Before CHAPTER IX. APOLOGY OF SOKRATES.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Grote, George
Plato does not provide solutions for the difficulties which he has raised. The affirmative and negative veins are in him completely distinct. His dogmas are enunciations à priori of some impressive sentiment.
The negative procedure is so conspicuous, and even so preponderant, in the Platonic dialogues, that no historian of philosophy can omit to notice it. But many of them (like Xenophon in describing Sokrates) assign to it only a subordinate place and a qualified application: while some (and Schleiermacher especially) represent all the doubts and difficulties in the negative dialogues as exercises to call forth the intellectual efforts of the reader, preparatory to full and satisfactory solutions which Plato has given in the dogmatic dialogues at the end. The first half of this hypothesis I accept: the last half I believe to be unfounded. The doubts and difficulties were certainly exercises to the mind of Plato himself, and were intended as exercises to his readers; but he has nowhere provided a key to the solution of them. Where he propounds positive dogmas, he does not bring them face to face with objections, nor verify their authority by showing that they afford satisfactory solution of the difficulties exhibited in his negative procedure. The two currents of his speculation, the affirmative and the negative, are distinct and independent of each other. Where the affirmative is especially present (as in Timæus), the negative altogether disappears. Timæus is made to proclaim the most sweeping theories, not one of which the real Sokrates would have suffered to pass without abundant cross-examination: but the Platonic Sokrates hears them with respectful silence, and commends afterwards.
The declaration so often made by Sokrates that he is a searcher, not a teacher — that he feels doubts keenly himself, and can impress them upon others, but cannot discover any good solution of them — this declaration, which is usually considered mere irony, is literally true.98 The Platonic theory of Objective Ideas separate and absolute, which the commentators often announce as if it cleared up all difficulties — not only clears up none, but introduces fresh ones belonging to itself. When Plato comes forward to affirm, his dogmas are altogether à priori: they enunciate preconceptions or hypotheses, which derive their hold upon his belief, not from any aptitude for solving the objections which he has raised, but from deep and solemn sentiment of some kind or other — religious, ethical, æsthetical, poetical, &c., the worship of numerical symmetry or exactness, &c. The dogmas are enunciations of some grand sentiment of the divine, good, just, beautiful, symmetrical, &c.,99 which Plato follows out into corollaries. But this is a process of itself; and while he is performing it, the doubts previously raised are not called up to be solved, but are forgotten or kept out of sight. It is therefore a mistake to suppose100 that Plato ties knots in one dialogue only with a view to untie them in another; and that the doubts which he propounds are already fully solved in his own mind, only that he defers the announcement of the solution until the embarrassed hearer has struggled to find it for himself.
Hypothesis — that Plato had solved all his own difficulties for himself; but that he communicated the solution only to a few select auditors in oral lectures — Untenable.
Some critics, assuming confidently that Plato must have produced a full breadth of positive philosophy to countervail his own negative fertility, yet not finding enough of it in the written dialogues look for it elsewhere. Tennemann thinks, and his opinion is partly shared by Boeckh and K. F. Hermann, that the direct, affirmative, and highest principles of Plato’s philosophy were enunciated only in his lectures: that the core, the central points, the great principles of his system (der Kern) were revealed thus orally to a few select students in plain and broad terms, while the dialogues were intentionally written so as to convey only indirect hints, illustrations, applications of these great principles, together with refutation of various errors opposed to them: that Plato did not think it safe or prudent to make any full, direct, or systematic revelation to the general public.101 I have already said that I think this opinion untenable. Among the few points which we know respecting the oral lectures, one is, that they were delivered not to a select and prepared few, but to a numerous and unprepared audience: while among the written dialogues, there are some which, far from being popular or adapted to an ordinary understanding, are highly perplexing and abstruse. The Timæus does not confine itself to indirect hints, but delivers positive dogmas about the super-sensible world: though they are of a mystical cast, as we know that the oral lectures De Bono were also.
Characteristic of the oral lectures — that they were delivered in Plato’s own name. In what other respects they departed from the dialogues, we cannot say.
