F r n th Ph l b

R b rt F hrn pf

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 15, Number 2, April 1977,pp. 202-207 (Article)

P bl h d b J hn H p n n v r t PrDOI: 10.1353/hph.2008.0062

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Notes and Discussions

FORMS IN T H E PHILEBUS

In a recently published monograph, 1 Roger Shiner argues that there is no textual evidence in the Philebus incompatible with the thesis of revisionism, i.e., the view that Plato in his later dialogues abandoned the "choristic" ontology of the middle dialogues, which held that Forms exist in an intelligible world of their own apart f rom the world of sensible particulars. Shiner concedes that little or no positive evidence in favor of revisionism can be found in the Philebus-- for this evidence, he thinks, we must look to the other late d ia logues--but his weaker claim is nevertheless vital to the revisionist thesis, since the Philebus contains passages which seem prima facie to endorse the theory of Transcendent Forms. I shall argue that Shiner does not succeed in neutralizing this prima facie appearance of endorsement, and therefore that his defense of revisionism fails.

The crucial port ion of the text is Philebus 55-62, in which Plato rates different kinds of knowledge according to their purity. He concludes that the purest kind is the art of dialectic, which is pre-eminent in virtue of its object. That is, by dialectic we have "the cognition of that which is, that which exists in reality, ever un- c h a n g e d . . . " (58a, Hackfor th translation). Such knowledge is contrasted with the study of "the universe around us, how it came to be, how it does things and how things happen to i t . . . " (59a). This latter study is inferior because it "has nothing to do with that which always is, but only with what is coming into being, or will come, or has come" (59a). No precise or exact truth can be at tached to things "none of which are at this present, or ever were, or ever will be free from change" (59b), and we cannot "get a permanent grasp on anything that is entirely devoid of permanence" (59b). Thus,

we find fixity, purity, truth and what we have called perfect clarity, either in those things that are always unchanged, unaltered and free of all admixture, or in what is most akin to them; everything else must becalled inferior and of secondary importance. (59c)

Surely, we want to say, Plato is here reiterating the theme of the middle dialogues: the Forms, as unchangeable objects of the knowledge obtained by dialectic, are contrasted with the transi tory-- and therefore inferior-- objects of sense. Admittedly the Forms receive no explicit mention in these passages, but the text could only with difficulty be read as referring to anything else. It is to provide just such an alternative reading that Shiner sets as his main task. He concedes that these passages indeed espouse a sort of ontological dualism, but he argues that nothing in the Philebus implies that this is a dualism between sensible particulars and Transcendent Forms. Rather, the only sort of ontological dualism to which the text commits Plato is that of concepts and their instantiations in sensible particulars. Concepts, on this interpreta- tion, are real, objective entities, in no way mind-dependent, which yet have no

Knowledge and Reality in Plato's Philebus (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1974). [2021

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 203

separa te existence as "paradigms existing in a t ranscendent world of their own, unseen by morta l eye. ''2 This ontological distinction be tween concep ts and instances is sufficient, Shiner supposes, to accoun t for the parallel epis temological distinction be tween knowledge of sensible things and knowledge of the unchangeable . This latter sort of knowledge is simply knowledge of the definitions of a priori concepts and as such is timeless and eternal, being a mat te r of logical or c o n c e p t u a l - - a s opposed to empir ical - - inquiry . Shiner thus allows that the Philebus shows Plato to believe that there are timeless concep tua l truths which const i tute the highest, most perfec t kind of knowledge, but he maintains that this no more commits Plato to a belief in t ranscendent entities than it does Aristotle, who also upholds the pr imacy of conceptua l knowledge.

This invocation of Aristotle is significant, since, a l though Shiner does not specifi- cally discuss the sort of ontological status concep ts are supposed to have in the Philebus, the only possibility, so far as I can see, is to make Plato an immanen t realist a long Aristotelian lines. Tha t is, Shiner admits that "Plato undoubtedly thought a kind of knowledge required a kind of object ," and that "this is a version of . . . Realism," so that concepts must be objects having some kind of ontological status. 3 Now, if concepts are real entities in their own right, instantiated in sensible particu- lars without being identified with these instances (e.g., what I am wearing is an instance of the concep t "shirt" and not the concep t itself), and yet having no existence apar t f rom sensible particulars, there seems no al ternat ive but to conclude that concepts are immanen t in particulars.

