 ; ( 4 5 6 C - 4 5 7 C ) , 3 1 0 ; (457e),
(50 1b ),
(5 0 ie -5 0 2 d ), 2; (50 2 d -e ),
(5 0 ie -5 0 2 c ), 453
n.
( 5 0 3 e f f .) , 2 9 9 ; ( 5 0 4 b f f .) , 2 9 6 ; ( 5 0 4 b - d ) , 16 4 298
n. n.
1;
2 ; (50 4 d ), 4 14 (5 o 6 b -e ), 298
n. n.
n. i ;
(50 8 b ), 3 0 2 ;
(510 b ), 284 12 9
n.
443;
4, 516
n.
n.
3;
(518 b ),
284;
(5 2 1 b -d ), 264,
(5 2 1 c -d ), n
(5 2 1 d ), 30 7;
4;
(5 2 3a ), 30 7,
(523d ), 1;
n.
1;
(524 a ), 1;
339
n.
1; 1;
(524 b ),
340
n.
(5 2 4 d -e )
423
(5 2 4 6 -5 2 5 3 ),
556
n.
3 ; (52 5b ), 296
n. n.
( 5 2 5 d ), 3 0 1 ; (5 2 6 c ), 1 6 6 (52 7 c ), 319
n.
i ; (527 3), 30 7;
297- 8 ;
(4 5 8 b -c ),
285;
(4 6 0 3-c ),
19 8 ;
Hippias Major ( 2 8 2 b ) , 1 7 7 ; ( 2 8 6 3 - c ) , 2 2 1 n. 1 ; ( 2 8 6 3- b ) , 2 0 6 n. 1 ; ( 2 8 6 b ) , 1 9 1 n. 3 , 1 9 2 ; ( 2 8 6 d ) , 1 7 5 n. 3 , 1 7 9 n. 1 ; ( 2 8 6 e ) , 1 1 6 ; ( 2 8 7 b ) , 1 7 9 n. 1 ; ( 2 8 7 c - d ) ,
586
n.
353
(28 9 d ), 176 ;
bis;
n. 2,
549 n. 2
(29 o d ), 179 n. 1 ;
18 0 ,
18 4 ;
(29 0 e ),
(2 9 1a ), 18 9
Lysis
(18 3b ),
4 18
n.
1;
(20 4 b -c), f f .) ,
136
(2 9 2 c ),
19 0 ; (2 9 2 d ),
(20 6 d ), (20 7d f f .) ,
135 ; 13 n.
(20 7b
138 -4 3 137 n. 1
2;
( 2 0 7 d ),
(2 io d ), 14 2 b -c ), (213c ), (2 14 e ), 137
. . 2;
; (2 11b ), (2 i2 d ),
( 2 9 4 d ),
14 7; 14 0 ;
(2 14 6 -2 15 3 ), ( 2 1 5 c), 14 6 ,
14 7;
(215 d)
(29 7c ), 17 5 , ,
(2 9 8 a -b ), (29 8 b ),
bis, n . 2;
.
14 1
( 2 17 a -b ),
(217 b ),
(29 8 a ), 18 2 358 .
99;
(29 9 a ), (30 0 39 ), 1;
19 1;
(30 0 a ),
18 7;
bis;
(30 0 a 10 ), 3 5 8 ; (30 0 d ), 60 n.
2;
(218 a ),
14 8
. ; (30 1 d -e ), 1 8 7 ; (30 1 d ),
(2 18 b ), 14 9 ; (2 i8 d 14 4 14 9 ,
n. 2 ; (30 4 d ), 17 6 ( 3 6 3 a -b ), 2 2 1 n. 1 ; ( 3 6 3 3 6 19 6 ;
3,
14 9 ; ( 2 i9 a -b ),
Hippias Minor
b 4 ), 19 1
15 1 , 38 6 ; (219 c ), 151, 15 1 n. n. 3 ; 3;
14 1;
n. 3 ; (36 6 c), 4 3 5 ; (3 6 7 c ),
(2 2 0 b ),
(22 0 c ),
(3 6 8 b ), 80 . ; (3 7 4 c ), 19 6 . ;( 3 7 5 * > ) , 276;
(2 2 0 d -e ), (220 e ), (22 2 a ),
15 1
(2 2 o e -2 2 ib ), 14 2
(375 d
f f .) , 1 9 6 ;
(375 d ) ,
4;
19 5; (
375e ) ,
200; n. 1;
14 9 ; 14 2 ,
(2 2 1 d -e ), 14 9 ,
1 9 7 ; (3 7 6 a ), 1 9 5 ; ( 3 7 6 b ) , 10 0
16 4 , 3 8 6 ; ( 2 2 2 b ),
Ion
(
(5 3 0 a -b ),
19 9
n.
(5 30 b ),
(222c
( 5 3 d ), 2 0 1, 20 1
. , 206 n. 1, 2 2 1
135 152
Menexenus
(236 a ), (2 35 d ), 322 n. 1; 312 , 312 n. 463 1, 313 n. 3 (237d ),
533c - 534d ) ,
202,
2 10 , 2 1 1 - 1 2 ; (
533e - 534e ) ,
( 5 3 4 c -d ), 1; (534 d ), n. n. 1; 1; 201
d ), 14 9 , 3 8 6 ; ( 2 2 2 c ) , 1 4 2 ; ( 2 2 3 b )
(24 5 e ), 3 13 3 ; (24 6 e ), 3 19
2, 245 10 8
Meno
(71a ),
132 ;
(71b ),
10 4
n. (71
(534 d 3), (5 35 b -e ), 2 10 ;
203 453
2;
e),
( 5 3 4 e 4 ), (5 35 d ), . 546 ,
n. 3 ;
(72 6 3)
(536 c ), ,
(536 d ),
(74 a ),
241
209,
2 10 ; 19 9
( 5 3 7 a f f .) , n. 4 ; (54 1e ),
(75 b -7 6 a ), 276 n. 1;
248;
(75 d) 90 1
2;
(54 1 c -d ),
( 7 7 b 7 8 b ) , 247 n.
20 1 . , 20 9 ; (54 2 a ), 2 10 ; (5 4 2 b ), 209
(77 b ), (77
246, b ),
(7 7 b 7),
Laches c),
(19 1
(18 1b ),
379
n.
3;
(18 5e ),
89,
133,
c 78
2 4 6 -7;
c),
247;
(78 3-b )
n.
1;
(19 0 b ), 134 ;
(8 0 3 -b ), 24 1
132 ;
(19 0 c),
10 8 ,
(i9 o d ),
( 8 0 d ), 2 3 8 n. 1 ; ( 8 1 3 - d ) , 2 4 9 - 5 3 ; ( 8 1 3 ) 2 4 1, 258 250 n. n. 2, 3 3 9 ; (8 1 c -d ), 4 2 6 ; (8 1 1; (8 1
a ff),
152 ;
10 8 ; ( 1 9 1 d ), 1 3 3 ; ( 1 9 1 e ) , 1 3 4 ; 134 16 5 ;
c)
(19 2b ),
c6),
252;
(81
c8),
254
bis,
10 8 ;
(8 1 d ), 2 5 2 2 5 4 -6 ; (8 5c), (8 5e ),
n. 2 ; (8 2 3 ), 249;
237;
(8 2b -8 5 b ) 172
( 8 4 b c ) , 278
n.
1;
(8 5 d -8 6 3 ), (8 6 3), 253
(19 5c), 19 9 a ),
(19 7e ), 12 8
134 ; 1;
(i9 8 d -
bis;
n. 2 ;
(8 6 b ) (8 6 e -
(19 9 a ),
n.
(19 9 b -c ),
; ( 8 7 3 -b ), 240 n. 3 ; (8 7 b) 222; (8 7
n.
3 ; (20 1b ),
(8 7 C -8 9 3 ),
c),
259,
280
Laws (658d), 20a; (674a-b), 454 n. 3; (719c d), 210; (721 b-c), 390 n. 5; ( 739 c - e ) , 484; ( 757 b f f ) , 301 n. 1 ; (8i9b-c), 526 n. 2; (837b-d), 394 n. 1;
260
(88c),
236;
38 1 n. 5 ; (8 9 d -e ), 2 1 7 n. 2 ; (8 9 e ) 236
(9 0 b ),
bis;
(9 13),
241
n.
587
n.
2;
(9 3a -9 4 e ), 236;
2 17
n.
2; 240
348; 348;
(9 5e
(9 5 e ), 2 6 1-5 ;
348; (9 7a ),
(9 4 e ),
(9 5c ),
237,
( 9 7 3 -9 9 d ),
n.
2, 2 8 7 ; (9 6 b -c ), 2 17
n. 2; n.
( 9 7 d ), 10 8 ;
( 9 7 b c ) , 334 350; n. 4; n. 1;
( 9 7 e -9 8 a ), 3 4 9 ; (9 8 a ), 2 5 3 ; ( 9 8 3 6 ), 2 6 4 ; (9 8 b ), 88 4 17
bis;
2;
(9 9 b ),
2 6 1, 352 262; n. 3;
n.
1;
(9 9 a ), 2 7 0
1 ; (9 9 c -d ) , (9 9 e ), 4 9 1;
(9 9 h l 1), ( 9 9 c )> 8 -9 ),
(9 9 c -d ),
n.
1;
(9 9 e -i0 0 b ), 2 6 4 ;
506 350 n.
(9 9 0 4 -6 ), 515
(9 9 c
( 9 9 d ),
Phaedo
(5 7a -b ),
326;
(59 a ),
366;
(59 b ),
9 4 , 1 3 5 ; (6 0 b ), 3 2 6 ; (6 1 a ), 2 0 , 4 0 3 (6 1 d -e ), 3 2 5 , 32 5 (6 3d ), (6 4 e 5),
n. 2; n.
1;
n.
