Complete Works
Page 40
8. Iliad xiv.201, 302.
9. The Greek could equally be translated ‘that the soul gains and preserves knowledge’; the reader may perhaps be expected to hear the clause both ways.
10. Iliad viii.17–27. Zeus boasts that if he pulled on a golden cord let down from heaven, he could haul up earth, sea and all, bind the cord fast round the peak of Mt. Olympus, and leave the lot dangling in mid-air.
11. Cf. Hippolytus 612.
12. Theogony 265. ‘Thaumas’ means wonder, while Iris, the messenger of the gods, is the rainbow which passes between earth and heaven.
13. An alternative translation would be: ‘the suggestion that nothing is, but rather becomes, good, beautiful or any of the things we were speaking of just now’.
14. A reference to a notorious declaration by Protagoras (Diog. Laert. 9.51): ‘Concerning gods I am unable to know whether they exist or do not exist, or what they are like in form; for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life’.
15. A wealthy Athenian famous for his patronage of the sophists: ‘a man who has spent more money on sophists than everyone else put together’ (Apology 20a). The discussion of Plato’s Protagoras is set in his house, where Protagoras and other visiting sophists are staying.
16. Literally, ‘the sophist’.
17. A legendary highwayman who attacked travellers on the coast between Megara and Corinth. His most famous ‘method’ was to compel them to wash his feet, and kick them over the cliff into the sea while they were so doing.
18. Antaeus was said to have lived in a cave and compelled all passers-by to wrestle with him, with results invariably fatal to them.
19. Odyssey xvi.121.
20. This quotation from a lost poem of Pindar’s is listed as his frag. 292 (Snell).
21. The first founder of Greek natural philosophy (sixth century B.C.), about whom we have anecdotes but little solid information.
22. Reading, with Madvig, taü chrusion.
23. An alternative text (accepting the conjecture of dē for mē at 179a1 and retaining the mss’ hautōi at a3) yields: ‘if he really was in the habit of persuading his pupils that, even about the future, neither a fortune-teller nor anyone else can judge better than one can for oneself’.
24. I.e., the principle that everything is really motion (156a).
25. Both the text and the sense of this quotation are uncertain.
26. Melissus of Samos was a fifth-century follower of Parmenides.
27. This is the first occurrence in Greek of the word poiotēs, ‘quality’ or ‘what-sort-ness’, coined by Plato from the interrogative adjective poios, ‘of what sort?’.
28. Iliad iii.172.
29. A reference probably to the discussion between Socrates and Parmenides in Parmenides.
30. Viz., the eyes and ears.
31. Cf. 143e.
32. Reading [anti tinos] for Burnet’s [ti] at 189c1; the latter reading would yield: ‘when a man asserts that one of the things which are is another of the things which are, having substituted one for the other in his thought’.
33. The Greek idiom here could be used to say either that some particular beautiful thing is ugly, or that beauty is ugliness.
34. In the Greek the opposition here between ‘one’ and ‘the other’ is expressed by the repetition of the word meaning ‘other’—thus yielding, literally, the unparadoxical tautology ‘the other is other’. As Socrates refrained at 189c–d from taking up the paradoxical construal of Theaetetus’ ‘truly false’, so Theaetetus must refrain from taking up this unparadoxical construal of Socrates’ ‘one is the other’.
35. A transliteration of a variant Greek expression for ‘other-judging’ that Socrates uses here.
36. Iliad ii.851, xvi.554. The word for ‘heart’ attributed to Homer here is kear, which has a superficial resemblance to the word for wax, kēros.
37. According to the scholiast the story was: some travellers came to the bank of a river, which they wished to cross at the ford; one of them asked the guide, ‘Is the water deep?’ He said, ‘It will show you’, i.e., you must try it for yourself.
38. ‘Account’ translates logos, which can also mean ‘statement,’ ‘argument’, ‘speech’, and ‘discourse’.
