Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
www.brill.nl/phro
Why Is the Sophist a Sequel to the Theaetetus?Charles H.
KahnDepartment of Philosophy, School of Arts and Sciences,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., USA
[email protected]
Abstract The Theaetetus and the Sophist both stand in the shadow
of the Parmenides, to which they refer. I propose to interpret
these two dialogues as Platos first move in the project of
reshaping his metaphysics with the double aim of avoiding problems
raised in the Parmenides and applying his general theory to the
philosophy of nature. The classical doctrine of Forms is subject to
revision, but Platos fundamental metaphysics is preserved in the
Philebus as well as in the Timaeus. The most important change is
the explicit enlargement of the notion of Being to include the
nature of things that change. This reshaping of the metaphysics is
prepared in the Theaetetus and Sophist by an analysis of sensory
phenomena in the former and, in the latter, a new account of Forms
as a network of mutual connections and exclusions. The division of
labor between the two dialogues is symbolized by the role of
Heraclitus in the former and that of Parmenides in the latter.
Theaetetus asks for a discussion of Parmenides as well, but
Socrates will not undertake it. For that we need the visitor from
Elea. Hence the Theaetetus deals with becoming and flux but not
with being; that topic is reserved for Eleatic treatment in the
Sophist. But the problems of falsity and Not-Being, formulated in
the first dialogue, cannot be resolved without the considerations
of truth and Being, reserved for the later dialogue. That is why
there must be a sequel to the Theaetetus. Keywords metaphysics,
Being, Not-Being, truth and falsity
I take my cue from the Philebus, where Socrates claims that the
combination of the one and the many is an unaging and immortal
attribute of discourse. Unity and plurality, he says, belong
together in all logoi, in everything that is ever said (15d). I
think these two themes unity and plurality offer our best guidance
for the interpretation of Plato. If as Koninklijke Brill NV,
Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156852807X177959
34
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
readers of Plato we try to do justice to the specific
individuality of each dialogue, as historians of philosophy we also
try to grasp the unity of thought underlying the diversity of the
texts. In an earlier study on Plato and the Socratic dialogue, I
argued for this kind of philosophical unity connecting a number of
Socratic dialogues with the Republic, and thus I tried to present a
considerable section of the corpus as a unified literary project on
Platos part.1 In stressing the theme of unity I was clearly
swimming against the current. The problem was not simply that, in
the age of Guthrie and Vlastos, the developmental approach was so
firmly established in the halls of Platonic scholarship. There was
also the pluralistic, even atomistic nature of the texts
themselves. From the Crito and the Ion to the Phaedrus and
Parmenides, every Platonic dialogue presents itself as an isolated
whole, a complete literary unit. No one of these dialogues refers
to the conversation in any other dialogue, even when the topics are
the same.2 Of course the situation is quite different in the later
works. Not only does the Statesman continue the Sophist (and refer
to this dialogue twice by name),3 but both dialogues present
themselves as sequel to the Theaetetus, and they promise to
continue this discussion with an unwritten dialogue on the
Philosopher. A comparable literary series is projected in the
Timaeus, which begins with a partial summary of the Republic and is
directly followed by the incomplete Critias. So in his later career
as an author, Plato played explicitly with the notion of an
extended literary project, comparable to the project that I found
implicit in the earlier work. Nevertheless, even in these later
series, the literary form does not reflect what I take to be the
underlying unity of thought. As an author, Plato remains as devious
in the late works as he was from the beginning. We are still faced
with the double task of doing justice to the surface diversity of
the dialogues but also to the underlying unity of philosophical
thought. The new challenge is to find such unity in the later
writings. I explore here the continuity between the TheaetetusPlato
and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996). Thus Phaedo 72e echoes the discussion of recollection in the
Meno, but does not refer to Socrates conversation with Meno in that
dialogue. 3) This explicit reference to the earlier dialogue has
been doubted by Rowe and others, but I cannot see that at Statesman
284b 7 can mean anything except in the dialogue Sophist. Similarly
for at 286b 10.2) 1)
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
35
and the Sophist as pointing to a larger project of reshaping
Platonic metaphysics in the later dialogues. Both the Sophist and
the Statesman present themselves as literary sequel to the
Theaetetus. Theodorus begins the conversation in the Sophist by
claiming that their meeting was agreed upon yesterday, and the
Statesman also refers to the Theaetetus conversation as taking
place yesterday (St. 258a 4). It is not quite so obvious that the
Theaetetus was composed with the Sophist-Statesman in view. There
is no definite forward reference in the earlier dialogue. Socrates
last words are: Let us meet again here at dawn, but nothing is said
about the future topic. The plan for the series is developed in the
Sophist-Statesman, not in the Theaetetus. This asymmetry between
backward and forward references probably reflects the fact that a
considerable lapse of time ensued between the composition of the
Theaetetus and that of the Sophist. That is suggested above all by
the stylistic discrepancies between the two dialogues,
discrepancies that connect the Theaetetus to the middle group of
dialogues stylistically akin to the Republic (together with the
Phaedrus and Parmenides), whereas the Sophist-Statesman belongs
stylistically to the late group, including the Philebus, Timaeus
and Laws.4 The most natural explanation of the stylistic
discrepancy between these two groups is the passage of some time.
Between the Theaetetus and the Sophist Plato was apparently busy
with other things, possibly with a voyage to Syracuse. But when he
returned to writing dialogues, Plato insisted on the continuity of
this particular literary project. In this case the
stylistic-chronological gap turns out to be of importance only as
evidence for the persistence of this project. There is another,
less obvious literary signal connecting the Sophist with the
Theaetetus. Both dialogues stand, as it were, in the shadow of the
Parmenides. For in both dialogues Socrates refers to his meeting
with Parmenides, when he was very young, as if it were a historical
fact. (Th. 183e, Soph. 217c). Now the dramatic date of the
Parmenides conversation is roughly 450 BC, when Socrates would have
been about twenty. Since Parmenides must have been dead by then,
the meeting is certainly4)
For the documentary evidence supporting the division into three
groups, see my chapter On Platonic Chronology in J. Annas and C.
Rowe (eds.), New Perpectives on Plato, Ancient and Modern
(Cambridge, Mass./London, 2002).
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C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
fictitious. The only occasion on which Socrates can have
personally encountered Parmenides is in the pages of Platos
dialogue. So these two references to a meeting between the two
philosophers are in fact a reference to Platos Parmenides. I am not
the first to notice these references to the dialogue Parmenides in
the Theaetetus and Sophist.5 But I think their significance for the
interpretation of our two dialogues has not been fully appreciated.
