|
Plato
|
|
Plato
Greek philosopher
born 428/427 bc, Athens, or Aegina, Greece
died 348/347, Athens
Main
ancient Greek philosopher, the second of the great trio of ancient
Greeks—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—who between them laid the
philosophical foundations of Western culture. Building on the life and
thought of Socrates, Plato developed a profound and wide-ranging system
of philosophy. His thought has logical, epistemological, and
metaphysical aspects; but its underlying motivation is ethical. It
sometimes relies upon conjectures and myth, and it is occasionally
mystical in tone; but fundamentally Plato is a rationalist, devoted to
the proposition that reason must be followed wherever it leads. Thus the
core of Plato’s philosophy is a rationalistic ethics.
Life
Plato, the son of Ariston and Perictione, was born in Athens, or perhaps
in Aegina, about 428 bc, the year after the death of the great statesman
Pericles. His family, on both sides, was among the most distinguished in
Athens. Ariston is said to have claimed descent from the god Poseidon
through Codrus, the last king of Athens; on the mother’s side, the
family was related to the early Greek lawmaker Solon. Nothing is known
about Plato’s father’s death. It is assumed that he died when Plato was
a boy. Perictione apparently married as her second husband her uncle
Pyrilampes, a prominent supporter of Pericles; and Plato was probably
brought up chiefly in his house. Critias and Charmides, leaders among
the extremists of the oligarchic terror of 404, were, respectively,
cousin and brother of Perictione; both were friends of Socrates, and
through them Plato must have known the philosopher from boyhood.
His own early ambitions—like those of most young men of his
class—were probably political. A conservative faction urged him to enter
public life under its auspices, but he wisely held back. He was soon
repelled by its members’ violent acts. After the fall of the oligarchy,
he hoped for better things from the restored democracy. Eventually,
however, he became convinced that there was no place for a man of
conscience in Athenian politics. In 399 bc the democracy condemned
Socrates to death, and Plato and other Socratic men took temporary
refuge at Megara with Eucleides, founder of the Megarian school of
philosophy. The next few years are said to have been spent in extensive
travels in Greece, in Egypt, and in Italy. Plato himself (if the Seventh
Letter is authentic; see below General features of the dialogues) states
that he visited Italy and Sicily at the age of 40 and was disgusted by
the gross sensuality of life there but found a kindred spirit in Dion,
brother-in-law of Dionysius I, the ruler of Syracuse.
Life » The Academy and Sicily
About 387 Plato founded the Academy as an institute for the systematic
pursuit of philosophical and scientific teaching and research. He
presided over it for the rest of his life. Aristotle was a member of the
Academy for 20 years, first as a student and then as a teacher. The
Academy’s interests encompassed a broad range of disciplines, including
astronomy, biology, ethics, geometry, and rhetoric. Plato himself
lectured—on at least one occasion he gave a celebrated public lecture
“On the Good”—and he set problems for his students to solve. The Academy
was not the only such “school” in Athens—there are traces of tension
between the Academy and the rival school of Isocrates, and Aristotle
started his own school, the Lyceum, after being passed over as Plato’s
successor at the Academy.
The one outstanding event in Plato’s later life was his intervention
in Syracusan politics. On the death of Dionysius I in 367, Dion
conceived the idea of bringing Plato to Syracuse as tutor to his
brother-in-law’s successor, Dionysius II, whose education had been
neglected. Plato was not optimistic about the results; but because both
Dion and Archytas of Tarentum, a philosopher-statesman, thought the
prospect promising, he felt bound to risk the adventure. The plan was to
train Dionysius II in science and philosophy and so to fit him for the
position of a constitutional king who might hold Carthaginian
encroachment on Sicily at bay. The scheme was crushed by Dionysius’
natural jealousy of the stronger Dion, whom he drove into virtual
banishment. Plato later paid a second and longer visit to Syracuse in
361–360, still in the hope of effecting an accommodation; but he failed,
not without some personal danger. Dion then captured Syracuse by a coup
de main in 357, but he was murdered in 354. Plato himself died in
348/347.
Of Plato’s character and personality little is known, and little can
be inferred from his writings. But it is worth recording that Aristotle,
his most able student, described Plato as a man “whom it is blasphemy in
the base even to praise,” meaning that Plato was so noble a character
that bad men should not even speak about him.
To his readers through the ages Plato has been important primarily as
one of the greatest of philosophical writers; but to himself the
foundation and organization of the Academy must have appeared to be his
chief work. The Seventh Letter contrasts the impact of written works
with that of the contact of living minds as a vehicle of philosophy, and
it passes a comparatively unfavourable verdict on written works. Plato
puts a similar verdict into the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedrus. He
perhaps intended his dialogues in the main to interest an educated
outside world in the more serious and arduous labours of his school.
All of the most important mathematical work of the 4th century was
done by friends or students of Plato. The first students of conic
sections, and possibly Theaetetus, the creator of solid geometry, were
members of the Academy. Eudoxus of Cnidus—author of the doctrine of
proportion expounded in Euclid’s Elements, inventor of the method of
finding the areas and volumes of curvilinear figures by exhaustion, and
propounder of the astronomical scheme of concentric spheres adopted and
altered by Aristotle—removed his school from Cyzicus to Athens for the
purpose of cooperating with Plato; and during one of Plato’s absences he
seems to have acted as the head of the Academy. Archytas, the inventor
of mechanical science, was a friend and correspondent of Plato.
Nor were other sciences neglected. Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and
successor, was a voluminous writer on natural history; and Aristotle’s
biological works have been shown to belong largely to the early period
in his career immediately after Plato’s death. The comic poets found
matter for mirth in the attention of the school to botanical
classification. The Academy was particularly active in jurisprudence and
practical legislation. As Plutarch testifies,
Plato sent Aristonymus to the Arcadians, Phormion to Elis, Menedemus
to Pyrrha. Eudoxus and Aristotle wrote laws for Cnidus and Stagirus.
Alexander asked Xenocrates for advice about kingship; the man who was
sent to Alexander by the Asiatic Greeks and did most to incite him to
his war on the barbarians was Delios of Ephesus, an associate of Plato.
The Academy survived Plato’s death. Though its interest in science
waned and its philosophical orientation changed, it remained for two and
a half centuries a focus of intellectual life. Its creation as a
permanent society for the prosecution of both humane and exact sciences
has been regarded—with pardonable exaggeration—as the first
establishment of a university.
Life » Formative influences
The most important formative influence to which the young Plato was
exposed was Socrates. It does not appear, however, that Plato belonged
as a “disciple” to the circle of Socrates’ intimates. The Seventh Letter
speaks of Socrates not as a “master” but as an older “friend,” for whose
character Plato had a profound respect; and he has recorded his own
absence (through indisposition) from the death scene of the Phaedo. It
may well be that his own vocation to philosophy dawned on him only
afterward, as he reflected on the treatment of Socrates by the
democratic leaders. Plato owed to Socrates his commitment to philosophy,
his rational method, and his concern for ethical questions. Among other
philosophical influences the most significant were those of Heracleitus
and his followers, who disparaged the phenomenal world as an arena of
constant change and flux, and of the Pythagoreans, with whose
metaphysical and mystical notions Plato had great sympathy.
Plato had family connections with Pyrilampes, a Periclean politician,
and with Critias, who became one of the most unscrupulous of the Thirty
Tyrants who briefly ruled Athens after the collapse of the democracy.
Plato’s early experiences covered the disastrous years of the
Deceleian War, the shattering of the Athenian empire, and the fierce
civil strife of oligarchs and democrats in the year of anarchy, 404–403.
He was too young to have known anything by experience of the imperial
democracy of Pericles and Cleon or of the tide of the Sophistic
movement. It is certainly not from memory that he depicted Protagoras,
the earliest avowed professional Sophist, or Alcibiades, a brilliant but
unreliable Athenian politician and military commander. No doubt these
early experiences helped to form the political views that were later
expounded in the dialogues.
General features of the dialogues
The canon and text of Plato was apparently fixed at about the turn of
the Christian era. By reckoning the Letters as one item, the list
contained 36 works, arranged in nine tetralogies. None of Plato’s works
has been lost, and there is a general agreement among modern scholars
that a number of small items—Alcibiades I, Alcibiades II, Theages,
Erastae, Clitopho, Hipparchus, and Minos—are spurious. Most scholars
also believe that the Epinomis, an appendix to the Laws, was written by
the mathematician Philippus of Opus. The Hippias Major and the Menexenus
are regarded as doubtful by some, though Aristotle seems to have
regarded them as Platonic. Most of the 13 Letters are certainly later
forgeries. About the authenticity of the Seventh Letter, which is by far
the most important from the biographical and the philosophical points of
view, there exists a long and unsettled controversy.
General features of the dialogues » Order of composition
Plato’s literary career extended over the greater part of a long life.
The Apology was probably written in the early 380s. The Laws, on the
other hand, was the work of an old man, and the state of its text bears
out the tradition that Plato never lived to give it its final revision.
Since there is no evidence that Plato began his career with a fully
developed system, and since there is every reason to believe that his
thoughts changed, the order in which the various dialogues were written
takes on importance. Only through it can the development of Plato’s
thought be adequately charted. Unfortunately, Plato himself has given
few clues to the order: he linked the Sophist and the Statesman with the
Theaetetus externally as continuations of the conversation reported in
that dialogue. Similarly, he seems to have linked the Timaeus with the
Republic. And Aristotle noted that the Laws was written after the
Republic.
Modern scholars, by the use of stylistic criteria, have argued that
the Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus (with its fragmentary sequel
Critias), and Laws form a distinct linguistic group, belonging to the
later years of Plato’s life. The whole group must be later than the
Sophist, which professes to be a sequel to the Theaetetus. Since the
Theaetetus commemorates the death of the eminent mathematician after
whom it is named (probably in 369 bc), it may be ascribed to circa 368,
the eve of Plato’s departure for Syracuse.
The earlier group of dialogues is generally believed to have ended
with the Theaetetus and the closely related Parmenides. Apart from this,
perhaps all that can be said with certainty is that the great dialogues,
Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic (and perhaps also Protagoras), in which
Plato’s dramatic power was at its highest, mark the culmination of this
first period of literary activity. The later dialogues are often thought
to lack the dramatic and literary merits of the earlier but to
compensate for this by an increased subtlety and maturity of judgment.
General features of the dialogues » Persons of the dialogues
One difficulty that initially besets the modern student is that created
by the dramatic form of Plato’s writings. Since Plato never introduced
himself into his own dialogues, he is not formally committed to anything
asserted in them. The speakers who are formally bound by the utterances
of the dialogues are their characters, of whom Socrates is usually the
protagonist. Since all of these are real historical persons, it is
reasonable to wonder whether Plato is reporting their opinions or
putting his own views into their mouths, and, more generally, to ask
what was his purpose in writing dialogues.
