This short chapter has two objectives: to review the interpretation of Aristotle's theory of meaning developed in this volume and to consider whether his theory of meaning can successfully answer philosophical challenges of both ancient and modern origins. The treatment of these topics will of necessity be brief and selective. The intent, especially in the case of modern theories, is to provoke discussion, not to settle questions that would demand a much more thorough investigation than is appropriate here.

Pulling the Threads Together

De Interpretatione 1 offers a terse explanation of meaning:

To understand this description, I have argued, we must interpret each of its parts within the context provided by Aristotle when he discusses the issues surrounding signification, ontology, and psychological processes. In Part I, Aristotle's conception of meaning and reference was explicated within the logical and ontological framework of the Organon. There the basic entities are simple subjects and their characteristics. For language and logic, the basic items are simple subjects and predicates. For epistemology and ontology, the basic units are simple substances and their properties and relations. Throughout, Aristotle assumes that the basic categories of language – knowledge and reality – are structural equivalents.

As a mode of sensory representation, phantasia is well placed to secure the reference of a common noun such as cat. An image derived from the perception of one cat resembles other cats. Aristotle's theory of meaning interpreted in light of his conception of phantasia faces several challenges, as we saw at the end of Chapter 7. The extension of his theory of meaning thus interpreted to include scientific definition raises additional questions. At best the image of a cat seems to convey minimal information about the essence of a cat, and so it appears to have little relevance for the logos that is captured in the real definition and is constitutive of knowledge. The image, moreover, presents as salient characteristics features that may be unique to the individual cat(s) perceived, yet ex hypothesi the mind derives the meaning of the generic term ‘cat’ from images of individual cats. How the mind grasps the essence remains a mystery, as does how the mind grasps the meanings of the terms that are common names of macroscopic objects.

Aristotle's answer to these puzzles, if he has one, must be found in his conception of thought. The challenge he faces is to give an account that allows phantasia to play a crucial role in determining reference while avoiding the pitfalls sketched above. Were he to envisage thinking in a way that forced sensory representation to the sidelines by treating it as little more than a backdrop of moving imagery, sensory representation would become irrelevant or dispensable for the activity of thinking.

Aristotle grapples with the topic of meaning head-on in only one place – at the beginning of the De Interpretatione. As already noted, this text is, on the most charitable reading, compressed and elliptical.

Confronted with a summary statement of this sort, an interpreter must try to situate Aristotle's words in a broader context in order to understand their import. The Categories and the remainder of the De Interpretatione provide the context in which Aristotle's conception of significant terms will be explored in this chapter.

The problem of meaning as framed by Plato in the Cratylus will also be briefly discussed, because it sets the stage for Aristotle's account. Aristotle believes the relation between a phoneme and a meaning is conventional (16a20–29). The meaning is the intentional content of the psychological state for which the word stands. He holds, nevertheless, that the relevant mental states (meanings) are the same for all humans and are likenesses of extramental states of affairs. The crucial contrast here is between convention as the explanation of how sounds carry meaning and a natural relation, the same for all humans, rooted in the likeness between a meaning and a reality.

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD

Socrates' reply is, of course, founded on the Forms. The reason that this life is not of great significance is that reality lies elsewhere (500b), and the reason death is to be welcomed rather than feared is that it is simply the sloughing off of the body and the release of the logistikon into the purely intellectual realm of Forms which is its true home (611b–612a). Furthermore, if the Forms are the divine (500C9) origin of all the goodness and beauty in the phenomenal world, then it would seem that divinity is not capricious or dangerous. There is also a point which is implicit in the Republic and explicit in the Symposium: if all beautiful loved ones (and loved objects) participate in the single source of Beauty itself, then they will all, Socrates thinks, be beautiful in the same way. The beloved is therefore not unique and irreplaceable, as Achilles mistakenly believes, but the replaceable token of an enduring type; for this chilling reason, too, the fear of his or her loss or death will be greatly diminished.

Equally important from our present perspective is the fact that the Forms preclude the necessity of making tragic choices between noble and beneficial courses of action. There are two possible ways in which this might be so. The more common, and less controversial, reading is that the ultimate cause of both all good and all beautiful particulars is the same, namely the Form of the Good.

PLATO'S ETHICAL FRAMEWORK

Let us return to the passage with which this book opened. At Gorgias 500c, in response to Callicles' trenchant attack on philosophers as unmanly wimps, Socrates issues a challenge of his own:

An almost identical claim is made in Republic 1. At 352d Socrates says that they must study Thrasymachus' attack on conventional justice with great care: ‘For our discussion is not about some trivial question, but about how one should live’.

This question of how best to live is, I would suggest, Plato's fundamental ethical starting-point. As we have seen, the question of which way of life is best runs throughout the Republic, and we shall find that it provides the basic structure of all the dialogues we shall consider. In the Gorgias, for instance, Socrates stresses again at 487a that he and Callicles are concerned with ‘how to live correctly’, and at the end of the dialogue he concludes that they now have some evidence that ‘the philosophic way of life is best’.