For even if the composition of the Parmenides did not reflect some
sort of intellectual crisis for Plato, as some modern interpreters
have believed, Platos detailed criticism of his own theory is
surely a major event. And since the objections of the Parmenides
are never explicitly answered, we are left in doubt how far Plato
thought the theory needed to be revised. We can be sure that it was
not entirely abandoned, since Parmenides himself observes that
giving up altogether on invariant forms would be equivalent to
giving up on philosophy (135bc). It is natural, then, to look to
the Theaetetus and Sophist, apparently the first writings after the
Parmenides, for clues as to how Plato proposed to take account of
the criticism presented in that dialogue. It is surely significant
that the Theaetetus contains no explicit reference to the theory of
Forms, while the Sophist treats that theory critically, from an
external point of view, as the doctrine of the friends of Forms. It
is as if Plato, after the Parmenides, had wiped the slate clean and
was prepared to make a fresh start in metaphysics and epistemology.
I propose to see the Theaetetus and the Sophist as Platos first
moves in a long-term project of reshaping his metaphysical doctrine
in the light of the problems raised in the Parmenides, a project
continued in the Philebus and Timaeus. But in order to see what the
challenge is, and how Plato responds to it, it will be helpful
first to distinguish the fundamental conception of Platonic
metaphysics from the particular formulation given to the theory in
the Phaedo and Republic. I will refer to this Phaedo-Republic
formulation as the classical theory of Forms. By Platonic
metaphysics, on the other hand, I mean a less specific doctrine,
whose essential feature is the commitment to a Being of Parmenidean
type, that is, to a reality that is eternally unchanging and
self-identical, accessible to rational cognition
5)
Cornford was already crediting Dis with this observation. See
Platos Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935), 1.
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
37
but not to sense-perception, and contrasted with a phenomenal
realm of sensible change and Becoming. This is a dualism not of two
worlds but of two levels of reality. This metaphysical dualism
entails a sharp contrast between reason or intellect (nous) and
sense perception, with doxa belonging on the side of sense
perception. This double dualism, implied in the Symposium and
Phaedo, is fully formulated in the central books of the Republic
and reasserted in the Philebus and Timaeus. There are signs of it
in the Sophist (253e-254a) and Statesman (285e-286a), though
perhaps none in the Theaetetus. The evidence from the Statesman and
Philebus, as well as from the Timaeus, shows that, for Plato, this
double dualism has survived the Parmenidean criticism. Whatever
changes he may have made in the classical theory of Forms, it is
clear that Plato did not abandon his metaphysical vision after the
Parmenides. There has been a tendency for some scholars to suppose
that, if the Timaeus could somehow be redated, one might succeed in
maintaining the Rylean picture of Plato as a philosopher who, in
his latest period, has left transcendental metaphysics behind.6 I
submit that the textual evidence to be cited below from the
Statesman and Philebus, as well as from the Timaeus, is
incompatible with this view. One clue, then, to understanding the
connection between the Sophist and Theaetetus is to see both
dialogues as follow-up to the Parmenides and to Platos all-out
assault on the classical theory of Forms. I suggest that, as a
consequence of the Parmenides criticism, at least two features of
the classical theory must be abandoned: namely, the language of
participation, which can be taken literally as the sharing of Forms
by sensibles, and the recognition of something like immanent forms
forms that we have or forms in us separate from the Forms
themselves.7 The latter notion, taken at face value, leads to the
conception of two separate worlds,
6)
The classical statement of this tendency is the influential
paper of G.E.L. Owen, The Place of the Timaeus in Platos Dialogues,
reprinted in Logic, Science and Dialectic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1986), 65-84. Despite the dazzling brilliance of
his arguments, Owens attempt to remove the Timaeus from its place
among the late dialogues is, in my view, a complete failure. 7) The
Phaedo makes frequent use of the terminology of participation for
the sensibleForm relation, but of course it is not committed to a
literal notion of sharing. On the contrary, this relation is there
left undefined (100d). After the criticism of the Parmenides,
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C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
a conception that makes the theory pointless, as Parmenides last
objection demonstrates. (I note that the theme of separation for
the Forms is a formula adopted by critics of the theory, such as
Parmenides and Aristotle, not by Plato in the positive exposition
of the Phaedo and Republic, nor in the Sophist report of the
doctrine of the Friends of Forms.)8 Most of the Parmenides
criticism concerns the problematic relationship between Forms and
the sensible many. It is precisely this problem that is
reformulated in the Philebus, where the question is asked how such
unities, admitting neither generation nor corruption, can remain
one and the same while coming to be in many and unlimited cases of
becoming, either one unity being scattered and becoming many, or
(most impossible of all) being separate from itself as a whole
(Philebus 15a-b, essentially a summary of Parmenides 131a-c). The
Philebus fails to answer this question; and that failure may be one
of the reasons why the Philebus ends with the interlocutor saying
to Socrates, in the very last words of the dialogue, I will remind
you of what has been left out! (67b 12). On my view, then, one of
Platos projects in the later dialogues is to find a way of
reformulating his metaphysics that avoids the objections raised in
the Parmenides. Such a project must confront three problems: 1) the
nature of the Forms, 2) the nature of sensible phenomena, and 3)
the connection between the two. This third problem, which we may
call the problem of participation, is the most intractable. If
there is any Platonic solution, I think it must be found in the
Timaeus. As we have seen, the Philebus raises this question without
offering a solution. The Sophist deals explicitly only with the
theme of Being; it concerns itself both negatively and positively
with the question of Forms, but not at all with the relation of
Forms to sensibles. By contrast, the Theaetetus never mentions
Forms
however, the metaphor of participation is abandoned as
misleading for the sensible-Form relation, and it is transferred
instead to the Form-Form relation in the Sophist as one of several
expressions for connections between Forms. 8) Notice the cunning
way in which Parmenides induces the immature Socrates to accept the
separation of Forms from their participants at Parmenides 130b.
Socrates had used the term once, harmlessly, for logical
distinction at 129d 7. Parmenides then uses it three times in
immediate succession (130b 2-4) and twice again in the near context
(130c 1, d 1), thus emphasizing the problem of separation that
leads to the greatest difficulty of two independent worlds (133b
4).