Some scholars have suggested that Plato allowed himself to develop
freely in a dialogue any view that interested him for the moment without
pledging himself to its truth. Thus Plato can make Socrates advocate
hedonistic utilitarianism in the Protagoras and denounce it in the
Gorgias. Others argue that some of Plato’s characters, notably Socrates
and Timaeus, are “mouthpieces” through whom he inculcates tenets of his
own without concern for dramatic or historical propriety. Thus it has
often been held that the theory of Forms, or Ideas, the doctrine of
recollection, and the notion of the tripartite soul were originated by
Plato after the death of Socrates and consciously fathered on the older
philosopher.
General features of the dialogues » Thought of the earlier and later
dialogues
There are undeniable differences in thought between the dialogues that
are later than the Theaetetus and those that are earlier. But there are
no serious discrepancies of doctrine between individual dialogues of the
same period. Plato perhaps announced his own personal convictions on
certain doctrines in the second group of dialogues by a striking
dramatic device. In the Sophist and Statesman the leading part is taken
by a visitor from Elea and in the Laws by an Athenian. These are the
only anonymous, indeed almost certainly the only imaginary, personages
of any moment in the whole of Plato’s writings. It seems likely,
therefore, that these two characters were left anonymous so that the
writer could be free to use them as mouthpieces for his own teaching.
Plato thus took on himself the responsibility for the logic and
epistemology of the Sophist and of the Statesman and for the ethics and
the educational and political theory of the Statesman and of the Laws.
General features of the dialogues » Doctrine of Forms
There is a philosophical doctrine running through the earlier dialogues
that has as its three main features the theory of knowledge as
recollection, the conception of the tripartite soul, and, most
important, the theory of Forms. The theory that knowledge is
recollection rests on the belief that the soul is not only eternal but
also preexistent. The conception of the tripartite soul holds that the
soul consists of reason, appetite, and spirit (or will). Each part
serves a purpose and has validity, but reason is the soul’s noblest
part; in order for man to achieve harmony, appetite and spirit must be
subjected to the firm control of reason. The theory of Forms has as its
foundation the assumption that beyond the world of physical things there
is a higher, spiritual realm of Forms, such as the Form of Beauty or
Justice. This realm of Forms, moreover, has a hierarchical order, the
highest level being that of the Form of the Good, which Plato sometimes
seems to identify with the Form of Unity, or the One. Whereas the
physical world, perceived with the senses, is in constant flux and
knowledge derived from it restricted and variable, the realm of Forms,
apprehensible only by the mind, is eternal and changeless. Each Form is
the pattern of a particular category of things in this world; thus there
are Forms of man, stone, shape, colour, beauty, and justice. The things
of this world have the properties they do by “participating” in the
corresponding Forms. Although it is traditional to conceive the
relationship of participation as a kind of approximation or imperfect
copying of a Form by a thing, many scholars now dispute this
interpretation.
In the Phaedo Socrates is made to describe the theory of Forms as
something quite familiar that he has for years constantly canvassed with
his friends. In the dialogues of the second period, however, these
tenets are less prominent, and the most important of them all, the
theory of Forms, is in the Parmenides subjected to a searching set of
criticisms. The question thus arises as to whether Plato himself had two
distinct philosophies, an earlier and a later, or whether the main
object of the first group of dialogues was to preserve the memory of
Socrates, the philosophy there expounded being, in the main, that of
Socrates—coloured, no doubt, but not consciously distorted, in its
passage through the mind of Plato. On the second view, Plato had no
distinctive Platonic philosophy until a late period in his life.
General features of the dialogues » Socrates and Plato
It may be significant that the only dialogue later than the Theaetetus
in which Socrates takes a leading part is the Philebus, the one work of
the second group that deals primarily with the ethical problems on which
the thought of Socrates had concentrated. This is usually explained by
supposing that Plato was unwilling to make Socrates the exponent of
doctrines that he knew to be his own property. It would, however, be
hard to understand such misgivings if Plato had already been employing
Socrates in that very capacity for years. It is notable, too, that
Aristotle, who apparently knew nothing of an earlier and a later version
of Platonism, attributed to Plato a doctrine that is quite unlike
anything to be found in the first group of dialogues. It was also the
view of Neoplatonic scholars that the theory of Forms of the great
earlier dialogues really originated with Socrates; and the fact that
they did not find it necessary to argue the point may show that this had
been the standing tradition of the Academy.
Few modern scholars, however, support this view. The differences
between the early and late periods are not as great as they have
sometimes been represented: although Plato’s thought developed from the
early to the late dialogues, it underwent no sudden dislocation. The
ideas of the early period may have been inspired by Socrates, but they
were Plato’s own—for example, the theory of Forms could not have arisen
with Socrates. Plato nevertheless attributed it to him because he saw it
as the theoretical basis of what Socrates did teach.
The earlier dialogues
In the Republic, the greatest of all the dialogues that precede the
Theaetetus, there are three main strands of argument deftly combined
into an artistic whole—the ethical and political, the aesthetic and
mystical, and the metaphysical. Other major dialogues belonging to this
period give special prominence to one of these three lines of thought:
the Phaedo to the metaphysical theme; the Protagoras and the Gorgias to
the ethical and political; the Symposium and the Phaedrus to the
aesthetic. But it should be noted that Plato’s dialogues are not
philosophical essays, let alone philosophical treatises, and they do not
restrict themselves to a single topic or subject.
The earlier dialogues » Dialogues of search
The shorter dialogues, dealing with more special problems, generally of
an ethical character, mostly conform to a common type: a problem in
moral philosophy, often that of the right definition of a virtue, is
propounded, a number of tentative solutions are considered, and all are
found to be vitiated by difficulties that cannot be dispelled. The
reader is left, at the end of the conversation, aware of his ignorance
of the very things that it is most imperative for a man to know. He has
formally learned nothing but has been made alive to the confusions and
fallacies in what he had hitherto been content to take as knowledge. The
dialogues are “aporetic” and “elenctic”: they pose puzzles (aporiai in
Greek) without solving them, and Socrates’ procedure consists in the
successive refutation (elenchos) of the various views presented by his
interlocutors.
The effect of these dialogues of search is thus to put the reader in
tune with the spirit of Socrates, who had said that the one respect in
which he was wiser than other men was in his keen appreciation of his
own ignorance of the most important matters. The reader learns the
meaning of Socrates’ ruling principle that the supreme business of life
is to “tend” the soul and his conviction that “goodness of soul” means
knowledge of good and evil. The three dialogues directly concerned with
the trial of Socrates have a further purpose. They are intended to
explain to a puzzled public, as a debt of honour to his memory, why
Socrates thought it a matter of conscience neither to withdraw from
danger before his trial, nor to make a conciliatory defense, nor, after
conviction, to avail himself of the opportunity of flight.
The Apology, or Defense, purports to give Socrates’ speeches at his
trial for impiety. In the Crito Socrates, in the condemned cell,
explains why he will not try to escape paying the death penalty; the
dialogue is a consideration of the source and nature of political
obligation. The Euthyphro is represented as taking place just before
Socrates’ trial. Its subject is the virtue of “piety,” or the proper
attitude for men to take toward the gods. The Hippias Major propounds
the question “What is the ‘fine’ (or ‘beautiful’)?” The Hippias Minor
deals with the paradox that “wrongdoing is involuntary.” The Ion
discredits the poets, who create not “by science” but by a nonrational
inspiration. The Menexenus, which professes to repeat a funeral oration
learned from Aspasia, Pericles’ mistress, is apparently meant as a
satire on the patriotic distortion of history. The Charmides, Laches,
and Lysis are typical dialogues of search. The question of the Charmides
is what is meant by sōphrosunē, or “temperance,” the virtue that is
shown in self-command, in dutiful behaviour to parents and superiors, in
balance, and in self-possession amid the turns of fortune. It seems that
this virtue can be identified with the self-knowledge that Socrates had
valued so highly. The Laches is concerned with courage, the soldier’s
virtue; and the Lysis examines in the same tentative way friendship, the
relation in which self-forgetting devotion most conspicuously displays
itself.
The question of whether words have meaning by nature or by convention
is considered in the Cratylus—whether there is some special
appropriateness of the sounds or forms of words to the objects they
signify, or whether meaning merely reflects the usage of the community.
Plato argues that, since language is an instrument of thought, the test
of its rightness is not mere social usage but its genuine capacity to
express thought accurately. The dialogue Euthydemus satirizes the
“eristics”—those who try to entangle a person in fallacies because of
the ambiguity of language. Its more serious purpose, however, is to
contrast this futile logic chopping with the “protreptic,” or hortatory,
efforts of Socrates, who urges that happiness is guaranteed not by the
possession of things but by the right use of them—and particularly of
the gifts of mind, body, and fortune.
The earlier dialogues » Ethical and political dialogues
The Gorgias, the Protagoras, and the Meno, like several of the lesser
dialogues, give prominence to ethical and political themes. The Gorgias
begins ostensibly as an inquiry into the nature and worth of rhetoric,
the art of advocacy professed by Gorgias, and develops into a plea of
sustained eloquence and logical power for morality—as against
expediency—as the sovereign rule of life, both private and public. It
ends with an imaginative picture of the eternal destinies of the
righteous and of the unrighteous soul.
Gorgias holds that rhetoric is the queen of all “arts.” If the
statesman skilled in rhetoric is clever enough, he can, though a layman,
carry the day even against the specialist. Socrates, on the other hand,
declares that rhetoric is not an art but a mere “knack” of humouring the
prejudices of an audience. There are two arts conducive to health of
soul, those of the legislator and of the judge. The Sophist counterfeits
the first, the orator the second, by taking the pleasant instead of the
good as his standard. The orator is thus not the wise physician of the
body politic but its toady. This severe judgment is disputed by Polus,
an ardent admirer of Gorgias, on the ground that the successful orator
is virtually the autocrat of the community, and to be such is the summit
of human happiness because he can do whatever he likes.
Socrates rejects this view. He does so by developing one of the
“Socratic paradoxes”: to suffer a wrong is an evil, but to inflict one
is much worse. Thus if rhetoric is of real service to men, it should be
most of all serviceable to an offender, who would employ it to move the
authorities to inflict the penalties for which the state of his soul
calls. All of this is in turn denied by Callicles, who proceeds to
develop the extreme position of an amoralist. It may be a convention of
the herd that unscrupulous aggression is discreditable and wrong, but
“nature’s convention” is that the strong are justified in using their
strength as they please, while the weak “go to the wall.” To Socrates,
however, the creators of the imperialistic Athenian democracy were no
true statesmen; they were the domestic servants of the democracy for
whose tastes they catered; they were not its physicians. That would be a
condition like that of the Danaids of mythology, who are punished in
Hades by being set to spend eternity in filling leaking pitchers. A
happy life consists not in the constant gratification of boundless
desires but rather in the measured satisfaction of wants that are
tempered by justice and sōphrosunē.
The Meno is nominally concerned with the question of what virtue is
and whether it can be taught. But it is further interesting for two
reasons: it states clearly the doctrine that knowledge is
“recollection”; and it introduces as a character the democratic
politician Anytus, the main author of the prosecution of Socrates.