VIRTUE AND THE VIRTUES (328d–334c)

The complexity of the relation between andreia and aretē as a whole is first raised in the Protagoras at 329e. At 328d Protagoras finally brings his Great Speech to a close and Socrates offers his praise; there is, however, just one point he would like clarified. Protagoras made reference to both particular virtues, such as justice, respect and temperance, and also to virtue (aretē) in general; does he see the former as parts of virtue, or are they simply different names for the same single thing? Protagoras replies that they are parts. In that case, continues Socrates, are they heterogeneous in the way that eyes, ears and nose are parts of the face, or are they homogeneous like the parts of a lump of gold? Protagoras says that they are like the parts of the face. And do different people possess different virtues, or is it the case (as the analogy would seem to suggest) that if you possess one virtue you must necessarily possess them all? No, says Protagoras, many people are courageous (andreioi) but unjust, and many again are just but not wise (329e5–6).

If we leave aside for the moment the issue of what precisely Socrates means when he suggests that the virtues are names of the same thing, the most striking features of this exchange are Protagoras' immediate citation of andreia as problematic, and his belief that justice may be divorced from wisdom.

TRAINING MEN

As we saw in chapter 2, the Laches is one of the clearest examples of Plato's belief that ethical enquiry should begin from questions of how to live and what sort of person to be. Two worthy but undistinguished Athenian gentlemen, Lysimachus and Melesias, are worried about the best way to educate their sons: their own education was neglected by their famous fathers, and they do not want to repeat the mistake. In particular, they cannot decide whether the boys should be taught the controversial new technique of fighting in armour, and they have invited two Athenian generals, Laches and Nicias, to watch a display with them and give their advice. Lysimachus and Melesias wish their sons to become aristoi, excellent and successful men: will learning to fight in armour promote this?

Before considering Nicias' and Laches' answers, it is worth noting a further way in which the opening scene accords with the suggested framework of an ethics of virtue and flourishing. This concerns general pedagogic method. All four characters take it for granted that becoming an aristos depends on the cultivation of the right studies and practices: it is the result of years of careful training. To be fully effective, however, such studies should not be viewed in isolation, but should be seen as forming part of an entire character and way of life. For the natural way to learn good practices is to reflect on and associate with those who already embody them.

HOMERIC ROLE MODELS AND ALEXANDER THE GREAT

We have seen how the Gorgias raises questions concerning the respective appeal of Socrates and Callicles, or the Calliclean superman, for the young men of fourth-century Athens: Plato is well aware that if he wishes to establish Socrates as a new ideal, then he has competition on his hands. Yet the most widely influential role models were neither the ruthless political operators promoted by some of the sophists, nor the sophists themselves; they were, still, the heroes and warrior-kings of the ancient myths and legends, and above all they were those heroes as depicted in Homer. There is abundant evidence that immersion in the Homeric poems formed the major part of a Greek male's education: both Xenophanes and Plato himself, for example, refer to Homer as the teacher of Greece, and in Xenophon's Symposium a certain Niceratus recounts how his father, wishing him to become ‘a good man’, made him learn the entire Homeric corpus; even now, he says, he can still recite the Iliad and Odyssey by heart. Nor was the point of such close study simply to cultivate one's aesthetic sensibilities: the poems were commonly regarded as repositories of ethical and perhaps even technical wisdom, practical manuals for a gentleman's life. We have already seen Callicles make use of Homer in precisely this way at Gorgias 485d, criticizing Socrates for not frequenting those public arenas where, in the words of Iliad 9.441, men ‘are made pre-eminent’.

THUMOS AMOK

The importance of Achilles in Republic 2 and 3 has gone strangely unremarked. He makes his first appearance at 379d, very near the beginning of the debate on the young Guardians' primary education. Socrates, disapprovingly, quotes Achilles' lines to Priam on Zeus' distribution of good and bad fates: in Socrates' view, God is responsible only for good; Achilles has got God wrong. From here until 391e, a mere twelve Stephanus chapters, there are fifteen more references to Achilles or his speeches, and two references to Patroclus. Furthermore, fourteen of the sixteen references involving Achilles are sharply critical, and the remaining two voice laments by Thetis on the tragic destiny of her son. Far from being worthy of comparison with Socrates, Achilles is presented in the Republic as a highly undesirable role model in every way. What has caused this startling fall from grace?

My proposal is simple. I suggest that by the time of the Republic and its more sophisticated moral psychology, Plato has come to see Achilles as the archetypal examplar of the thumos gone awry: a terrible warning of what can happen to a man when he is not only characterized by his thumoeidic elements – which must of course be the case with all the Auxiliary class – but is actually dominated by them, instead of being ruled by his or someone else's reason.

This book arose initially from my fascination with certain of the Platonic Socrates' interlocutors, and in particular with Callicles and Alcibiades. Why was Plato so ready to give room to the views of such unSocratic and charismatic opponents? The answer, I believed, had largely to do with his abiding interest in different conceptions of manliness and courage (andreia), and hence also with different conditions of the spirited element of the Republic's tripartite psuchē (the thumos), with which andreia is especially connected. At this juncture I came across Allan Bloom's interpretative essay on the Republic, in which he highlights the central role played by Achilles in Books 2 and 3, and it became evident that Plato's concern with Achilles throughout the early and middle dialogues was also part of this interest in notions of andreia. In short, it seemed to me that there was a book to be written on andreia and thumos in early and middle Plato, focusing not only on the theoretical discussions of the Laches and Protagoras, but also on these three characters (who were quickly joined by Thrasymachus).