39. The parenthesis may alternatively be translated: ‘(that was the word he used)’. The translation in the text expresses surprise about the claim that some things are not knowable at all. The alternative translation calls attention to the particular Greek word used for ‘knowable’.
40. ‘Letters’ translates stoicheia, which can also mean ‘elements’ more generally (and is so translated sometimes below). ‘Syllables’: in Greek sullabai, also translated below as ‘complexes.’
41. I.e., the seven vowels of ancient Greek, as contrasted with two classes of consonant: mutes like B, which cannot be pronounced without a vowel, and semivowels like S, which can.
42. The word translated ‘sum’ (pan) and the word translated ‘all’ (panta) in the phrase ‘all the parts’ are singular and plural forms of the same Greek word.
43. At 204a.
44. See 203d–e.
45. Alternatively (accepting the conjecture of to for touto at 205d): ‘And is there any other reason for this than that it is single in form and indivisible into parts?’
46. ‘Giving an account’ here translates legein, the ordinary Greek word for ‘say, speak, speak of’, which corresponds to logos in its wider meanings ‘speech, discourse, statement’.
47. Works and Days 456.
48. The pictorial technique referred to (skiagraphia) seems to have been one which depended on contrasts between light and shade to create the appearance of form and volume. A more familiar comparison for modern readers would be a pointilliste painting by Seurat.
49. Reading Ei ge dē … for Eipe dē at 209e5.
* Alternatively, this sentence could be translated: ‘What we must do is to make use of our midwife’s art to set Theaetetus free from the thoughts which he has conceived about the nature of knowledge’.
SOPHIST
Translated by Nicholas P. White.
The day following their conversation in Theaetetus, the geometer Theodorus, together with his Athenian pupils Theaetetus and Socrates’ young namesake, rejoins Socrates for further discussion. They bring with them a philosopher visiting from Elea, a Greek town of Southern Italy famous as home to the great philosopher Parmenides and his pupil, the logician Zeno—both of whom Socrates had encountered in yet another dialogue closely linked to this one, Parmenides. Socrates asks whether this visitor and the others at Elea treat the philosopher, the statesman, and the sophist as actually being just one thing—a single sort of person, though appearing to different people as falling under just one or another of these headings—or rather as having three distinct intellectual capacities, as their three names indicate. Hearing that the latter is the Eleatics’ view, he thus initiates two successive, complex discussions. First, in Sophist, the visitor, opting to use Socrates’ favorite procedure of question and answer, displays in full detail his own conception of the sophist. In Statesman he then continues in a similar way with the statesman. There is no third discussion of the philosopher, despite occasional suggestions that the initial agenda calls for one. The visitor, after all, is a distinguished philosopher. Perhaps Plato’s intention is to mark the philosopher off for us from these other two through showing a supreme philosopher at work defining them and therein demonstrating his own devotion to truth, and the correct method of analysis for achieving it: for Plato these together define the philosopher.
In defining the sophist, the visitor employs the ‘method of division’—or, more accurately, of ‘collection and division’—described in Phaedrus 265d ff. and early on in Philebus; this also underlies the latter’s discussion of the varieties of pleasure and knowledge. He first offers six distinct routes for understanding the sophist, by systematically demarcating specific classes within successivel
y smaller, nested, more inclusive classes of practitioners; these specific subclasses are then identified as the sophists. Apparently ‘sophistry’ is a somewhat loosely associated set of distinct capacities—it hunts rich, prominent young men so as to receive a wage for speaking persuasively to them about virtue, it sells (in several different circumstances) items of alleged knowledge on this same subject, it is expert at winning private debates about right and wrong, it cleanses people’s souls by refuting their false or poorly supported ideas. Yet in a final accounting—whose long-delayed completion is reached only at the very end of the dialogue—the sophist is ‘penned in’ as one who, though aware that he does not know anything, produces in words totally inadequate ‘copies’ of the truth on important subjects, ones he makes appear to others to be the truth, even though, being false, they are hardly even like it. The relation of this final definition to the six first ones is not fully explored. The visitor may be intimating the general principle that sometimes a ‘nature’ or real ‘kind’ has no single place in a systematic division; it unifies a set of differently located functions, each with its own differences from its more immediate intellectual neighbors. In any case, the essential idea of the ‘method of collection and division’ is that each thing is to be understood through a full, lively awareness of its similarities and differences in relation to other things—the sort of awareness that the varied divisions encourage us to reach. Much other general instruction on how to make proper use of the ‘method’ is given in Statesman.
