Philebus

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This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

PHILEBUS

by

Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The Philebus appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which the
style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become
subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of
abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the
Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding
diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a
laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and
incompleteness in the general design. As in the speeches of Thucydides,
the multiplication of ideas seems to interfere with the power of
expression. Instead of the equally diffused grace and ease of the earlier
dialogues there occur two or three highly-wrought passages; instead of the
ever-flowing play of humour, now appearing, now concealed, but always
present, are inserted a good many bad jests, as we may venture to term
them. We may observe an attempt at artificial ornament, and far-fetched
modes of expression; also clamorous demands on the part of his companions,
that Socrates shall answer his own questions, as well as other defects of
style, which remind us of the Laws. The connection is often abrupt and
inharmonious, and far from clear. Many points require further explanation;
e.g. the reference of pleasure to the indefinite class, compared with the
assertion which almost immediately follows, that pleasure and pain
naturally have their seat in the third or mixed class: these two
statements are unreconciled. In like manner, the table of goods does not
distinguish between the two heads of measure and symmetry; and though a
hint is given that the divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of
this in the final summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences
does not appear; though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the
highest good, the sciences and arts and true opinions are enumerated in the
fourth class. We seem to have an intimation of a further discussion, in
which some topics lightly passed over were to receive a fuller
consideration. The various uses of the word 'mixed,' for the mixed life,
the mixed class of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and
pain, are a further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions
which Plato is attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a
controversy might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended to
refer. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has not told
us; or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them, the relation in
which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or the Megarian good, or to
the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes respecting pleasure. Nor are we
able to say how far Plato in the Philebus conceives the finite and infinite
(which occur both in the fragments of Philolaus and in the Pythagorean
table of opposites) in the same manner as contemporary Pythagoreans.

There is little in the characters which is worthy of remark. The Socrates
of the Philebus is devoid of any touch of Socratic irony, though here, as
in the Phaedrus, he twice attributes the flow of his ideas to a sudden
inspiration. The interlocutor Protarchus, the son of Callias, who has been
a hearer of Gorgias, is supposed to begin as a disciple of the partisans of
pleasure, but is drawn over to the opposite side by the arguments of
Socrates. The instincts of ingenuous youth are easily induced to take the
better part. Philebus, who has withdrawn from the argument, is several
times brought back again, that he may support pleasure, of which he remains
to the end the uncompromising advocate. On the other hand, the youthful
group of listeners by whom he is surrounded, 'Philebus' boys' as they are
termed, whose presence is several times intimated, are described as all of
them at last convinced by the arguments of Socrates. They bear a very
faded resemblance to the interested audiences of the Charmides, Lysis, or
Protagoras. Other signs of relation to external life in the dialogue, or
references to contemporary things and persons, with the single exception of
the allusions to the anonymous enemies of pleasure, and the teachers of the
flux, there are none.

The omission of the doctrine of recollection, derived from a previous state
of existence, is a note of progress in the philosophy of Plato. The
transcendental theory of pre-existent ideas, which is chiefly discussed by
him in the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus, has given way to a
psychological one. The omission is rendered more significant by his having
occasion to speak of memory as the basis of desire. Of the ideas he treats
in the same sceptical spirit which appears in his criticism of them in the
Parmenides. He touches on the same difficulties and he gives no answer to
them. His mode of speaking of the analytical and synthetical processes may
be compared with his discussion of the same subject in the Phaedrus; here
he dwells on the importance of dividing the genera into all the species,
while in the Phaedrus he conveys the same truth in a figure, when he speaks
of carving the whole, which is described under the image of a victim, into
parts or members, 'according to their natural articulation, without
breaking any of them.' There is also a difference, which may be noted,
between the two dialogues. For whereas in the Phaedrus, and also in the
Symposium, the dialectician is described as a sort of enthusiast or lover,
in the Philebus, as in all the later writings of Plato, the element of love
is wanting; the topic is only introduced, as in the Republic, by way of
illustration. On other subjects of which they treat in common, such as the
nature and kinds of pleasure, true and false opinion, the nature of the
good, the order and relation of the sciences, the Republic is less advanced
than the Philebus, which contains, perhaps, more metaphysical truth more
obscurely expressed than any other Platonic dialogue. Here, as Plato
expressly tells us, he is 'forging weapons of another make,' i.e. new
categories and modes of conception, though 'some of the old ones might do
again.'