Whether virtue can be taught depends on what virtue is. But the
inquiry into virtue is difficult—indeed, the very possibility of inquiry
is threatened by Meno’s paradox concerning the quest for knowledge. If a
person is ignorant about the subject of his inquiry, he could not
recognize the unknown, even if he found it. If, on the other hand, the
person already knows it, inquiry is futile because it is idle to inquire
into what one already knows. But this difficulty would vanish if the
soul were immortal and had long ago learned all truth, so that it needs
now only to be reminded of truths that it once knew and has forgotten.
To advance this argument, Socrates shows that a slave boy who has never
studied geometry can be brought to recognize mathematical truths. He
produces the right answer “out of himself.” In general, knowledge is
“recollection.” Socrates next produces the hypothesis that virtue is
knowledge and infers that it is teachable. But if virtue is knowledge,
there must be professional teachers of it. Anytus insists that the
Sophists, who claim to be such professionals, are mischievous impostors;
and even the “best men” have been unable to teach it to their own sons.
The Meno ends with a distinction between knowledge and true belief and
with the suggestion that virtue comes not by teaching but by divine
gift.
The Protagoras gives the most complete presentation of the main
principles of Socratic morality. In this dialogue Socrates meets the
eminent Sophist Protagoras, who explains that his profession is the
“teaching of goodness”—i.e., the art of making a success of one’s life
and of one’s city. Socrates urges, however, that both common opinion and
the failure of eminent men to teach “goodness” to their sons suggest
that the conduct of life is not teachable. But the problem arises as to
whether the various commonly recognized virtues are really different or
all one. Protagoras is ultimately ready to identify all of the virtues
except courage with wisdom or sound judgment. Socrates then attempts to
show that, even in the case of courage, goodness consists in the fact
that, by facing pain and danger, one escapes worse pain or danger. Thus
all virtues can be reduced to the prudent computation of pleasures and
of pains. Here, then, is a second “Socratic paradox”: no one does wrong
willingly—all wrongdoing is a matter of miscalculation. It is a puzzling
feature of this argument that Socrates appears to embrace a form of
hedonism.
The earlier dialogues » Metaphysical foundation of Plato’s doctrine:
Phaedo
In the works so far considered, the foundation of a Socratic moral and
political doctrine is laid, which holds that the great concern of man is
the development of a rational moral personality and that this
development is the key to man’s felicity. Success in this task, however,
depends on rational insight into the true scale of good. The reason men
forfeit felicity is that they mistake apparent good for real. If a man
ever knew with assurance what the Good is, he would never pursue
anything else; it is in this sense that “all virtue is knowledge.” The
philosophical moralist, who has achieved an assured insight into
absolute Good, is thus the only true statesman, for he alone can tend to
the national character. These moral convictions have a metaphysical
foundation and justification. The principles of this metaphysics are
expounded more explicitly in the following dialogues, in which a theory
of knowledge and of scientific method is also discernible.
The object of the Phaedo is to justify belief in the immortality of
the soul by showing that it follows from a fundamental metaphysical
doctrine (the doctrine of Forms), which seems to afford a rational clue
to the structure of the universe. Socrates’ soul is identical with
Socrates himself: the survival of his soul is the survival of
Socrates—in a purified state. For his life has been spent in trying to
liberate the soul from dependence on the body. In life, the body is
always interfering with the soul’s activity. Its appetites and passions
interrupt the pursuit of wisdom and goodness.
There are four arguments for thinking that the soul survives death.
First, there is a belief that the soul has a succession of many lives.
The processes of nature in general are cyclical; and it is reasonable to
suppose that this cyclicity applies to the case of dying and coming to
life. If this were not so, if the process of dying were not reversible,
life would ultimately vanish from the universe.
Second, the doctrine that what men call “learning” is really
“recollection” shows, or at least suggests, that the soul’s life is
independent of the body.
Third, the soul contemplates the Forms, which are eternal,
changeless, and simple. The soul is like the Forms. Hence it is
immortal.
The fourth argument is the most elaborate. Socrates begins by
recalling his early interest in finding the causes of being and change
and his dissatisfaction with the explanations then current. He offers
instead the Forms as causes. First, and safely, he says that something
becomes, say, hot simply by participating in Heat. Then, a little more
daringly, he is prepared to say that it becomes hot by participating in
Fire, which brings Heat with it. Now if Fire brings Heat, it cannot
accept Cold, which is the opposite of Heat. All this is then applied to
the soul. Human beings are alive by participating in Life—and, more
particularly, by having souls that bring Life with them. Since the soul
brings Life, it cannot accept Death, the opposite of Life. But in that
case the soul cannot perish and is immortal. (For further discussion of
the theory of Forms, see metaphysics: Forms.)
The earlier dialogues » Aesthetic and mystical dialogues
Both the Symposium and the Phaedrus present the Forms in a special
light, as objects of mystical contemplation and as stimuli of mystical
emotion.
The immediate object of the Symposium, which records several banquet
eulogies of erōs (erotic love), is to find the highest manifestation of
the love that controls the world in the mystic aspiration after union
with eternal and supercosmic beauty. It depicts Socrates as having
reached the goal of union and puts the figure of Alcibiades, who has
sold his spiritual birthright for the pleasures of the world, in sharp
opposition to him.
The main argument may be summarized thus: Erōs is a reaching out of
the soul to a hoped-for good. The object is eternal beauty. In its
crudest form, love for a beautiful person is really a passion to achieve
immortality through offspring by that person. A more spiritual form is
the aspiration to combine with a kindred soul to give birth to sound
institutions and rules of life. Still more spiritual is the endeavour to
enrich philosophy and science through noble dialogue. The insistent
seeker may then suddenly descry a supreme beauty that is the cause and
source of all of the beauties so far discerned. The philosopher’s path
thus culminates in a vision of the Form of the Good, the supreme Form
that stands at the head of all others.
Though the immediate subject of the Phaedrus is to show how a truly
scientific rhetoric might be built on the double foundation of logical
method and scientific study of human passions, Plato contrives to unite
with this topic a discussion of the psychology of love, which leads him
to speak of the Forms as the objects of transcendent emotion and,
indeed, of mystical contemplation. The soul, in its antenatal,
disembodied state, could enjoy the direct contemplation of the Forms.
But sense experience can suggest the Form of Beauty in an unusually
startling way: through falling in love. The unreason and madness of the
lover mean that the wings of his soul are beginning to grow again; it is
the first step in the soul’s return to its high estate.
The earlier dialogues » The Republic
In the Republic the immediate problem is ethical. What is justice? Can
it be shown that justice benefits the man who is just? Plato holds that
it can. Justice consists in a harmony that emerges when the various
parts of a unit perform the function proper to them and abstain from
interfering with the functions of any other part. More specifically,
justice occurs with regard to the individual, when the three component
parts of his soul—reason, appetite, and spirit, or will—each perform
their appropriate tasks; with regard to society, justice occurs when its
component members each fulfill the demands of their allotted roles.
Harmony is ensured in the individual when the rational part of his soul
is in command; and in society when philosophers are its rulers, because
philosophers—Platonic philosophers—have a clear understanding of
justice, based on their vision of the Form of the Good.
In the ethical scheme of the Republic three roles, or “three lives,”
are distinguished: those of the philosopher, of the votary of enjoyment,
and of the man of action. The end of the first is wisdom; of the second,
the gratification of appetite; and of the third, practical distinction.
These reflect the three elements, or active principles, within a man:
rational judgment of good; a multitude of conflicting appetites for
particular gratifications; and spirit, or will, manifested as resentment
against infringements both by others and by the individual’s own
appetites.
This tripartite scheme is then applied to determine the structure of
the just society. Plato develops his plan for a just society by dividing
the general population into three classes that correspond to the three
parts of man’s soul as well as to the three lives. Thus there are: the
statesmen; the general civilian population that provides for material
needs; and the executive force (army and police). These three orders
correspond respectively to the rational, appetitive, and spirited
elements. They have as their corresponding virtues wisdom, the
excellence of the thinking part; temperance, that of the appetitive part
(acquiescence of the nonrational elements to the plan of life prescribed
by judgment); and courage, that of the spirited part (loyalty to the
rule of life laid down by judgment). The division of the population into
these three classes would be made not on the basis of birth or wealth
but on the basis of education provided for by the state. By a process of
examination, each individual would then be assigned to his appropriate
rank in correspondence with the predominant part of his soul.
The state ordered in this manner is just because each of the elements
vigorously executes its own function and, in loyal contentment, confines
itself within its limits. Such a society is a true aristocracy, or rule
of the best. Plato describes successive deviations from this ideal as
timocracy (the benign military state), oligarchy (the state dominated by
merchant princes, a plutocracy), and democracy (the state subjected to
an irresponsible or criminal will).
The training of the philosophical rulers would continue through a
long and rigorous education because the vision of the Good requires
extensive preparation and intellectual discipline. It leads through
study of the exact sciences to that of their metaphysical principles.
The central books of the Republic thus present an outline of metaphysics
and a philosophy of the sciences. The Forms appear in the double
character of objects of all genuine science and formal causes of events
and processes. Plato expressly denied that there can be knowledge, in
the proper sense, of the temporal and mutable. In his scheme for the
intellectual training of the philosophical rulers, the exact
sciences—arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, astronomy, and
harmonics—would first be studied for 10 years to familiarize the mind
with relations that can only be apprehended by thought. Five years would
then be given to the still severer study of “dialectic.” Dialectic is,
etymologically, the art of conversation, of question and answer; and,
according to Plato, dialectical skill is the ability to pose and answer
questions about the essences of things. The dialectician replaces
hypotheses with secure knowledge, and his aim is to ground all science,
all knowledge, on some “unhypothetical first principle.”
This principle is the Form of the Good, which, like the Sun in
relation to visible things, is the source of the reality of all things,
of the light by which they are apprehended, and also of their value.
(There are hints in the Republic, as well as in Plato’s lecture “On the
Good” and in several of the later dialogues, that this first principle
is identical with Unity.) As in the Symposium, the Good is the supreme
beauty that dawns suddenly upon the pilgrim of love as he draws near to
his goal.
The earlier dialogues » Dialogues of critical reconstruction
The two works that probably anticipate the dialogues of Plato’s old age,
the Parmenides and Theaetetus, display a remarkable difference of tone,
clearly the result of a period of fruitful reconstruction.
The theory expounded in the Phaedo and Republic does not allow enough
reality to the sensible world. These dialogues suppose that an entity
capable of being sensed is a complex that participates in a plurality of
Forms; what else it may be they do not say. Clearly, however, the
relation between a thing and a Form (e.g., beauty), which has been
called participation, needs further elucidation. In these dialogues
truths of fact, of the natural world, have not yet had their importance
recognized.
Plato clearly had an external motive for the reexamination of his
system as well. The Parmenides, the Theaetetus, and the Sophist all
reveal a special interest in the Eleatic philosophy, of which Parmenides
was the chief representative. The doctrine of his friend Eucleides of
Megara, like that of Parmenides, was that phenomena which can be
apprehended by the senses are illusions with no reality at all.