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
39
as such and it is concerned primarily with Becoming, that is to
say, with sensible phenomena. Neither the Sophist nor the
Theaetetus confronts the problem of participation. As David Sedley
has recently reminded us, the Theaetetus has the external form of
an aporetic dialogue in the Socratic manner an unsuccessful attempt
to define knowledge, with a series of definitions proposed and
rejected.9 With regard to content, we can say that the argument of
the Theaetetus has the structure of a double reductio. Part One
takes as starting-point an account of knowledge in terms of sense
perception, and shows that this account is unacceptable. Part Two
begins with an account of knowledge in terms of doxa, and this
assumption leads to equally unsatisfactory results. In both cases,
the negative conclusion is prepared by important constructive
argument. But despite many positive achievements, no clear progress
is made towards a satisfactory account of knowledge. (I do not
believe, as some commentators both ancient and modern have
suggested, that the Theaetetus aims to lead us to an improved
version of the Meno suggestion that knowledge should be conceived
as a kind of doxa that has been tied down by a logos. That would be
incompatible with the place of doxa in the cognitive dualism of the
Philebus and Timaeus; see specifically the contrast between the
objects of doxa and truest epistm at Philebus 59a-b.) Why is the
Theaetetus so negative? And why this regression to a Socrates
ignorant of Platonic metaphysics? I suggest that, as a consequence
of Parmenides attack, Platos theory has been put on hold. At the
same time, if we bear in mind the account of knowledge given in the
Republic, and reasserted in the Philebus and Timaeus, the reasons
for failure in the Theaetetus will be clear. In this standard
Platonic account, the concept of knowledge is, on the one hand,
grounded in the metaphysics of Being and, on the other hand,
sharply distinguished from sense perception and doxa. If (as the
Philebus and Timaeus will show) the author of the Theaetetus is
still committed to this cognitive dualism, he knows in advance that
an account of knowledge based on aisthsis and doxa, and
excluding
9)
D. Sedley, The Midwife of Platonism. Text and Subtext in Platos
Theaetetus (Oxford, 2004).
40
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
the metaphysics of Being, is doomed to fail. (The problematic
status of doxa as a basis for defining knowledge tends to be masked
by the modern tradition of translating doxa in the Theaetetus as
judgment rather than opinion. ) But if Plato has not changed his
mind on these fundamental matters, why did he undertake such an
elaborate double reductio? It may be helpful here to look back to
the Parmenides, and to the philosophical method recommended and
practiced in that dialogue. Parmenides urges the young Socrates to
see not only what follows from his own hypothesis but also what
follows from its denial (136a). Following Parmenides advice, in the
Theaetetus Socrates and Theaetetus pursue an account of knowledge
from the opposing, non-Platonic point of view. Assume that
knowledge can be defined on the basis either of aisthsis or of
doxa, without the metaphysics of Being, and see what follows. Since
neither alternative gives a satisfactory outcome, we are justified
in returning to the original, Platonic point of view. After
attacking the classical theory, Parmenides had warned that,
nevertheless, without invariant forms there can be no rational
discourse (dialegesthai, Parm. 135c), and hence no knowledge. The
strong version of this thesis is what I call the Parmenidean
postulate, that knowledge in the full sense (knowledge pantels)
takes as its object Being in the full sense (to pantels on). It is
precisely in this respect that Plato can be rightly seen as a
revisionist follower of Parmenides. This postulate is explicitly
formulated as a premise in the argument introducing the Forms at
the end of Republic V (477a 3). It is often taken for granted. For
example, an equivalent assumption (referring to nous and Forms
rather than to knowledge and Being) appears as an implicit premise
in the argument for the existence of Forms in the Timaeus (51b
7-52a 4). The postulate itself is never argued for. But it is
supported indirectly in the Theaetetus, by the failure of all
attempts to give an account of knowledge while avoiding this
assumption. This failure of the alternatives justifies, or at least
supports, Platos return to his standard position in the Philebus
and Timaeus. (Such is my slightly updated version of a traditional
view of the Theaetetus as offering indirect support for Platonic
metaphysics.)10
10) The standard modern version of this view of the Theaetetus
is F.M. Cornford, Platos Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935). For an
ancient precedent see D. Sedley, Three
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
41
I turn now to the continuities between Theaetetus and Sophist.
The most obvious connection is the theme of falsehood and error,
which is developed at length as a problem in the first dialogue but
restated and more fully resolved in the second. This division of
labor between the two works is best understood in terms of the
global contrast between them, symbolized by the role of Heraclitus
in the first dialogue and Parmenides in the second. In thematic
terms, the contrast is between flux and stasis, between Becoming
and Being. The Theaetetus is primarily concerned with flux and the
realm of change; a parallel discussion of stasis is acknowledged as
necessary (181a), but deliberately excluded from this dialogue
(183e-184a). Thus an examination of the Parmenidean position, which
Theaetetus had requested, is postponed for the sequel. (That is why
there must be a sequel to the Theaetetus.) This division between
the two dialogues has important consequences for the discussion of
error and falsehood. The problem of perceptual error is carefully
treated in the Theaetetus, with the famous model of the wax tablet
(191c-195b). But the more general problem of falsehood includes the
problem of Not-Being, as the Theaetetus demonstrates (188d-189b).
Now the Sophist insists that Being and Not-Being must be understood
together (250e 7). Since Socrates is unwilling to engage Parmenides
directly, the notion of Being as such is excluded from the
Theaetetus, full discussion and solution of the problem of
falsehood is necessarily reserved for the later dialogue. It might
be objected to my account of the division of labor between the two
dialogues that what is excluded from the Theaetetus is only the
strong metaphysical or Parmenidean notion of Being, whereas what is
needed for the account of Not-Being is something much weaker, more
like the copula or identity use of the verb to be. But this, it
turns out, is not a distinction that Plato will allow. There is no
such thing as a nonmetaphysical sense of being, no philosophical
difference between what we call existential and copula uses of
is.11
Platonist Interpretations of the Theaetetus, in C. Gill and M.M.
McCabe (eds.), Form and Argument in Late Plato (Oxford, 1996),
89-93. 11) I take it that this point is well established, in
particular by the work of Lesley Brown. See Being in the Sophist: A
Syntactical Enquiry, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy IV
(1986), 49-70.
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C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
The Sophist does argue, in criticizing the standard formulation
of Platonic dualism, that the conception of Being must be generous
enough to include changing as well as unchanging entities (249d).
This is a new move in Platos revisionist version of Parmenidean
metaphysics. Its implications are considerable, and most
specifically for the theory of flux, as we shall see. We can also
recognize signs of this broader ontology in some curious phrases of
the Philebus: genesis eis ousian becoming into being at 26d 8,
gegenmen ousia being that has come to be at 27b 8. These
paradoxical expressions reflect the fact that the concept of Being
has been explicitly extended to include things that move and
change, such as soul. The Timaeus will even allow that phenomenal
images cling somehow or other to being, on pain of being nothing at
all ( . . . , , 52c 4). Hence not all beings are eternal essences,
even if essences or Forms remain the onts onta, the true beings.