Implici t in Shiner 's interpretat ion of the Philebus, then, is the view of Plato as an immanen t realist. 4 One consequence of an immanen t realist ontology which Shiner does not mention, but which Plato would surely have found distasteful, is that immanen t forms exist only because and insofar as part iculars exist to facilitate their instantiation. The immanen t form, or concept , of horseness has ontological status only insofar as horses themselves exist. Should horses b e c o m e extinct, the concep t as well would cease to have ontological status. T o mainta in otherwise would be effectively to admit that the concep t of horseness is not really immanen t in, because not really ontologically dependen t on, horses at all. Aristotle, at least on Ross's account , never succeeds in formulat ing a consistent view on this issue in his own version of immanen t realism. On the one hand, according to Ross, Aristotle holds that "no specific fo rm ever begins or ceases to be; it only comes to be actual ized in fresh individuals. ''s On the other hand, " fo rm is e ternal only by virtue of the never- failing succession of its embodiments . ''6 The first view reflects Aristotle 's desire to preserve the eternali ty of objects of concep tua l knowledge, and the second view

2 Ibid., p. 63. 3 Ibid., pp. 63, 61. Shiner subsequently says (p. 64) that concepts are "objects" only in a general and

aseptic sense. By his prior admission, however, the sense cannot be so general and aseptic as to exclude all ontological import whatsoever but only so as to exclude that particular interpretation in which "object" is equivalent to "Transcendent Form."

4 A few commentators, of course, have supposed that Plato always held Forms to be immanent in particulars, even in the middle dialogues; but Shiner correctly points out the implausibility of such an interpretation, arguing, for example, that the model-copy imagery of the Republic is appropriate only where Forms exist separately from particulars.

5 W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London: Methuen, 1949), p. 178. 6 Ibid., p. 175.

204 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

reflects his realization that this eternali ty is sustained only by the cont inued exis- tence of particulars, which implies that a terminat ion of this "eternali ty" is conceiv- able.

Now, I find it difficult to believe that Plato could have failed to see this conse- quence of immanen t realism, and equally difficult to believe that he could have embraced it. The ontological dependence of forms upon particulars would have been intolerable, not only for the au thor of the middle dialogues, but for the author of the Philebus as well, judging by the tenor of the passages already cited. Fortunate- ly, the a rgument against regarding the Philebus as a s ta tement of immanen t realism does not rest entirely on such general considerations; there is also specific and compel l ing textual evidence, to which I now turn.

In Philebus 61 the task is set of trying to de termine the recipe for the mixture of pleasure and knowledge which const i tutes the good life. The conclusion finally reached is that all kinds of knowledge, but only certain kinds of pleasure, belong in such a mixture. In the course of arriving at this conclusion, Plato considers the suggestion that only the highest kind of knowledge should be admit ted to the mixture. Wha t is of interest to us is not the ult imate reject ion of this suggestion, but the manner in which the suggestion is posed, revealing as it does ontological assump- tions incompat ib le with immanen t realism. Thus, in 61e the point once again is made that there are different kinds of knowledge, "one having regard to the things that come into being and perish, the other to those that do not come into being nor perish, but are always, unchanged and unaltered." In order to s e e w h e t h e r this latter type of knowledge alone suffices as the knowledge-ingredient of the mixture, Socrates asks Protarchus to

imagine a man who understands what Justice itself is, and can give an account of it conform- able to his knowledge, and who moreover has a like understanding of all else that is . . . . Will such a man be adequately possessed of knowledge, if he can give his account of the divine Circle and the Divine Sphere themselves, but knows nothing of these human spheres and circles of ours, so that, when he is building a house, the rules that he uses, no less than the circles, are of the other sort? (62a-b) 7

Pro tarchus replies, "I a m moved to mirth, Socrates, by this descript ion we are giving of ourselves confined to divine knowledge" (62b). Socrates then asks whether we are to " throw in alongside of our other ingredients the ar t of the false rule and false circle, with all the lack of fixity and purity it involves" (62b). Protarchus admits that we must "if we are going to find the way home when we want it" (62b).

What does this passage tell us abou t the ontology of the Philebus? First of all, we are given Justice itself, the Divine Circle, and the Divine Sphere as examples of the objects of "divine knowledge," i.e., knowledge of those things that nei ther come into being nor perish. In passing immediate ly and without qualification f rom the example of Justice to the examples of the Divine Circle and Sphere, Plato can reasonably be taken to imply that there is no relevant difference be tween the examples; there is, in

7 Shiner critizes Hackforth for prejudicing the issue by capitalizing "Justice" in 62a. There is in any case, as I shall argue, ample independent justification for regarding Plato as referring here to a Transcendent Form. My criticism of Hackforth is that, for the sake of consistency, he should have capitalized "Divine Circle" and "Divine Sphere" as well, since they are here treated on a par with Justice; and I have therefore emended the quotation accordingly.

