Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  The meeting of Socrates with the Eleatic philosophers (an invention of Plato’s) is reported in a way unparalleled in the other dialogues. The narrator, Cephalus—a different Cephalus from the one in whose house the Republic’s conversation takes place—speaks directly to the reader (as Socrates himself does in Republic), telling of his visit to Athens from his home in Clazomenae, accompanied by a group of Clazomenian philosophers. (Clazomenae was famous as the birthplace of the pre-Socratic ‘physical’ philosopher Anaxagoras.) They have come specially to hear Antiphon, in fact Plato’s younger half brother, recite from memory the record of this conversation: he had heard it from Pythodorus. Cephalus now reports what Antiphon said, in himself reporting what Pythodorus had told him the various speakers on the original occasion had said to one another: four levels of conversation, counting the one Cephalus is having now with an undetermined group—us, the readers. The effect is twofold: to emphasize the extraordinary philosophical value of this conversation and to put us hearers at a great intellectual distance from it—as if to say that we could barely be expected to assimilate and learn properly from it. The situation in Symposium is in some ways comparable—except that the meeting there is reported at only two removes and its fame apparently extends only to those with a personal interest in Socrates (one intimate of Socrates has just reported it to a second and is now reporting it to another friend). This conversation is marked as having truly universal significance.

  J.M.C.

  Cephalus

  [126] When we arrived in Athens from home in Clazomenae, we ran into Adeimantus and Glaucon in the marketplace. Adeimantus took me by the hand and said, “Welcome, Cephalus. If there is anything you want here that we can do for you, please tell us.”

  “In fact that’s the very reason I’m here,” I replied, “to ask a favor of you.”

  “Tell us what you want,” he said.

  [b] And I replied, “Your half brother on your mother’s side – what was his name? I’ve forgotten. He would have been a child when I came here from Clazomenae to stay before – and that’s a long time ago now. I think his father’s name was Pyrilampes.”

  “It was, indeed,” he said.

  “And his?”

  “Antiphon. But why do you ask?”

  “These men are fellow citizens of mine,” I said, “keen philosophers, and they have heard that this Antiphon met many times with a friend of Zeno’s called Pythodorus and can recite from memory the discussion that Socrates [c] and Zeno and Parmenides once had, since he heard it often from Pythodorus.”

  “That’s true,” he said.

  “Well, we want to hear that discussion,” I replied.

  “Nothing hard about that,” he said. “When Antiphon was a young man, he practiced it to perfection, although these days, just like the grandfather he’s named for, he devotes most of his time to horses. But if that’s what’s called for, let’s go to his house. He left here to go home just a short time ago, but he lives close by in Melite.”

  After this exchange, we set off walking and found Antiphon at home [127] engaging a smith to work on a bit of some kind. When he had finished with the smith, and his brothers told him why we were there, he recognized me from my earlier visit and greeted me. We asked him to go through the discussion, and he balked at first – it was, he said, a lot of work. But finally he narrated it in detail.

  Antiphon said that Pythodorus said that Zeno and Parmenides once came to the Great Panathenaea. Parmenides was already quite venerable, [b] very gray but of distinguished appearance, about sixty-five years old. Zeno was at that time close to forty, a tall, handsome man who had been, as rumor had it, the object of Parmenides’ affections when he was a boy. Antiphon said that the two of them were staying with Pythodorus, outside [c] the city wall in the Potters’ Quarter, and that Socrates had come there, along with a number of others, because they were eager to hear Zeno read his book, which he and Parmenides had just brought to Athens for the first time. Socrates was then quite young.

  Zeno was reading to them in person; Parmenides happened to be out. Very little remained to be read when Pythodorus, as he related it, came [d] in, and with him Parmenides and Aristotle – the man who later became one of the Thirty. They listened to a little of the book at the very end. But not Pythodorus himself; he had heard Zeno read it before.

  Then Socrates, after he had heard it, asked Zeno to read the first hypothesis of the first argument again; and when he had read it, Socrates said, [e] “Zeno, what do you mean by this: if things1 are many, they must then be both like and unlike, but that is impossible, because unlike things can’t be like or like things unlike? That’s what you say, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” said Zeno.

  “If it’s impossible for unlike things to be like and like things unlike, isn’t it then also impossible for them to be many? Because, if they were many, they would have incompatible properties. Is this the point of your arguments – simply to maintain, in opposition to everything that is commonly said, that things are not many? And do you suppose that each of your arguments is proof for this position, so that you think you give as many proofs that things are not many as your book has arguments? Is [128] that what you’re saying – or do I misunderstand?”

  “No,” Zeno replied. “On the contrary, you grasp the general point of the book splendidly.”