But Being comes in degrees. That is why Being is the most universal
of the koina (186a 2), or, in the terminology of the Sophist, a
vowel Form, required for every connection, every symplok. But there
is still no purely formal sense of the copula is, no predication
without ontology. That is clear for the most conspicuous instance
of Being in the Theaetetus, the fundamental predicative or
veridical is, that provides the nerve of the argument in the final
refutation of knowledge as sense perception at 186b-e. This is the
propositional being needed for truth and falsity, the ousia that
aisthsis cannot provide, and hence cannot be knowledge. It is, I
suggest, because the hypothesis of the Theaetetus is deliberately
designed to exclude Being as far as possible, that the account of
logos at the end of this dialogue will still be unsatisfactory. The
final section begins with a promising connection between knowledge
and the capacity to give and receive a logos (202c 2). However, in
a standard Platonic context the logos in question would be a , a
statement of the essence or what a thing is. Hence no adequate
account of logos can be given without reference to Being and
ultimately to Forms. In the context of the Theaetetus, logos can be
analyzed only as a symplok onomatn, a weavingtogether of words
(202b). But the Sophist, with its broader metaphysical horizon, can
point out that logos is given to us by a symplok eidn, a
weaving-together of Forms. A similar insight lies behind the claim
cited above from the Parmenides, that without invariant Forms there
can be no dialegesthai, no philosophical discourse (Parm. 135b-c).
Essentially the
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
43
same claim, of a necessary connection between logos and stable
concepts or essences, is made indirectly by the refutation of
unrestricted flux in both the Cratylus and Theaetetus, as we shall
see. First, however, we pause to take account of Platos monumental
achievement in the syntactic and semantic analysis of propositional
structure in the Sophist, where logos is described as an elementary
symplok, the weaving-together of noun and verb as subject and
predicate. It is a common feature for both Plato and Aristotle that
the subjectpredicate analysis of simple sentences is given in terms
of the word classes Noun (onoma) and Verb (rhma).12 The
morphological distinction between noun and verb is easy to make in
Greek but, as far as we know, no one before Plato had ever made it.
In fact this passage at Sophist 262b is the first time in extant
texts that rhma is used in the sense of verb. In all earlier
occurrences, including occurrences in this dialogue, rhma means
simply phrase, expression or saying. (And so again later in the
Sophist, at 265c 5.) Plato has invented the noun-verb distinction
in order to display the subject-predicate structure of elementary
sentences such as Theaeteus sits and Theaetetus flies. Furthermore,
in order to give an account of truth and falsehood, Plato has
analyzed predication not only as a syntactic or sentential
structure but also as a semantic or extra-linguistic relation
between what is said and what it is said of. (Thus Theaetetus
recognizes that these two sample sentences are about me 263a 10.)
And all this is summed up in the formula for veridical being: the
true logos says the things that are, as they are (ta onta hs estin)
about you; the false logos says thing other than the things that
are (hetera tn ontn) (263b).13 Exactly how the weaving-together of
Forms is implicated in this elementary weaving-together of noun and
verb is an obscure problem that deserves more attention than I can
give it here. Presumably the Forms in question are Sitting, Flying,
Human Being or anthrpos, and Being or ousia. Being is needed for
each of the Forms separately as well as for their symplok. This
symplok of Forms is somehow reflected in, or at least presupposed
by, the subject-predicate fitting-together of a true statement.
This fitting-together is represented in Platos formula for a true
logos by
12) 13)
For the corresponding analysis in Aristotle, see De
Interpretatione 2-5. (sc. ) . . . . . . (Sophist 263b).
44
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
what I call the veridical use of the verb in ta onta hs estin.
The repetition of the verb in this formula (onta, estin) makes
clear that the symplok must be taken twice: once for the
conjunction of subject and predicate in the assertion or judgment
expressed in the logos, and again for the conjunction in fact or
reality that makes the logos true. This is, I think, the same
duality captured by the so-called disquotational view of truth: the
sentence snow is white is true if and only if snow is white. In an
earlier study of Platos use of einai, I pointed out that there is a
similar judgmentfact ambiguity or parallelism in the key notion of
ousia in the Theaetetus, the notion of propositional being that is
decisive in the final refutation of aisthsis.14 Since aisthsis
alone cannot judge that X is anything (or that X is), aisthsis
cannot be true or false, and hence cannot be knowledge. The
repetition of the verb to be in Platos formula for truth (saying ta
onta hs estin) makes explicit this duality of being as thought and
as fact, or as claim and truth value. Thus the Sophist, in its
ontic formula for truth, offers a more fine-grained analysis of the
same notion of propositional Being that functioned in the
Theaetetus. This advance in the analysis of einai in the Sophist is
parallel to the way in which the subject-predicate analysis of
logos and its connection with the symplok of Forms carries the
account of logos beyond what can be reached in the Theaetetus.
These two advances in the analysis of einai and in the account of
logos represent the most technical sense in which the Sophist is a
sequel to the earlier dialogue. The Sophist provides the
ontological and semantic resources for the analysis of not-being
and falsehood, and hence it makes possible Platos definitive
solution to the old problem of false judgment, the problem that the
Theaetetus develops but does not solve. We should notice that the
veridical or propositional notion of ta onta, the things that are,
is needed in the Theaetetus not only for the final argument against
aisthsis but throughout the dialogue for the discussion of what is
true, as in the formula of Protagoras: man is the measure of what
is, that it is, and what is not, that it is not. We note further
that in this fundamental formula for truth, introduced by
Protagoras but retained by Plato and Aristotle, the occurrence of
einai is not only doubled in the way I have suggested (for both
judgment and fact); it also neutralizes our distinction between the
existential and copula uses of the verb: man is the14)
Some Philosophical Uses of to be in Plato, Phronesis 26 (1981),
105-34.
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
45
measure of what exists, but also of what is the case measure of
what is, but also of what is X and not Y. This systematic ambiguity
in the notion of ta onta is fundamental in Greek thought. The
notion of beings or what there is, ta onta, applies to things like
the moon but also to events like the moon being eclipsed. (Even the
ordinary words for things, ta pragmata or ta chrmata, are ambiguous
in the same way.) Of course philosophers can make this distinction
when they choose to do so, as in the noun-verb analysis of logos.