4 ; (6 2 b ), 339 , 5 18 ;
3 2 6 ; (6 4 a ), 3 2 6 ; (6 4 c ), 340
355 36 0 ; (io 2 d ), 3 5 3 ; (io 2 e 2 ) , 356 n. 2 ; (10 3 3-c ), n. 2; 342 n. 2, 356; 356 (10 3 3-b ), n. 1; 225
346;
( 6 5 b ) , 1 8 7 n. I , 4 2 1 ; ( 6 5 d ) ,
12 0 ,3 4 0 ,3 4 0 4 2 1; 39 1, 327 260
n. 2 , 3 5 2 , 3 5 9 n. 2 , 3 9 1 ; ( 6 6 a ) , ( 6 6 3 3 ) , 3 4 6 ; ( 6 6 c ) , 3 3 8 . , 3 4 7 ,
( 6 6 d ), 3 9 1 ; (6 6 e ), 3 9 1 ; (6 7 C 3 ) , (6 8 b -6 9 d ), (6 8 d -e ), 389; 34 1; (6 8 d -6 9 c ), (6 8 d ), 364; 3; 1;
(10 3 b 4 -6 ),
(io 3 b 5 ),
3 5 4 ; (io 3 b 8 ), 356 . ; (10 3 C 1), 356 n. 1 ; (10 3e ), 357; (10 36 4 -5), 356 n. 4;
448 ;
n. n.
( i o 3 e 5 - 6 ) ,3 5 7 ; ( i0 4 d 1), 3 5 6 n. 3 ; (io 4 d 5 -6 ) , 359 n 2 ; (10 5 3 1 - 5 ) , 359 n. 2 ; (10 5 d io 6 d ), 358 357 n. 4; (io 6 d ), 359; (10 7c ), (10 9 b ),
n.
3;
n.
bis,
n.
36 4 , 5 5 4 ; ( 10 8 d -e ), 3 6 3 ;
( 7 0 c f f .) , 335;
36 1; (m e ), 336 4;
18 n. 1 ; ( 112 b ) , 3 6 2 ; ( 112 c ), ( i i
( 72 e - 7 7 e ) , 249
2 e 8-
i i
33i ) ,
361
n.
2;
(7 3 c -e ),
n.
3;
ff.) , 3 4 2
n.
( 1 13 b ) , 18 n. 1 ; ( 1 14 c ) , 3 5 8 ; ( ii4 d ) , 30 7,
n.
2 ; (74 b ), 152 ,
18 4
n. 2 ; n. 1 ;
(7 4 39 (74 c 0 ,
358,
366
363;
5e ) ,
14 6
n. 1 ,2 4 4 ; ( I I
7d ),
4 18 ;
( 7 4 d -e ),
345,
351
359
> ( 74 d ) ,
344,
Phaedrus
(231c ),
(228 d ), 137,
399 137
n. n.
1; 2;
(230 b ),
. ; .
( 7 5 a b ) , 2 5 6 253, 345,
. ;
(75b ), 550
( 7 5 c -d ),
n.
2;
( 7 5 d ),
39 9 -4 0 0 ; 60 n. 1;
( 2 3 4 c 2 3 7 b ) , ( 2 3 4 6 -2 3 5 b ),
I, 3 5 9 ; (7 5 e ), 2; (77e ),
345; ( 7<5d ) ,
363; (78
( 7 8 b f f .) ,
( 2 3 7 b c ) , 4 1 4 ;
( 2 3 7 d -e ), n. 1 ; n. n. 1; 1;
( 7 8 b 8 4 b ) ,
3 3 0 -1;
c 80
389,
b ),
156 n. n.
n. n.
2 ; ( 7 8 d ), 3 5 9 ; (7 9 a f f ) , ( 79 d X
( 2 3 8 c ), ( 2 4 0 d ), (24 2b ),
359>
556
n.
4;
(8 0 a ), 35 9 , 54 3 557 n. 1;
2 ; (8 0 b ), 4 2 4 ; (8 0 d -e ), (8 1a ), 262, 3 4 1,
(2 4 3 3),
(24 4 3-
(8 ia -e ), 4 2 3 ;
2 4 5 0 , 4 0 1 - 2 ; ( 2 4 5 c 2 4 6 d ) , 4 0 2 ; ( 2 4 5 c ) , 171 . , 4 19 ; ( 2 4 5 d 8 -e i) , 4 2 0 ; (24 5 e ),
n.
3;
3 ; (8 1 b 5), 3 4 1 (8 1
n.
3;
n.
c),
4 2 1;
(8 id 5 ),
n. 3 ; ( 8 1 d 6 ) , 3 4 1 n. 3 ; ( 8 1 e 2 ) , n. 3 ; ( 8 2 3 - b ) , 3 4 1 ; ( 8 2 3 ) , 3 8 9 ; ( 8 2 b ) , . , 4 8 7 n. 1 ; ( 8 2 c ) , 2 3 4 n. 3 ; ( 8 2 e ) , n. 1 ; ( 8 4 3 - b ) , 4 2 4 n. 3 ; ( 8 4 C - 8 8 b ) >
(8 4 d ), 352 364; (8 5c ff), 34 7 -8 ;
(247e),
426;
3 3 1-2 ; (8 5 c -d ),
n. 4 , 3 5 8 ; ( 8 5 e - 8 6 3 ) , ' 3 4 7 ; ( 8 6 b c ) , 3 4 7 n. 3 ; ( 8 6 e - 8 8 b ) , 3 4 8 ; ( 8 7 d ) , 3 9 1 ; ( 8 8 c 9 1 c), 3 3 2 ; ( 8 8 c ) , 3 2 6 ; ( 8 9 3 - b ) ,
326; (9 d ), (9 2 d ), (9 1b ), 348; 120 ; 340 ; (9 1C -9 5 3), 555 347 3 3 2 -3 ; (9 2 c-9 4 b ), (9 2 e -9 4 b ),
(24 9 a ), 34 2 , 405 . , 405 n. 2 ; (2 4 9 b -c ), 392, 492 n. 427; n. 3; 1; (24 9 b ), (24 9 b 7), 342, 252 . , 474 n. 3, 502
427; 4 18 ; 427;
(2 4 9 c -d ),
(24 9 c),
n. n.
5; 2;
4 0 4 -6 ;
(2 5 0 b -d ),
(9 2 6 -9 3 3 ),
348;
(9 4 3), 3 4 7 ; (9 4b ), 346 ,
3),
14 9 ; ( 2 5 5 b ),
588
(cont.)
150 ; (256 c), 137 ; (2 5 6 c !), 423; (2 5 7 b -2 5 9 d ), 406; (2 57 b ), 4 0 6 -7; (259 e ),
2 2 2 -6 ; 471 n. 471
(3 2 9 C -3 3 0 3 ), 3; n. (330 b ), 3;
10 6 471
n. n.
2; 3;
14 7,
(3 3 0 c -d ), 119 ; (
115 ;
(2 5 9 e -2 0 2 c ),
n. 2 ; (3 3 d -e ), 10 6 n. 2;
33 1
a ),
(331b ),
( 3 3 2 a - 3 3 3 b )>
(2 6 2 b -c ), 4 1 4 ; (2 6 2 b ), 16 8 n. 1 ; ( 2 6 2 c 26 9 c ), 4 0 7 -8 ; (2 6 4 a -e ), 4 15 ; (26 5a ),
(334 d ), 6 1;
336d ) ,
(3 3 8 e -339 a ),
206
(26 5e ), 428, 4 14 ;
550,
n. 2 ; 315 ;
( 2 6 6 d 2 6 7 d ) , 4 0 8 -9 ; 4 31;
(34 7e ), n. 1;
(2 6 9 0 -2 7 2 ^ ,
(26 9 d ),
(34 8 d ),
414;
c -d ), 4 15;
(270 a ), 432;
(2 7 0 b 5), 16 4 n. 2;
(27 0
(270 c),
( 2 7 2 b 2 7 4 a ) , 76 ; ( 2 7 3 d -e ),
4 0 9 -10 ; 428;
4;
(35o b 7),
273a ), 57;
(3 5 0 c -d ), 2 26 ; (350 C 4 ), 229 n. i ; (3 5 o d e ), 229 442 n. 230; n. 4; (35o d 6 ), 1; 229 n. 1; (3 5 0 0 4 -6 ), 2 3 1-5 ; ( 3 5 1 d ), 12 3; n. 3, (351b ), 224;
( 2 7 4 b 2 7 9 b ) , 65 n. 1;
4 10 -11; (276 a ),
(275a ), 57, 59
(2 7 5 d -e ), (2 7 6 d ), (2 7 7 b 7),
( 3 5 1 b 3 5 7 b ) , 233;
59;
( 2 7 7 b c ) , 4 2 8 ; (27 7e ), 62;
(277b ), (27 8 b ),
(351C 1),
4 3;
(351e ), 16 9 ( n. 1;
30 3;
( 3 5 2 b -d ), 234
(352e ), 331 n. 1;
6 0 ; ( 2 7 8 d -e ), 6 3 ; ( 2 7 8 d ), 9 0 ,1 4 9 ; (2 7 9 a b ), 24
( 3 5 3 d -e ),
355a ) , 3 3 >
(357d ), 130
(356 a 5), 30 3; n. 2;
235;
30 4, 1; 1;
Philebus
519 ;
(i4 c -d ),
( 3 5 8 d ),
n.
bis;
(36 o d ), 12 8 n. i, 2 2 8 ; (3 6 0 6 -3 6 13 ), 13 2 ; ( 3 6 1a ), 13 4 ; (3 6 1c ), 10 4 n. 2
( 2 6 d ), 495
Republic
( 3 2 7 -3 3 1 d ), (
439; b ),
4 3 9 -4 1;
333e 3 3 4
n. 2 ; (5 ie -5 2 b ), (6 4 e ), 18 3 n. i,
54 1 n. 2 ; 18 6 n. 4,
4 0 7 n. 3, 4 35 ; (3 3 5 b -d ), 76 n. 1 ; (3 3 5 b ), 10 6 n. 2 ; ( 3 3 6 b -3 5 4 c ) , 4 4 1 - 2 ; ( 3 3 6 c -d ) ,
(56 d ), 19 1
522;
Politicus
(26 3c),
438; 443;
n. 2 ;
(2 6 8 d -e ), 6 1 ;
(26 9 b ),
354a ) ,
54 1; 54 1;
4435
542; 54 1; 426;
339
306;
(36 4 b 54 1;
( 3 io d - e ) , 16 5
(3 6 5 c ),
Protagoras
2 14 ; 241 281
(30 9 a ),
201
n.