But if superior in thought and dialectical power, the Philebus falls very
far short of the Republic in fancy and feeling. The development of the
reason undisturbed by the emotions seems to be the ideal at which Plato
aims in his later dialogues. There is no mystic enthusiasm or rapturous
contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to the greater
feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel between philosophy
and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some degree, to a
carelessness about artistic effect, when he was absorbed in abstract ideas,
we can hardly be wrong in assuming, amid such a variety of indications,
derived from style as well as subject, that the Philebus belongs to the
later period of his life and authorship. But in this, as in all the later
writings of Plato, there are not wanting thoughts and expressions in which
he rises to his highest level.

The plan is complicated, or rather, perhaps, the want of plan renders the
progress of the dialogue difficult to follow. A few leading ideas seem to
emerge: the relation of the one and many, the four original elements, the
kinds of pleasure, the kinds of knowledge, the scale of goods. These are
only partially connected with one another. The dialogue is not rightly
entitled 'Concerning pleasure' or 'Concerning good,' but should rather be
described as treating of the relations of pleasure and knowledge, after
they have been duly analyzed, to the good. (1) The question is asked,
whether pleasure or wisdom is the chief good, or some nature higher than
either; and if the latter, how pleasure and wisdom are related to this
higher good. (2) Before we can reply with exactness, we must know the kinds
of pleasure and the kinds of knowledge. (3) But still we may affirm
generally, that the combined life of pleasure and wisdom or knowledge has
more of the character of the good than either of them when isolated. (4)
to determine which of them partakes most of the higher nature, we must know
under which of the four unities or elements they respectively fall. These
are, first, the infinite; secondly, the finite; thirdly, the union of the
two; fourthly, the cause of the union. Pleasure is of the first, wisdom or
knowledge of the third class, while reason or mind is akin to the fourth or
highest.

(5) Pleasures are of two kinds, the mixed and unmixed. Of mixed pleasures
there are three classes--(a) those in which both the pleasures and pains
are corporeal, as in eating and hunger; (b) those in which there is a pain
of the body and pleasure of the mind, as when you are hungry and are
looking forward to a feast; (c) those in which the pleasure and pain are
both mental. Of unmixed pleasures there are four kinds: those of sight,
hearing, smell, knowledge.

(6) The sciences are likewise divided into two classes, theoretical and
productive: of the latter, one part is pure, the other impure. The pure
part consists of arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing. Arts like
carpentering, which have an exact measure, are to be regarded as higher
than music, which for the most part is mere guess-work. But there is also
a higher arithmetic, and a higher mensuration, which is exclusively
theoretical; and a dialectical science, which is higher still and the
truest and purest knowledge.

(7) We are now able to determine the composition of the perfect life.
First, we admit the pure pleasures and the pure sciences; secondly, the
impure sciences, but not the impure pleasures. We have next to discover
what element of goodness is contained in this mixture. There are three
criteria of goodness--beauty, symmetry, truth. These are clearly more akin
to reason than to pleasure, and will enable us to fix the places of both of
them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the second place
is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom; the fourth, to
knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures; and here the Muse
says 'Enough.'

'Bidding farewell to Philebus and Socrates,' we may now consider the
metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are (I) the
paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or elements;
(III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge; (V) the
conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine (VI) the relation
of the Philebus to the Republic, and to other dialogues.

I. The paradox of the one and many originated in the restless dialectic of
Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by showing the
contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence of the many
(compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by well-known examples
taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems to intimate that the time
had arrived for discarding these hackneyed illustrations; such difficulties
had long been solved by common sense ('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of
the co-existence of opposites was a sufficient answer to them. He will
leave them to Cynics and Eristics; the youth of Athens may discourse of
them to their parents. To no rational man could the circumstance that the
body is one, but has many members, be any longer a stumbling-block.

Plato's difficulty seems to begin in the region of ideas. He cannot
understand how an absolute unity, such as the Eleatic Being, can be broken
up into a number of individuals, or be in and out of them at once.
Philosophy had so deepened or intensified the nature of one or Being, by
the thoughts of successive generations, that the mind could no longer
imagine 'Being' as in a state of change or division. To say that the verb
of existence is the copula, or that unity is a mere unit, is to us easy;
but to the Greek in a particular stage of thought such an analysis involved
the same kind of difficulty as the conception of God existing both in and
out of the world would to ourselves. Nor was he assisted by the analogy of
sensible objects. The sphere of mind was dark and mysterious to him; but
instead of being illustrated by sense, the greatest light appeared to be
thrown on the nature of ideas when they were contrasted with sense.