Towards filling up this gap, then, the oral lectures cannot be shown to lend any assistance. The cardinal point of difference between them and the dialogues was, that they were delivered by Plato himself, in his own name; whereas he never published any written composition in his own name. But we do not know enough to say, in what particular way this difference would manifest itself. Besides the oral lectures, delivered to a numerous auditory, it is very probable that Plato held special communications upon philosophy with a few advanced pupils. Here however we are completely in the dark. Yet I see nothing, either in these supposed private communications or in the oral lectures, to controvert what was said in the last page — that Plato’s affirmative philosophy is not fitted on to his negative philosophy, but grows out of other mental impulses, distinct and apart. Plato (as Aristotle tells us102) felt it difficult to determine, whether the march of philosophy was an ascending one toward the principia (ἀρχὰς), or a descending one down from the principia. A good philosophy ought to suffice for both, conjointly and alternately: in Plato’s philosophy, there is no road explicable either upwards or downwards, between the two: no justifiable mode of participation (μέθεξις) between the two disparate worlds — intellect and sense.
The principia of Plato take an impressive hold on the imagination: but they remove few or none of the Platonic difficulties; and they only seem to do this because the Sokratic Elenchus, so effective whenever it is applied, is never seriously brought to bear against them.
Apart from any result, Plato has an interest in the process of search and debate per se. Protracted enquiry is a valuable privilege, not a tiresome obligation.
With persons who complain of prolixity in the dialogue — of threads which are taken up only to be broken off, devious turns and “passages which lead to nothing” — of much talk “about it and about it,” without any peremptory decision from an authorised judge — with such complainants Plato has no sympathy. He feels a strong interest in the process of enquiry, in the debate per se: and he presumes a like interest in his readers. He has no wish to shorten the process, nor to reach the end and dismiss the question as settled.103 On the contrary, he claims it as the privilege of philosophical research, that persons engaged in such discussions are noway tied to time; they are not like judicial pleaders, who, with a klepsydra or water-clock to measure the length of each speech, are under slavish dependence on the feelings of the Dikasts, and are therefore obliged to keep strictly to the point.104 Whoever desires accurate training of mind must submit to go through a long and tiresome circuit.105 Plato regards the process of enquiry as being in itself, both a stimulus and a discipline, in which the minds both of questioner and respondent are implicated and improved, each being indispensable to the other: he also represents it as a process, carried on under the immediate inspiration of the moment, without reflection or foreknowledge of the result.106 Lastly, Plato has an interest in the dialogue, not merely as a mental discipline, but as an artistic piece of workmanship, whereby the taste and imagination are charmed.
The dialogue was to him what the tragedy was to Sophokles, and the rhetorical discourse to Isokrates. He went on “combing and curling it” (to use the phrase of Dionysius) for as many years as Isokrates bestowed on the composition of the Panegyrical Oration. He handles the dialectic drama so as to exhibit some one among the many diverse ethical points of view, and to show what it involves as well as what it excludes in the way of consequence. We shall not find the ethical point of view always the same: there are material inconsistencies and differences in this respect between one dialogue and another.
Source notes
“The enemy against whom Plato really fought, and the warfare against whom was the incessant occupation of his life and writings, was — not Sophistry, either in the ancient or modern sense of the term, but — Commonplace. It was the acceptance of traditional opinions and current sentiments as an ultimate fact; and bandying of the abstract terms which express approbation and disapprobation, desire and aversion, admiration and disgust, as if they had a meaning thoroughly understood and universally assented to. The men of his day (like those of ours) thought that they knew what Good and Evil, Just and Unjust, Honourable and Shameful, were — because they could use the words glibly, and affirm them of this or that, in agreement with existing custom. But what the property was, which these several instances possessed in common, justifying the application of the term, nobody had considered; neither the Sophists, nor the rhetoricians, nor the statesmen, nor any of those who set themselves up, or were set up by others, as wise. Yet whoever could not answer this question was wandering in darkness — had no standard by which his judgments were regulated, and which kept them consistent with one another — no rule which he knew and could stand by for the guidance of his life. Not knowing what Justice and Virtue are, it was impossible to be just and virtuous: not knowing what Good is, we not only fail to reach it, but are certain to embrace evil instead. Such a condition, to any one capable of thought, made life not worth having.