Continued reflection on this problem led straight to the discussion of
the meaning of the copula “is” and the significance of the denial “is
not,” which is the subject of the Sophist.
Formally the Parmenides leads to an impasse. In its first half the
youthful Socrates expounds the doctrine of Forms as the solution of the
problem of the “one and many.” (“How can this, that, and the other cat
all be one thing—e.g., black?” “Each distinct cat participates in the
unique Form of Blackness.”) Parmenides raises what appear to be
insoluble objections and hints that the helplessness of Socrates under
his criticism arises from insufficient training in logic. In the second
half Parmenides gives an example of the logical training that he
recommends. He takes for examination his own thesis, “The one is,” and
constructs upon it as basis an elaborate set of contradictions.
The Eleatic objections to the doctrine of Forms are, first, that it
does not really reconcile unity with plurality, because it leads to a
perpetual regress. It says that the many things that have a common
predicate, or characteristic, participate in a single Form. But the Form
itself also admits of the same predicate, and therefore a second Form
must exist, participated in alike by the sensible things and the first
Form, and so on, endlessly. This objection came to be known in Plato’s
time as the problem of the Third Man, because it alleges that, in
addition to an individual man and the Form of Man, there must be a third
entity.
Because the Parmenides does not clearly resolve these objections,
some scholars have concluded that Plato had become aware of fatal flaws
in the doctrine of Forms and that the second half of the dialogue is
merely a demonstration of the kind of dry logical exercise to which he
had resigned himself. Others, taking Parmenides at his word, have urged
that Plato believed that the doctrine could be satisfactorily revised
and that the second half of the dialogue is a demonstration of the
logical means necessary for accomplishing this task. According to this
view, the problem of the Third Man arises from Socrates’ failure to
distinguish between two senses in which a Form may be said to admit of a
predicate. One sense consists of participating in another Form; another
involves bearing a certain relationship to the predicate whereby the
predicate is part of the Form’s nature or essence. Because in general
the Forms can be predicated of themselves only in the second sense, the
self-predication in the Third Man does not imply the existence of
additional Forms, and the infinite regress is blocked. The details and
implications of this view continue to be debated by scholars.
The Theaetetus is a discussion of the question of how knowledge
should be defined. It is remarkable that the dialogue treats knowledge
at length without making any reference to the Forms or to the mythology
of recollection. It remains to this day one of the best introductions to
the problem of knowledge. The main argument is as follows:
It seems plausible to say that knowledge is perception, which appears
to imply that “what seems to me is so to me; what seems to you is so to
you” (Protagoras). This relativistic doctrine is, rather oddly, claimed
by Plato to be equivalent to the view held by the late 6th-century-bc
Greek philosopher Heracleitus that “everything is always and in all ways
in flux.” But these views imply that there is no common perceived world
and therefore nothing of certainty can be said or thought at all.
As for the thesis that knowledge is perception, one must first
distinguish what the soul perceives through bodily organs from what it
apprehends by itself without organs—such as number, sameness, likeness,
being, and good. But because all knowledge involves truth and therefore
being, perception, which cannot grasp being, is not identical with
knowledge.
Is knowledge, then, true belief? The reference to true belief leads
Plato into a discussion of false belief, for which he can discover no
satisfactory analysis. False belief is belief in what is not, and what
is not cannot be believed. But the example of verdicts in the law courts
is enough to show that there can be true belief without knowledge.
Finally, is knowledge true belief together with an “account”? The
concept of an account (logos) is not a simple one. No satisfactory
definition of knowledge emerges, and the dialogue ends without a
conclusion.
Because Plato’s argument nowhere appeals to his favourite doctrine of
Forms and because the dialogue ends so inconclusively, some scholars
have suggested that Plato wanted to show that the problem of knowledge
is insoluble without the Forms.
The later dialogues
Formally the important dialogues the Sophist and the Statesman are
closely connected, both being ostensibly concerned with a problem of
definition. The real purpose of the Sophist, however, is logical or
metaphysical; it aims at explaining the true nature of negative
predication, or denials that something is so. The object of the
Statesman, on the other hand, is to consider the respective merits of
two contrasting forms of government, personal rule and
constitutionalism, and to recommend the second, particularly in the form
of limited monarchy. The Sophist thus lays the foundations of all
subsequent logic, the Statesman those of all constitutionalism. A second
purpose in both dialogues is to illustrate the value of careful
classification as a basis for scientific definition.
The Sophist purports to investigate what a Sophist really is. The
definitions all lead to such notions as falsity, illusion, nonbeing. But
these notions are puzzling. How can there be such a thing as a false
statement or a false impression? The false means “what is not,” and what
is not is nothing at all and can be neither uttered nor thought. Plato
argues that what is not in some sense also is and that what is in some
sense is not; and he refutes Parmenidean monism by drawing the
distinction between absolute and relative nonbeing. A significant
denial, A is not B, does not mean that A is nothing but that A is other
than B; every one of the “greatest kinds,” or most general, features of
reality—being, identity, difference, motion, and rest—is other than
every other feature. Motion, say, is other than rest; and thus motion is
not rest—but it does not follow that motion is not. The true business of
dialectic is to treat the Forms themselves as an interrelated system,
with relations of compatibility and incompatibility among themselves.
In the Statesman the conclusion is reached that government by a
benevolent dictator is not suitable to the conditions of human life
because his direction is not that of a god. The surrogate for direction
by a god is the impersonal supremacy of inviolable law. Where there is
such law, monarchy is the best and democracy the least satisfactory form
of constitution; but where there is no law, this situation is inverted.
The Philebus contains Plato’s ripest moral psychology. Its subject is
strictly ethical—the question of whether the Good is to be identified
with pleasure or with wisdom. Under the guidance of Socrates a mediating
conclusion is reached: the best life contains both elements, but wisdom
predominates.
Philosophically most important is a classification adopted to
determine the formal character of the two claimants to recognition as
the Good. Everything real belongs to one of four classes: (1) the
infinite or unbounded, (2) the limit, (3) the mixture (of infinite and
limit), (4) the cause of the mixture. It emerges that all of the good
things of life belong to the third class—that is, are produced by
imposing a definite limit upon an indeterminate continuum.
The Timaeus is an exposition of cosmology, physics, and biology.
Timaeus first draws the distinction between eternal being and temporal
becoming and insists that it is only of the former that one can have
exact and final knowledge. The visible, mutable world had a beginning;
it is the work of God, who had its Forms before him as eternal models in
terms of which he molded the world as an imitation. God first formed its
soul out of three constituents: identity, difference, being. The world
soul was placed in the circles of the heavenly bodies, and the circles
were animated with movements. Subsequently the various subordinate gods
and the immortal and rational element in the human soul were formed. The
human body and the lower components of its soul were generated through
the intermediacy of the “created gods” (i.e., the stars).
The Timaeus combines the geometry of the Pythagoreans with the
biology of Empedocles by a mathematical construction of the elements, in
which four of the regular solids—cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, and
icosahedron—are assumed to be the shapes of the corpuscles of earth,
fire, air, and water. (The fifth, the dodecahedron, comprises the model
for the whole universe.)
Among the important features of the dialogue are its introduction of
God as the “demiurge”—the intelligent cause of all order and structure
in the world of becoming—and the emphatic recognition of the essentially
tentative character of natural science. It is also noteworthy that,
though Plato presents a corpuscular physics, his metaphysical substrate
is not matter but chōra (space). The presence of space as a factor
requires the recognition, over and above God or mind, of an element that
he called anankē (necessity). The activity of the demiurge ensures that
the universe is in general rational and well-ordered, but the brute
force of material necessity sets limits to the scope and efficacy of
reason. The details of Plato’s cosmology, physiology, and psychophysics
are of great importance for the history of science but metaphysically of
secondary interest.
The Laws, Plato’s longest and most intensely practical work, contains
his ripest utterances on ethics, education, and jurisprudence, as well
as his one entirely nonmythical exposition of theology. The immediate
object is to provide a model of constitution making and legislation to
assist in the actual founding of cities. The problem of the dialogue is
thus not the construction of an ideal state as in the Republic but the
framing of a constitution and code that might be successfully adopted by
a society of average Greeks. Hence the demands made on average human
nature, though exacting, are not pitched too high; and the communism of
the Republic is dropped.
Purely speculative philosophy and science are excluded from the
purview of the Laws, and the metaphysical interest is introduced only so
far as to provide a basis for a moral theology. In compensation the
dialogue is exceptionally rich in political and legal thought and
appears, indirectly, to have left its mark on the great system of Roman
jurisprudence.
In the ethics of the Laws, Plato is rigid and rigorous—for example,
homosexuality shall be completely suppressed, and monogamous marriage
with strict chastity shall be the rule. (In the Republic the guardian
class enters into temporary unions or “sacred marriages,” with a
community of wives and children, to foster a concern for the common
good.) In politics, Plato favours a mixed constitution, one with
elements of democratic freedom and autocratic authoritarianism, and he
suggests a system for securing both genuine popular representation and
the proper degree of attention to personal qualifications. The basis of
society is to be agriculture, not commerce. What amounts to a tax of 100
percent is to be levied on incomes beyond the statutory limits.
Education is regarded as the most important of all the functions of
government. The distinction between the sexes is to be treated as
irrelevant.
Careful attention is to be paid to the right utilization of the
child’s instinct for play and to the demand that the young shall be
taught in institutions where expert instruction in all of the various
subjects is coordinated. Members of the supreme council of the state
shall be thoroughly trained in the supreme science, which “sees the one
in the many and the many in the one”—i.e., in dialectic. In the Laws
Plato instituted regulations which would ensure that trials for serious
offenses would take place before a court of highly qualified magistrates
and would proceed with due deliberation. Also, provision was made for
appeals, and a foundation was laid for a distinction between civil and
criminal law.
The Laws also creates a natural theology. There are three false
beliefs, Plato holds, that are fatal to moral character: atheism, denial
of the moral government of the world, and the belief that divine
judgment can be bought off by offerings. Plato claims that he can
disprove them all. His refutation of atheism turns on the identification
of the soul with the “movement which can move itself.” Thus all motion
throughout the universe is ultimately initiated by souls. It is then
inferred from the regular character of the great cosmic motions and
their systematic unity that the souls which originate them form a
hierarchy with a best soul, God, at their head. Since some motions are
disorderly, there must be one soul that is not the best, and there may
be more. (There is no suggestion, however, that there is a worst soul, a
Devil.) The other two heresies can be similarly disposed of. Plato thus
becomes the originator of the view that there are certain theological
truths that can be strictly demonstrated by reason—i.e., of
philosophical theology. Plato goes on to enact that the denial of any of
his three propositions shall be a grave crime.
The Laws strikes many readers as a dull and depressing work. Its
prose lacks the sparkle of the early dialogues; and Socrates, the hero
of those works, would not have been tolerated under a government of the
repressively authoritarian style that the Laws recommends.
Jonathan Barnes
|
|
|
|
THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO
|
Type of work: Philosophical dialogues
Author: Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Time: About 400 B.C.