  “Parmenides,” Socrates said, “I understand that Zeno wants to be on intimate terms with you not only in friendship but also in his book. He has, in a way, written the same thing as you, but by changing it round he tries to fool us into thinking he is saying something different. You say in [b] your poem that the all is one, and you give splendid and excellent proofs for that; he, for his part, says that it is not many and gives a vast array of very grand proofs of his own. So, with one of you saying ‘one,’ and the other ‘not many,’ and with each of you speaking in a way that suggests that you’ve said nothing the same – although you mean practically the same thing – what you’ve said you appear to have said over the heads of the rest of us.”

  “Yes, Socrates,” said Zeno. “Still, you haven’t completely discerned the truth about my book, even though you chase down its arguments and [c] follow their spoor as keenly as a young Spartan hound. First of all, you have missed this point: the book doesn’t at all preen itself on having been written with the intent you described, while disguising it from people, as if that were some great accomplishment. You have mentioned something that happened accidentally. The truth is that the book comes to the defense of Parmenides’ argument against those who try to make fun of it by [d] claiming that, if it2 is one, many absurdities and self-contradictions result from that argument. Accordingly, my book speaks against those who assert the many and pays them back in kind with something for good measure, since it aims to make clear that their hypothesis, if it is many,3 would, if someone examined the matter thoroughly, suffer consequences even more absurd than those suffered by the hypothesis of its being one. In that competitive spirit, then, I wrote the book when I was a young man. Someone made an unauthorized copy, so I didn’t even have a chance to decide [e] for myself whether or not it should see the light. So in this respect you missed the point, Socrates: you think it was written not out of a young man’s competitiveness, but out of a mature man’s vainglory. Still, as I said, your portrayal was not bad.”

  “I take your point,” Socrates said, “and I believe it was as you say. But [129] tell me this: don’t you acknowledge that there is a form, itself by itself,4 of likeness, and another form, opposite to this, which is what unlike is? Don’t you and I and the other things we call ‘many’ get a share of those two entities? And don’t things that get a share of likeness come to be like in that way and to the extent that they get a share, whereas things that get a share of unlikeness come to be unlike, and things that get a share of both come to be both? And even if all things get a share of both, though they are opposites, and by partaking of them are both like and unlike themselves, what’s astonishin
g about that?

  “If someone showed that the likes themselves come to be unlike or the [b] unlikes like – that, I think, would be a marvel; but if he shows that things that partake of both of these have both properties, there seems to me nothing strange about that, Zeno – not even if someone shows that all things are one by partaking of oneness,5 and that these same things are many by partaking also of multitude. But if he should demonstrate this thing itself, what one is, to be many, or, conversely, the many to be one – at this I’ll be astonished.

  “And it’s the same with all the others: if he could show that the kinds [c] and forms6 themselves have in themselves these opposite properties, that would call for astonishment. But if someone should demonstrate that I am one thing and many, what’s astonishing about that? He will say, when he wants to show that I’m many, that my right side is different from my left, and my front from my back, and likewise with my upper and lower parts – since I take it I do partake of multitude. But when he wants to show that I’m one, he will say I’m one person among the seven of us, [d] because I also partake of oneness. Thus he shows that both are true.

  “So if – in the case of stones and sticks and such things – someone tries to show that the same thing is many and one, we’ll say that he is demonstrating something to be many and one, not the one to be many or the many one – and we’ll say that he is saying nothing astonishing, but just what all of us would agree to. But if someone first distinguishes as separate the forms, themselves by themselves, of the things I was talking about a moment ago – for example, likeness and unlikeness, multitude and oneness, rest and motion, and everything of that sort – and then shows [e] that in themselves they can mix together and separate, I for my part,” he said, “would be utterly amazed, Zeno. I think these issues have been handled with great vigor in your book; but I would, as I say, be much more impressed if someone were able to display this same difficulty, which you and Parmenides went through in the case of visible things, also [130] similarly entwined in multifarious ways in the forms themselves – in things that are grasped by reasoning.”

  Pythodorus said that, while Socrates was saying all this, he himself kept from moment to moment expecting Parmenides and Zeno to get annoyed; but they both paid close attention to Socrates and often glanced at each other and smiled, as though they admired him. In fact, what Parmenides said when Socrates had finished confirmed this impression. “Socrates,” he [b] said, “you are much to be admired for your keenness for argument! Tell me. Have you yourself distinguished as separate, in the way you mention, certain forms themselves, and also as separate the things that partake of them? And do you think that likeness itself is something, separate from the likeness we have? And one and many and all the things you heard Zeno read about a while ago?”

  “I do indeed,” Socrates answered.