The visitor delays completing his final accounting because he sees the need first to show how it is even possible for anyone to do what he wants to say the sophist does do—speak words that appear to be true but in fact are false. The trouble is that he understands speaking falsely as saying ‘what is not’, while his teacher Parmenides famously maintained that that is impossible: so he is required to engage in ‘parricide’—in showing how Parmenides was wrong. There ensues an elaborate discussion of the meaning of ‘what is’ as well as of ‘what is not’, in which we can see Plato working out a new theory of the nature of the Form of being, and its relations to other ‘greatest’ or most comprehensive Forms: such a theory is needed to make saying ‘what is not’—speaking falsely—intelligible after all. Much of the interest of the dialogue has always been found in this metaphysical excursion into the topic of being—and not being— in general.
J.M.C.
[216] THEODORUS: We’ve come at the proper time by yesterday’s agreement, Socrates. We’re also bringing this man who’s visiting us. He’s from Elea and he’s a member of the group who gather around Parmenides and Zeno. And he’s very much a philosopher.
SOCRATES: Are you bringing a visitor, Theodorus? Or are you bringing a god without realizing it instead, like the ones Homer mentions? He says [b] gods accompany people who are respectful and just.1 He also says the god of visitors—who’s at least as much a god as any other—is a companion who keeps an eye on people’s actions, both the criminal and the lawful ones. So your visitor might be a greater power following along with you, a sort of god of refutation to keep watch on us and show how bad we are at speaking—and to refute us.
THEODORUS: That’s not our visitor’s style, Socrates. He’s more moderate than the enthusiasts for debating are. And he doesn’t seem to me to be a god at all. He is divine—but then I call all philosophers that. [c]
SOCRATES: And that’s the right thing for you to do, my friend. But probably it’s no easier, I imagine, to distinguish that kind of person than it is to distinguish gods. Certainly the genuine philosophers who “haunt our cities”2—by contrast to the fake ones—take on all sorts of different appearances just because of other people’s ignorance. As philosophers look down from above at the lives of those below them, some people think they’re worthless and others think they’re worth everything in the world. Sometimes they take on the appearance of statesmen, and sometimes of sophists. [d] Sometimes, too, they might give the impression that they’re completely insane. But if it’s all right with our visitor I’d be glad to have him tell us what the people where he comes from used to apply the following names to, and what they thought about these things? [217]
THEODORUS: What things?
SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, and philosopher.
THEODORUS: What, or what kind of thing, especially makes you consider asking that question? What special problem about them do you have in mind?
SOCRATES: This: did they think that sophists, statesmen, and philosophers make up one kind of thing or two? Or did they divide them up into three kinds corresponding to the three names and attach one name to each of them?
THEODORUS: I don’t think it would offend him to tell us about it. Or would it, sir?
VISITOR: No, Theodorus, it wouldn’t offend me. I don’t have any objection. [b] And the answer is easy: they think there are three kinds. Distinguishing clearly what each of them is, though, isn’t a small or easy job.
THEODORUS: Luckily, Socrates, you’ve gotten hold of words that are very much like the ones we happened to be asking him about. And he made the same excuse to us that he made to you just now—since he’s heard a lot about the issue, after all, and hasn’t forgotten it.