Locale: Greece, principally Athens
First transcribed: с 387-347 B.C.
|
|
Principal Personages
Socrates, the Athenian philosopher
Gorgias, a Sophist
Protagoras, a Sophist
Crito, Socrates' contemporary, an aged friend
Phaedrus, a defender of rhetoric
Aristophanes, a poet and playwright
Theaetetus, hero of the battle of Corinth
Parmenides, the philosopher from Elea
Philebus, a hedonist
Timaeus, a philosopher and statesman
Plato, Socrates' pupil
|
|
The Platonic Dialogues rank with the extant works of Aristotle as the
most important collection of philosophical works so far produced in the
Western world. Although Plato's influence is partly due to the fact that
his works have survived, unlike many writings of earlier Greek
philosophers, and also to the fact that at various times in the history
of the Christian church his ideas have been utilized in one form or
another in the process of constructing a Christian theology, the
principal cause of his past and present effect on human thought is the
quality of his work.
The distinctive character of Platonic thought finds adequate expression
in the dialogue form. Although Plato, like all philosophers, had his
favored perspectives from which he interpreted and, consequently, saw
the world, he realized better than most philosophers that philosophy is
more an activity of the mind than the product of an investigation. This
is not to say that philosophy does not, in some legitimate sense,
illuminate the world; it means that in the process of making sense out
of experience the philosopher is restless: no one way of clarifying an
idea or a view is entirely satisfactory, and there is always much to be
said for some alternative mode of explanation. When distinctive Platonic
conceptions finally become clear, they do so against a background of
penetrating discussion by means of which alternative ideas are explored
for their own values and made to complement the conception which Plato
finally endorses. As an instrument for presenting the critical point
counterpoint of ideas, the dialogue is ideal; and as a character in
control of the general course and quality of the discussion. Socrates is
unsurpassed.
Socrates was Plato's teacher, and it was probably out of respect for
Socrates the man and philosopher that Plato first considered using him
as the central disputant in his dialogues. Reflection must have enforced
his decision, for Socrates was important more for his method than for
his fixed ideas, more for his value as a philosophical irritant than as
a source of enduring wisdom. The Socrat-ic method is often described as
a question-answer method designed to bring out the contradictions and
omissions in the philosophical views of others; but it is better
understood as a clever technique for so playing upon the ambiguities of
claims as to lead others into changing their use of terms and, hence,
into apparent inconsistency.
The question concerning the extent to which Plato uses the dialogues to
record the ideas of Socrates and the extent to which he uses Socrates as
a proponent of his own ideas will probably never be conclusively
answered. The question is, of course, historical; philosophically
speaking, it makes no difference whose ideas find their way into the
dialogues. A fairly safe assumption is that Socrates emphasized the
importance of philosophical problems of value, knowledge, and philosophy
itself. He probably did argue that it is important to know oneself, that
the admission of one's own ignorance is a kind of wisdom possessed by
few men, and that virtue is knowledge.
Certainly Socrates must have had a devotion to his calling as
philosopher and critic. No man who regarded philosophy as a game would
have remained in Athens to face the charge that by philosophy he had
corrupted the youth of Athens, nor would he have refused a chance to
escape after having been condemned to death. The courage and integrity
of Socrates are recorded with poignant power in the Apology, the
dialogue in which Socrates defends himself and philosophy against the
charges brought against him; the Crito, in which Socrates refuses to
escape from prison; and the Phaedo, in which Socrates discusses the
immortality of the soul before he drinks the hemlock poison and dies.
Of the ideas presented in the dialogues, perhaps none is more important
than Plato's theory of Ideas or Forms. This idea is most clearly
expressed in the Republic, in which the problem of discovering the
nature of justice in man is resolved by considering the nature of
justice in the state. Plato distinguished between particular things, the
objects we experience in our daily living, and the characters that
things have, or could have. Goodness, truth, beauty, and other universal
characters—properties that can affect a number of individual objects—are
eternal, changeless, beautiful, and the sourci? of all knowledge.
Although some critics have claimed that Plato was speaking
metaphorically when he talked, through Socrates, about the reality of
the Forms, speaking as if they enjoyed a separate existence, the
dialogues leave the impression that Plato considered the Forms (Ideas)
to be actually existing, in some sense peculiar to themselves, as
universals or prototypes which things may or may not exemplify.
If one reviews, however inadequately, the range of questions and
tentative answers to be found in the dialogues, a bare inkling of
Plato's power as a philosopher is then realized. But the dialogues must
be read before the depth of Plato's speculative mind and the skill of
his dialectic can be appreciated. Furthermore, only a reading of the
dialogues can convey Plato's charm, wit, and range of sympathy. Whether
the final result may be in good part attributed to Socrates as Plato's
inspiring teacher is not important. Socrates as the subject and Plato as
the writer (and philosopher—in all probability more creative than
Socrates) combine to leave us with an unforgettable image of the
Hellenistic mind.
Although many of the dialogues concern themselves with more than one
question, and although definitive answers are infrequent so that
discussions centering about a certain subject may crop up in a number of
different dialogues, it may be helpful to indicate the central problems
and conclusions of the dialogues:
Charmides centers on the question, "What is temperance?" After
criticizing a number of answers, and without finally answering the
question, Socrates emphasizes the point that temperance involves
knowledge. Lysis and Laches consider, respectively, the questions, "What
is friendship?" and "What is courage?" The former discussion points out
the difficulty of the question and of resolving conflicts of values: the
latter distinguishes courage from a mere facing of danger and makes the
point that courage, as one of the virtues, is a kind of knowledge
involving willingness to act for the good. The Ion exhibits Socratic
irony at work on a rhapsodist who is proud of his skill in the
recitation of poetry. Socrates argues that poetry is the result of
inspiration, a kind of divine madness. In the Protagoras Socrates
identifies virtue and knowledge, insisting that no one chooses evil
except through ignorance. One of a number of attacks on the sophistical
art of fighting with words is contained in the Euthydemus.
In the Meno the philosopher Socrates and his companions wonder whether
virtue can be taught. The doctrine that ideas are implanted in the soul
before birth is demonstrated by leading a slave boy into making the
correct answers to some problems in geometry. At first it seems that
since virtue is a good and goodness is knowledge, virtue can be taught.
But since there are no teachers of virtue, it cannot be taught; and, in
any case, since virtue involves right opinion, it is not teachable.
"What is piety?" is the question of the Euthyphro. Euthyphro's idea that
piety is whatever is pleasing to the gods is shown to be inadequate.
The Apology is the most effective portrait of Socrates in a practical
situation. No moment in his life had graver consequences than the trial
resulting from the charge that he had corrupted the youth of Athens by
his teachings, yet Socrates continued to be himself, to argue
dialecti-cally, and to reaffirm his love of wisdom and virtue. He
pictured himself as a gadfly, stinging the Athenians out of their
intellectual arrogance. He argued that he would not corrupt anyone
voluntarily, for to corrupt those about him would be to create evil that
might harm him.
Socrates is shown as a respecter of the law in the Crito; he refuses to
escape after having been pronounced guilty. In the Phaedo he argues that
the philosopher seeks death because his whole aim in life is to separate
the soul from the body. He argues for the immortality of the soul by
saying that opposites are generated from opposites; therefore, life is
generated from death. Also, the soul is by its very nature the principle
of life; hence, it cannot itself die.
The dialogue Greater Hippias does not settle the question, "What is
beauty?" but it does show, as Socrates points out, that "All that is
beautiful is difficult."
The subject of love is considered from various philosophic perspectives
in the Symposium, culminating in the conception of the highest love as
the love of the good, the beautiful, and the true.
Gorgias begins with a discussion of the art of rhetoric, and proceeds to
the development of the familiar Socratic ideas that it is better to
suffer evil than to do it, and it is better to be punished for
evil-doing than to escape punishment.
The Parmenides is a fascinating technical argument concerning various
logical puzzles about the one and the many. It contains some criticism
of Plato's theory of Ideas. Plato's increasing interest in problems of
philosophic method is shown by the Cratylus, which contains a discussion
of language beginning with the question whether there are true and false
names. Socrates is not dogmatic about the implications of using names,
but he does insist that any theory of language allow men to continue to
speak of their knowledge of realities.
The Phaedrus is another discourse on love. It contains the famous myth
of the soul conceived as a charioteer and winged steeds. In the
Theaetetus Socrates examines the proposal by Theaetetus that knowledge
is sense perception. He rejects this idea as well as the notion that
knowledge is true opinion.
The Sophist is a careful study of sophistical method with emphasis on
the problem of Being and Not-being. In the Statesman Plato continues the
study of the state he initiated in the Republic, introducing the
idea—later stressed by Aristotle—that virtue is a mean.
Socrates argues in the Philebus that neither pleasure nor wisdom is in
itself the highest good, since pleasure that is not known is worthless
and wisdom that is not pleasant is not worth having; only a combination
is wholly satisfactory.
A rare excursion into physics and a philosophical consideration of the
nature of the universe are found in the Timaeus. Here Plato writes of
God, creation, the elements, the soul, gravitation, and many other
matters.
The Critias, an unfinished dialogue, presents the story of an ancient
and mythical war between Athens and Atlantis; and with the Laws, the
longest of the dialogues, Plato ranges over most of the areas touched on
in his other dialogues, but with an added religious content: Soul is the
source of life, motion, and moral action; and there is an evil soul in
the universe with which God must deal.
|
|
|
|
REPUBLIC
|
Type of work: Philosophic dialogue
Author: Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Time: Fifth century B.C.
Locale: The Piraeus, Greece
First transcribed: Fourth century B.C.
|
|
The Republic is Plato's masterpiece, not only because it presents a
fascinating defense of the author's conception of the ideal state but
also because it gives us the most sustained and convincing portrait of
Socrates as a critical and creative philosopher. Other dialogues, such
as the Phaedo and the Apology, may be superior as studies of the
personality and character of Socrates, but the Republic is unexcelled as
an exhibition of the famed Socratic method being brought to bear on such
questions as "What is justice?" and "What kind of state would be most
just?"
Although the constructive arguments of this dialogue come from the mouth
of Socrates, it is safe to assume that much of the philosophy is
Platonic in origin. As a rough reading rule, we may say that the method
is Socratic, but the content is provided by Plato himself. Among the
ideas which are presented and defended in the Republic are the Platonic
theory of Forms—the formal prototypes of all things, objective or
intellectual—the Platonic conception of the nature and obligations of
the philosopher, and the Platonic theory and criticism of poetry. But
the central concern of the author is with the idea of justice in man and
the state. The pursuit of this idea makes the Republic the longest of
the dialogues with the exception of the Laws.
The dialogue is a discussion between Socrates and various friends while
they are in the Piraeus for a festival. The discussion of justice is
provoked by a remark made by an old man, Cephalus. to the effect that
the principal advantage of being wealthy is that a man near death is
able to repay what he owes to the gods and men, and is thereby able to
be just in the hope of achieving a happy afterlife. Socrates objects to
this conception of justice, maintaining that whether a person should
return what he has received depends on the circumstances. For example, a
man who has received dangerous weapons from his friends while sane
should not, if he is just, return those weapons if his friend while mad
demands them.
