Plato 1: Participation In Duality

[koganbot]

I'm auditing a class in introductory philosophy at Metro State. So I might toss some of my notes in here, from time-to-time.

"Well, then, if one is added to one or if one is divided, you would avoid saying that the addition or the division is the cause of two? You would exclaim loudly that you know no other way by which anything can come into existence than by participating in the proper essence of each thing in which it participates, and therefore you accept no other cause of the existence of two than participation in duality, and things which are to be two must participate in duality, and whatever is to be one must participate in unity..."
--Socrates, in Plato's Phaedo (translated by Henry North Fowler)

Supposing I'd opened to this passage, not knowing it was by Plato, thinking it was some guy in the modern world, and not having read what comes before or follows it, I'd have thought "This is vacuous and this fellow's an idiot" and shut the book. So, for this reason, the passage is crucial to me. And in context it must be important to Plato too (and Socrates as well, if Socrates really said something like it) since it isn't simply an esoteric tangent. Socrates is just minutes away from being put to death, he's surrounded by his devoted friends, telling them not to grieve, giving his reasons for believing in the immortality of the soul and that the ideas are the sole cause of things.

The questions I'd ask about the apparently vacuous notion that the number two owes its existence to its "participation in duality" are:

(1) What's at stake in the notion? What's its role in a larger argument Plato is making, and if he'd left out the notion, what would the argument be missing?

(2) Why does the overall argument matter? What in his world does Plato think he's taking care of by making the argument? What problem does he think it is meeting, or what opportunity does he think it creates?

I'm following Thomas Kuhn's admonition in The Essential Tension:

When reading the works of an important thinker look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them. When you find an answer..., when those passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages, ones you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning.

I'll put some of my own thoughts in the comments; you can put yours there, too.

Comments

Because, cause, become

[koganbot]

Now, at first glance I'd think that Plato's puzzlement here is different from his puzzlement in relation to beauty, since one being added to one doesn't seem to run parallel to a thing's being beautiful owing to its color or shape. The color can fade, after all, and the shape twist or collapse, so Plato would want the concept "beauty" nonetheless to live on, free and separate from color and shape and this or that beautiful object. Whereas the one that adds itself to another one or that divides itself into two parts seems as strong and stalwart as the two that results from these operations, its nature unchanged by the calculations. Now, Plato might find it a problem that in one instance two seems to be a composite (of one and one) and in the other a derivative (one dividing itself into two parts), hence not existing on its own. But if this is what's bothering Plato - and it might be - I wonder what Plato makes of one plus one equaling two, or of two parts equaling one whole. It doesn't seem to me that these operations cause two to disappear, nor is two truly composite or derivative, even if it can be expressed as one plus one in substitution of the word "two." Two has its nature as part of a numeric system, and for Plato this might indeed be problematic, that two is contingent upon the system that contains it (but if he finds this a problem, it's not one he alludes to in this dialogue). And, in any event, the system itself seems indestructible, at least in comparison to beauty, is not part of the variation and change that afflicts beauty and that I went into this reading thinking was his big problem with the world as we experience it. Participating in the numeric system would seem to be support enough for "two," without its needing to participate in "duality" as well.

But part of what he's working at, by analogy, is his rejection of the idea that he can explain how the body grows simply by saying that you give it food and drink. So adding two to eight is analogous to adding food and drink to the body, and neither is adequate to explain how you get ten or how a man grows into his form - just as bringing one in proximity of another one is inadequate for explaining how you get two.

The key words in his passage about one and two are "because" and "cause" and "become," as in "I thought ten were more than eight because the two had been added to the eight" and "I cannot yet believe that if one is divided, the division causes it to become two." And what I'm thinking here - and I think I'm separating out the questions/notions more than he does - is that the question he's asking when he's wrestling with the issue of causation isn't along the lines of "What caused Mary to hit John?" or "What caused the boulder to roll down the hill?" but more like "What causes two and beauty to exist as they do?" And this question might be in closer relation to "Why are there things instead of nothing?" than to "What were the events or operations that led up to this?" or "What are the constituent parts of which these are composed?" But, as I said, I'm not sure how much Plato separates these out as different questions. In any event, if I were to say, "When we point out that someone is one head taller than someone else, we're not saying what caused the difference in height, we're merely coming up with a way to measure the distance, and when we add two to eight we're not saying what causes ten, or how ten came into being, we're merely using a system that allows us to measure what we got." But for Plato that wouldn't end his questioning, as it would end mine, since it doesn't even address the question "How is it that one, two, and ten exist as they do?" or "How is it that two is what it is and does what it does?"