1,
214 ;
(313a ),
445- 6 ;
(370 b ), n. ( 2,
( 3 6 9 6 -3 7 1 b ),
446 ;
483
( n.
37i a ) ,
1;
(3 2 0 c ), 2 1 7 n. 3 ; (3 2 o d ), 4 6 3 ; ( 3 2 2 a -b ), 4 4 5 ; ( 3 2 2 b 3), 2 16 n. 3 ; ( 3 2 2 b 5), 2 16 n.
( 3 7 2 d 3 7 4 c ) ,
4 4 6 -7 ;
372e ) ,
ff),
296 n. 1 ; (3 24 d -3 2 5 3 ), 223
(3 7 7 3 -3 9 2 0 ), n. 1;
(377e ), 201
(378 d ),
(3 2 5 6 -3 2 6 3 ),
206
(327d ),
2 14 ;
379b
n.
-c ), 1;
(38 2 3), n.
4 57; 2;
441
(38 6 b ), 455
(38 7c),
n. 2 ; (3 8 8 3 -b ), 4 52 n. i ; (38 8 e ), 455 n. 2 ;
589
46 6 . , 4 8 2 ; (4 5 9 e ), 46 6 n. 2 ; (4 6 0 a ),
( 3 8 9 b -d ), 4 55 n. 2 ; (3 8 9 b ), 4 5 7 , ( 3 9 2 c 39 8 b ), 4 5 2 - 3 ; ( 464;
(39 5 b -c ),
( 3 9 5 d ), 4 5 2 ; ( 3 9 6 a -b ) , 4 5 5 n. 2 ; ( 3 9 6 b ),
494
211,
n.
470 n . 3 ; (460c), 482 bis; (4 6 1c ), 482; (462 a ff.), 468 n . 2 ; (462 c -d ), 445 n . 2 ; (4 6 5 d -4 6 6 b ), 467 n . 2 ; (4 6 6 e -4 7 ic ), 4 8 2 -3 ; (466e), 453 n . 1 ; (468a), 464; (470c), 14 2 . 1 , 482; (470e), 485; (471 c), 4 8 3 ; (472b f f ) , 4 8 3; (472b), 434 n . 2 ; (472 d), 447 ; (473 a), 484; (475 c), 487; (475 d), n . 2 ; (475 e ) , 459 ; (476a), 498; (476b ff.), 34 5 ; (4 7 6 d -4 7 7 d ), 169 n . 1 ; (4 76d ), 490; (4 77a), 14 8 ; (478a), 492 n . 2 ; (479a b), 344 n. 3 ; (479b), 184 n . 1 , 488 n . 3, 494; (479e), 492 n 2 ; (484a), 434 n. 2 ; (484c), 49 ; (485 c), 14 2 n. 1 , 458 ; (4 8 5d ), 394 n . 3, 538 n . 1 ; (487a), 4 35 ; (487e), 548; (48 83-4893), 523 n . 3 ; (4 8 9 3-b ), 4 13 n . 2 ; (4 9 0 3-c), 4 57; (491 d), 224 . ; (4 9 2b -4 9 3d ), 502 n . 1 ; (4 943-502C ), 2 5 ; (494a), 9 2 ; (494b), 2 5 ; ( 494 d), 500; ( 494 e), 9 2 n . 1 ; (495 c -d , 540 n . 1 ; (496b), 504 n . 1 ; (497 c -d ), 4 71 n . 1 ; (499b -d ), 48 5; (4 9 9 d -50 2c), 521 n . 1 ; (50 0b -d ), 502 n . 3 ; (500b), 502; (5 o o c -d ), 500, 525 ; (500c), 360 n . 3, 544; (5ood), 502; (500e), 547; (5 0 1a ), 4 8 5; (50 2 b ), 526, 539 n . 2 ; (502c), 485; (5 0 3 c -d ), 498 n . 5 ; (504b), 474; (5053), 5 10 . , 5 18 n . 1 ; ( o b -c ), 50 5 -6 ; (505 d ), 50 3; (505 e ) , 504, 518 n . 1 ; (5 0 6 -18 ), 352 n . 1 ; (50 6 c -e ), 5 12 n . 1 ; (5 o 6 d -e ), 505 n . 4 ; (506e), 506 n . 3 ; (507 b -5 0 9 c ), 50 6 -8 ; (507b), 554 n . 3 ; (508 b - c ) , 506; (508b), 506 n . 3 ; (5 0 8 e 509b), 1 5 2 ; (5093), 542 n . 2 ; (509c), 5 12 n . 1 ; ( 5 0 9 d - 5 iie ) , 5 0 8 -12 ; (509d), 490; (5 10 3 ) , 490; (5 10 3 9 ), 262 n . 3, 508; ( 5 10 C - 5 11C ) , 282; (5 10 c ), 509, 525 n . 1 ; ( 5 io d -e ) , 256 n . 1 , 282 n . 1 ; ( 5 1 1 b - c ) , 52 5; ( 5 1 1 b ) , 5 1 1 n . 3 ; ( 5 1 1 c ) , 509; ( 5 1 1 d -e ), 5 17 n . 5 ; ( 5 1 1 d), 256 n . 3, 5 1 1 ; ( 5 1 1 e i ) , 262 n . 3 ; ( 5 1 4 3 - 5 1 9 ^ , 5 1 2 1 7 ; ( 5 14 3 2 ) , 5 16 n . 1 ; (5 14 b ),
453; ( 398 c f f ) ,
450;
4 5 4 n. 3 , 4 55 4 0 2e),
n. 2 ; (3 9 9 e ), 4 4 8 ; ( 4 0 0 c (4 0 0 d -4 0 ia ),
438
(4 0 1 b - c ) , 4 5 9 ; (4 0 1 b ), 5 1 7 n. 2 ; (4 0 1 c -e ) , 451 n. 1; (4 0 1c ), 18 7 n. 1, 455 n. 2;
(4 0 2 b - c ) , 4 5 9 , 5 1 7 n. 2 ; (4 0 2 b ), 4 9 2 . ; (4 0 2c ), 455 n. 2; ( 4 0 2 d ), 459 n. 1;
4 5 5 ; (4 10 c ), 4 5 4 ; (4 12 3 9 ) , 4 6 1; (4 12 b ), 4 6 1 ; ( 4 1 4 3 6 ) , 4 6 1 ; ( 4 1 4 b c ) , 4 5 8 n . 1 ; (4 14 b ), 4 6 2; (4 14 c ), 462
bis, 4 6 3 , 4 6 3
. ;
( 4 i4 d ) , 4 6 3 ; (4 14 e ), 46 3 n. 3 ; ( 4 i4 e 6 ) , 4 6 3 . ; ( 4 1 5 a ), 4 6 2 ; ( 4 1 5 3 4 ) , 4 6 3 n. 2 ; (4 15 c ), 482; ( 4 1 5 d -e ), 456; (4 15 ^ 7 ),
bis;
n.
456
470; n.
( 4 2 5 d 4 4 4 a ) , 1; (4 27c), 471
4 7 3 " 6 ; n. 2;
(4 25 d -e ), 4 7 1 ( 4 2 7 d ),
434 n .
472; 128 .
2 ; (4 27e ),
447;
(427e
7)>
4;
43
472
473
4, 4 9;
434
151
n.
2,
473 n.
n. 2;
5;
(4 34 e ), ( 4 3 5 d ),
439
474
n. n.
2; 1;
(435b ),
474
(439d ) , 476
( 4 4 2 b 4 4 3 d ) , (4 4 3c), ( 465
(4 4 1 a -b ),
(442 b -c ),
4 76 n. 3 ; (4 4 2 c ), 16 6 ; ( 4 4 3 c -e ), 4 76 n. 3 ; n. 2, 475; (4 4 3 d -e ), n. 2 ; n. 3; 18 6 16 6 ;
4 9 8, 5 2 7 ; ( 4 5 1 c ) ,4 8 0 . ; (4 54 a ), 4 7 . ; (4 5 7b ),
( 4 5 8 d ff .) ,
464;
( 4 5 9 a ) , 4 8 1 ; ( 4 5 9 c d ) , 4 5 8 n . 1 ; ( 4 5 9 d ) ,
549 n 2 ; ( 5 i 5 a), 515 n. 2, 5 17 n . 4; ( 5 1 5 d), 497; (5 16 b ), 515 n . 3 ; (5 16 c ), 5 16 ; ( 5 17 3 - b ) , 5 1 2 ; (5 17 3 8 - C 5 ) , 5 14 ; ( 5 !7 b ) , 5 12 n. 1 ; (517c), 5<S n. 3 ; ( 5 1 7 d -e ), 5 1 6 n . 2 ; ( 5 1 8 b -c ), 5 16 ; (5 18 e ), 477 ; ( 5 I 9 a - b ), 5 16 ; ( 5 i 9 b - 5 2 ib ) , 518 2 1 ; (5 19 c ) , 502, 520; ( 5 i9 d - 5 2 ib ) , 469; (520C 5-6), 343 n . 5 ; ( 5 2 o d 5 2 1b ) , 50 2; (52 2 3-5 26 C ), 5 22; (5 223), 5 2 2 ; (524 a), 203 n . 1 ; (52 53) 507; (5 2 6 3), 523 n . 3 ; (529), 46; (5 2 9 c 530b ), 282 n . 1 ; (5 2 9 c -d ), 1 18 n . 2 ;
590
(cont.)
