In the previous chapter we focused on the metaphysics of the Philebus and its fourfold classification. In this one, I propose to show how those results can be brought to bear on the ethical discussion, which occupies the bulk of the dialogue, about what seem to be two competing lives: the life of intellect and the life of pleasure. In this regard, the roles of both pleasure and knowledge in a happy life deserve further scrutiny, and each will be treated in a separate section. First, if pleasure is one of the main subjects of the Philebus, should we think that it is only by way of compromise that Socrates ends up including it as a component of the happy life? This is a particularly pressing question, given that contemporary interpretations have tended to downplay the role of pleasure in the dialogue (so that Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, is at heart on the side of the intellectualist in the discussion) or even contended that god embodies the ideal of the pleasureless life. In opposition to these readings, I shall argue that in the Philebus Plato does mean to allot pleasure an indispensable role even in the best form of life. Accordingly, if god functions as a model for humans, it is not as an entity who experiences no pleasure but as the ideal of the happiest life understood as one that combines pleasure with knowledge.

The Philebus is known as a dialogue on pleasure. Its central issue is “the good”, or happiness, for humans, and where it is to be found. Is it in pleasure, knowledge, or a mixture of both? At the outset of the dialogue, Philebus and Protarchus are presented as two supporters of hedonism, advocating the first view. Socrates appears, at least initially, defending the second one, even though they agree that if a life is found that is superior to both, that candidate wins (11d–12a). The question will then concern the status of a mixed life of pleasure and knowledge with respect to happiness, and what the role of those components is within it.

Now, if this is so, and if the purpose of the dialogue is fundamentally ethical, it might seem prima facie surprising that so much of it is spent on taxonomy, or dialectical classifications of kinds of pleasure and knowledge. In particular, it might seem disturbing that the interlocutors should devote a whole section (14–31) to dealing with a pair of notions that stand out as especially obscure in Plato's writing. These are those of limit (to peras) and the unlimited or indefinite (to apeiron), whose interpretation has raised unending controversy. As we shall see, they are introduced not as mere technicalities, but with the hope of shedding light on difficult logical (or dialectical) and metaphysical issues. But why should dialectic and metaphysics matter to a hedonist?

In this book I have argued that Plato's cosmology is an indispensable framework for understanding his concerns about the happy life in the late dialogues. While the Timaeus and the Philebus emphasise the role of the universe as a model for human behaviour, the Politicus and the Laws, without dismissing the latter dimension, seem to open a new one: the universe as the stage of human actions, whose description can be tinged by anthropological concerns. This can reach the point of depicting on a cosmic scale an ethical drama that seems inherently human, as in the Politicus, or portraying the cosmos as the battlefield of human good and evil in the Laws, with a consequent warning, we might infer, about the cosmic dimension of human behaviour, since whatever we do is reflected in the cosmos and contributes to its being good or not.

The late dialogues, in addition, present the universe as a “common origin” for all souls (Laws X 903d2–3; cf. Tim. 41d, Phil. 30a), which therefore have a kinship not only among themselves but with their source. Hand in hand with this, we see Plato's tendency to extend more widely the possibility of an autonomous kind of happiness, a tendency that seems to rescue him, as it were, from the limitations of his elitist approach in the Republic.

WHY COSMOLOGY AND ETHICS?

This book is a study of Plato's late cosmology and its relation to Plato's ethics. The combination might strike one as odd. Indeed, it might seem far from obvious, first, that Plato has any coherent cosmological story to tell; second, that even if he does, it would deserve any special attention beyond historical curiosity, still less as a necessary background for understanding his ethical thinking. In the modern literature, it has in fact been quite common to investigate Plato's ethics, but much less common to delve into his cosmology. At any rate, these two undertakings have usually been carried out in isolation from each other. Thus, for example, Terence Irwin's extensive treatment in Plato's Ethics contains no section on the Timaeus, and virtually no allusion to Plato's cosmology and theology. Even more striking in this regard is Christopher Bobonich's recent book on Plato's later ethics and politics, Plato's Utopia Recast, which, despite occupying more than 600 pages of exegetical treatment, does not for the most part consider it necessary, for its purposes, to take a stand on cosmological issues.

Certainly, some fresh air has been brought to these topics in a few recent contributions, though an extensive treatment of Plato's late cosmology in relation to his ethics is lacking to this day. Julia Annas, for example, devotes a chapter of her Platonic Ethics, Old and New to the issue of assimilation with god, but does not do much in terms of integrating this aspect of Plato with other aspects of his ethical thinking, and is at any rate quite comfortable with the thought that Plato's ethics can be understood independently of his metaphysical commitments.

The previous chapter argued for a view of the myth of the Politicus according to which, even on a literal reading, we are currently living in a period governed by god. In this respect, the letter of the text has been shown to be consistent with the cosmological accounts of other dialogues, which gives us good reason to suppose that Plato does after all mean to present our universe as one under divine guidance. And this, in turn, has enabled us to make better sense of the possibility of human and political progress as allowed in the rest of the Politicus. A further point to discuss now, however, is how literally the myth should be taken in other respects, and whether it does not still deserve other levels of analysis that could complementarily enrich and enlighten our understanding of its function in the dialogue. It is prima facie clear that the guise of the myth is cosmological, but how much cosmological significance does it have?

