MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM

God first (I shall come back to philosophy and farming in my final chapter). It is often supposed that all Plato's cosmic teleology is theistic, just as it is often supposed that he will make his theistic claims under the protective custody of a myth. If there are other stories to tell about myth, however, perhaps there are others about god, too. Indeed, if I am right that the Politicus myth invites a contrast between two mythologies, then the absence of god in the mythology of our era tells immediately against unthinking theism on Plato's part (and perhaps against thoughtful theism, too). Even if Plato would earlier have responded to the failings of Anaxagoras by adding to the mechanistic account of the universe an overseeing god (this is, if you like, giving Anaxagoras' Mind a job to do; cf. Phaedo 98b ff.), how far is this cosmological theology what we have in the Politicus and the Philebus?

At Philebus 28–30 Socrates offers an argument which seems at first to encourage a theistic view, that the cosmos is as it is by the agency of god. Socrates has been discussing the nature of limit and the unlimited in order to relegate the life of Philebus – a life which is barely a life, but rather the episodic existence of a mollusc – to what has no measure, to what is characterised by the more and the less.

This book had its origins in the W. B. Stanford Memorial Lectures at Trinity College, Dublin, in February 1996; I am extremely grateful to John Dillon and Kathy Coleman both for the honour of their invitation and for the warmth of their hospitality, then and thereafter. My audiences in Dublin were very generous and their various comments and questions most illuminating. In particular, Vasilis Politis and John Cleary made me clarify a good deal that had been unclear; whatever opacity there remains – and I fear there may be far too much – is despite their best efforts.

In a form close to the present one Chapter 2 was delivered at the Southern Association for Ancient Philosophy in September 1996, and again at Queen's University, Belfast; and it is published in Dialogos 1998. I am grateful to the editors for permission to reprint that material here. A French version of some of Chapters 5 and 6 was delivered at the Sorbonne in 1996, and is published as ‘Téléologie et Autonomie dans le Philèbe de Platon’ in La fêlure du plaisir et la pensée. Études sur le Philèbe de Platon vol. I, ed. M. Dixsaut. Some of the same material was delivered at University College Cork and at King's College London. On all these various occasions I was fortunate in my audiences, whom I should like warmly to thank. In addition John Dillon, Verity Harte, Alan Lacey and Vasilis Politis have all read and commented upon a draft of the whole book; I am extremely grateful to them, both for their patience and for their insights. As reader for the Press, John Cooper made extensive comments on the whole manuscript with his customary care and incisiveness.

HERACLITUS' EARLY APPEARANCES

Heraclitus' influence on Plato from early on is evident, although it is not evident that it was the flux of the sensible world which was Plato's dominant problem. Instead, it seems that in the middle dialogues Plato was more interested in Heraclitus' logic, or his methodology. Consider Socrates' exhortation to his companions:

REASON AND SELF-DETERMINATION

Let us return, first of all, to the Politicus. The judgement of lives suggested that philosophy, the inquiring sort, is, at least in the conditions of the golden age, sufficient for happiness; and possibly necessary as well. Astonishingly, Young Socrates makes a similar point (indeed, this is his only point). The Stranger argues that the best state is one where the statesman is present to exercise the judgement which is his alone. Failing that, a state will have fixed laws, protected by fierce legislation. But in this state (from which the experts have departed) there would be no experts and no investigation into new knowledge, for fear of the overthrow of the fixed laws. Young Socrates is horrified:

If the cosmological myth makes inquiry sufficient for happiness in the golden age, Young Socrates supposes it to be necessary in this one. And yet this is in sharp contrast to the dramatisation of the dialogue itself, which makes it hard to see how the process of philosophy could be vital for a life that is worth living (would you want to be Young Socrates?). Why might men in the golden age fail to do philosophy? And why should they be worse off if they do? And why should the life of the ordinary citizen be utterly diminished by an embargo on inquiry?

A MURDER MYSTERY

Parmenides' influence on Plato is both obvious and acknowledged. Parmenides claimed that there is no such thing as what is not, so all there is is one, single, uniform and self-identical entity, unchanging and imperishable, eternal and complete:

Proper reasoning and accurate speech should be directed at this entity alone; belief, which tries to talk about plurality, is fraught with contradiction and (so) unreason:

Plato's own account of the nature of forms (single-natured, eternal, unchanging) appears deeply indebted to Parmenides' account of the One, even if Plato allows the plural world of sensation to be quite satisfactorily real, and even if his forms are themselves plural. Plato's own account of reason, moreover, has an Eleatic origin; both Parmenides and Plato suppose that reason can deliver its conclusions without the benefit of sense-perception.

SOCRATES' METHODS

The early dialogues present Socrates in conversation with various people – sophists, religious experts, generals, old friends and new adversaries. Socrates insistently questions his interlocutors, about what they are doing and why. He asks because he wants to know and because he claims to be ignorant himself. Ironically he commends his interlocutor's expertise and then, by careful analysis, shows his interlocutor to be in an even worse cognitive case. For when the interlocutor defines some ethical notion Socrates elicits from him a whole collection of his sincere beliefs and assumptions, and then shows that those beliefs are inconsistent with the proposed definition. This, famously, results in dismay, irritation, even apoplectic horror on the part of the interlocutor.

You can see why they gave Socrates the hemlock. His methods are not only maddening for his victims; they also seem pretty destructive. For showing a set of propositions inconsistent shows that at least one of them must be false; but it does not show which one. The elenchus does not seem to offer positive progress unless the exposure of inconsistency is itself positive (e.g. Gorgias 482b–c). So the elenchus may be barren and negative. Matters may be made worse when Socrates insists that he knows nothing anyway (e.g. Apology 21b–c; Euthyphro 5a–b; Charmides 165b–c). Why does he do that? Does he intend to undermine anything his interlocutor believes, and thus save him from the horrors of doxosophy? Then Socrates' arguments may be therapeutic; but are they any more productive than sophistry? Or does Socrates have some knowledge himself which protects the argument from the waste of scepticism? If he does, how is that knowledge immune from the elenchus?

PROTARGHUS AND SOCRATES

Protarchus' attack on the negative ways of the elenchus at Philebus 19c seems to be accepted by Socrates, so that the Philebus ends – at least from Socrates' point of view – with some sort of positive conclusion. So perhaps also the dialectic of question and answer has been laid to rest; perhaps Plato no longer supposes there to be value in the investigation of someone's beliefs for consistency or in the exposure of confusion in someone's opinions. Perhaps even the preliminary activities of the noble sophist should be put aside, in favour of setting out some subject in the manner prescribed by (broad) collection and division (or if, as Protarchus allows, not by collection and division, then in some other productive way). It may be, therefore, that by the time the Philebus draws to a close, the significance of person to person dialectic has receded in favour of – what might seem – more analytic methods of philosophy, which require neither the personal engagement of any of the participants, nor that philosophical progress should be made by dialogue itself. By this time, that is to say, we may no longer need to search for the sincerity of an interlocutor, since propositions and theories and principles may be entertained and considered irrespective of whether they are believed. By this time, furthermore, we may no longer need to ask whether the dialogue form is significant to the philosophical content of the dialogue, since by now it has receded into a mere formality.