Both here and in the Parmenides, where similar difficulties are raised,
Plato seems prepared to desert his ancient ground. He cannot tell the
relation in which abstract ideas stand to one another, and therefore he
transfers the one and many out of his transcendental world, and proceeds to
lay down practical rules for their application to different branches of
knowledge. As in the Republic he supposes the philosopher to proceed by
regular steps, until he arrives at the idea of good; as in the Sophist and
Politicus he insists that in dividing the whole into its parts we should
bisect in the middle in the hope of finding species; as in the Phaedrus
(see above) he would have 'no limb broken' of the organism of knowledge;--
so in the Philebus he urges the necessity of filling up all the
intermediate links which occur (compare Bacon's 'media axiomata') in the
passage from unity to infinity. With him the idea of science may be said
to anticipate science; at a time when the sciences were not yet divided, he
wants to impress upon us the importance of classification; neither
neglecting the many individuals, nor attempting to count them all, but
finding the genera and species under which they naturally fall. Here,
then, and in the parallel passages of the Phaedrus and of the Sophist, is
found the germ of the most fruitful notion of modern science.

Plato describes with ludicrous exaggeration the influence exerted by the
one and many on the minds of young men in their first fervour of
metaphysical enthusiasm (compare Republic). But they are none the less an
everlasting quality of reason or reasoning which never grows old in us. At
first we have but a confused conception of them, analogous to the eyes
blinking at the light in the Republic. To this Plato opposes the
revelation from Heaven of the real relations of them, which some
Prometheus, who gave the true fire from heaven, is supposed to have
imparted to us. Plato is speaking of two things--(1) the crude notion of
the one and many, which powerfully affects the ordinary mind when first
beginning to think; (2) the same notion when cleared up by the help of
dialectic.

To us the problem of the one and many has lost its chief interest and
perplexity. We readily acknowledge that a whole has many parts, that the
continuous is also the divisible, that in all objects of sense there is a
one and many, and that a like principle may be applied to analogy to purely
intellectual conceptions. If we attend to the meaning of the words, we are
compelled to admit that two contradictory statements are true. But the
antinomy is so familiar as to be scarcely observed by us. Our sense of the
contradiction, like Plato's, only begins in a higher sphere, when we speak
of necessity and free-will, of mind and body, of Three Persons and One
Substance, and the like. The world of knowledge is always dividing more
and more; every truth is at first the enemy of every other truth. Yet
without this division there can be no truth; nor any complete truth without
the reunion of the parts into a whole. And hence the coexistence of
opposites in the unity of the idea is regarded by Hegel as the supreme
principle of philosophy; and the law of contradiction, which is affirmed by
logicians to be an ultimate principle of the human mind, is displaced by
another law, which asserts the coexistence of contradictories as imperfect
and divided elements of the truth. Without entering further into the
depths of Hegelianism, we may remark that this and all similar attempts to
reconcile antinomies have their origin in the old Platonic problem of the
'One and Many.'

II. 1. The first of Plato's categories or elements is the infinite. This
is the negative of measure or limit; the unthinkable, the unknowable; of
which nothing can be affirmed; the mixture or chaos which preceded distinct
kinds in the creation of the world; the first vague impression of sense;
the more or less which refuses to be reduced to rule, having certain
affinities with evil, with pleasure, with ignorance, and which in the scale
of being is farthest removed from the beautiful and good. To a Greek of
the age of Plato, the idea of an infinite mind would have been an
absurdity. He would have insisted that 'the good is of the nature of the
finite,' and that the infinite is a mere negative, which is on the level of
sensation, and not of thought. He was aware that there was a distinction
between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, but he would have
equally denied the claim of either to true existence. Of that positive
infinity, or infinite reality, which we attribute to God, he had no
conception.

The Greek conception of the infinite would be more truly described, in our
way of speaking, as the indefinite. To us, the notion of infinity is
subsequent rather than prior to the finite, expressing not absolute vacancy
or negation, but only the removal of limit or restraint, which we suppose
to exist not before but after we have already set bounds to thought and
matter, and divided them after their kinds. From different points of view,
either the finite or infinite may be looked upon respectively both as
positive and negative (compare 'Omnis determinatio est negatio')' and the
conception of the one determines that of the other. The Greeks and the
moderns seem to be nearly at the opposite poles in their manner of
regarding them. And both are surprised when they make the discovery, as
Plato has done in the Sophist, how large an element negation forms in the
framework of their thoughts.

2, 3. The finite element which mingles with and regulates the infinite is
best expressed to us by the word 'law.' It is that which measures all
things and assigns to them their limit; which preserves them in their
natural state, and brings them within the sphere of human cognition. This
is described by the terms harmony, health, order, perfection, and the like.
All things, in as far as they are good, even pleasures, which are for the
most part indefinite, partake of this element. We should be wrong in
attributing to Plato the conception of laws of nature derived from
observation and experiment. And yet he has as intense a conviction as any
modern philosopher that nature does not proceed by chance. But observing
that the wonderful construction of number and figure, which he had within
himself, and which seemed to be prior to himself, explained a part of the
phenomena of the external world, he extended their principles to the whole,
finding in them the true type both of human life and of the order of
nature.