But they automatically ignore the distinction between things and
states of affairs when referring to ta onta. Returning to the
Theaetetus, we note that, although the theory of universal flux
aims to avoid expressions of einai or what is and seeks to replace
them by gignesthai or what becomes (152e 1), it is unable to do so
consistently. An account of knowledge cannot do without some notion
of what is the case, what is really so; and for Plato (and for
ordinary Greek) this implies the static aspect of einai, rather
than the kinetic aspect of gignesthai. This idiomatic advantage of
Being over Becoming in colloquial expressions for truth mirrors the
philosophical claim that knowledge and truth require some fixity in
the object. That is the thought behind Platos insistence in the
Sophist that there can be no nous or understanding without
stability (249b-c). In effect, the Theaetetus argues the same
conclusion for logos: there can be no description of a world
without stability, a world of unrestricted flux. That, I take it,
is the conclusion at 182c-183b: there is no coherent statement of
the thesis of total flux. The noun-verb or subject-predicate
analysis of logos in the Sophist also sheds a retrospective light
on the treatment of false judgment in the earlier dialogue. It has
often been remarked that the examples of error given in the
Theaetetus typically involve perceptual misidentification
(mistaking Socrates for Theodorus) or conceptual confusion (taking
7 and 5 for 13). These examples give the impression that an
erroneous judgment is always a mistake of identification, as if
every judgment that X is Y involved the is of identity.15 Socrates
choice of examples is puzzling here, because clearly the problem of
error is intended to be more general.15) This is true even for the
impossible examples of confusing two universal concepts taking the
beautiful to be ugly or a cow to be a horse. See Burnyeats note in
The Theaetetus of Plato, translation of M.J. Levett revised by
Myles Burnyeat (Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1990), 323, n. 43.
46
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
However, this limitation in the examples recalls a similar
restriction on the use of is implied in the view of the
late-learners in the Sophist, who refuse to say a man is good, but
only that a man is a man or that something good is good (251b-c).
In the case of predication for the late-learners, the
identification is a semantic relation: the identity between a name
and a nominatum, between a description and the thing described. In
the perceptual case of Theaetetus Part Two, the identity is between
a person perceived and the proper name or memory-trace of a person.
Despite these differences, the semantic parallel is precise: most
of the positive examples of error in the Theaetetus are compatible
with the late-learners limitation of the notion of predication to
statements of identity, in the sense of matching a name with a
nominatum. In effect, the late-learners construe predication as
naming. I suggest that Plato in the Theaetetus has largely
restricted his examples of error to judgments of this kind, because
he is not yet ready to give the richer account of propositional
being and predication that he will offer in the Sophist. Since
Plato has no purely formal notion of being as copula, he may well
hold that the propositional symplok of an elementary logos cannot
be adequately presented except in the context of symplok eidn, the
weaving-together of Forms. Thus when the Sophist argues for the
necessity of mixing between Kinds, the argument is expressly
designed to tell against the late-learners restriction on
predication, as well as against a denial of other kinds of
connection (physical combination or conceptual links, 251e-252c).
In each case, a rational account requires a symplok eidn. And this
is a topic that is excluded by hypothesis from the Theaetetus but
must await the new perspective introduced by the Stranger from
Elea. I am assuming that Plato, when he composed the Theaetetus,
had in mind most of the ideas that he would develop later in the
Sophist. That is why, when the dialogue ends, the interlocutors
plan to meet again at dawn. But nothing depends on this
biographical assumption. If Plato had not yet recognized the
complexity of noun-verb predication, he had in any case a sure
instinct for avoiding such complexity in his choice of examples of
error in the Theaetetus. There are, of course, allusions to the
Forms in the Theaetetus. In the famous ethical digression, the many
echoes of moral doctrine from the Gorgias and Republic culminate in
the depiction of two patterns established in reality ( 176e 3), one
a divine
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
47
model of happiness, the other a godless model of misery. As
models for a human life to copy, these two paradeigmata are
functionally equivalent to Forms of Justice and Injustice. But they
are not described in the ontological terms that would be
distinctive of the theory of Forms. Even more suggestive of Forms
is the introduction of the koina at 185a-186b. The examples given
of these common elements of thought are extensionally equivalent to
a list of Forms. The list given includes the following: Being,
Not-Being, Same, Different, Similar, Dissimilar, One, Two and
number generally with its subdivisions Odd and Even, as well as
Admirable and Shameful (kalon, aischron), Good and Bad (agathon,
kakon) (185a-186b). The positive members of the last two pairs
represent typical examples of Forms in the classical theory; the
other koina represent the Kinds that function in dialectical
argument in Parmenides and Sophist. In the present context these
koina serve to distinguish thought or judgment from sense
perception, from aisthsis narrowly defined by dependence on the
sense modalities of the body. In distinguishing these common
concepts from the objects of the special senses, the Theaetetus
comes exceedingly close to recognizing Forms as the objects of
rational thought. Three of the koina mentioned in this passage
(Being, Same and Different) will in fact reappear among the five
Greatest Kinds discussed in the central section of the Sophist.
This is one of the more obvious continuities between our two
dialogues. But the Theaetetus says nothing whatsoever about the
ontological status of the koina; they are simply items that the
psyche considers by itself, without the aid of the body. However,
without some metaphysical distinction between invariant Being and
variant Becoming it is not clear how the corresponding epistemic
distinction can be drawn. There are certainly allusions here to the
notion of rational cognition (analogizesthai at 186a 10,
analogismata 186c 2; syllogismos at 186d 3). The psyche in question
is clearly the rational soul. But there is no attempt to
distinguish conceptual thought as such from the more general notion
of doxa or dianoia that includes perceptual judgment and
imagination. Since it excludes any basis in Platonic metaphysics,
the Theaetetus is unwilling to draw Platos distinction between nous
and epistm, on the one hand, and doxa on the other. Of course the
nominal distinction can be drawn: unlike knowledge and nous, doxa
can be false. But what is it about nous and epistm that guarantees
their contact with truth? At this point, I
48
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
suspect, Platos epistemology cannot be fully articulated in
separation from his metaphysics. The Sophist does deal at length
with the metaphysical concept of Being, but it does not focus on
the familiar contrast between the invariant and the changing,
between Being and Becoming. On the contrary, it insists that Being
must include both the unchanging and what changes (249d 3). The
inclusion of change is new; less new is the insistence that,
without some unchanging, self-identical reality, there can be no
nous and, in effect, no philosophy (249b-d). The formula here for
invariance, , sameness of respect, sameness of state, reference to
the same thing (transl. L. Brown) is familiar from the Phaedo,
where similar formulae occur repeatedly ( 79 9 d 2; again in the
summary at 80b). This formula for invariance is twice cited in the
Sophist as the characteristic doctrine of the Friends of Forms
(248a 12, 252a 7). But it is also affirmed by the Eleatic Stranger
himself, as a general requirement for knowledge, intelligence and
reason (epistm, phronsis, nous at 249b 12-c 7). And it is just such
stable reality that is avoided by the assumptions of the
Theaetetus. Even in the Sophist, however, Plato remains strikingly
reluctant to specify the ontological status of the Kinds under