Such a study necessarily touches on many overlapping aspects of Plato's thought. The introduction of Achilles inevitably raises the issue of Plato's complex attitude to Homer, and his ambivalent deployment of other Homeric heroes, most notably Odysseus. Such topics in their turn prompt questions concerning role models and education in general, and relations between individual and community.

The Life of Reason and the Life of Desire

In Plato's early dialogue the Gorgias, Socrates and his interlocutor Callicles debate what Socrates says is the most important question of all: how one should live. Socrates argues for the philosophic life, in which one's desires are ordered by reason; Callicles advocates the life of the forceful man of affairs, who as far as possible acts as he pleases both in public and private. Underlying their differences lies an implicit disagreement about the nature of the self. While both appear to believe that the human personality consists of two main aspects, reason and the desires, Socrates seems to identify himself with the former, whereas Callicles identifies himself with the latter. Thus for Socrates freedom and happiness depend on the desires' obedience to reason, while for Callicles freedom and happiness depend on reason's obedience to the desires. Callicles is adamant that it is his view of human nature that is correct: the philosopher is a pathetic creature who is entirely ignorant of human pleasures and desires and the characters of men. When Socrates asks whether Callicles agrees that those who need nothing are happy, Callicles scathingly replies that if that were true then stones and corpses would be happiest of all. Impasse appears to have been reached. Although Callicles later formally capitulates to Socrates, he also claims that he is only agreeing with him so that the discussion may be brought to a speedy conclusion.

MAN AND SUPERMAN

At first sight, it may seem rather odd to claim that Callicles is an example of thumoeidic tendencies gone astray; it may seem more plausible to view him as a forerunner, not of the thumos, but of the pleasure-seeking epithumētikon. After all, from 491e to 492c Plato puts into his mouth what appears to be one of the most forceful exhortations to hedonism ever made. The man who would live rightly, Callicles asserts,

One might imagine that a life devoted to such relentless sybaritic indulgence could hold little time for the thumoeidic pursuit of worldly success and honours. Yet at 484d Callicles makes it plain that a man should aspire to be a well-respected kalos k'agathos, and to this end should emulate men who possess wealth and reputation (486c–d) – a remark which is significant not only for the content of its ideal, but also because it shows that he is interested in ideals and role models in the first place. His chosen route, furthermore, is the energy-consuming one of politics: at 515a we are told that he has just embarked on a political career, and at 481d that he is in love with the Athenian dēmos.

SELF-PERPETUATING HEROES

In the Republic, Socrates is in no doubt that our non-rational elements can normally only be harnessed when early education is in the hands of Philosopher-Rulers. The trouble, of course, is that this education system must somehow already be in place for Philosopher-Rulers to be created. How is the ideally just state to get off the ground? The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, as we have seen, a role model culture such as Plato's Athens has an in-built tendency to reproduce itself – an innate conservatism that Plato highlights by stressing the thumos' desires for social esteem and success. Once the ideal state is up and running, and state-approved heroes well established, such conservative tendencies can be put to good use: properly purified literature and music, which promote the right ideals, must never be altered in any way (424b–c). In imperfect societies, on the other hand, the same tendencies will plainly work against Plato's blueprint.

The obstacles such innate conservatism raises are forcefully depicted in the Symposium. Before looking at them, however, we need first to consider the radical project for educating desire that the dialogue proposes, and the role in this erotic training of the conservatively-inclined thumos.

THE SYMPOSIUM: THUMOS AS INTERMEDIARY

The immediate task is clearly to establish that the thumos plays any role whatsoever in the Symposium: there is after all no explicit reference to it, or indeed to a divided psuchē of any kind.

The Republic and the Symposium are not, of course, Plato's last words on andreia. it reappears as an important theme in both the Politicus and the Laws. Yet the Republic is, I would maintain, his most sustained and consistent attempt to bring andreia and sōphrosunē together, chiefly by means of a careful education of thumos. And the Symposium is perhaps the most vivid demonstration of how difficult it is to effect such an education in practice.

Although the later dialogues fall outside the scope of this book, a very brief glance at the rich treatments of andreia in the Politicus and Laws will help to illustrate the radical nature of the Republic's project, and the importance of its theory of the tripartite psuchē. The Politicus, in particular, initially appears to adopt a position diametrically opposed to that (or those) of earlier dialogues on the question of the Unity of the Virtues. In 306a–b the Stranger tells Young Socrates that, in order to understand the statesman's art, it is necessary to explain what many will find a ‘difficult’ and ‘extraordinary’ doctrine, which asserts that the virtue of andreia and the virtue of sōphrosunē ‘are in a way in a condition of great hostility and strife in many things’. These two potentially hostile virtues are, in their turn, to be placed in two opposite classes (eidē) of qualities, and those who possess such qualities also naturally constitute two opposing groups (307c).