Polemarchus amends the idea and declares that it is just to help our
friends and return to them what they are due, provided they are good and
worthy of receiving the good. Enemies, on the other hand, should have
harm done to them for. they are bad and unworthy and that is what they
are due.
Socrates compels Polemarchus to admit that injuring anyone, even a
wicked man. makes him worse: and since no just man would ever sanction
making men worse, justice must be something other than giving good to
the good and bad to the bad.
Thrasymachus then proposes the theory that justice is whatever is to the
interest of the stronger party. His idea is that justice is relative to
the law, and the law is made by the stronger party according to his
interests. In rebuttal. Socrates maneuvers Thrasymachus into saying that
sometimes rulers make mistakes. If this is so, then sometimes the law is
against their interests; when the law is against the interests of the
stronger party, it is right to do what is not to the interest of the
stronger party.
The secret of the Socratic method is evident from analysis of this
argument. The term "interest" or "to the interest of" is ambiguous,
sometimes meaning what a man is interested in, what he wants, and at
other times what he could want if he were not in error, as when we say,
"But although you want it, it is not really to your interest to have
it." Socrates adroitly shifts from one sense of the expression to the
other so that Thrasymachus apparently contradicts himself. In this
indirect way Socrates makes it clear both to the "victim" and to the
onlookers that the proponent of the claim—in this case, Thrasymachus—has
not cleared it of all possibility of misinterpretation.
Socrates then goes on to say that justice must be relative to the needs
of those who are served, not to the desires of those who serve them. The
physician, for example, as physician, must make the health of the
patient his primary concern if he is to be just.
Socrates suggests that their understanding of justice would be clarified
if they were to consider a concrete case, say the state: if by
discussion they could come to understand what a state must be in order
to be just, it might be possible to generalize and to arrive at an idea
of justice itself.
Beginning with an account of what a state would have to be in order to
fulfill its functions as a state, Socrates then proceeds to develop the
notion of an ideal state by asking what the relations of ihe various
groups of citizens to each other should be.
Every state needs three classes of citizens: the Guardians, who rule and
advise the rest; the Auxiliaries, who provide military protection for
the state; and the Workers, the husbandmen and other providers of food,
clothing, and such useful materials.
In a just state these three classes of citizens function together, each
doing its own proper business without interfering with the tasks of the
other classes.
Applying this idea to the individual person, Socrates decides that a
just man is one who gives to each of his functions its proper task,
relating them to each other in a harmonious way. Just as the state has
three distinct elements, the governing, the defending, and the producing
bodies, so the individual person has three corresponding elements, the
rational, the spirited, and the appetitive. By the spirited element
Plato means the passionate aspect of man's nature, his propensity to
anger or other irrational emotions. He so uses the term anger that he
allows for what we call righteous indignation, the passionate defense of
reason against desire. The rational element is the discerning and
calculating side of man's nature, and it is what enables man to be wise
and judicious. The appetitive side of man is his inclination to desire
some things in preference to others.
A just man, then, is one who keeps each of the three elements of his
nature doing its proper work with the rational element in command. A
person is brave, says Socrates, if his spirited element remains always
in the service of reason. He is wise if he is governed by reason, for
reason takes into account the welfare of the entire person; and he is
temperate if his spirit and appetive work harmoniously under the
guidance of reason.
In order to discover those citizens best suited to be Guardians,
Socrates proposed that the ideal state educate all its citizens in music
and gymnastics, continually observing them to decide upon the sort of
occupation for which they would best be fitted. He also argues that the
Guardians and Auxiliaries should have no private property, and that they
each should share a community of wives and children.
These obvious communal features of the ideal state have led many critics
to dismiss Plato's conception as unacceptable. But it is well to
remember that in the dialogue Socrates tells his listeners that he is
not concerned about the practicality of his state; the conception of the
state is constructed merely to bring out the nature of justice.
In considering the education of the Guardians, Socrates builds the
conception of the philosopher as the true aristocrat or rational man,
the ideal ruler for the ideal state. The philosopher is a lover of
wisdom, and he alone manages to keep appetite and spirit in harmony with
reason. Consequently, the Guardians of the state should be educated as
philosophers, supplementing their training in arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and music with training in the philosophic skills of
dialectic. But the prospective Guardians should not be allowed to
undertake philosophic education until they are old enough to take it
seriously, not as mere amusement. After his philosophic training the
prospective Guardian should take part in the active life of his times,
so that at fifty he can assume political power with some knowledge of
the actual matters with which he shall be concerned.
In connection with his discussion of the philosopher, Socrates
introduced his famous myth of the cave. Men are like prisoners in a cave
that faces away from the light. Unable to see themselves or anyone else
because they are shackled, they observe only the shadows of things on
the wall in front of them, not realizing that the reality is something
quite different from the shadows. The philosopher is like a man who
leaves the cave, comes to know things as they really are, and returns
reluctantly to help the shackled men who think that shadows make up the
true world.
The philosopher comes to know reality through a study of the Forms or
Ideas of particular things. The world of our experience is like the
world of shadows, but the world of Ideas is the true reality. For every
class of objects, such as beds (Socrates' example), there is an
Idea-bed, a form shared by all particular beds. The man who studies only
the individual beds made by carpenters, or only the pictures of beds
made by artists, knows only copies of reality (and, in the case of the
imitative artist, only copies of copies); but the philosopher, making
the effort to learn the Idea itself, comes closer to reality.
Socrates objects to poetry and to art whenever they are imitative, which
they usually are. Although he admits that some poetry can be inspiring
in the patriotic training of the Guardians, he stresses the point that
imitative art is corrupting because it is misleading. Physical things,
after all, are merely copies of the Forms, the Ideas; hence they are one
step removed from reality. But works of art are copies of physical
things; hence they are at least two steps removed from reality.
Furthermore, the artist paints only a single aspect of a thing; hence
strictly speaking, art is three steps removed from reality. It is on
this account, as well as because of the immoral effect of the poetic
style of all but the most noble poets, that Socrates recommends that
imitative poets be banned from the state.
The Republic closes with Socrates' reaffirmation of his conviction that
only the just man is truly happy, for only he harmonizes reason,
appetite, and spirit by loving wisdom and the Form of the Good. The soul
is immortal, he argues, because the soul's illness is injustice; yet
injustice itself does not destroy a soul. Since the soul cannot be
destroyed by any illness other than its own, it must be immortal.
Socrates concludes by using a myth about life after death to show that
the just and wise man will prosper both in this life and "during the
journey of a thousand years."
|
|
|
|
|
ION
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION
The Ion is the shortest, or nearly the shortest, of all the writings which
bear the name of Plato, and is not authenticated by any early external
testimony. The grace and beauty of this little work supply the only, and perhaps
a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The plan is simple; the dramatic
interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of Socrates and the
transparent vanity and childlike enthusiasm of the rhapsode Ion. The theme of
the Dialogue may possibly have been suggested by the passage of Xenophon's
Memorabilia in which the rhapsodists are described by Euthydemus as 'very
precise about the exact words of Homer, but very idiotic themselves.' (Compare
Aristotle, Met.)
Ion the rhapsode has just come to Athens; he has been exhibiting in Epidaurus
at the festival of Asclepius, and is intending to exhibit at the festival of the
Panathenaea. Socrates admires and envies the rhapsode's art; for he is always
well dressed and in good company—in the company of good poets and of Homer, who
is the prince of them. In the course of conversation the admission is elicited
from Ion that his skill is restricted to Homer, and that he knows nothing of
inferior poets, such as Hesiod and Archilochus;—he brightens up and is wide
awake when Homer is being recited, but is apt to go to sleep at the recitations
of any other poet. 'And yet, surely, he who knows the superior ought to know the
inferior also;—he who can judge of the good speaker is able to judge of the bad.
And poetry is a whole; and he who judges of poetry by rules of art ought to be
able to judge of all poetry.' This is confirmed by the analogy of sculpture,
painting, flute-playing, and the other arts. The argument is at last brought
home to the mind of Ion, who asks how this contradiction is to be solved. The
solution given by Socrates is as follows:—
The rhapsode is not guided by rules of art, but is an inspired person who
derives a mysterious power from the poet; and the poet, in like manner, is
inspired by the God. The poets and their interpreters may be compared to a chain
of magnetic rings suspended from one another, and from a magnet. The magnet is
the Muse, and the ring which immediately follows is the poet himself; from him
are suspended other poets; there is also a chain of rhapsodes and actors, who
also hang from the Muses, but are let down at the side; and the last ring of all
is the spectator. The poet is the inspired interpreter of the God, and this is
the reason why some poets, like Homer, are restricted to a single theme, or,
like Tynnichus, are famous for a single poem; and the rhapsode is the inspired
interpreter of the poet, and for a similar reason some rhapsodes, like Ion, are
the interpreters of single poets.
Ion is delighted at the notion of being inspired, and acknowledges that he is
beside himself when he is performing;—his eyes rain tears and his hair stands on
end. Socrates is of opinion that a man must be mad who behaves in this way at a
festival when he is surrounded by his friends and there is nothing to trouble
him. Ion is confident that Socrates would never think him mad if he could only
hear his embellishments of Homer. Socrates asks whether he can speak well about
everything in Homer. 'Yes, indeed he can.' 'What about things of which he has no
knowledge?' Ion answers that he can interpret anything in Homer. But, rejoins
Socrates, when Homer speaks of the arts, as for example, of chariot-driving, or
of medicine, or of prophecy, or of navigation—will he, or will the charioteer or
physician or prophet or pilot be the better judge? Ion is compelled to admit
that every man will judge of his own particular art better than the rhapsode. He
still maintains, however, that he understands the art of the general as well as
any one. 'Then why in this city of Athens, in which men of merit are always
being sought after, is he not at once appointed a general?' Ion replies that he
is a foreigner, and the Athenians and Spartans will not appoint a foreigner to
be their general. 'No, that is not the real reason; there are many examples to
the contrary. But Ion has long been playing tricks with the argument; like
Proteus, he transforms himself into a variety of shapes, and is at last about to
run away in the disguise of a general. Would he rather be regarded as inspired
or dishonest?' Ion, who has no suspicion of the irony of Socrates, eagerly
embraces the alternative of inspiration.
The Ion, like the other earlier Platonic Dialogues, is a mixture of jest and
earnest, in which no definite result is obtained, but some Socratic or Platonic
truths are allowed dimly to appear.