discussion. It is surely implied that these Kinds satisfy the
requirement of invariance just cited. The network of connections
and exclusions between these gen is, after all, the object of
dialectic, the highest form of knowledge (253c-d). Each Kind has
its definite nature, which determines its negative or positive
relations to other Kinds. One of the Kinds is Being itself, which
seems to contain all the rest as its parts. But in this dialogue
Being is never contrasted with Becoming, and there is no explicit
reference to either the metaphysical or the cognitive dualism that
we recognize as distinctly Platonic. There is only one passage in
the Sophist that can be read as an allusion to such dualism.This
dialectical skill ( ) I imagine you would award it to none but
those who philosophize in a pure and righteous manner? . . . . The
philosopher ever clings through his reasoning to the form of
what-is (or the form of eternal beings) ( ), and with him its
rather the brightness of the place that makes it no easy matter to
catch sight of him. For most of us cannot bear to keep the gaze of
the souls eyes fixed firmly on the divine. (Sophist 253c-254b 1,
translation after Lesley Brown)
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
49
The light-darkness contrast here is strongly reminiscent of the
Cave allegory, and the picture of the philosopher clinging by
reasoning to the idea of beings that are forever (254a 8) cannot
fail to recall the philosopher of the Republic. But the crucial
phrase can also be read more innocently as clinging always to the
form of being, without any mention of eternal reality. (This
ambiguity in the syntax of seems to me deliberate.) By way of
contrast, the only reference in the Sophist to the familiar
oppositions Being-Becoming and epistm-doxa is in the doctrine
ascribed to the Friends of Forms. Why is Plato so coy in this
dialogue, on the one hand alluding to his familiar metaphysics in
the picture of the true philosopher, and on the other hand
distancing himself from that metaphysics by attributing it to the
Friends of Forms? The answer must hang together with an explanation
for his introducing the Eleatic Stranger as a replacement for
Socrates. The Stranger is a kind of stand-in for his master
Parmenides, who, in the earlier dialogue, was responsible for
criticizing the theory of Forms. By assigning this role to
Parmenides, the source of his own metaphysics, Plato had guaranteed
that the criticism would be sympathetic rather than hostile.
Similarly, by introducing now an Eleatic philosopher as critic of
both his own theory and that of Parmenides, Plato has created a new
philosophical perspective from which both theories can be surveyed
and revised. So in the Sophist Parmenides rejection of Not-Being
will be corrected, just as Platos extreme Parmenidean conception of
Being will be modified to include change. By putting responsibility
for all this in the hands of a follower of Parmenides, Plato
arranges for the whole discussion to take place in a spirit of
friendship and mutual respect. Furthermore, this new theoretical
viewpoint coincides with a new conception of dialectic as Division
and Collection, a version of dialectic less metaphysically oriented
than the original version presented in the Divided Line. In this
new dialectic, sketched in the Phaedrus and systematically
practiced in the Sophist and Statesman, the terms genos and eidos
tend to acquire their logical meaning of genus and species. Hence
the corresponding notion of Form or Kind appears less loaded with
metaphysical commitment. It is as if Plato had replaced his
metaphysics of Being by a kind of transcendental logic, the study
of logical connections and divisions between abstract or
topic-neutral concepts. The ontological background, which was
hinted at in the Sophist in the description of the true philosopher
clinging to the bright idea of Being,
50
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
begins to emerge more clearly (but still discreetly) in the
Statesman, where the Stranger connects skill in dialectic with the
study of the greatest and most precious of beings.I think most
people dont realize that some beings () have by nature some
perceptible likenesses ( ) that are easy to grasp . . . But the
greatest and most precious of beings have no image () that one can
adapt to the senses . . . Therefore one should practice being able
to give and receive a logos for each thing. For the incorporeals,
the finest and greatest beings ( , ), are clearly indicated by
logos and by nothing else. (Statesman 285e-286a)
This seems to be the only passage in either the Statesman or
Sophist that connects the dialectical Kinds with metaphysical
dualism. Even in this passage that dualism is not represented in
the standard way; there is no reference to Being and Becoming or to
the contrast between epistm and doxa. Of course the oppositions of
incorporeal-corporeal and logosaisthsis point in the same
direction. But the absence of the standard formulation is still
quite striking.16 If for contrast we glance briefly at the account
of dialectic in the Philebus, we can see that this terminological
restraint is a distinctive feature of the Sophist- Statesman and
their Eleatic protagonist; it is not a permanent choice by the
author. For Socrates in the Philebus (like Timaeus in his own
dialogue) will not hesitate to describe the object of dialectic in
the old way as true Being or the really real (to onts on) in
contrast to what comes to be ( gignetai); only the former is fully
stable and invariant (59a-c).I suppose every reasonable person
would think that dialectic is by far the truest cognition (),
namely, the cognition concerning being and what is truly and by
nature forever in the same state in every respect ( ) . . . Most of
the arts (technai) and those who work at them make use of doxai and
are eagerly investigating matters of doxa, investigating the nature
of things ( ).. and matters concerning this kosmos,
16) For a more deflationary reading of this passage, see G.E.L.
Owen, Plato on the Undepictable, in Logic, Science and Dialectic
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 138-47.
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
51
how it came to be ( ) and how it acts and how it is acted on . .
. . Such a person has chosen to work not on eternal beings ( ) but
on what comes to be ( ) and will come to be and has come to be . .
. Could we say with the most exact truth that any of these things
occur precisely, since none of them ever was or ever will be or
presently is in any self-identical state ( )? . . . So neither
reason () nor the truest form of knowledge is concerned with these
things that lack all stability (). (Philebus 58a-59b)
In this text we have not only the metaphysical opposition
between Being and Becoming but also the epistemic contrast between
nous or epistm and doxa.17 So when we encounter these standard
Platonic dualisms again in the Timaeus, they are not to be regarded
as a peculiarity of that dialogue.18 On the contrary, it is the
relative silence of the Sophist-Statesman that calls out for an
explanation. Interpreters in the tradition of Ryle and Owen have
preferred to see the Sophist- Statesman, together with the
Theaetetus, as reflecting a period in Platos life in which he
adopted a less metaphysical conception of dialectic and a less
dualistic metaphysics. But given the passage just cited from the
Philebus, this assumption seems gratuitous. I suggest we see the
shifts in doctrinal formulation in these dialogues as a deliberate
literaryrhetorical device, comparable to the choice of a new
protagonist. These dialogues, and specifically the Theaetetus and
Sophist, stand as we have
Alexander Nehamas notes that, even in the Philebus, Plato can
speak of epistm for coming-to-be as well as for eternal being. See
his Epistm and Logos in Platos Later Thought in Virtues of
Authenticity (Princeton, 1999), 238. However, only unchanging being
is the object of knowledge which has the most truth (59b 7, 61d
10-e). With a shift in terminology, this cognitive contrast is
preserved in the final ranking, where epistmai are listed in the
level below nous, together with technai and orthai doxai (66b). 18)
Timaeus 27d 5: , , , ; , , , , . The initial
17)
statement here of ontological dualism seems to ignore the
extension of Being to include change that is introduced in the
Sophist. But this intermediate possibility is allowed for by the
implied contrast in the concluding words . What comes-tobe is not
truly being; it has the lower degree of being () assigned to images
at 52b 4-c5, cited in part above. And the mixed status of soul in
the Timaeus may also represent a distinct ontological level.