524 n. 2 ; (530 a ), 544; 5 14 ; ( 5 3 1 d (532a ), 5 2 4 -6 ; (5 3 2 a -d ),
6n
b -
6i 23) ,
5 56 -7;
( 6 1 1 b -e ),
478;
(5 29 d ), 535a ), 392;
( 6 1 1 c -d ) , 5 5 6 ; ( 6 1 4 c ) , 3 1 9 n. 1 ; ( 6 i 7 d \ 1 1 8 n. 2 ; ( 6 2 13 ) , 2 5 2 ; ( 6 2 1 b ) , 559 n. 2
549 n . 2 ; ( 5 3 * c - d ) , 5 0 8 n. 5 ; (533c), 525 . ; ( 533 d ) , 5 1 8 ; (533e (5 3 *b -c ), 534 a), 5 17 . 5 ;( 5 34b ),2 6 5 ;(5 3 5 a -5 4 ib ) , 52 6 -7 ; ( 5 3 5 b -e ), 525 n. 1; ( 5 3 6 c ), 60, 6 1 n. 1 ; 4 8 6 ; ( 5 3 6 d -e ), 4 5 1 n (
Sophist
(217c), 47;
34,
53;
( 2 18 b -c ), 47; (2373),
(218 e ff), ( 2 4 2 d ),
( 2 2 9 d ),
34;
(2 4 3 b ), 6 0 ; (24 8 e ff ) ,
537b ) ,
526; (
( 5 3 7 e f f .) ,
l i ( 53<5 e ),
( 2 6 7 b - d ) , 5 4 7 ; ( 2 6 8 d ), 4 9 4 n. 3
457 ( 5 4 d ) ,
502 n. 2, 478 465 n. n. 1; 1;
539 n 2 ;
1; 485,
(5 4 0 6 -5 4 13), 479 n. 2;
521
(54 3c ),
783- i 8o b ) , 3 6 9 ; ( 1 7 8 3 ) ,
(18 5 c -e ), 383; 37 0 -1; (18 6 b ),
546- 7) ,
(54 63),
(18 0 c ), 370;
(18 1 d -e ),
(5 4 6 3 -5 4 7 3 ),
( 18 5 e -i8 8 e ),
bis;
52,
(19 1c ), 365;
(19 33 ), 135;
(19 3b ), 3 72 -3 ;
5 i 2 n . i ; ( 5 5 5 b ) , 5 3 i ; ( 5 5 6 d ) , 5 36;(557b),
53I J
n. 1 ; (
(558 b ), 534;
435; 479
426; n. 1;
(558c),
301
n.
1;
(558 d ),
(56 o d ),
157;
(56 3b ),
577e ) , 538;
(58 1c ), 18 2
538- 9;
( 58 o d n. n. 3; 1;
(58 0 c ),
386;
(20 2e ),
203
58 7b ), 426;
5 39 -4 2 ;
(58 0 e ),
. ; (2 0 3 3 ), 395 n. 2 ; ( 2 0 3 d 7 ), 38 6 ;
(5 8 1 d ), (58 4 c ),
(2 0 4 3 -b ), 3 8 6 ; (2 0 4 3 ), 14 9 , 3 8 6 ; (2 0 4 b 7 ), 3 7 5 n . 1 ; ( 2 0 4 d 2 0 5 392 . , 4 2 1; 375;
(58 4 b ),
3), 2 4 7 n . 1 ; ( 2 0 4 e ) ,
507, 542 n. 1; 386; (20 5 d ),
(58 5 b -c ) ,
540, 5 4 1 ; (58 5 h l ) , n. 1 ;
n. 1 ; n. 3 ; n. 1; 386,
( 5 8 5 c -d ), 495 541
(20 5 b ),
54 1; 541 n.
(58 5 d 5 ), 1;
(58 6 e ),
14 9 ,
bis;
538 n .
542;
1;
(58 7 b -5 9 2 b ), 5 4 1; n. 2; 543
54 2 -4 ;
(58 7b ), n. n. 2; 1;
( 2 0 7 c ) , 3 8 5 ; ( 2 0 7 d 2 0 8 3 ) , 3 9 1 ;
20 7d ), 3 3 ,
(58 9 d ),
543 543
3 3 1 n. 2 ; ( 2 0 8 3 7 ) , 3 8 8 ; (2 0 8 c ), 38 5 n. 2 ; (20 8 e -2 0 9 e ), 3 8 9 ; (20 9 b ), 3 8 7 ; (2 0 9 h l), 39 0 ; (20 9 c ), 390, 3 9 4 ; (2 0 9 0 3 ), 390 n. 1 ; (2 10 3-b ), 2 1 1 c), n. n. 1; 3; 497 394; n. (210 b ), 1; 392; 393, 394; (210 e 18 4 5 11 1; 390; (2153f f .) ,
(58 9 6 4 ),
2 ; (5 9 5 c -5 9 8 d ),
59732) ,
523 n. . 1; ;
597b 5 - 6 ) ,
551;
(59 7c 552;
(2 11e ),
(211 e 378;
4 2i 237) ,
n. 3;
-d ),
3,
(2 12 C -2 15 3),
(213c ), 367;
597C 9) ,
209, 208 436;
597e 7) ,
(59 9 e ), (6 o o d ), 546;
(59 8 e ),
(216 e ), 4 18 ;
(2 i6 e 6 ),
(218 b ),
(6 0 13-6 0 2 3 ), 549;
(6 0 1 d ),
(6 0 23), 553;
(6 0 2b ), 553;
6 0 ; (6 o 2 c -6 o 6 d ), 62 n. 2;
(6 0 3e ),
(6 0 4 b ),
( 2 2 2 b ) , 1 9 7 n . 2 ; ( 2 2 2 c 2 2 3 d ) , 3 8 0
Theaetetus ( 1 4 5
493 i;
e ), 2 6 5 ; ( 1 5 0 3 ) , 12 5 ; ( 1 5 0 b ) , 151 n. 2; ( 15 0 c -d ),
(15 0 c ),
(6 io d -e ),
( 1 7 1 3 -c ),
(17 2 c ff),
(17 2 c GHO
39
591
592
II. G E N E R A L I N D E X
The index has been compiled with a view to assisting those who would have preferred the book to be arranged by subjects rather than dialogues. References to Plato have so far as possible been distributed under other heads, e.g. for his debt to Parmenides see Parmenides, for his conception of knowledge or his views on immortality see those words. The heading Plato has however been retained for a few personal items. abstractions, expressed by adjective and article, 119 Academy, the, 8, 19 -2 3 , 520, 524 n. 1; not a school of rhetoric, 412 f. Acheron, 337, 361 Achilles, 192, 193 Ackrill, J. L., 340 n. 2 Acumenus, 367 Adam, J., 54, 228, 229 n. 1, 444, 460, 555; on Protagoras, 221 ; on nous, 425 Addison, J., 543 Adeimantus, 10, 11, 437-548 saepe Adkins, A. W . H., 154 n. 2, 217 n. 2, 291 n. 2, 442 Aeacus, 305 Aegyptus, 316 Aeschines (Socratic), 315 n. 1, 317 Aeschylus, 382 Aesop, 327 Aethalides, 250 n. Agathon, 52, 60, 214, 365-80 saepe; speech of, 373 385 agathon, 140 n. 1, 178, 288, 503, 518 aischron, opp. kalon, 288 aither, 361 aitia, 349 f. Alcibiades, 61, 214, 218, 267, 293, 324, 418, 419, 500; in Symposium, 367, 368, 387 n. 3, 395, (speech of) 378-80, 381 Alcibiades /, 169 Alcidamas, 59 Alcmaeon, 347 . 3, 42 Allan, D. J., 5 Allen, R. E., 116, 119 n. 1, 120, 122, 223; on Platos logic, 112 n. 1, 113 nn. 3 and 4; on immanence of forms, 118 n. 1 anachronisms in Plato, 199 n. 4, 215, 313, 320 anamnesis, see recollection Anaxagoras, 36, 58, 83, 333, 348, 350, 409, 431 f. Andie, M., 242 n. 3 Anniceris, 19 Antiphon of Rhamnus, 314 Antiphon (Platos half-brother), 11 Antiphon (sophist), 157, 282 Antisthenes, 37, 176 n. 2, 206 n. 1, 274, 277, 282, 312 n. 505 n. 3 Anton, J. P., 363 n. 2 Anytus, 82, 83, 84, 90, 236 f., 239 f., 260, 262 Apelt, ., 191 Aphrodite, 375 ; the twofold, 369 Apollo, 109, 327, 471 n. 2 Apollodorus, 10, 325, 366 Apology, 70 93 (see table of contents, p. v), 170 Apuleius, 9 Archelaus (tyrant of Macedon), 288, 289 Archer-Hind, R. D., 422 n. 4; on subject of Phaedo, 363 n. 2 Archytas, 17, 18 n. 1, 27, 28, 30, 33, 284 arete, see virtue Aristides, 125, 294 Aristippus, 27 n. 2, 37 Aristodemus, 366 f., 368, 380 Aristomache, 18 Ariston (father of Plato), 10 Aristonymus, 23 Aristophanes (comic poet), 366, 367, 380, 382; on the old education, 165; on poets, 206; speech of, 371 f., 383 f.; (on communism, 480 . Aristophanes (librarian), 39 Aristotle, 8, 21, 31, 260 n. 1, 274, 287 n. 2; on Forms, 32, 117 f., 352 n. 3, 355, 358 f.; quotes from the dialogues, 4 1; Eudemus, 94 n.; on individuals, 114 ; on friendship, 144 f., 154; denied self-action, 17 1; on virtue, 174; on formal identity of producer and product, 186; on voluntary wrong doing, 196; on virtue is knowledge, 228; nous in, 253; Sophistic Refutations, 276; on mathematical objects in Plato, 343; on causation, 349 f., 351 n. 1; took Phaedo myth seriously, 362; on motive for re production, 387 f.; on apprehension of 39-2
593
General index