The grand business of human intellect ought to consist in subjecting these terms to the most rigorous scrutiny, and bringing to light the ideas that lie at the bottom of them. Even if this cannot be done and real knowledge attained, it is already no small benefit to expel the false opinion of knowledge: to make men conscious of the things most needful to be known, fill them with shame and uneasiness at their own state, and rouse a pungent internal stimulus, summoning up all their energies to attack those greatest of all problems, and never rest until, as far as possible, the true solutions are reached. This is Plato’s notion of the condition of the human mind in his time, and of what philosophy could do to help it: and any one who does not think the description applicable, with slight modifications, to the majority of educated minds in our own time and in all times known to us, certainly has not brought either the teachers or the practical men of any time to the Platonic test.”
The Reviewer farther illustrates this impressive description by a valuable citation from Max Müller to the same purpose (Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series, pp. 520-527). “Such terms as Nature, Law, Freedom, Necessity, Body, Substance, Matter, Church, State, Revelation, Inspiration, Knowledge, Belief, &c., are tossed about in the war of words as if every body knew what they meant, and as if every body used them exactly in the same sense; whereas most people, and particularly those who represent public opinion, pick up these complicated terms as children, beginning with the vaguest conceptions, adding to them from time to time — perhaps correcting likewise at haphazard some of their involuntary errors — but never taking stock, never either enquiring into the history of the terms which they handle so freely, or realising the fulness of their meaning according to the strict rules of logical definition.”
98 See the conversation between Menippus and Sokrates. (Lucian, Dialog. Mortuor. xx.)
99 Dionysius of Halikarnassus remarks that the topics upon which Plato renounces the character of a searcher, and passes into that of a vehement affirmative dogmatist, are those which are above human investigation and evidence — the transcendental: καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος (Plato) τὰ δόγματα οὐκ αὐτὸς ἀποφαίνεται, εἶτα περὶ αὐτῶν διαγωνίζεται· ἀλλ’ ἐν μεσῳ τὴν ζήτησιν ποιούμενος πρὸς τοὺς διαλεγομένους, εὑρίσκων μᾶλλον τὸ δέον δόγμα, ἢ φιλονεικῶν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ φαίνεται· πλὴν ὅσα περὶ τῶν κρειττόνων, ἢ καθ’ ἡμᾶς, λέγεται (Dion. Hal. Ars Rhet. c. 10, p. 376, Reiske.)
M. Arago, in the following passage, points to a style of theorising in the physical sciences, very analogous to that of Plato, generally:—
Arago, Biographies, vol. i. p. 149, Vie de Fresnel. “De ces deux explications des phénomènes de la lumière, l’une s’appelle la théorie de l’émission; l’autre est connue sous le nom de système des ondes. On trouve déjà des traces de la première dans les écrits d’Empédocle. Chez les modernes, je pourrais citer parmi ses adhérents Képler, Newton, Laplace. Le système des ondes ne compte pas des partisans moins illustres: Aristote, Descartes, Hooke, Huygens, Euler, l’avaient adopté.…
“Au reste, si l’on s’étonnait de voir d’aussi grands génies ainsi divisés, je dirais que de leurs temps la question on litige ne pouvait être résolue; que les expériences nécessaires manquaient; qu’alors les divers systèmes sur la lumière étaient, non des déductions logiques des faits, mais, si je puis m’exprimer ainsi, de simples vérités de sentiment, qu’enfin, le don de l’infaillibilité n’est pas accordé même aux plus habiles, des qu’en sortant du domaine des observations, et se jetant dans celui des conjectures, ils abandonnent la marche sévère et assurée dont les sciences se prévalent de nos jours avec raison, et qui leur a fait faire de si incontestables progrès.”
100 Several of the Platonic critics speak as if they thought that Plato would never suggest any difficulty which he had not, beforehand and ready-made, the means of solving; and Munk treats the idea which I have stated in the text as ridiculous. “Plato (he observes) must have held preposterous doctrines on the subject of pædagogy. He undertakes to instruct others by his writings, before he has yet cleared up his own ideas on the question, he proposes, in propædeutic writings, enigmas for his scholars to solve, while he has not yet solved them himself; and all this for the praiseworthy (ironically said) purpose of correcting in their minds the false persuasion of knowledge.” (Die natürliche Ordnung der Platon Schrift. p. 515.)
That which Munk here derides, appears stated, again and again, by the Platonic Sokrates, as his real purpose. Munk is at liberty to treat it as ridiculous, but the ridicule falls upon Plato himself. The Platonic Sokrates disclaims the pædagogic function, describing himself as nothing more than a fellow searcher with the rest.