The elements of a true theory of poetry are contained in the notion that the
poet is inspired. Genius is often said to be unconscious, or spontaneous, or a
gift of nature: that 'genius is akin to madness' is a popular aphorism of modern
times. The greatest strength is observed to have an element of limitation. Sense
or passion are too much for the 'dry light' of intelligence which mingles with
them and becomes discoloured by them. Imagination is often at war with reason
and fact. The concentration of the mind on a single object, or on a single
aspect of human nature, overpowers the orderly perception of the whole. Yet the
feelings too bring truths home to the minds of many who in the way of reason
would be incapable of understanding them. Reflections of this kind may have been
passing before Plato's mind when he describes the poet as inspired, or when, as
in the Apology, he speaks of poets as the worst critics of their own
writings—anybody taken at random from the crowd is a better interpreter of them
than they are of themselves. They are sacred persons, 'winged and holy things'
who have a touch of madness in their composition (Phaedr.), and should be
treated with every sort of respect (Republic), but not allowed to live in a
well-ordered state. Like the Statesmen in the Meno, they have a divine instinct,
but they are narrow and confused; they do not attain to the clearness of ideas,
or to the knowledge of poetry or of any other art as a whole.
In the Protagoras the ancient poets are recognized by Protagoras himself as
the original sophists; and this family resemblance may be traced in the Ion. The
rhapsode belongs to the realm of imitation and of opinion: he professes to have
all knowledge, which is derived by him from Homer, just as the sophist professes
to have all wisdom, which is contained in his art of rhetoric. Even more than
the sophist he is incapable of appreciating the commonest logical distinctions;
he cannot explain the nature of his own art; his great memory contrasts with his
inability to follow the steps of the argument. And in his highest moments of
inspiration he has an eye to his own gains.
The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry, which in the Republic leads to
their final separation, is already working in the mind of Plato, and is embodied
by him in the contrast between Socrates and Ion. Yet here, as in the Republic,
Socrates shows a sympathy with the poetic nature. Also, the manner in which Ion
is affected by his own recitations affords a lively illustration of the power
which, in the Republic, Socrates attributes to dramatic performances over the
mind of the performer. His allusion to his embellishments of Homer, in which he
declares himself to have surpassed Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of
Thasos, seems to show that, like them, he belonged to the allegorical school of
interpreters. The circumstance that nothing more is known of him may be adduced
in confirmation of the argument that this truly Platonic little work is not a
forgery of later times.
ION
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Ion.
SOCRATES: Welcome, Ion. Are you from your native city of Ephesus?
ION: No, Socrates; but from Epidaurus, where I attended the festival of
Asclepius.
SOCRATES: And do the Epidaurians have contests of rhapsodes at the festival?
ION: O yes; and of all sorts of musical performers.
SOCRATES: And were you one of the competitors—and did you succeed?
ION: I obtained the first prize of all, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Well done; and I hope that you will do the same for us at the
Panathenaea.
ION: And I will, please heaven.
SOCRATES: I often envy the profession of a rhapsode, Ion; for you have always
to wear fine clothes, and to look as beautiful as you can is a part of your art.
Then, again, you are obliged to be continually in the company of many good
poets; and especially of Homer, who is the best and most divine of them; and to
understand him, and not merely learn his words by rote, is a thing greatly to be
envied. And no man can be a rhapsode who does not understand the meaning of the
poet. For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers,
but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means? All this is
greatly to be envied.
ION: Very true, Socrates; interpretation has certainly been the most
laborious part of my art; and I believe myself able to speak about Homer better
than any man; and that neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus, nor Stesimbrotus of
Thasos, nor Glaucon, nor any one else who ever was, had as good ideas about
Homer as I have, or as many.
SOCRATES: I am glad to hear you say so, Ion; I see that you will not refuse
to acquaint me with them.
ION: Certainly, Socrates; and you really ought to hear how exquisitely I
render Homer. I think that the Homeridae should give me a golden crown.
SOCRATES: I shall take an opportunity of hearing your embellishments of him
at some other time. But just now I should like to ask you a question: Does your
art extend to Hesiod and Archilochus, or to Homer only?
ION: To Homer only; he is in himself quite enough.
SOCRATES: Are there any things about which Homer and Hesiod agree?
ION: Yes; in my opinion there are a good many.
SOCRATES: And can you interpret better what Homer says, or what Hesiod says,
about these matters in which they agree?
ION: I can interpret them equally well, Socrates, where they agree.
SOCRATES: But what about matters in which they do not agree?—for example,
about divination, of which both Homer and Hesiod have something to say,—
ION: Very true:
SOCRATES: Would you or a good prophet be a better interpreter of what these
two poets say about divination, not only when they agree, but when they
disagree?
ION: A prophet.
SOCRATES: And if you were a prophet, would you not be able to interpret them
when they disagree as well as when they agree?
ION: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only, and not
about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same themes which
all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and does he not speak of
human society and of intercourse of men, good and bad, skilled and unskilled,
and of the gods conversing with one another and with mankind, and about what
happens in heaven and in the world below, and the generations of gods and
heroes? Are not these the themes of which Homer sings?
ION: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And do not the other poets sing of the same?
ION: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer.
SOCRATES: What, in a worse way?
ION: Yes, in a far worse.
SOCRATES: And Homer in a better way?
ION: He is incomparably better.
SOCRATES: And yet surely, my dear friend Ion, in a discussion about
arithmetic, where many people are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest,
there is somebody who can judge which of them is the good speaker?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who judges of the good will be the same as he who judges of
the bad speakers?
ION: The same.
SOCRATES: And he will be the arithmetician?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, and in discussions about the wholesomeness of food, when many
persons are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, will he who
recognizes the better speaker be a different person from him who recognizes the
worse, or the same?
ION: Clearly the same.
SOCRATES: And who is he, and what is his name?
ION: The physician.
SOCRATES: And speaking generally, in all discussions in which the subject is
the same and many men are speaking, will not he who knows the good know the bad
speaker also? For if he does not know the bad, neither will he know the good
when the same topic is being discussed.
ION: True.
SOCRATES: Is not the same person skilful in both?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you say that Homer and the other poets, such as Hesiod and
Archilochus, speak of the same things, although not in the same way; but the one
speaks well and the other not so well?
ION: Yes; and I am right in saying so.
SOCRATES: And if you knew the good speaker, you would also know the inferior
speakers to be inferior?
ION: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then, my dear friend, can I be mistaken in saying that Ion is
equally skilled in Homer and in other poets, since he himself acknowledges that
the same person will be a good judge of all those who speak of the same things;
and that almost all poets do speak of the same things?
ION: Why then, Socrates, do I lose attention and go to sleep and have
absolutely no ideas of the least value, when any one speaks of any other poet;
but when Homer is mentioned, I wake up at once and am all attention and have
plenty to say?
SOCRATES: The reason, my friend, is obvious. No one can fail to see that you
speak of Homer without any art or knowledge. If you were able to speak of him by
rules of art, you would have been able to speak of all other poets; for poetry
is a whole.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And when any one acquires any other art as a whole, the same may be
said of them. Would you like me to explain my meaning, Ion?
ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates; I very much wish that you would: for I love to
hear you wise men talk.
SOCRATES: O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but
you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas
I am a common man, who only speak the truth. For consider what a very
commonplace and trivial thing is this which I have said—a thing which any man
might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry
into good and bad is one and the same. Let us consider this matter; is not the
art of painting a whole?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there are and have been many painters good and bad?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And did you ever know any one who was skilful in pointing out the
excellences and defects of Polygnotus the son of Aglaophon, but incapable of
criticizing other painters; and when the work of any other painter was produced,
went to sleep and was at a loss, and had no ideas; but when he had to give his
opinion about Polygnotus, or whoever the painter might be, and about him only,
woke up and was attentive and had plenty to say?
ION: No indeed, I have never known such a person.
SOCRATES: Or did you ever know of any one in sculpture, who was skilful in
expounding the merits of Daedalus the son of Metion, or of Epeius the son of
Panopeus, or of Theodorus the Samian, or of any individual sculptor; but when
the works of sculptors in general were produced, was at a loss and went to sleep
and had nothing to say?
ION: No indeed; no more than the other.
SOCRATES: And if I am not mistaken, you never met with any one among
flute-players or harp-players or singers to the harp or rhapsodes who was able
to discourse of Olympus or Thamyras or Orpheus, or Phemius the rhapsode of
Ithaca, but was at a loss when he came to speak of Ion of Ephesus, and had no
notion of his merits or defects?
ION: I cannot deny what you say, Socrates. Nevertheless I am conscious in my
own self, and the world agrees with me in thinking that I do speak better and
have more to say about Homer than any other man. But I do not speak equally well
about others—tell me the reason of this.
SOCRATES: I perceive, Ion; and I will proceed to explain to you what I
imagine to be the reason of this. The gift which you possess of speaking
excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an
inspiration; there is a divinity moving you, like that contained in the stone
which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as the stone of
Heraclea. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a
similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see a number of
pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to form quite a long
chain: and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone.
In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these
inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the
inspiration. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful
poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the
Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric
poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful
strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired
and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when
they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right
mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say; for
they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of
the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from
flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy
thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of
his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this
state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble
words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when
speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are
simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and
when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise,
another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses—and he who is good at one
is not good at any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but
by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to
speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds
of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy
prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of
themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but
that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.
And Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking instance of what I am saying: he
wrote nothing that any one would care to remember but the famous paean which is
in every one's mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply an invention
of the Muses, as he himself says. For in this way the God would seem to indicate
to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the
work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the
interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the
lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets
he sang the best of songs? Am I not right, Ion?
ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates, I feel that you are; for your words touch my
soul, and I am persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret the
things of the Gods to us.
SOCRATES: And you rhapsodists are the interpreters of the poets?
ION: There again you are right.
SOCRATES: Then you are the interpreters of interpreters?
ION: Precisely.
SOCRATES: I wish you would frankly tell me, Ion, what I am going to ask of
you: When you produce the greatest effect upon the audience in the recitation of
some striking passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus leaping forth on the
floor, recognized by the suitors and casting his arrows at his feet, or the
description of Achilles rushing at Hector, or the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba,
or Priam,—are you in your right mind? Are you not carried out of yourself, and
does not your soul in an ecstasy seem to be among the persons or places of which
you are speaking, whether they are in Ithaca or in Troy or whatever may be the
scene of the poem?
ION: That proof strikes home to me, Socrates. For I must frankly confess that
at the tale of pity my eyes are filled with tears, and when I speak of horrors,
my hair stands on end and my heart throbs.
SOCRATES: Well, Ion, and what are we to say of a man who at a sacrifice or
festival, when he is dressed in holiday attire, and has golden crowns upon his
head, of which nobody has robbed him, appears weeping or panic-stricken in the
presence of more than twenty thousand friendly faces, when there is no one
despoiling or wronging him;—is he in his right mind or is he not?
ION: No indeed, Socrates, I must say that, strictly speaking, he is not in
his right mind.
SOCRATES: And are you aware that you produce similar effects on most of the
spectators?
ION: Only too well; for I look down upon them from the stage, and behold the
various emotions of pity, wonder, sternness, stamped upon their countenances
when I am speaking: and I am obliged to give my very best attention to them; for
if I make them cry I myself shall laugh, and if I make them laugh I myself shall
cry when the time of payment arrives.