Aristotle (cont.) universals, 428; on ethical study, 436; on transfer between classes in Platonic state, 464 n. 1; on moral responsibility, 479; on the Platonic state, 486 n. 4; theology of, 512; Platonism of, 548 Aristoxenus, 9, 10 arithmetic, popular and philosophical dis tinguished, 522 f. Arnim, H. von, 151 n. 3; on date of Euthydemus, 266 n. 3 Aspasia, 52, 313, 317, 321, 385 astronomy, 282 n. 1, 524, 558 Athenaeus, 9 Athens, Athenians: attack on, in Gorgias, 294-6; praise of, in Menexenus, 315 f., 320; claim to autochthony, 315, 463 Bacchi, 338, 418 Bambrough, J. R., 489 n. 3 Barker, E., 528 n. 2 beauty (see also kalon)'. equated with utility (fitness for function), 181, 186, 436; im portance in education, 18 1; Form of, 377, 389, 392; assists delivery of soul-children, 387; visible beauty assists recollection of Forms, 393, 404, 419, 426 f. Begemann, A. W ., 135 n. 1 belief {doxa) : relation to knowledge, see knowledge; false, 257 Bendis, 438 Bentham, J., 518 n. Bluck, R. S., 259 n. 1, 266 n. 3, 326, 354, 511 . body, 421; as tomb of soul, 305; why dis paraged by philosophers, 328, 331 Boreas, 399 Boyanc, P., 20 Brentlinger, J. A., 489 n. 1, 523 n. 3 Bronowski, J., 427 n. 2 Brown, M., 345 n. 2 Burnet, J., 11, 72, 350 n. 3 ad fin. Bury, J. B., 366 Cadmus, 316, 462 Callias, 88, 216, 218, 317 Callicles, 157, 231, 242, 246, 28 5-311 saepe, 475 , 499 n 1 Calogero, G., 77 n. Campbell, L., 49, 53, 174 n. 2 causation, 349-52 Cave, simile of, 340, 497, 5 1 2 - 1 8 Cebes, 325-64 saepe, 391, 554 censorship, 452 Cephalus, 398, 437, 438, 439 Chaerephon, 81, 285, 286 Charmantides, 438 Charmides, 6, 11, 45, 155-68 saepe, 419 Charmides, 11, 42, 68 f., 1 5 4 - 7 4 (see table of contents, p. vi), 281, 472, 519 Cherniss, H., 22, 33 n. 1; on mathematical, 343 children: communally reared, 481; unwanted, treatment of, 481 f. Chilon, 165 cicadas, 406; golden, worn by Athenians, 463 Cicero, 10, 16, 315 n. 2, 321; on Phaedoy 358 . Cimon, 292, 293 Clearchus, 9, 237 Cleophantus, 265 Clinias, 135, 267-80 saepe Clitophon, 438 Cocytus, 337, 361 Codrus, 10 collection and division, method of, 408, 416, 4 27 3 1 ; Socratic origin, 431 n. 1 Collingwood, R. G., 547 n. colour, definition of, 248 f. computers, use of in Platonic scholarship, 49 concepts, relation to forms, 427 contradiction, impossibility of, 271, 272 n. 2 Coriscus, 23 Cornford, F. M., 17, 50, 68, 393, 397, 449, 468 n. 3, 482 cosmology, 431 f., 558 Coulter, J. A., 72, 77 n. courage, 471; equated with knowledge, 129 f., 132, 2 19 -2 1, 22 7-31, 232, 235 crafts, analogy from in Socrates and Plato, 88, 100, 123, 19 8 f., 245 f., 287, 292, 379, 439 f Cratylus, 13, 14 . , 34 Cratylus, 63, 67 Crete, 300 Critias, 6, 11, 75, 155-73 saepe, 218, 296, 440 Critias, 11, 52 Crito, 86, 94-9 and 267-80 saepe, 325 Crito, 86, 90, 9 3 IOI (see table of contents, p. vi), 350 Critobulus, 86, 94 Croiset, M., 93, 100, n o n. 2 Crombie, I. M., 58, 145, 161, 163, 223 n. 2, 228 n., 230 n. 3, 266, 391, 423 n. 2, 494 n. 4, 551 . Cronus, 104, n o
594
General index
Cross, R. C., 4, 5; and Woozley, 444, 471, 473 nn. i and 2, 474 n. 1, 477, 478, 488 n. 3, 539 n. i Ctesippus, 135, 136, 267-77, 325 Cushman, R. E., 491 n. Cyrene, Platos visit to, 16 Daedalus, 106, 263 daimones, 83 n., 375 Damon, 453 Danaus, 316 death: concept of, 556; a good thing, whether dreamless sleep or migration to another world (Apology), 86 f. ; as separation of psyche from body, 327, 340 n. 1 definition, 108 f., 112, 128, 183, 237 f., 2 4 2 -6 , 430; distinguished from exemplification, 108, 131, 183, 237 f., 242; three tests of, 132 degrees of reality, 256 n. 3, 493-8, 545, 546 n. i, 548 deinos, 402 n. 1 Delphic oracle, 81, 471 Demaratus, 96 n. 2 Demetrius of Phalerum, 73 democracy (see also politics), 435, 5 3 1 - 3 , 535, 537; Socratess opinion of, 92, 98; freedom of travel in, 96 n. 3 ; Athenian, character of, 216 f., 293; Platos attitude to, 298 f., 301 Democritus, 37; on poetic inspiration, 207 Demos, 11 n. 3 Demosthenes, 318 n. 3 Descartes, R., 497 dialectic, 248 n. 1, 265, 276, 282, 392, 514, 524 -6 , method of, 407 f., 428-31, 510; harmful to unsuitable students, 527 dialogue form, 64 f., 215 dialogues, the (see also table of contents, ch. I l l ) : connexion between form and content, 2 f., 241; spurious and doubtful, 39 f.; Socratic, characteristics of, 67-70, 212 dianoia, 510, 511, 523 Dicaearchus, 9 Dis, A., 5 dikaiosyn, 435 Diogenes Laertius, 9 Dion, 18, 24-31, 94 . i, 284 . 4 Dionysiae possession, 207 f. Dionysius I, 18, 24 f. Dionysius II, 24-30, 52, 57 n. 1, 66, 284 n. 4, 485 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 320 Dionysodorus, 45, 266-78 saepe, 308 Dionysus, 207, 418 Diotima, 149, 324, 374, 385; teaching of, 374- 7 , 385-95 Dittenberger, W ., 49 Dittmar, H., 317 f. Dives, 306 division, method of (see also collection), 47 Dodds, E . R ., 6, 231, 284 n. 1, 302, 305, 306 Dodona, 401 dogs, guardians compared to, 450, 467 doxa (see also knowledge), 495, 503, 508, 509, 547 Duchemin, J., 298 Dumzil, G., 466 . 3 Diimmler, F., 177 . Duns Scotus, n o earth, 403 n. 1 ; shape of (in Phaedo), 336, 362; as Mother of life, 472 f. Ebert, Th., 64 n. 1, 253 n. 3, 258 n. 1, 261 n. 4 Echecrates, 326, 332 economic origin of social community, 445 Edelstein, E., 68 Edelstein, L., 8 . 2, 383 . 2 education, 2 17 ,449 ^1 , 52 - 7 (see table of con tents, p p .x and xi), 515, 517; importance of the arts in, 451 ; through play, 526 Egypt, Platos visit to, 16 eidos, - , 114, 120, 121, 133, 550, 551, 552 Eileithyia, 387 einai, 496 elenchus, Socratic, 102 n. 2, 108, 241, 525 Empedocles, 33, 36, 140 n. 2, 249, 382, 383, 384, 447, 487 n. i, 518 Ephorus, 10 n. i Epinomis, 40, 63 epistm, 265, 510 epistemology (see also knowledge), 174; moral aim of Platos, 516 Epistles, see Letters equality, 289 f., 299, 301, 310; geometrical opp. arithmetical, 301 ; is it a Form?, 342-5 Er, 306. 557, 559, 56 Erastus, 8, 23 Erbse, H., 364 . 2 eristic, 275 f., 311 Eros, 373, 387 401 n. i ; twofold, 369 f.; as cosmic power, 3 7 1,3 8 2 f.; as intermediate, 374 f., 386; a daimon, 375; birth of, 375; lover'of goodness, 375 f., cf. 420 f. ers, ern (see also love), 137, 149, 500, 551, 561 ; single force flowing in different chan nels, 425, 475, 476, 478 Eryximachus, 367-84 saepe; speech of, 369 f., 382 f.