So too Munk declares (p. 79-80, and Zeller also, Philos. der Griech. vol. ii. p. 472, ed. 2nd) that Plato could not have composed the Parmenidês, including, as it does, such an assemblage of difficulties and objections against the theory of Ideas, until he possessed the means of solving all of them himself. This is a bold assertion, altogether conjectural; for there is no solution of them given in any of Plato’s writings, and the solutions to which Munk alludes as given by Zeller and Steinhart (even assuming them to be satisfactory, which I do not admit) travel much beyond the limits of Plato.
Ueberweg maintains the same opinion (Ueber die Aechtheit der Platon. Schriften, p. 103-104); that Sokrates, in the Platonic Dialogues, though he appears as a Searcher, must nevertheless be looked upon as a matured thinker, who has already gone through the investigation for himself, and solved all the difficulties, but who goes back upon the work of search over again, for the instruction of the interlocutors. “The special talent and dexterity (Virtuosität) which Sokrates displays in conducting the dialogue, can only be explained by supposing that he has already acquired for himself a firm and certain conviction on the question discussed.”
This opinion of Ueberweg appears to me quite untenable, as well as inconsistent with a previous opinion which he had given elsewhere (Platonische Welt-seele, p. 69-70) — That the Platonic Ideenlehre was altogether insufficient for explanation. The impression which the Dialogues of Search make upon me is directly the reverse. My difficulty is, to understand how the constructor of all these puzzles, if he has the answer ready drawn up in his pocket, can avoid letting it slip out. At any rate, I stand upon the literal declarations, often repeated, of Sokrates; while Munk and Ueberweg contradict them.
For the doubt and hesitation which Plato puts into the mouth of Sokrates (even in the Republic, one of his most expository compositions) see a remarkable passage, Rep. v. p. 450 E. ἀπιστοῦντα δὲ καὶ ζητοῦντα ἄμα τοὺς λόγους ποιεῖσθαι, ὃ δὴ ἐγὼ δρῶ, &c.
101 Tennemann, Gesch. der Philos. ii. p. 205-220. Hermann, Ueber Plato’s Schriftsteller. Motive, pp. 290-294.
Hermann considers this reserve and double doctrine to be unworthy of Plato, and ascribes it to Protagoras and other Sophists, on the authority of a passage in the Theætêtus (152 C), which does not at all sustain his allegation.
Hermann considers “die akroamatischen Lehren als Fortsetzung und Schlussstein der schriftlichen, die dort erst zur vollen Klarheit principieller Auffassung erhoben wurden, ohne jedoch über den nämlichen Gegenstand, soweit die Rede auf denselben kommen musste, etwas wesentlich Verschiedenes zu lehren” (p. 293).
102 Aristot. Eth. Nik. i. 4, 5. εὖ γὰρ καὶ Πλάτων ἠπόρει τοῦτο καὶ ἐζήτει πότερον ἀπὸ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἢ ἐπὶ τὰς ἀρχάς ἐστιν ἡ ὁδός.
103 As an illustration of that class of minds which take delight in the search for truth in different directions, I copy the following passage respecting Dr. Priestley, from an excellent modern scientific biography. “Dr. Priestley had seen so much of the evil of obstinate adherence to opinions which time had rendered decrepit, not venerable — and had been so richly rewarded in his capacity of natural philosopher, by his adventurous explorations of new territories in science — that he unavoidably and unconsciously over-estimated the value of what was novel, and held himself free to change his opinions to an extent not easily sympathised with by minds of a different order. Some men love to rest in truth, or at least in settled opinions, and are uneasy till they find repose. They alter their beliefs with great reluctance, and dread the charge of inconsistency, even in reference to trifling matters. Priestley, on the other hand, was a follower after truth, who delighted in the chase, and was all his life long pursuing, not resting in it.
On all subjects which interested him he held by certain cardinal doctrines, but he left the outlines of his systems to be filled up as he gained experience, and to an extent very few men have done, disavowed any attempt to reconcile his changing views with each other, or to deprecate the charge of inconsistency.… I think it must be acknowledged by all who have studied his writings, that in his scientific researches at least he carried this feeling too far, and that often when he had reached a truth in which he might and should have rested, his dread of anything like a too hasty stereotyping of a supposed discovery, induced him to welcome whatever seemed to justify him in renewing the pursuit of truth, and thus led him completely astray. Priestley indeed missed many a discovery, the clue to which was in his hands and in his alone, by not knowing where to stop.”
