Topical Structure of the Dialogue

The Statesman begins with Socrates thanking Theodorus for introducing him to Theaetetus and the Stranger (ξένος) from Elea. After a bantering interchange on the relative values of sophistry, statesmanship, and philosophy, and after acquiescing to the Stranger's request that Young Socrates (YS) serve as respondent in the ensuing discussion, Socrates announces his intention to converse with his younger namesake on another occasion and takes his seat among the audience. We hear nothing more from him until the final speech of the dialogue in which he compliments the Stranger for completing an excellent portrayal of the kingly art.

The Stranger begins by assuming that the statesman, like the sophist before him, is someone possessing knowledge (έπιστημόνων: 258B4). After securing YS's agreement that the king, the slave master, and the household manager all share the same knowledge and exercise the same skill as the statesman (259C1–4), the Stranger identifies this knowledge as theoretical (γνωστικῆς: 259C10) rather than practical (πρακτικῆς: 259D1). Theoretical knowledge is then divided into that responsible for making judgments and that responsible for giving directions, which latter is further divided into self-directive (αὐτεπιτακτικην) and a nameless kind concerned with promulgating the directions of others. Those guided by their own directions, in turn, might be concerned with bringing either inanimate or animate products into being (γενέσεσιν at 261B13).

Return to the Problems of Chapter 7

Anticipating that YS might come to consider their definition of weaving too long, the Stranger attempts to forestall such misgivings by undertaking an examination of Excess and Deficiency in general. He begins this examination by distinguishing two kinds of measurement, which he proceeds to describe in a variety of alternative formulations. In our initial encounter with these alternative descriptions (in Chapter 7), we found them sufficiently diverse to raise doubts about the nature of the intended distinction. In hopes of resolving these doubts, we undertook a brief survey of other relevant contexts employing the same terminology, looking first at Aristotle and his later Greek commentators (section 7.2) and then at other dialogues written roughly at the time of the Statesman (Chapter 8). It is time to return to the problems raised by these diverse formulations.

While the reader may want to refer to the translations provided in Chapter 7 for details, it will be helpful to have a summary of these formulations at hand.

1. In formulation (1), the first kind of measurement is said to concern the association of greatness and smallness with each other, whereas the second is said to engage a being that is necessary for generation.

2. In formulation (2), the first compares the larger and the smaller with each other exclusively, whereas the second involves comparison with the condition of due measure (which is chiefly responsible for the difference between bad and good in human affairs).

3. In formulation (3), the first has to do with the fact that the Great and the Small both exist and are judged relative to each other, whereas the second pertains to their existing and being judged relative to due measure.

4. […]

Knowledge and Art in the Philebus

In a seemingly offhand remark at Statesman 284D1–2, the Stranger alludes to a forthcoming “exhibition” (ἀπόδειξιν) of exactness itself and says that on this occasion there will be need for the distinction between two kinds of measurement that he and YS have been discussing. As pointed out during our initial encounter with this passage in section 7.1, there is an examination of accuracy among the arts at Philebus 55D–59D that apparently answers to the Stranger's prediction. Not only does this examination of accuracy make use of a distinction between two types of measurement very much like that in the Statesman, it also deals at length with the topic of dialectic which is the Stranger's main concern in the passages directly following the prediction.

Whether or not Plato had the Philebus (or plans for it) in mind when assigning this remark to the Eleatic Stranger, its treatment of accuracy in the arts is obviously relevant to the discussion underway at the middle of the Statesman. The task of the present chapter is to bring Socrates' examination of accuracy to bear in setting the stage for a discussion in the following chapter of the procedure of dividing according to Forms.

To someone accustomed to a sharp distinction between knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and art (τέχνη) in other Platonic contexts, it may seem disorienting to find dialectic referred to as an art in the Statesman and the Philebus.