52
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
seen in the shadow of the Parmenides, under the impact of the
critique of Platos own theory. That situation defines a moment in
Platos career as an author in which he is distancing his written
work and his reading audience from the doctrines of earlier
dialogues like the Phaedo and Republic. This doctrinal liberation
(provoked by the critique of the Parmenides and symbolized by the
introduction of a new protagonist) allows him to pursue some
arguments and clarify some issues more freely than would be
possible or at least convenient within the framework of his
familiar dualisms. In particular, he undertakes a solution to the
problem of NotBeing that is designed to be accessible to any
competent philosopher, and not only to a convinced Platonist. Thus
Plato has good philosophical reasons for choosing an intellectual
standpoint located outside the teachings of Parmenides and outside
the doctrines of his own earlier writing, but sympathetic to both.
He has, as it were, put Parmenidean metaphysics, and his own
revised version of it, inside brackets for the sake of specific
arguments in the Theaetetus and Sophist. This exercise in doctrinal
restraint or bracketing has an interesting parallel in the
Statesman, where Plato will deliberately ignore his own earlier
account of the philosopher-king. Thus in describing the ideal
Statesman and King, the Eleatic Stranger neither endorses nor
denies the training in mathematics and metaphysics that is required
of the ruler in the Republic. The true politikos is now defined by
his expertise in ruling, but the content of this expertise is
simply left blank. No reader of the Statesman can fail to be
reminded of the philosopher-king. But the Eleatic Stranger has not
read the Republic. And nothing in the Statesman argument depends
upon doctrine from that dialogue. We saw that Platos project of
reformulating his metaphysics had to deal with three problems: 1)
the nature of Forms, 2) the nature of sensible phenomena, and 3)
the relation between them. The Sophist presents the Forms (or
Kinds) as logical parts of Being, that is, as deriving their own
being by participating in Being itself. Since, if the Kinds are to
be objects of nous they must be invariant and self-identical, they
will in effect have the eternal nature defined for the Forms in the
Phaedo and Republic. The Sophist gives us a completely new picture
of the relations between Forms, and also of the internal structure
of each Form. But the basic distinction between the timeless,
unchanging being of Forms and the variable status of sensible
becoming seems unaltered from the classical theory even
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
53
though this dualism is never explicitly mentioned in the Sophist
and only vaguely described in the Statesman. The Eleatic Strangers
discretion on this point matches his general lack of interest in
matters of sensation and change. For sense perception and Becoming
we return to the Theaetetus. Part One of the Theaetetus expounds a
complex theory of perception based upon a metaphysics of flux. I
leave aside the controversial question whether this theory of
perception can be regarded as Platos own, or simply as a
hypothetical account. In regard to flux Platos position is clearer,
because we can trace his treatment of flux through three dialogues,
from the Cratylus to the Theaetetus, and beyond to the Timaeus.
Despite the diversity of viewpoint between these three dialogues,
there are enough common features to reveal a consistent
philosophical core. Furthermore, the topic of flux ultimately
connects up with the new requirement, urged in the Sophist, that
the theory of Being must be extended to include things that change.
In the end, this enlargement of Being to include Becoming, on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, the requirement of stability in
Platos critique of the theory of flux, turn out to be two sides of
the same coin: namely, the application of Platos metaphysics to an
explanation of the physical world. Hence the attitude towards flux
shifts from negative criticism to reappropriation. In the Phaedo
the formula for invariance, which we have quoted above, is
regularly contrasted with the description of a changing sensible
realm that is never in the same state ( 79a 10,c 6, 80b 5). Both
the Phaedo and the Cratylus wax ironical on the subject of thinkers
who become so dizzy from the twists and turns of their own
researches that they project their confusion onto the world and
conclude that there is no stability in things (Crat. 411b-c), or
who, because they have fallen into a whirlpool and got all mixed
up, want to drag us in too (439c 5); or like someone with a cold,
they imagine that everything is runny and dripping (440c 8).19
Despite such satirical comments, the Cratylus anticipates the
Theaetetus in sketching a systematic theory of the
Similarly in Phaedo 90c 2, where the misologists conclude that
there is nothing sound or stable either in things or in logoi, but
that all things (panta ta onta) are reversing back and forth just
like the current of the Euripus, and they do not stay in place for
any time at all.
19)
54
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
world as characterized by movement, flux and change. However,
both the Cratylus and Theaetetus reject the thesis of unrestricted
flux, and for similar reasons. The Cratylus argues that there can
be no description, and in fact no existence, for anything
completely devoid of stability (439d-e). The positive conclusion,
which the Theaetetus does not draw, is that for reasons of both
ontology and epistemology in order to be and to be known a changing
world must contain elements of stability. This is the implicit
conclusion of the Cratylus, where Socrates points out that the
doctrine of flux does not apply to the Forms. Things like a
beautiful face may be in flux, but the Beautiful itself is always
such as it is (439d). Thus the Cratylus (like the Phaedo) presents
the Forms as models of stability, both ontological and epistemic.
But the Cratylus does not tell us how these Forms can provide a
principle of fixity for sensible, changing things, so that they too
might qualify for some kind of cognition and some kind of reality.