SOCRATES: Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I
am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another? The
rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet
himself is the first of them. Through all these the God sways the souls of men
in any direction which he pleases, and makes one man hang down from another.
Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters and under-masters of choruses,
who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side of the rings which hang
down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse from whom he is suspended, and
by whom he is said to be possessed, which is nearly the same thing; for he is
taken hold of. And from these first rings, which are the poets, depend others,
some deriving their inspiration from Orpheus, others from Musaeus; but the
greater number are possessed and held by Homer. Of whom, Ion, you are one, and
are possessed by Homer; and when any one repeats the words of another poet you
go to sleep, and know not what to say; but when any one recites a strain of
Homer you wake up in a moment, and your soul leaps within you, and you have
plenty to say; for not by art or knowledge about Homer do you say what you say,
but by divine inspiration and by possession; just as the Corybantian revellers
too have a quick perception of that strain only which is appropriated to the God
by whom they are possessed, and have plenty of dances and words for that, but
take no heed of any other. And you, Ion, when the name of Homer is mentioned
have plenty to say, and have nothing to say of others. You ask, 'Why is this?'
The answer is that you praise Homer not by art but by divine inspiration.
ION: That is good, Socrates; and yet I doubt whether you will ever have
eloquence enough to persuade me that I praise Homer only when I am mad and
possessed; and if you could hear me speak of him I am sure you would never think
this to be the case.
SOCRATES: I should like very much to hear you, but not until you have
answered a question which I have to ask. On what part of Homer do you speak
well?—not surely about every part.
ION: There is no part, Socrates, about which I do not speak well: of that I
can assure you.
SOCRATES: Surely not about things in Homer of which you have no knowledge?
ION: And what is there in Homer of which I have no knowledge?
SOCRATES: Why, does not Homer speak in many passages about arts? For example,
about driving; if I can only remember the lines I will repeat them.
ION: I remember, and will repeat them.
SOCRATES: Tell me then, what Nestor says to Antilochus, his son, where he
bids him be careful of the turn at the horserace in honour of Patroclus.
ION: 'Bend gently,' he says, 'in the polished chariot to the left of them,
and urge the horse on the right hand with whip and voice; and slacken the rein.
And when you are at the goal, let the left horse draw near, yet so that the nave
of the well-wrought wheel may not even seem to touch the extremity; and avoid
catching the stone (Il.).'
SOCRATES: Enough. Now, Ion, will the charioteer or the physician be the
better judge of the propriety of these lines?
ION: The charioteer, clearly.
SOCRATES: And will the reason be that this is his art, or will there be any
other reason?
ION: No, that will be the reason.
SOCRATES: And every art is appointed by God to have knowledge of a certain
work; for that which we know by the art of the pilot we do not know by the art
of medicine?
ION: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Nor do we know by the art of the carpenter that which we know by
the art of medicine?
ION: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And this is true of all the arts;—that which we know with one art
we do not know with the other? But let me ask a prior question: You admit that
there are differences of arts?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: You would argue, as I should, that when one art is of one kind of
knowledge and another of another, they are different?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Yes, surely; for if the subject of knowledge were the same, there
would be no meaning in saying that the arts were different,—if they both gave
the same knowledge. For example, I know that here are five fingers, and you know
the same. And if I were to ask whether I and you became acquainted with this
fact by the help of the same art of arithmetic, you would acknowledge that we
did?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Tell me, then, what I was intending to ask you,—whether this holds
universally? Must the same art have the same subject of knowledge, and different
arts other subjects of knowledge?
ION: That is my opinion, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then he who has no knowledge of a particular art will have no right
judgment of the sayings and doings of that art?
ION: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then which will be a better judge of the lines which you were
reciting from Homer, you or the charioteer?
ION: The charioteer.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, because you are a rhapsode and not a charioteer.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the art of the rhapsode is different from that of the
charioteer?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a different knowledge, then a knowledge of different
matters?
ION: True.
SOCRATES: You know the passage in which Hecamede, the concubine of Nestor, is
described as giving to the wounded Machaon a posset, as he says,
'Made with Pramnian wine; and she grated cheese of goat's milk with a grater
of bronze, and at his side placed an onion which gives a relish to drink (Il.).'
Now would you say that the art of the rhapsode or the art of medicine was
better able to judge of the propriety of these lines?
ION: The art of medicine.
SOCRATES: And when Homer says,
'And she descended into the deep like a leaden plummet, which, set in the
horn of ox that ranges in the fields, rushes along carrying death among the
ravenous fishes (Il.),'—
will the art of the fisherman or of the rhapsode be better able to judge
whether these lines are rightly expressed or not?
ION: Clearly, Socrates, the art of the fisherman.
SOCRATES: Come now, suppose that you were to say to me: 'Since you, Socrates,
are able to assign different passages in Homer to their corresponding arts, I
wish that you would tell me what are the passages of which the excellence ought
to be judged by the prophet and prophetic art'; and you will see how readily and
truly I shall answer you. For there are many such passages, particularly in the
Odyssee; as, for example, the passage in which Theoclymenus the prophet of the
house of Melampus says to the suitors:—
'Wretched men! what is happening to you? Your heads and your faces and your
limbs underneath are shrouded in night; and the voice of lamentation bursts
forth, and your cheeks are wet with tears. And the vestibule is full, and the
court is full, of ghosts descending into the darkness of Erebus, and the sun has
perished out of heaven, and an evil mist is spread abroad (Od.).'
And there are many such passages in the Iliad also; as for example in the
description of the battle near the rampart, where he says:—
'As they were eager to pass the ditch, there came to them an omen: a soaring
eagle, holding back the people on the left, bore a huge bloody dragon in his
talons, still living and panting; nor had he yet resigned the strife, for he
bent back and smote the bird which carried him on the breast by the neck, and he
in pain let him fall from him to the ground into the midst of the multitude. And
the eagle, with a cry, was borne afar on the wings of the wind (Il.).'
These are the sort of things which I should say that the prophet ought to
consider and determine.
ION: And you are quite right, Socrates, in saying so.
SOCRATES: Yes, Ion, and you are right also. And as I have selected from the
Iliad and Odyssee for you passages which describe the office of the prophet and
the physician and the fisherman, do you, who know Homer so much better than I
do, Ion, select for me passages which relate to the rhapsode and the rhapsode's
art, and which the rhapsode ought to examine and judge of better than other men.
ION: All passages, I should say, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Not all, Ion, surely. Have you already forgotten what you were
saying? A rhapsode ought to have a better memory.
ION: Why, what am I forgetting?
SOCRATES: Do you not remember that you declared the art of the rhapsode to be
different from the art of the charioteer?
ION: Yes, I remember.
SOCRATES: And you admitted that being different they would have different
subjects of knowledge?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then upon your own showing the rhapsode, and the art of the
rhapsode, will not know everything?
ION: I should exclude certain things, Socrates.
SOCRATES: You mean to say that you would exclude pretty much the subjects of
the other arts. As he does not know all of them, which of them will he know?
ION: He will know what a man and what a woman ought to say, and what a
freeman and what a slave ought to say, and what a ruler and what a subject.
SOCRATES: Do you mean that a rhapsode will know better than the pilot what
the ruler of a sea-tossed vessel ought to say?
ION: No; the pilot will know best.
SOCRATES: Or will the rhapsode know better than the physician what the ruler
of a sick man ought to say?
ION: He will not.
SOCRATES: But he will know what a slave ought to say?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Suppose the slave to be a cowherd; the rhapsode will know better
than the cowherd what he ought to say in order to soothe the infuriated cows?
ION: No, he will not.
SOCRATES: But he will know what a spinning-woman ought to say about the
working of wool?
ION: No.
SOCRATES: At any rate he will know what a general ought to say when exhorting
his soldiers?
ION: Yes, that is the sort of thing which the rhapsode will be sure to know.
SOCRATES: Well, but is the art of the rhapsode the art of the general?
ION: I am sure that I should know what a general ought to say.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, Ion, because you may possibly have a knowledge of the art
of the general as well as of the rhapsode; and you may also have a knowledge of
horsemanship as well as of the lyre: and then you would know when horses were
well or ill managed. But suppose I were to ask you: By the help of which art,
Ion, do you know whether horses are well managed, by your skill as a horseman or
as a performer on the lyre—what would you answer?
ION: I should reply, by my skill as a horseman.
SOCRATES: And if you judged of performers on the lyre, you would admit that
you judged of them as a performer on the lyre, and not as a horseman?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And in judging of the general's art, do you judge of it as a
general or a rhapsode?
ION: To me there appears to be no difference between them.
SOCRATES: What do you mean? Do you mean to say that the art of the rhapsode
and of the general is the same?
ION: Yes, one and the same.
SOCRATES: Then he who is a good rhapsode is also a good general?
ION: Certainly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And he who is a good general is also a good rhapsode?
ION: No; I do not say that.
SOCRATES: But you do say that he who is a good rhapsode is also a good
general.
ION: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you are the best of Hellenic rhapsodes?
ION: Far the best, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And are you the best general, Ion?
ION: To be sure, Socrates; and Homer was my master.
SOCRATES: But then, Ion, what in the name of goodness can be the reason why
you, who are the best of generals as well as the best of rhapsodes in all
Hellas, go about as a rhapsode when you might be a general? Do you think that
the Hellenes want a rhapsode with his golden crown, and do not want a general?
ION: Why, Socrates, the reason is, that my countrymen, the Ephesians, are the
servants and soldiers of Athens, and do not need a general; and you and Sparta
are not likely to have me, for you think that you have enough generals of your
own.
SOCRATES: My good Ion, did you never hear of Apollodorus of Cyzicus?
ION: Who may he be?
SOCRATES: One who, though a foreigner, has often been chosen their general by
the Athenians: and there is Phanosthenes of Andros, and Heraclides of
Clazomenae, whom they have also appointed to the command of their armies and to
other offices, although aliens, after they had shown their merit. And will they
not choose Ion the Ephesian to be their general, and honour him, if he prove
himself worthy? Were not the Ephesians originally Athenians, and Ephesus is no
mean city? But, indeed, Ion, if you are correct in saying that by art and
knowledge you are able to praise Homer, you do not deal fairly with me, and
after all your professions of knowing many glorious things about Homer, and
promises that you would exhibit them, you are only a deceiver, and so far from
exhibiting the art of which you are a master, will not, even after my repeated
entreaties, explain to me the nature of it. You have literally as many forms as
Proteus; and now you go all manner of ways, twisting and turning, and, like
Proteus, become all manner of people at once, and at last slip away from me in
the disguise of a general, in order that you may escape exhibiting your Homeric
lore. And if you have art, then, as I was saying, in falsifying your promise
that you would exhibit Homer, you are not dealing fairly with me. But if, as I
believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer
unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty,
and shall only say that you are inspired. Which do you prefer to be thought,
dishonest or inspired?
ION: There is a great difference, Socrates, between the two alternatives; and
inspiration is by far the nobler.
SOCRATES: Then, Ion, I shall assume the nobler alternative; and attribute to
you in your praises of Homer inspiration, and not art.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
