Plato 1: Participation In Duality
Aug. 31st, 2008 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotI'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.
"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.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-01 03:31 am (UTC)"For I think this is the safest answer I can give to myself or to others, and if I were to cleave fast to this, I think I shall never be overthrown, and I believe it is safe for me or anyone else to give this answer, that beautiful things are beautiful through beauty. Do you agree?"
"I do."
"And great things are great and greater things greater by greatness, and smaller things smaller by smallness?
"Yes."
"And you would not accept the statement, if you were told that one man was greater or smaller than another by a head, but you would insist that you say only that every greater thing is greater than another by nothing else than greatness, and that it is greater by reason of greatness, and that which is smaller is smaller by nothing else than its smallness and is smaller by reason of smallness. For you would, I think, be afraid of meeting with this retort, if you said that a man was greater or smaller than another by a head, first that the greater is greater and the smaller is smaller by the same thing, and secondly, that the greater man is greater by a head, which is small, and that it is a monstrous thing that one is great by something that is small. Would you not be afraid of this?"
And Cebes laughed and said "Yes, I should."
"Then," he continued, "you would be afraid to say that ten is more than eight by two and that this is the reason it is more. You would say it is more by number and by reason of number; and a two-cubit measure is greater than a one-cubit measure not by half but by magnitude, would you not? For you would have the same fear."
"Certainly," said he.
"Well, then, if one is added to one..."