Two other points may be noticed respecting the third class. First, that
Plato seems to be unconscious of any interval or chasm which separates the
finite from the infinite. The one is in various ways and degrees working
in the other. Hence he has implicitly answered the difficulty with which
he started, of how the one could remain one and yet be divided among many
individuals, or 'how ideas could be in and out of themselves,' and the
like. Secondly, that in this mixed class we find the idea of beauty.
Good, when exhibited under the aspect of measure or symmetry, becomes
beauty. And if we translate his language into corresponding modern terms,
we shall not be far wrong in saying that here, as well as in the Republic,
Plato conceives beauty under the idea of proportion.

4. Last and highest in the list of principles or elements is the cause of
the union of the finite and infinite, to which Plato ascribes the order of
the world. Reasoning from man to the universe, he argues that as there is
a mind in the one, there must be a mind in the other, which he identifies
with the royal mind of Zeus. This is the first cause of which 'our
ancestors spoke,' as he says, appealing to tradition, in the Philebus as
well as in the Timaeus. The 'one and many' is also supposed to have been
revealed by tradition. For the mythical element has not altogether
disappeared.

Some characteristic differences may here be noted, which distinguish the
ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.

a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal. Nor
in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in
speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem to
himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and
impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental
distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of
various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear
almost to meet in one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without
any reconciliation or even remark, in the Republic he speaks at one time of
God or Gods, and at another time of the Good. So in the Phaedrus he seems
to pass unconsciously from the concrete to the abstract conception of the
Ideas in the same dialogue. Nor in the Philebus is he careful to show in
what relation the idea of the divine mind stands to the supreme principle
of measure.

b. Again, to us there is a strongly-marked distinction between a first
cause and a final cause. And we should commonly identify a first cause
with God, and the final cause with the world, which is His work. But
Plato, though not a Pantheist, and very far from confounding God with the
world, tends to identify the first with the final cause. The cause of the
union of the finite and infinite might be described as a higher law; the
final measure which is the highest expression of the good may also be
described as the supreme law. Both these conceptions are realized chiefly
by the help of the material world; and therefore when we pass into the
sphere of ideas can hardly be distinguished.

The four principles are required for the determination of the relative
places of pleasure and wisdom. Plato has been saying that we should
proceed by regular steps from the one to the many. Accordingly, before
assigning the precedence either to good or pleasure, he must first find out
and arrange in order the general principles of things. Mind is ascertained
to be akin to the nature of the cause, while pleasure is found in the
infinite or indefinite class. We may now proceed to divide pleasure and
knowledge after their kinds.

III. 1. Plato speaks of pleasure as indefinite, as relative, as a
generation, and in all these points of view as in a category distinct from
good. For again we must repeat, that to the Greek 'the good is of the
nature of the finite,' and, like virtue, either is, or is nearly allied to,
knowledge. The modern philosopher would remark that the indefinite is
equally real with the definite. Health and mental qualities are in the
concrete undefined; they are nevertheless real goods, and Plato rightly
regards them as falling under the finite class. Again, we are able to
define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are in the mind, but in so
far as they are manifested externally, and can therefore be reduced to rule
and measure. And if we adopt the test of definiteness, the pleasures of
the body are more capable of being defined than any other pleasures. As in
art and knowledge generally, we proceed from without inwards, beginning
with facts of sense, and passing to the more ideal conceptions of mental
pleasure, happiness, and the like.

2. Pleasure is depreciated as relative, while good is exalted as absolute.
But this distinction seems to arise from an unfair mode of regarding them;
the abstract idea of the one is compared with the concrete experience of
the other. For all pleasure and all knowledge may be viewed either
abstracted from the mind, or in relation to the mind (compare Aristot. Nic.
Ethics). The first is an idea only, which may be conceived as absolute and
unchangeable, and then the abstract idea of pleasure will be equally
unchangeable with that of knowledge. But when we come to view either as
phenomena of consciousness, the same defects are for the most part incident
to both of them. Our hold upon them is equally transient and uncertain;
the mind cannot be always in a state of intellectual tension, any more than
capable of feeling pleasure always. The knowledge which is at one time
clear and distinct, at another seems to fade away, just as the pleasure of
health after sickness, or of eating after hunger, soon passes into a
neutral state of unconsciousness and indifference. Change and alternation
are necessary for the mind as well as for the body; and in this is to be
acknowledged, not an element of evil, but rather a law of nature. The
chief difference between subjective pleasure and subjective knowledge in
respect of permanence is that the latter, when our feeble faculties are
able to grasp it, still conveys to us an idea of unchangeableness which
cannot be got rid of.

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