Subdivisions of Mental Derangement in the Phaedrus

With regard to dialectic, the pivotal passage in the Phaedrus is 265D–266C. The passage begins with reference to a pair of procedures, identified shortly thereafter as collection and division, and concludes by assigning the name ‘dialectician’ persons able to apply them. As already noted, collection is described here as a process of bringing what is multiply dispersed “into a single Idea” (Εἰs μίαν … ἰδέαν: 265D3). Division is characterized in turn as a matter of “cleaving things according to Forms” (κατ᾽ εἴδη … διατέμνειν: 265E1) and likened to the technique of cutting “according to natural joints” (κατ᾽ ἄρθρα ᾗ πέφυκεν: 265E1–2) practiced by a competent butcher.

The treatment of collection in the Phaedrus has been discussed in the previous chapter, along with the relationship between collection and recollection (ἀνάμνησις). Our present concern is with the other phase of the dialectical process in which things are partitioned according to Forms.

This technique of cutting things along natural lines of cleavage, Socrates tells Phaedrus, has already been illustrated in his two speeches on love. After locating mental derangement (τὸ … ἄφρον τῆς διανοίας: 265E3–4) under a single common Form (by collection), these two speeches then partitioned off the “left-handed” and the “right-handed” parts of mental derangement (termed παρανοίας at 266A2), analogously to the distinction between the left- and right-hand parts of the body. Let us examine the forms of mental derangement distinguished in these two speeches.

The Purpose of This Chapter

Chapter 7 identified seven expressions used equivalently by Aristotle and his commentators for Plato's (the) Great and (the) Small. All but two of these appear in the Platonic dialogues. Of the five used by Plato, occurrences of ὑπεροχή καὶ ἔλλειψις (Excess and Deficiency) and τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν (the Great and the Small) are found in the Statesman. The remaining three, τὸ ἄπειρον (the Unlimited), τὸ μᾶ̃λλον καὶ ἧ̃ττον (the More and Less), and ἡ ἀπείρον φύσις (the Unlimited Nature, or the Nature of the Unlimited), occur in the Philebus. The tactic of the present chapter is to examine the use of these expressions in the latter dialogue in hopes of elucidating the nature of Excess and Deficiency in the middle section of the Statesman.

Merely knowing that these three expressions occur in the Philebus, of course, tells us little about their meaning in that particular context. Of the three, τὸ ἄπειρον has received the most extensive discussion. Ancient commentary begins with Aristotle, who says in the Physics that Plato made the Infinite (or Unlimited) a substance in its own right (203a4–5), that it is present both in the Forms and in sensible things (203a8–10), and that Plato had “two infinites,” the Great and the Small (203a15–16). Commenting on these and adjacent passages, Simplicius equates the Infinite with the Indefinite Dyad and the Great and Small on Plato's behalf (see Appendix). Similar connections are made by Alexander, Themistius, and Philoponus (see Appendix).

Overview

This chapter and the next deal with antecedents present in earlier dialogues of the dialectical method exhibited in the Statesman. These antecedents are found primarily in the Phaedrus and the Sophist. A brief overview of these antecedents will indicate why this and the following chapter are needed.

The Sophist and the Statesman are the second and third members of a trilogy beginning with the Theaetetus. The method followed by Socrates in the Theaetetus is an integrated version of the method of hypothesis developed in progressive stages through the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Republic. When Socrates cuts off his conversation with Theaetetus to go meet his indictment, he steps down as discussion leader for the remainder of the trilogy. The Sophist takes up next morning with the introduction of the Stranger from Elea, who leads Theaetetus through the steps of a substantially different dialectical process. This process is commonly characterized as the method of collection and division.

Lest too much be made of the association of different methods with different discussion leaders, we should not forget that the method of collection and division first appeared in the conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus. In point of fact, the Phaedrus is the only dialogue in which collection and division are paired by name as companion procedures. Yet collection is the procedure featured most prominently in this earlier conversation, as we shall see in section 2.2.

MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

For the purpose of this paper, I assume that if a person is morally responsible for an action, this is a necessary and sufficient condition for moral appraisal of that person for that action. For instance, if the action is morally wrong, moral blame is in order. Other morally relevant responses that are sometimes connected with moral responsibility are praise, pardon, shame, pride, reward, punishment, remorse.

I now introduce two quite different concepts of moral responsibility: one grounded on the causal responsibility of the agent for an action, the other on the ability of the agent to do otherwise. The one based on the agent's causal responsibility considers it a necessary condition for praising or blaming an agent for an action, that it was the agent and not something else that brought about the action. The question of moral responsibility becomes one of whether the agent was the or a cause of the action, or whether the agent was forced to act by something else. On this view, actions or choices can be attributed to agents because it is in their actions and choices that the agents, qua moral beings, manifest themselves.

The second idea of moral responsibility considers it a prerequisite for blaming or praising an agent for an action that the agent could have done otherwise.

Previously I have discussed the diverse ways in which one could apply the image of the body. I will now examine a uniquely Stoic use. Authors such as Seneca and Cicero often compared a human body to a universal humanity which was, for them, another type of body in a very real way. Understanding how the Stoics saw the universe and society as a “body” may help us comprehend what lies behind Paul's statements that the believers are not only “like” a body, but also “are” the body of Christ.

The universe as living creature in Stoicism

The Stoics considered the universe to be a living being. In this context the body could be used to describe some aspect of the universe as being a living creature which grows and develops. Cleanthes says,

For Cleanthes, the way in which the human body develops provides a proper analogy for the growth of various parts of the universe.

Likewise Cicero relates,

In the preceding chapter I attempted to demonstrate that the Stoic identification of the universe as a “body” was a statement about the unified and organic nature of the universe. In this chapter I will examine the relationship of this conception of the universe to Stoic ethics. We will see that the idea of a bodily universe was applied to a universal and bodily humanity and that Stoic social ethics was based upon the ability to understand the consequences of the nature of a unified humanity. The role of the moral teacher was not simply to instruct the student, but to help him or her grow in reasoning ability so that the student would understand the basic connection between one's relationship to the whole and subsequent ethical behavior. Understanding corporate identity, specifically bodily unity, was the critical component in social ethics.

The goal of ethics

Like many other Greek philosophers such as the Aristotelians, Platonists, and Epicureans, the Stoics considered happiness or εὐδαιμονία to be the goal or τέλος of life. For the Stoics, happiness consisted in “living in accordance with nature,” or the order of the universe. This is the virtuous life. To live in accordance with virtue or nature is to live in accordance with a universal law or right reason. The virtuous life becomes equated with life according to nature because virtue becomes “the goal towards which nature guides us.”

The current revival of virtue ethics is indebted to Aristotle in many ways: Aristotle clearly states that the virtuous agent displays the right action together with the appropriate motivation; he explicitly connects the concept of virtue with the accomplishment of the best and flourishing life; he formulates a principle that is often used to define the very concept of virtue ethics, namely the principle that the good particular action cannot be defined by general rules, but is rather determined by the way the virtuous person would act; in the same context Aristotle seems to hint at the idea that it is a sort of context-sensitivity that allows us to find and execute the right course of action. Further, Aristotle unambiguously describes the acquisition of virtues as a process of forming and habituating one's character, and last but not least, he outlines his theory of ethical virtue in terms of emotional responses to various situations. Some of these points can be found in other ancient ethical schools as well, but there are characteristics of Aristotle's ethics that make it more attractive for modern ethical theory: his account of virtue does not seem to carry the burden of Socratic intellectualism; it seems to be less dependent on metaphysical background theories than, e. g., Plato's ethics; it does not display the same hostile attitude towards emotions as the Stoic account of virtue; and it seems to be closer to some important common-sense convictions, e.g., that the good life must be a pleasant one and that not even virtue immunizes us against the effects of great misfortunes.