595
General index
Etna, 18, 336 n. 3 Euclides of Megara, 9, 14, 37, 325 Eudicus, 191 . 3, 192, 194 Eudoxus, 15, 23, 32 Euenus, 77, 327 Euphorbus, 250 . Euripides, 15, 382 Eurydice, 369 Euthydemus (brother of Lysias), 438 Euthydemus (pupil of Socrates), 197, 268 . i Euthydemus (Sophist), 45, 266-83 passim Euthydemus, 60, 63, 195, 222, 257,266 83 (see table of contents, p. vii) Euthyphro, 102 f., ch. IV. 3 passim Euthyphro 68 f., 24 (see table of contents, p. v i\ 430, 435 evil, 421 n. 1, 461, 507; can never be abolished, 145; is multiform, 498 f.; specific or con genital, 348 . , 554 evolution 393 falsehood: impossibility of, 2 71; use of in Platos state, 457-9 family, abolition of, 480 f. Fates, the, 558 Field, G. C., 7, 10, 12, 46, 51, 55, 68, 283, 484 Findlay, J. N., xvi Finley, M. I., 16 n. 2 Fischer, J. L., 56 Flashar, H., 67 n. 1 Flew, A., n o f., 242, 255, 436 n. 1 Forms (see also Good): Platos doctrine of, 4, 251, 435; (ethical aim of), 116, 244, 506 f., 551; (relation to common-sense), 223, 340 n. 2, 459; (scope of theory), 340, 359, 54951; Forms in Euthyphro, 1 1 4 -2 1 ; of negatives, 115, 498; as universals, 117 ; as paradigms, 118, 329 f., 342, 490; as causes, 118 f., 263, 350 -2; qualified by themselves, 119, 223, 360, 551; as essences, 120; in Laches, 133 f.; presence in particulars, 151, 189, 35o; in Charmides, 169 n. 3, 172 n. 1; in Hippias Major, 189-91 ; not transcendent in Socratic dialogues, 2 12 ; as solution to the Socratic problem, 250-2; how apprehended, 252 f., 392, 507, 5 1 1; in Meno, 2 5 1-4 ; in Euthydemus, 266, 278 80; in Gorgias, 306 f. ; in Phaedo, 340-61 passim ; Forms and immortality, 334 f., 389; immanent, 353-6 ; separation from sensibles, 358 f.; in Sym posium, 385 f.; once seen by all human souls, 404, 427, 492; in Phaedrus, 426 f.; in Republic, (bk 3) 459 f., (bk 5) 490-2; of artefacts?, 549 . i; a religious conception,
552
Freud, Sigmund, 393, 395 Friedlnder, P., 2, 55, 68, 157, 187, 188, 205 n. 2, 283, 406 n. 2; on antapodosis, 342 n. 2; on Phaedo myth, 362 f. friendship, 136-54 passim Fritz, K. von, 484 Frutiger, P., 362 Gauss, H., 163 n., 175 Geach, P. T ., 112 generalization, a distinctively human accom plishment, 404, 427, 516 geometry, 239, 248, 256 n. 1, 259, 282 n. 1, 353, 523 f.; moral aspect of, 292, 299 ghosts, explanation of, 331 Gifford, E. H., 279 n. 1 Glaser, W ., 153 Glaucon, 10, 11, 437-554 saepe Glaucus, 556 gods: quarrels of, 104; as keepers of mankind, 327; no direct contact with men, 386; journey of, 402 f.; in the chariot-simile, 423; bodi less, 424 n. 2; misrepresented by poets, 451 Goethe, J. W . von, 205 Gomme, A. W ., 96 n. 3, 98 Good, Form of the, 151 f., 264 f., 282, 472, 474, 498, 503 2 1 (see table of contents, p. xi); equated with what belongs, 142, 386; Protagorass conception of, 218; rela tion to beauty, 375, 392 Gorgias, 6, 37, 75, 77, 237, 242, 248, 260, 285311 saepe, 367 n. 3, 4 15; Palamedes, 74, 76 f.; Helen, 300 Gorgias, 91, 98, 86, 231, 244, 264, 2 8 4 -3 12 (see table of contents, p. viii), 315 f., 319 f., 324, 362, 416, 430 f. Gosling, J., 344 n. 2 Gouldner, A., 458 Green, P. M., 295 Groag, E., 423 n. 1, 424, 425 n. 3 Grote, G., 3, 40, 54, 232, 444; on Apology, 72; on Crito, 98; on Euthyphro, 122; on Lysis , 143 n. 4; on H. Maj., 176 n. 2; on eristic, 275 n. 2; on Platos use of fallacy, 276 n. 2 ; on Gorgias, 295 ; on personal beauty and philosophy, 419 Grube, G. M. A., xiii n. 1, 130, 175, 188, 205, 325 n. 4, 459, 547 Guardians, see table of contents, pp. x -x i Gulley, N,, 252 n. 2, 253 n. 3, 345 n. 3, 489 Gundert, H., 2 n. 2, 64
596
General index
Hackforth, R., 92, 231, 354, 361; on subject of Phaedo, 363 2; on immortality in Sym posium, 387, 389 Hades, 336, 338, 339 Hall, R. W ., 539 n. 1 Hamilton, E., 143 n. 3, 144 Hamlyn, D. W ., 517 n. 4 happiness: only for the good, 292; is its own justification, 375; of the philosopher, 539 harmonics, 524 Hartmann, N., 255 Harward, ]., 29, 66 Havelock, E. A., 206 Hayter, T., 469 n. 2 Heath, Thomas, 259 n. 1 hedonism (see also pleasure), in Gorgias and Protagoras, compared, 302-5 hedonistic calculus, 220, 231, 233, 328 Hera, 404 Heraclitus, Heracliteans, 14, 32, 33 f., 140 n. 2, 260 . Hermann, K. F., 67 hermaphrodites, 371, 384 Hermaphroditos, 384 Hermias of Atarneus, 23 Hermodorus, 8 Hermogenes, 14 n. 2, 73, 320, 325, 550 Hermotimus, 250 n. Herodicus, 9 Herter, H., 315, 323 Hesiod, 140,159, 202, 205 f., 373,463 n. 1, 546 Hestia, 403 Hippias, 6, 37, 45, 77, 177-98 saepe, 218, 219, 220, 221, 260 . , 276, 367 n. 3 Hippias Major, 112, 1 7 5 91 (see table of con tents, p. V ), 250, 385 Hippias Minor, 78, 10 0 ,1 9 1 9 Hippocrates (friend of Socrates), 216, 286 n. 2, 366 Hippocrates (physician), 409, 431, 432 Hippocratic Corpus, 383 Hippothales, 135-4 2 saepe Hobbes, T., n o, 445 Hoerber, G., 112, 146, 147, 186 n. 4, 455 f., 528 Homer, 139 ,192, 200-6, 361, 517; as educator, 208 f., 546 Homeridae, 200 f. homosexuality (see also love), 398; physical intercourse condemned by Plato, 394, 405, 454; laws regarding pederasty, 381 n. 4 Horace, 207 Huby, P., 319, 322, 352 . 4 hylozoism, 420 Hypereides, 319 hypothesis, hypothetical method: in Meno, 258 f.; in Phaedo, 334 f., 352 f.; in Republic, 509 f.; hypotheses abolished by dialectic, 525 f. idea, 114, 120, 12 1, 133, 551 Ideas, doctrine of, see Forms immortality, 25, 2 13 , 239, 249, 554; demon strable, 258; arguments for: in Phaedo, 32 8 35, 341 f., 345-7, 356-8, in Phaedrus (from self-motion), 402, 420, in Republic (from doctrine of specific evils), 554-6 individuals: ontological status of, 114 ; in definable, 114, 245; (citizens) determine character of state, 528, 535 induction, 353; relation to collection, 428 infanticide, 481 f. intermediates, see mathematical Ion, 201 10 saepe Ion, 8 9 ,19 9 210 (see table of contents, p. vii) Ionians, 419 Isles of the Blest, 294 Isocrates, 10, 24, 58, 176 n. 1, 274 f., 284, 3 0 8 - 1 1 ,3 1 5 n. 3, 330 . 412,416 ,499 . ; criticized in Euthydemus?, 283 is-ought controversy, 436 n. 1, 519 Jacoby, F., 321 Jacques, J. H., 444, 508 Jaeger, W ., 307 Joel, ., 68 Joseph, H. W . B., 441 n. 1 Jowett, B., 205; editors of, 267 n., 283 justice, as doing ones own in Charmides, 166; in Protagoras, 2 2 2 -5; as a number (Pythagorean), 256; main subject of Republic, 434, 443; defined (Republic), 473; as healthy state of psyche, 475, 538; can non-philosophers be just?, 539 n. 1 Kahn, C. H., 232 n. 2, 315 n. 2, 322, 437, 443 kakon, 90 kalon, 177 f., ch. IV. 7 passim, 288, 377 n. 2, 451 Kapp, R. O., 511 n. 4 Keulen, H., 278 . Keyt, D., 360 kinship of nature, 35 f., 249 Kneale, M., 111 knowledge (see also virtue, courage, recollec tion): of knowledge, 160-3, 168-70, 174,
42
597
General index