The Theaetetus, on the other hand, makes no explicit reference to
Forms, and hence it makes no attempt to explain how perceptual flux
might be structured by elements of stability. Only the Timaeus
(anticipated in part by the Philebus) undertakes to provide a
positive theory of the physical world, in which the flux of
phenomena is ultimately structured by a relationship to Forms. In
the Phaedo Plato had sketched, as a desideratum for physics, an
account of the world where everything is set in order by Nous, and
hence ordered for the best (97c-98b). Plato was late in paying this
large promissory note, but in the Timaeus he has done what he could
to provide a cosmology that takes account of both Reason and
Necessity, both formal structure and the flux of becoming. So far I
have presented the Theaetetus and the Sophist as Platos first moves
in the project of reshaping or reformulating his metaphysics after
the Parmenides. As far as we can see, that project was completed in
the Timaeus. The Theaetetus takes a fresh view of sensory phenomena
and the Sophist presents a revised doctrine of Forms, but only the
Timaeus attempts to bring the Forms and phenomena together, and
thus to deal with the notorious problem of participation. The
lynch-pin of Platos solution is his new concept of the Receptacle,
introduced by a new and, for the first time, constructive treatment
of flux. The Receptacle is the only entity recognized in the
Timaeus as independent of the Forms. Sensible images of the Forms
are now construed as modifications of the
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
55
Receptacle, not as beings in their own right. Thus Plato avoids
the problem of reifying images as separate entities or immanent
forms, the problem that leads to the paradox of two independent
worlds. This is not the occasion for an exegesis of the highly
controversial flux passage in the Timaeus.20 But this positive
account of flux is prepared to some extent in the Statesman and
Philebus. To round off my sketch of a unifying vision of Platos
later work, let me briefly summarize the steps leading to the
attempted solution in the Timaeus. The Sophist insists that the
notion of Being must be extended to include kinsis and change, but
it does not show how this is to be done. Looking backwards from the
role assigned to arithmetic and geometry in the Timaeus, we can see
the treatment of mathematics in the Statesman and Philebus as
motivated by precisely the same theoretical concern, namely, to
give a rational account of change. In an important digression in
the Statesman (corresponding formally to the treatment of Not-Being
in the Sophist), the Eleatic Stranger introduces the notion of
normative mathematics as an art of measurement (metrik) based on
the concept of due measure (to metrion). This metrical art is said
to concern all coming-to-be, to be the basis for all expertise and
the source of all products that are fine and good (283d 8, 284b 2,
285a 2). The cosmic art of the Demiurge would be a special
application of this metrical expertise to the ordering of the
natural world. Such an application of metrik remains implicit in
the Statesman, where the Demiurge is mentioned only in the myth
(269d 9, 270a 5, 273d 4). But the Statesman myth can take for
granted this notion of a cosmic craftsman, since the idea of a god
responsible for shaping the products of nature was introduced
earlier, as a species of the art of making (poitik) in the final
divisions of the Sophist (265c). A different but parallel approach
to the mathematical order of nature is developed in the Philebus,
where, according to a principle tossed down from heaven by some
Prometheus, all things that are ever said to be (ta aei legomena
einai) are derived from one and many, and hence have Limit and
Unlimited in their nature (16c). In the cosmological sketch
that
20) For my reading of Timaeus 49c-50a see Flux and forms in the
Timaeus, in M. Canto-Sperber and P. Pellegrin (eds.) Le Style de la
Pense. Recueil de textes en hommage Jacques Brunschwig (Paris,
2002), 113-131.
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C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
follows in the Philebus, all the beings that are now present in
the universe (23c) are analyzed as a blended mixture of Limit and
Unlimited, under the cosmic guidance of nous. In this sketch the
Unlimited is conceived as a kind of qualitative flux (24d); but the
correlative principle of Limit is represented by quantitative
concepts: equality, numerical ratios, and mathematical proportion
(metron pros metron, Ph. 25a7-b 2). We can see these two passages
from the Statesman and Philebus as developing the application of
mathematical concepts, first to the analysis of artistic making,
and then to an analysis of cosmic order as a special case of
artistic making. (The Philebus also prepares for the Timaeus in
construing all causality in terms of making, 26e.) Both Statesman
and Philebus share with the Timaeus a conception of mathematics
that is quite different from that of the Republic. Whereas in the
epistemology of the Republic mathematics is always pointed upwards,
serving to raise the mind towards the Being of the Forms, in these
three dialogues the power of mathematics is systematically directed
downwards, to impose order on the mixed products of Becoming. We
cannot discuss here in detail Platos attempt in the Timaeus to
solve the problem of participation, but we can at least recognize
the necessary ingredients prepared for this solution. These
ingredients are, first of all the unchanging Forms, including Forms
for fire and the elements of nature; second, the Receptacle,
providing both the spatial framework and also the qualitative flux
for Becoming. (The connection between flux and the Receptacle is a
subject of dispute. I take it that what is described in the
Philebus as the qualitative flux of the Unlimited is represented in
the Timaeus narrative as the chaotic state of the Receptacle before
the Demiurge goes to work, 52d-53b. Thus the qualitative dimension
of phenomenal experience is accounted for as an attribute of the
Receptacle itself, although each particular quality will be
determined by specific modifications (or limits) imposed on the
Receptacle. In that sense the Receptacle has no intrinsic
properties, but only the capacity for qualitative determination, by
limits imposed from above.) Finally, there is the appearance of
phenomenal images, which are modifications of the Receptacle
structured by imitation of the various Forms, imprinted from them
in a marvelous way that is hard to describe, which we will pursue
later, says Timaeus ( ,
C. H. Kahn / Phronesis 52 (2007) 33-57
57
50c 6). Is this promise left unfulfilled, and the problem of
par-
ticipation avoided once again? (Thus Zeyl, following Cornford,
translates as we will pursue [this] at another time.) Or is a
forward reference within the dialogue to the unfamiliar logos three
Stephanus pages later, the logos in which Timaeus will describe the
structuring of the cosmic elements by forms (eid) and numbers (53c
1)? On this second reading (which I prefer), the geometry of the
elemental triangles and, more generally, the use of mathematics to
give structure to the phenomena of nature, is the marvelous device
by which Forms are imitated in phenomena. In other words, applied
mathematics is the mechanism by which the noetic unity of
unchanging Forms is transmitted to the perceptual plurality of
kinds of things that come to be and perish. In this intermediate
role, between the purely intelligible and the perceptible, between
the eternal and the changing, mathematics provides the instrument
by which the one becomes many, as an invariant Form is repeatedly
imitated in regular modifications of the Receptacle. Such an
interpretation of the Timaeus may well lie behind Aristotles
references to the so-called mathematicals, which are said to
account for plurality and hence to occupy an intermediate status
between the Forms and their sensible homonyms.21 If this is even
approximately correct, the numerical ratios and elementary
triangles of the Timaeus would constitute Platos last and best
attempt to deal with the problem of participation. In answer to the
question, Why is the Sophist a sequel to the Theaetetus? I have
suggested that we see these two dialogues as Platos first moves in
a long-term project of reshaping his metaphysics in the light of
the Parmenides critique, with the further goal of extending his
theory to include the world of change and Becoming. Thus my story
begins with the Parmenides (or even with the Cratylus) and ends
with the Timaeus. In some ways this account may seem more
developmental than unitarian. But perhaps that is the price to be
paid for doing justice to the themes of both unity and plurality in
Platos work.
21)
Met. A.6, 987b 14-18.