(Dr. Geo Wilson — Life of the Hon. H. Cavendish, among the publications of the Cavendish Society, 1851, p. 110-111.)
104 Plato, Theætêt. p. 172.
105 Plato, Republic, v. 450 B. μέτρον δέ γ’, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὁ Γλαύκων, τοιούτων λόγων ἀκούειν, ὅλος ὁ βίος νοῦν ἔχουσιν. vi. 504 D. Τὴν μακροτέραν περϊιτέον τῷ τοιούτῳ, καὶ οὐχ ἧττον μανθάνοντι πονητέον ἢ γυμναζομένῳ. Also Phædrus, 274 A, Parmenid. p. 135 D, 136 D, ἀμήχανον πραγματείαν — ἀδολεσχίας, &c. Compare Politikus, 286, in respect to the charge of prolixity against him.
In the Hermotimus of Lucian, the assailant of philosophy draws one of his strongest arguments from the number of years required to examine the doctrines of all the philosophical sects — the whole of life would be insufficient (Lucian, Hermot. c. 47-48). The passages above cited, especially the first of them, show that Sokrates and Plato would not have been discouraged by this protracted work.
106 Plato, Republic, iii. 394 D. Μαντεύομαι (says Glaukon) σκοπεῖσθαι σε, εἴτε παραδεξόμεθα τραγῳδίαν τε καὶ κωμῳδίαν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, εἴτε καὶ οὔ. Ἴσως (says Sokrates) καὶ πλείω ἔτι τούτων· οὐ γὰρ δὴ ἔγωγε πω οἶδα, ἀλλ’ ὅπῃ ἂν ὁ λόγος ὥσπερ πνεῦμα φέρῃ, ταύτῃ ἰτεον. Καὶ καλῶς γ’, ἔφη, λέγεις.
The Republic, from the second book to the close, is one of those Platonic compositions in which Sokrates is most expository.
We find a remarkable passage in Des Cartes, wherein that very self-working philosopher expresses his conviction that the longer he continued enquiring, the more his own mind would become armed for the better appreciation of truth — and in which he strongly protests against any barrier restraining the indefinite liberty of enquiry.
“Et encore qu’il y en ait peut-être d’aussi bien sensés parmi les Perses ou les Chinois que parmi nous, il me sembloit que le plus utile étoit, de me régler selon ceux avec lesquels j’aurois à vivre; et que, pour savoir quelles étoient véritablement leurs opinions, je devois plutôt prendre garde à ce qu’ils pratiquaient qu’à ce qu’ils disaient; non seulement à cause qu’en la corruption de nos mœurs, il y a peu de gens qui veuillent dire tout ce qu’ils croient — mais aussi à cause que plusieurs l’ignorent eux mêmes; car l’action de la pensée, par laquelle on croit une chose étant différente de celle par laquelle on connoit qu’on la croit, elles sont souvent l’une sans l’autre. Et entre plusieurs opinions également reçues, je ne choisissois que les plus modérées; tant à cause que ce sont toujours les plus commodes pour la pratique, et vraisemblablement les meilleures — tous excès ayans coutume d’être mauvais — comme aussi afin de me détourner moins du vrai chemin, en cas que je faillisse, que si, ayant choisi l’un des deux extrêmes, c’eût été l’autre qu’il eut fallu suivre.
“Et particulièrement, je mettois entre les excès toutes les promesses par lesquelles on retranche quelque chose de sa liberté; non que je désapprouvasse les lois, qui pour remédier à l’inconstance des esprits foibles, permettent, lorsqu’on a quelque bon dessein (ou même, pour la sureté du commerce, quelque dessein qui n’est qu’indifférent), qu’on fasse des vœux ou des contrats qui obligent à y persévérer: mais à cause que je ne voyois au monde aucune chose qui demeurât toujours en même état, et que comme pour mon particulier, je me promettois de perfectionner de plus en plus en mes jugemens, et non point de les rendre pires, j’eusse pensé commettre une grande faute contre le bon sens, si, parceque j’approuvois alors quelque chose, je me fusse obligé de la prendre pour bonne encore après, lorsqu’elle auroit peut-être cessé de l’être, ou que j’aurois cessé de l’estimer telle.” Discours de la Méthode, part iii. p. 147-148, Cousin edit.; p. 16, Simon edit.