knowledge (cont.) 281 ; of good and evil, 130, 173, 220, 261 ; a priori, 255 f., 258 n. 1; linked with immor tality, 250; relation to belief (doxa), (Meno) 240, 256 8 and 261 4, (Phaedrus) 348 f., 386 and 416 n. 2, (Republic) 472 n. 4, 48793, 546; and wisdom 265, 280; practical associations of, 239, 270, 272; resembles its object, 360 n. 3, 500, 525 kosmos, 183, 292, 300, 511, 522 Krmer, H.-J., 2 n. 1 Kuhn, T. S., 190 n. 2 Laches, 12 5-34 saepe, 228, 243, 244 Laches, 68 f., 1 2 4 - 3 4 , ^4, 228, 472 Lachesis, 558, 559 Laws , 32, 37, 49, 51, 52, 390 . 5, 394 , 4*, 484; bk X, 60 Leibniz, G. W ., n o Leisegang, H., 53, 188, 196, 266 n. 3 Leon of Salamis, 84 Lesky, A., 73 Lethe, 559, 560 Letters of Plato: (2), 65 f.; (3), 3 1; (4), 3 1,6 2 ; (7), 8, 16, 31, 65 f., 284, 317, 526; (8), 31 Levin, B., 96 n. 3 Levinson, R. B., 322, 393 n. 1, 396 n. 1 Libanius, 73 Lodge, G., 284 n. 2 Loewenclau, I. von, 322 logic, Platos contributions to, i i i f., 187, 430 n.; subordinate role of, 244 lot, use of in appointments, 301; in mating arrangements, 481 love (see also Eros, eros, sublimation) : between males, 369 f., 372, 381, 384, 393 f.; leads to apprehension of Forms, 392,426; definition of (rhetorical), 400; a species of divine mad ness, 404,429 f.; meaning disputed, 408; as desire for the good, 420 f.; twofold, 249; reason a form of, 476 Lutoslawski, W ., 49 Lyceum, 267 Lycon, 82 Lycurgus, 300, 377 Lysias, 75, 166, 324, 367 n. 3, 396-417 saepe, 438; Apology of, 73; Epitaphios, 318 n. 3; speech of, in Phaedrus?, 433 Lysimachus, 125 Lysis, 45, 13 5 -5 1 saepe Lysis , 42, 68 f., 1 3 4 - 5 4 (see table of contents, p. vi), 385 madness: divine, 401, 4 17 -19 ; of poets, 402, 417 f.; of prophets, 4 0 1,4 17; telestic, 401 f., 4 1 8 ; o f lover s, 402,404,418 ; of philosophers, 418 Maguire, J. P., 448 Malcolm, J., 184 n. 1 Mantinea, 374; battle of, 125; dispersion of population, 365 marriage-festivals, 481, 529 Marsyas, 378 mathematicals, 342-5, 509, 523 mathematics (see also geometry, arithmetic), 36, 246 n., 249, 299 n., 351, 5 2 1 - 4 ; in Meno, 248, 251, 255; subordinate and pro paedeutic to dialectic, 282, 510, 524; in Gorgias, 299; methods of (Republic), 509 medicine, 370 f., 383; used as analogy, 95, 98, 129, 140, 141, 164, 288, 289, 302, 408, 457; demands knowledge of natural philosophy, 431 n. 4; proper use of, 454 f. Megarians, 3 11, 505 n. 3 Melesias, 125 Meletus, 77, 82, 84, 85, 88, 90, 103 f., 108 Melissus, 277 . i Memory, water of, 559 n. 1 Menander, 19 n. 1 Menedemus, 23 Menexenus, 135-46 saepe, 313, 314, 325 Menexenus, 52, 67, 3 1 2 - 2 3 , 324, 385 Meno, 236 f., 241 f., 243-64 saepe Meno, 36, 90, 112, 172, 210, 228, 229 n., 2 3 6 -6 5 (see table of contents, pp. vii viii), 281, 426, 489 f. Mridier, L., 318-20 Metrodorus, 201 . 3 Meyer, E., 10 . i miasma, 109 Mikkos, 136 Milesians, 350, 420 Miltiades, 292, 293 Milton, John, 361 . 3 mimesis, 63, 452, 516, 547, 553 Minos, 87, 305 misology, 332 Mithaecus, 284 Moline, J., 238 n. Momigliano, A., 312 Moore, G. E., 115 n. 2, 522 Moravcsik, J. M. E., 393 n. 3 Moreau, J., 177 n., 184 n. 1, 185 n. 1,18 6 n. 4 Morrison, J. S.: on dating of dialogues, 236 n. 2, 284, 325 n. 2; on shape of earth, 336 nn. i and 4; on the round men of Aristo phanes, 371 n. 2; on Symposium, 388 n. 3 Mumford, L., 469
598
General index
Murphy, N. R., 508 n. 4 Muses, 402, 406 music, 453 f. mystery-religions (see also Orphies): Platos feeling for, 305 n. 2, 338-40, 418, 552; Eleusinian, 554 myth: of Protagoras, 217; Platos attitude to, 365; allegorizing of, 399; criticism of tradi tional, 452; of the metals in Rep. 3, 462-4; different kinds of, 486 myths: eschatological, in Gorgias, 294, 305-7, 362; how far believed by Plato, 307; in Phaedo, 335-8, 36 1-3, 432; in Republic, 432 Natorp, P., 5 Necessity, 432, 558, 559 Nestor, 192 Nettleship, R. L., 446, 452 n., 473, 476, 477, 504 n. 2, 506, 508 n. 2, 537 Neumann, H., 447 n. 1 Niceratus, 208, 438 Nicias, 109, ch. IV. 4 passim, 242 Nietzsche, F., xiv n. 3 nomos-physis (convention-nature) antithesis, 218 n. 4, 289 nous, 253, 421, 423, 424, 425, 510, 514 number, nuptial, 528 f. Nyerere, J., 469 n. 2 OBrien, D., 353 n. 4, 357 n. 2 Oceanus, 337, 361 Odysseus, 192, 193, 559 oligarchy, 530 f. Olney, J., xiv Olympiodorus, 9, 364 On the Good, 21 Oreithyia, 399 Orpheus, 306, 369, 559 Orphies, Orphica, 208, 249, 305 f., 339, 342, 364, 382, 518, 554, 557 ouranos, 543 ousia, 120, 433 Ovink, B. G. H., 246 n.; on Hipp. Minor, 196 Owen, G. E. L., 50, 189 n. 1, 228 n. 2, 342 nn. 3 and 5 paidia, 59 Palamedes, 76 Panaetius, 40 Parmenides, 6, 33, 277, 352, 407 n. 2, 488 n. 2; influence on Plato, 34 f., 492, 496, 546 n. 1 Parmenides, 4, 33, 43, 45, 60, 120, 549, 551 parusia, 15 1, 189, 307 Pascal, Blaise, 255 path, 120 Pausanias, 367, 368, 383; speech of, 369, 381 f. Pelops, 316 Pembroke, S. G., 149 n. Penia, 375 Penner, T., 441 . , 442 . Pericles, 6, 11, 129 n. 2, 286, 292, 293, 294, 295> 3 I 3 I 5> 409> 431 sons of, 214 Perictione (mother of Plato), 10, 11 Phaedo, 326, 332 Phaedo, 187 . , 234, 250, 324, 3 2 5*5 ( table of contents, pp. viii ix), 386, 391, 478 Phaedrus, 367-9, 383, 3 9 8 -4 11 saepe; speech of (in Symposium), 369 f., 381 Phaedrus, 36, 43, 57, 59 f., 75, 89, 190, 250, 252, 3 * 5> 324, 389 396-433 (see tableof contents, p. ix) Phanes, 384 Pheidias, 180 phenomena, ontological status of, 488 Pherecrates, 214 Philebus, 33, 51, 182 ., 191, 54 1 2, 542 . 2 philia, philos, 1 36 f. Philip of Opus, 8, 40 Philolaus, 325, 327 philosophers: descriptions of, 149, 487; can take no part in politics, 9 1-3, 413, 500 f.; compared to the initiated, 338 f., 341, 389, 418; freed after three incarnations, 404; div inely possessed, 404; as advisers to states men, 413, 531; madness of, 418; as rulers, 485; possess all good qualities, 498; spurious, 500 f.; reluctant to govern, 502, 520; how they would reform society, 502; happiness of, 539-42 philosophy: Pythagorean term, 35; as per sonal encounter, 56, 59, 168; defined as search for knowledge, 279, 2 71; not for adults (Callicles), 289 f.; as preparation for death, 327; not suitable for the young, 501 Phormio, 23 phronesis, 265 piety, 103-23 passim, 222-4 Pindar, 207 Plato (see also table of contents for ch. II, p. v): mentions of in the dialogues, 8 ,7 2 (Apology) ; family connexions, 10 -12 , 155; poems of, 12 f., 18 n. 2; travels (excluding Sicily), 14 -16 ; moral instruction paramount for, 244
599
General index
play, (59-63, 270); educational value of, 61 pleasure (see also hedonism) : relation to kalon, 181 f., 187, 219 f.; discussion of, in Prot agoras, 2 1 3 - 1 5 ; good and bad pleasures (Gorgias), 291; of replenishment, 290 f., 540 Plutarch, 10; wrote an Apology of Socrates, 73 poetry: Platos attitude to, 89, 453, 553 f.; objections to, 4 5 1-3 , 545-8, 553; twice removed from reality, 546; true poetry, 547 poets: divine inspiration of, 89, 202, 2 0 4-11, 402, 417 f., 426; how regarded in Greece, 205-7, 208-9 Polemarchus, 398, 438, 439 f., 441 n. 1, 475, Homer, 340 n. 1; dual conception of: (a) source of motion, (b) personality, 348, 420, 555; is it a Form?, 360 f.; compared to winged chariot in Phaedrus, 402-5, 542; as cosmic arche, 419 f.; struggles to see Forms, 402 f., 426 f.; function of, 442; identified with reason, 478 ; necessity of understanding, 519; compared to mythical creature, 542 f. Pyrilampes, 11, 155 Pyriphlegethon, 337, 361 Pythagoras, 250 n., 251, 456 Pythagoreanism, 236, 249, 284, 299 f., 305, 426, 518, 524; Platos relations with, 32 f., 35 f., 3 8 ,2 5 1 f., 256 Pythia, the, 401