Positions on this point have often been extreme. Thus, the myth has sometimes been treated either as a digressive and separate piece of cosmological doctrine, or as a rather lengthy tale fashioned for the political purposes of the dialogue but deprived of great cosmological importance. In this chapter I wish to undertake a more integrated analysis, by stressing the cosmological content of the myth and, against that background, exploring further its ethical and political implications and its relevance to the general political purpose of the dialogue.

This book is the result of many years of thought and research, and has taken on several different shapes before reaching its final version. It started as a project based on (and soon took off beyond) my Ph.D. thesis, written between 1992 and 1995. My research on Plato's cosmology goes back somewhat further, and I am happy that, as this book is coming to fruition, my La noción de dios en el Timeo de Platón, originally published in Buenos Aires in 1991, is due to appear in its second edition for a Spanish-speaking readership. Proper acknowledgements were made in both those productions to scholars and institutions, in Argentina and in England, which contributed to my research then. But I would like here to thank David Sedley and Richard Sorabji for their keen criticism early on. I am also grateful to Christopher Shields and Raphael Woolf, who commented on different chapters of the book, and to the anonymous referees for Cambridge University Press for their helpful suggestions. It is my pleasure to thank, in addition, the National Endowment for the Humanities for generous financial support, and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, which has allowed me to finalise the manuscript in optimal research conditions and in an excellent collegial environment.

Previous versions of sections of this book have appeared as follows: Chapter 2, Section II.2 is based on Carone (2004c); Chapter 3, Section III is based on Carone (1997); parts of Chapter 5, Section I are based on Carone (2000); Chapter 6 is based on Carone (2004a); parts of Chapter 7 are based on Carone (1993); and parts of Chapter 8 are based on Carone (1994).

The Laws presents Plato's last and vast attempt at laying the platform for a political project, where all the citizens will have an understanding of the reasons why they should abide by certain norms. In this respect, the dialogue sustains the effort of other late dialogues to extend education to the many, and thus avail them of more solid foundations for the attainment of happiness. The Laws also lays down the groundwork for a system where political law is to be based on natural law; but establishing this point requires proving that there are norms of nature. To this effect, Plato finds it of importance to establish that there is nous – intelligence – pervading the cosmos, and that our own intelligence is akin to it. In particular, if it is the role of intelligence to grasp objective goodness, the hope is that by having all citizens acquire and use critical understanding, they will reach agreement about common values and this will in turn secure the rule of law in a way that is grounded in nature. Thus, book IV relates the etymology of nomos, law, to nous, intelligence (714a; cf. XII 957c), and presents the divine nous that ruled during the golden age of Cronus as paradigmatic for a political search. In this way, in opposition to the view that laws are merely the arbitrary rule of the stronger, the Laws presents a normative concept of law; one which should, in a desirable political system, promote the individual flourishing of virtue.

So far I have argued that there is a tendency, in the late dialogues, to emphasise the teleological arrangement of the cosmos as one in which intelligence prevails. In this context, it is possible to see how the universe can provide a framework for the realisation of human autonomy, if now it is no longer expected, or required, that the individual should be under the rule of a gifted sage in order to attain happiness. Instead, by studying and imitating the rational consistency that pervades astronomy and mathematical disciplines in general, he can find and internalise models for his own behaviour, and be encouraged to explore his identity within that larger picture. This move towards the education of the many, who are no longer expected blindly to follow an authority, seemed to contrast with the Republic, and promised to pervade Plato's thinking in his later years as a mark of positive philosophical development. However, the Politicus confronts us with a problem in this respect – or, rather, with many problems.

First, it is not clear what the function of its cosmological myth is in relation to the overall political argument of the dialogue; at any rate the prevalent tendency has been to read that myth (by contrast with the dialogues we have so far considered) as suggesting that the universe is not under the control of god.

INTRODUCTION

What kind of universe do we live in? How can we coherently explain a world where there is room for both beauty and ugliness, good and evil? In what way do these factors interact, and to what extent do they affect our own lives? The Timaeus will utilise a rich conceptual apparatus, anchored in the notions of intelligent design and recalcitrant necessity, to make sense of these issues, which will occupy us here and in the next chapter.

The leading image the Timaeus employs for this purpose, that of an intelligent craftsman or “demiurge” coping with difficult materials, may raise suspicions about its philosophical meaning, particularly in a work that offers such a difficult medium for the interpreter. Two questions in particular need to be addressed at the outset: First, how much of the Timaeus should be considered mythical, and how much as pertaining to the realm of argumentative discourse? Second, what is the relation, if any, between the various speeches that compose it? Let us start with the latter question.

Notably, Socrates is not the main speaker (that role is allotted to Timaeus, an expert astronomer from southern Italy). Yet the Timaeus starts with an allusion by Socrates to his speech “given yesterday” concerning the best kind of constitution (politeia, 17c), which seems to be reminiscent of the content of the Republic.