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 205

other words, no suggestion here of the doctr ine of mathematical intermediaries? In each case we have a straightforward example of a Form o r - - a s Shiner prefers to say- -a concept . The question then is, Are these concepts transcendent, or are they immanent in their instances? If Plato were an immanent realist, he would have to say that we arrive at the concept of a circle by a process of abstraction from sensible circles; such is indeed the view of Aristotle. On this view, the concep t is not some- thing other than sensible circles, but ra ther is what remains of these circles when all that is extraneous to the concep t itself (and for Aristotle this would include both sensible and intelligible matter) is removed by abstraction. On such an account of the relation between the concep t and its instances, the situation we are asked by Plato to imagine, in which someone has knowledge of the concep t but is complete ly ignorant of the instances--i .e. , knows the Divine Circle but not sensible circles-- is unintelligible.

If, on the other hand, the Divine Circle is taken to be a Transcendent Form, related to sensible circles as a model is to its copies, the situation we are asked to imagine is at least intelligible, if not likely. I say "not likely" because we would expect knowledge of sensible circles to precede knowledge (and possibly to serve as a needed stimulus for recollection) of the Divine Circle itself. Plato, however, is not claiming as a serious possibility that there could be people of high intelligence who possess no mundane knowledge whatsoever; he is merely trying to show, by means of a humorous illustration, that mundane knowledge does indeed have value. In any case, however bizarre is the supposition that there could be someone who had knowledge of the Divine Circle but no knowledge of the "false" circles found in sense experience, it is not even bizarre, it is nonsensical to distinguish the Divine Circle from sensible circles as two different sorts of circle, if the former exists only as instantiated in the latter.

In general, knowledge of immanent forms cannot be had apart f rom knowledge of what they are immanent in, and that Plato could even suppose for the sake of argument that someone might exist who possesses only the highest knowledge, and no knowledge of sensible particulars, shows that he cannot be regarding these objects of the highest knowledge as being immanent in, and discovered by abstrac- tion from, sensible particulars.

The discussion of knowledge and its object in Philebus 55-62 thus seems to constitute solid evidence that Plato retained to the e n d - - f o r the Philebus is almost certainly one of the latest d ia logues--a belief in the existence of Transcendent Forms. Shiner, however, has a strategy by which he at tempts to neutralize what seems to be the obvious ontological implications of this discussion of knowledge. His line of argument, in its essentials, is this: The Republic, in which the ontological doctr ine of t ranscendent realism is given its classic expression, links this doctr ine to an epistemological doctr ine in which knowledge is only of Forms, and all else is a mat ter of opinion. In Philebus 55-62, however, the knowledge of the philosopher, though the highest kind, is nevertheless regarded as only one kind of knowledge among many. Since this view is incompatible with the earlier doctr ine of epistemo- logical exclusiveness, there is reason to suppose that Plato has revised his earlier ontological views as well.

s Even if we did suppose that the Divine Circle and Sphere were mathematical intermediaries, Shiner's ease for immanent realism would not be helped, since such intermediaries are themselves transcendent entities of a sort, though not full-fledged Forms.

206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

For a number of reasons, this argument clearly will not do. First of all, a departure from the epistemology of the Republic so as to allow, e.g., carpentry as a genuine branch of knowledge is perfectly compatible with the retention of an ontology of Transcendent Forms. Shiner evidently thinks otherwise, stating as he does that such a view of knowledge coupled with the theory of Transcendent Forms makes for "impossible bed-mates, "9 but he gives no justification for this claim. Of course, this charge of incompatibility is true--indeed, trivially true--if we accept his earlier claim l~ that the doctrine of epistemological exclusiveness is an essential element of the theory of Transcendent Forms. But the problem then concerns the aptness of this characterization of the theory, and I see nothing which compels us to tie the ontological claim of transcendent realism to this particular epistemological view.