  “And what about these?” asked Parmenides. “Is there a form, itself by itself, of just, and beautiful, and good, and everything of that sort?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  [c] “What about a form of human being, separate from us and all those like us? Is there a form itself of human being, or fire, or water?”

  Socrates said, “Parmenides, I’ve often found myself in doubt whether I should talk about those in the same way as the others or differently.”

  “And what about these, Socrates? Things that might seem absurd, like hair and mud and dirt, or anything else totally undignified and worthless? Are [d] you doubtful whether or not you should say that a form is separate for each of these, too, which in turn is other than anything we touch with our hands?”

  “Not at all,” Socrates answered. “On the contrary, these things are in fact just what we see. Surely it’s too outlandish to think there is a form for them. Not that the thought that the same thing might hold in all cases hasn’t troubled me from time to time. Then, when I get bogged down in that, I hurry away, afraid that I may fall into some pit of nonsense and come to harm; but when I arrive back in the vicinity of the things we agreed a moment ago have forms, I linger there and occupy myself with them.”

  [e] “That’s because you are still young, Socrates,” said Parmenides, “and philosophy has not yet gripped you as, in my opinion, it will in the future, once you begin to consider none of the cases beneath your notice. Now, though, you still care about what people think, because of your youth.

  “But tell me this: is it your view that, as you say, there are certain forms from which these other things, by getting a share of them, derive their [131] names – as, for instance, they come to be like by getting a share of likeness, large by getting a share of largeness, and just and beautiful by getting a share of justice and beauty?”

  “It certainly is,” Socrates replied.

  “So does each thing that gets a share get as its share the form as a whole or a part of it? Or could there be some other means of getting a share apart from these two?”

  “How could there be?” he said.

  “Do you think, then, that the form as a whole – one thing – is in each of the many? Or what do you think?”

  “What’s to prevent its being one,7 Parmenides?” said Socrates.

  “So, being one and the same, it will be at the same time, as a whole, in [b] things that are many and separate; and thus it would be separate from itself.”

  “No it wouldn’t,” Socrates said. “Not if it’s like one and the same day. That is in many places at the same time and is none the less not separate from itself. If it’s like that, each of the forms might be, at the same time, one and the same in all.”

  “Socrates,” he said, “how neatly you make one and the same thing be in many places at the same time! It’s as if you were to cover many people with a sail, and then say that one thing as a whole is over many. Or isn’t that the sort of thing you mean to say?”

  “Perhaps,” he replied. [c]

  “In that case would the sail be, as a whole, over each person, or would a part of it be over one person and another part over another?”

  “A part.”

  “So the forms themselves are divisible, Socrates,” he said, “and things that partake of them would partake of a part; no longer would a whole form, but only a part of it, be in each thing.”

  “It does appear that way.”

  “Then are you willing to say, Socrates, that our one form is really divided? Will it still be one?”

  “Not at all,” he replied.

  “No,” said Parmenides. “For suppose you are going to divide largeness itself. If each of the many large things is to be large by a part of largeness [d] smaller than largeness itself, won’t that appear unreasonable?”

  “It certainly will,” he replied.

  “What about this? Will each thing that has received a small part of the equal have something by which to be equal to anything, when its portion is less than the equal itself?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Well, suppose one of us is going to have a part of the small. The small will be larger than that part of it, since the part is a part of it: so the small itself will be larger! And that to which the part subtracted is added will [e] be smaller, not larger, than it was before.”

  “That surely couldn’t happen,” he said.

  “Socrates, in what way, then, will the other things get a share of your forms, if they can do so neither by getting parts nor by getting wholes?”

  “By Zeus!” Socrates exclaimed. “It strikes me that’s not at all easy to determine!”

  “And what do you think about the following?”

  “What’s that?”

  [132] “I suppose you think each form is one on the following ground: whenever some number of things seem to you to be large, perhaps there seems to be some one character, the same as you look at them all, and from that you conclude that the large is one.”

  “That’s true,” he said.

  “What about the large itself and the other large things? If you look at them all in the same way with the m
ind’s eye, again won’t some one thing appear large, by which all these appear large?”8

  “It seems so.”

  “So another form of largeness will make its appearance, which has emerged alongside largeness itself and the things that partake of it, and [b] in turn another over all these, by which all of them will be large. Each of your forms will no longer be one, but unlimited in multitude.”

  “But, Parmenides, maybe each of these forms is a thought,”9 Socrates said, “and properly occurs only in minds. In this way each of them might be one and no longer face the difficulties mentioned just now.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “Is each of the thoughts one, but a thought of nothing?”

  “No, that’s impossible,” he said.

  “Of something, rather?”

  “Yes.”