SOCRATES: In that case, sir, don’t refuse our very first request. Tell us [c] this. When you want to explain something to somebody, do you usually prefer to explain it by yourself in a long speech, or to do it with questions? That’s the way Parmenides did it one time, when he was very old and I was young.3 He used questions to generate a very fine discussion.
[d] VISITOR: It’s easier to do it the second way, Socrates, if you’re talking with someone who’s easy to handle and isn’t a trouble-maker. Otherwise it’s easier to do it alone.
SOCRATES: You can pick anyone here you want. They’ll all answer you politely. But if you take my advice you’ll choose one of the young ones—Theaetetus here or for that matter any of the others you prefer.
VISITOR: As long as I’m here with you for the first time, Socrates, I’d be [e] embarrassed not to make our meeting a conversational give-and-take, but instead to stretch things out and give a long continuous speech by myself or even to someone else, as if I were delivering an oration. A person wouldn’t expect the issue you just mentioned to be as small as your question suggests. In fact it needs a very long discussion. On the other hand, it certainly seems rude and uncivilized for a visitor not to oblige you and these people here, especially when you’ve spoken the way you [218] have. So I’ll accept Theaetetus as the person to talk with, on the basis of your urging, and because I’ve talked with him myself before.
THEAETETUS: Then please do that, sir, and you’ll be doing us all a favor, just as Socrates said.
VISITOR: We probably don’t need to say anything more about that, then, Theaetetus. From now on you’re the one I should have the rest of our talk with. But if you’re annoyed at how long the job takes, you should blame your friends here instead of me.
[b] THEAETETUS: I don’t think I’ll give out now, but if anything like that does happen we’ll have to use this other Socrates over here as a substitute. He’s Socrates’ namesake, but he’s my age and exercises with me and he’s used to sharing lots of tasks with me.
VISITOR: Good. As the talk goes along you’ll think about that on your own. But with me I think you need to begin the investigation from the [c] sophist—by searching for him and giving a clear account of what he is. Now in this case you and I only have the name in common, and maybe we’ve each used it for a different thing. In every case, though, we always need to be in agreement about the thing itself by means of a verbal explanation, rather than doing without any such explanation and merely agreeing about the name. But it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to grasp the tribe we’re planning to search for—I mean, the sophist—or say what it is. But if an important issue needs to be worked out well, then as everyone [d] has long thought, you need to practice on unimportant, easier issues first. So that’s my advice to us now, Theae
tetus: since we think it’s hard to hunt down and deal with the kind, sophist, we ought to practice our method of hunting on something easier first—unless you can tell us about another way that’s somehow more promising.
THEAETETUS: I can’t.
VISITOR: Do you want us to focus on something trivial and try to use it as a model for the more important issue?
THEAETETUS: Yes. [e]
VISITOR: What might we propose that’s unimportant and easy to understand, but can have an account given of it just as much as more important things can? For example, an angler: isn’t that recognizable to everybody, but not worth being too serious about?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
VISITOR: That, I expect, will provide an appropriate method of hunting [219] and way of talking for what we want.
THEAETETUS: That would be fine.
VISITOR: Well then, let’s go after the angler from this starting point. Tell me, shall we take him to be an expert at something, or a nonexpert with another sort of capacity?
THEAETETUS: He’s definitely not a nonexpert.
VISITOR: But expertise as a whole falls pretty much into two types.
THEAETETUS: How?
VISITOR: There’s farming, or any sort of caring for any mortal body; and there’s also caring for things that are put together or fabricated, which we call equipment; and there’s imitation. The right thing would be to call all [b] those things by a single name.
THEAETETUS: How? What name?
VISITOR: When you bring anything into being that wasn’t in being before, we say you’re a producer and that the thing you’ve brought into being is produced.
THEAETETUS: That’s right.
VISITOR: And all the things we went through just now have their own capacity for that.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
VISITOR: Let’s put them under the heading of production.