In any case, the epistemological differences between the Republic and the Phile- bus are, for our purposes, of minimal consequence. No great concession is made in allowing sensible particulars to be objects of an inferior sort of knowledge, as opposed to being objects merely of opinion. On either distinction, the contrast between such objects and Forms is preserved. Furthermore, Philebus 59 shows that while Plato is willing to allow that we can have an inferior sort of knowledge of changeable objects (since he denies of such objects only that they are associated with "knowledge that gives perfect truth" [59b], which implies that they are in fact objects of some kind of knowledge) he also allows in the same passage that those arts which concern themselves with such changeable objects, e.g., cosmology, belong to the realm of opinion (59e). There is admittedly a difficulty in understanding how Plato can consistently hold that objects of knowledge, even of an inferior kind of knowledge, are yet confined to the realm of opinion. Clearly, opinion cannot here serve, as it did in the Republic, to characterize those objects of which there could be no knowledge whatsoever. It of course continues as before to mark off the same class of objects-- viz., those objects which are subject to change-- now doing so, however, no longer on the basis that such objects cannot be known at all, but rather on the basis that they cannot be known in the truest and most perfect manner. There are obvious reasons why Plato should want to retract the extreme position of the Republic and allow knowledge other than that of Forms; not to do so is to ignore and to leave inexplicable the distinction which, as is acknowledged in the Theatetus, we are able to draw between knowledge and belief within the scope of ordinary experi- ence. What is confusing is that Plato should continue, in Philebus 59, to characterize the whole realm of changeable objects, within which a legitimate distinction be- tween knowledge and opinion can be maintained, as itself a realm of opinion. Probably this is explained simply as a terminological vestige of the Republic. What- ever difficulty we may have in explaining Plato's use of the term "opinion" here, the fact that he continues to use language reminiscent of his earlier epistemological views, even at the risk of inconsistency, indicates that he retains a fundamental sympathy for these views and tells against Shiner's contention that Plato's outlook in the Philebus has undergone radical change either in epistemology or ontology.

Finally, the compatibility of the theory of Transcendent Forms with an extension of the application of the term "knowledge" to cover sensible objects is shown by a

9 Shiner, p. 60. 1o Ibid., p. 23.

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 207

passage in the Phaedrus. Describing the ascension of the soul to that place beyond the heavens where "true being dwells" and "all true knowledge is knowledge thereof" (247c, Hackforth translation), Plato says that while the soul

is borne round she discerns justice, its very self, and likewise temperance, and knowledge, not the knowledge that is neighbor to Becoming and varies with the various objects to which we commonly ascribe being, but the veritable knowledge of Being that veritably is. (247d -e)

Surely there can be no doubt that the Phaedrus, especially in this very passage, endorses an ontology of Transcendent Forms; and yet Plato here admits, using essentially the same distinction between true and inferior knowledge that he later uses in the Philebus, that there can be a sort of knowledge which is nevertheless not "the veritable knowledge of Being."

For these reasons, Shiner fails to reconcile Philebus 55-62 with the thesis of revisionism. Despite Shiner's arguments, then, I conclude that the Philebus provides substantial evidence that Plato never gave up the theory of Transcendent Forms.

University o f British Columbia ROBERT FAHRNKOPF

ON THE INTELLECT AND THE R A T I O N A L SOUL

Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, in the city of Dham~r, in Yemen, a Jewish scholar turned his thoughts to creating a synthesis of the philosophic tradi- ditions to which he was an heir. This thinker, .H8t.er ben Shel8m8 (also known as Mansflr ibn Suleim~n), had read al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazzali, the Ikhwan al-Safa' and other Moslem philosophers. He had also read Maimonides, Saadia, and Halevi, and had studied Jewish law and midrashic literature..HSt.er then synthesized these traditions. His theories of the intellect and the rational soul are good examples of this synthetic skill. 1

In his philosophic Responsa and in his commenta ry to the Torah entitled S i ~ j al- 'Uqhl, .HSt.er sets forth the definition of the intellect and its function as followsF

What is the human intellect and what is its function? The answer: The human intellect is an absolute perfection whose root is in the Agent Intelligence [huwa karnfil mah..d min 'a41 al-'aql al-fa '~l]. 3 Its function is the encompassing of the forms in its essence, according to its essence,

For .Hbt.er's background see my The Commentary of R. H. bt.er ben Shelbmb to the Thirteen Prin- ciples of Maimonides, Etudes sur le juda'fsme m6di6val, vol. 6 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), pp. 3-16. Hereafter cited as Commentary.

21 hope to publish .Hbt.er's philosophic Responsa, or more properly his Questions and Answers, for he wrote both the questions and the answers. The text of Siraj remains to be edited. Responsum #39 deals with the intellect and is cited in Commentary, p. 27, as is the quotation from Sire j, which is from"Shoftim"

a A very unfortunate mixture of terms has occurred here due to two factors: (1) the term 'aql can be translated as "intelligence" or as "intellect"; (2) the term 'aql, used in the alfarabian-avicennian context of emanated beings, is usually rendered "Intelligence" but, in the parallel neoplatonic context, it is usually