527 Rabinowitz, W . G., 122 n. polis, 444 . Raven, J. E., 508 n. 5 political theory, Platos, 413 recollection, learning as (anamnesis), 5 1 1; in politicians, live by doxa, 26 1-3, 281 Meno, 239, 249-53, 257, 259, 260, 261, 263, politics: Platos attitude to, 16 f., 23 f., 500 277 f.; in Phaedo, 329, 345 f.; in Symposium, . 2; philosophers can take no part in, 389; in Phaedrus, 404, 426 8 9 1-3 , 501; Athenian, attacked in Gorgias, reincarnation, 35, 36, 249 f., 328, 341 f., 389, 294-6 Politicus, 33, 47, 53, 67, 165, 167 423, 557-9; an Orphic doctrine, 339 n. 1 relative terms, 360, 374 Pollis, 19 reproduction, as substitute for immortality, Polus, 247 n. 2, 28 5-311 saepe, 415 Polycrates, 72, 282, 284 387 Republic, i i , 24 f., 29, 46, 60, 90, 165 f., Polygnotus, 305 434 56 1 (see table of contents, pp. x xii) Popper, K. R., 322 responsibility, 478 f. Poros, 375 Rhadamanthys, 87, 305 Porphyry, 518 rhapsodes, 200 f. Potone, i i rhetoric: and morals, 286, 298; not an art, pregnancy and birth, metaphor of, 376, 387, 287 f., 407; aims of in a democracy, 291 ; in 389, 500 Menexenus, 314 f., 318, 320; relation to Prodicus, 37, 77, 218, 220, 221, 239 n., 367 n. 3 truth, 407 f. ; contrasted with philosophy, Prometheus, 463 4 12 -17 ; Platos attitude in Gorgias and prophecy and prophets, 262, 375,401, 417,426 Phaedrus, compared, 4 13; true rhetoric, Protagoras, 6, 10, 33, 37, 75, 98, 114 , 115, 4 13; must understand psyche, 415, 431 214 -34 saepe, 246, 267, 271 n. 4, 284 nn. 1 ,3 , Rist, J. M., 355 310, 445, 475; man the measure, 271 n. 2, Ritter, C., 49, 51, 55, 196, 231 277 Robin, L., xiv, 361 nn. 1 and 2, 362 Protagoras, 11, 20, 42, 43, 44, 119, 123, 128, 133, 2 13 3 5 (see table of contents, p. vii) , Robinson, R., 226 n. 1, 243, 511 n. 2 Robinson, T. M., 300 240, 260, 302-5, 318, 367, 519 Ross, W . D., 188 . protreptic, 274 f., 280 pseudos, 457, 462 Runciman, W . G., 51, 396 n. 1,493, 523 n- 1 psyche (soul, mind: see also immortality, re Russell, B., 244, 265 Ryle, G., 20 . , 24 n. 3, 67 n. 1, 93, 412, 413 incarnation): nature of, 89; importance of tending, 89, 98, 302, 3 11, 358, 364, 454; Sandbach, F. H., 498 n. 1 parts of, 133, 300, 474: as self-mover, 171, Savan, D., 223 n. 2 40 2,419 -21; simple or composite?, (Phaedo) Sayre, K. M., 430 n., 511 n. 1 330, 346 f., (Phaedrus) 421 5, (Republic) Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 2 . 2, 43 556 ; natural ruler of body, 330; as harmonia Scholl, N., 322 of the bodys elements, 3 3 1-3 , 347 f; in
600
General index
self-action, possibility of, 170 f. self-knowledge, 163 f., 168 self-motion, 17 1; of psyche, 171, 402, 419 f. self-predication of Forms, 119, 223, 360, 551 senses: in themselves are deceptive, 328, 3 31; but initiate recollection of Forms, 345 f., 349, 426; left behind by reason, 352 sensibles, as imperfect representations of the Forms, 251 f., 253, 329, 345 f. shape, definitions of, 248 Sherrington, Charles, 259 n. 1 Ship of State, parable of, 499 Shorey, P., xiii, 46 Sibyl, the, 401 Sicily, Platos activities in, see Dion, Dionysius Sileni, 378 Simmias, 325-58 saepe Simonides, 219, 227 Skemp, J. B., 23 n. 2 slavery, 483 Socrates: Platos relation to, 32, 33, 66,164; in later dialogues, 33; his ignorance, excep tions to, 88, 99, 123 f.; disapproval of democracy, 92; the divine sign, 103; social standing, 126 ; expert in love, 136 n. 1, 164; employs Sophistic arguments, 143 f., 147, 14 9 ,159 ,16 6 ,18 5,19 5,222,275 f.; utilitarian viewpoint, 144 f., 145 n. 2, 518; military service, 155, 379; as true lover, 164, 395 f.; his paralysing effect, 238, 254; as true states man, 264 f., 294, 299, 395; as eristic, 275 f.; transformed in Gorgias, 295 f.; his intellec tual biography, 333 f.; impervious to drink, 378, 380 n. 2; as intellectual midwife, 387 Socratic fallacy, 242 f. Socratic method, 108 f., 297; criticized, 168 f. Solmsen, F., 459 n. 2 Solon, 200, 206, 377 sophia, sophos, 8 ., 265, 266 Sophist, 33, 34, 47, 53, 6o, 67, 324, 498 Sophists, 81 n., 193 n., 216, 239 f., 250, 257, 260, 276, 281 n. 3, 318, 341, 496, 502 n. i, 504, 517 . 4, 546 Sophocles, 418 Sophroniscus, 126 sophrosyn, 156 f., ch. IV . 6 passim, 2i8, 281, 400, (in the state) 472, (in the citizen) 475 Soreth, M., 175 n. 1, 178 n. 4 soul (see also psyche.), as translation of psyche, 327 n. 2 Sparshott, F. E., 441 n. 2, 442 n. 1 Sparta, 165, 300, 485, 530 Spenser, Edmund, 375 n. 1 Speusippus, 8, 9, 10 n. 1, 11, 21, 23, 28, 31 601 spoude, 59 Sprague, R., 143 n. 5, 230 n. 3, 266 n. 3, 271 nn. 1 and 2, 276 n. 2, 278 n. 2 Stallbaum, G., 146, 176 . i, 188, 197 . i, 279 n. i Stannard, J., 66 Stenzel, J., 6 n. 1, 48 n. 1 ; on dating Phaedrus, 397 Stesichorus, 401 Stesimbrotus, 201 n. 3 Stewart, J. A., 5 Strato, 357 n. 4 Stygian lake, 337 Styx, 361 sublimation, 393-5 suffering wrong, better than doing it, 90, 287 90 suicide, 327 Sullivan, J. P., 233 n. 1, 234 n. 1, 302 symposion, 380 Symposium, 20, 52, 60, 190, 324, 3 ^ 5 9 ^ (see table of contents, p. ix), 489 Tanner, R. G., 517 n. 4 Tarrant, D., 175, 188, 189 Tartarus, 294, 336 f., 339, 362, 557 Tate, J., 547 Taureas, 156 n. 2 taxis, 300 Taylor, A. E., xiii n. 1, 283, 437; on dating of dialogues, 42, 55; criticism of Gorgias, 284 n. 2; on Platonic eros, 393; on appre hension of Forms, 507 Teiresias, 299 teleology, 333, 348, 350,420, 507, 511 n. 1, 549 teletai, 338, 518 Tennyson, Alfred, 265 Terpsion, 14 Thamus, king of Egypt, 410 Thayer, H. S., 508 n. 1 Theaetetus, 45, 52 Theaetetus, 14, 15, 33, 43, 52, 53, 67, 92, 102, 264 Theages, 125, 504 n. 1 Themistocles, 286, 292, 293, 294 Theodectes, 73 Theodorus, 14 f. Theognis, 206 Theon of Antioch, 73 Theopompus, 9 f. therapeia, 106 n. 1 Theuth, 57, 410 Third Man argument (see also self-predica tion), 551 f.
General index
Thirty Tyrants, the, i i , 16 f., 167, 316, 533 Thomas, J. E., 254 n. 1 Thompson, E. S., 55, 247 n. 1, 259 n. 1, 265 Thompson, W . H., 283, 300, 397 Thrasyllus, 39 . 2, 175 Thrasymachus, 37, 282, 408, 409, 415, 438, 441, 442, 443, 475 Thrasymachus (supposed early dialogue of Plato), 69 . , 437 Thucydides (historian), 58, 79, 157, 317, 319, 321 Thucydides, son of Melesias, 125 Thurii, 267 Tigerstedt, E. N., 56, 485 n. 1 Timaeus (historian), 10 n. 1 Timaeus, 11, 33, 36, 37, 47, 52, 61, 137, 166, 347, 420, 432, 469, 486, 512, 549 timocracy, 529 Timonides, 10 n. 1 Tisias, 367 n. 3, 408 Trethowan, I., i i i Trophonius, 559 n. 2 Tuckey, T . G., 172, 173 n. Tynnichus, 203 tyrannical character, 538 f. tyranny, 353 f.; Platos hatred of, 299, 301 tyrants, unhappiness of, 288 f., 435 f., 539 univocal and multivocal terms, 243, 407 f. unwritten doctrines of Plato, 1 4, 64 Uranus, n o Versnyi, L., 519 . virtue {arete) (general discussions in ch. V, and 2): 145, 216, 241, 243, 499; unity of, 12 3 ,13 2 ,17 3 ,2 2 2 ;identified with knowledge, 12 4 ,13 2 f., 173, 222, 239 ,26 1,435,56 1; parts of, 130, 218, 219, 264, 280; whether teach able, ch. V. 2 passim (conclusion on p. 264), 266, 280; as imparted by Sophists, 268 f.; popular or political, 341, 389; the two standards of, 416; as fitness of function, 442, 504 Vlastos, G., 63 n. 1, 222 n., 223 n. 3, 301 n. 2, 3 11, 323, 350 . , 354 n. 1; on degrees of reality, 494-8 volcanoes, 337 Vries, G. J. de, 63 n. 1 war, 468; cause of (in Phaedo), 338 n. 1, 448, (in Republic), 447, 448; conduct of, 428 f. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 42 n. 2, 55, 7 8, 153 237 n. 3, 279; on Hipp. Minor, 196; on date of Euthydemus, 266 n. 3; on Gorgias, 296; on date of Symposium, 365 n. 3 Williams, C. J. F., 342 n. 2 wisdom: in Protagoras, 226; relation to know ledge, 265; as katharmos, 338 n. 3 Witte, G., 67 n. 2, 153 n. 3, 157 women: to share mens training and duties, 480; possession of, 480 n. 1 Woozley, A. D., see Cross, R. C. Wordsworth, W ., 427 writing and speech, compared, 56-64, 410 f. wrong-doing is involuntary, 197 f., 246 Xenocrates, 8, 21 Xenophon, 197; Apology, 71 f., 73, 74, 78; Symposium, 365 Zeller, E., 64 n. 1, 279 n. 1, 460 n. 1 Zeno of Elea, 198, 407 Zeus, 104, n o, 294, 306, 372, 403, 404
602
603