Phaedo 93 a 11–94 b 3

W. F. Hicken

doi:10.1017/S0009838800007849

Phaedo 93 a 11–94 b 3

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009

W. F. Hicken

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W. F. Hicken: Affiliation:
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

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In the course of a series of arguments to refute Simmias' hypothesis that soul is an attunement Socrates asks the question (93 a 11–12), which may be literally translated ‘Is it not natural for each attunement to be an attunement according as it has been attuned?’ This question Simmias admits he does not understand, and Socrates responds with another question in which he suggests that if it (i.e. the attunement) is more attuned and to a greater extent, supposing that it is possible for this to happen, it would be more of an attunement and a greater attunement, if less attuned and to a smaller extent, less of an attunement and a smaller attunement (93 a 14–b 2).if less attuned and to a smaller extent, less of an attunement and a smaller attunement (93 a 14–b 2). Neither the meaning of these questions nor their place in the argument is at all obvious, and none of the solutions offered by the English commentators seems to be without difficulty.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Classical Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 1-2 , May 1954 , pp. 16 - 22

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838800007849 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Classical Association 1954

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^{page 16 note 1} see no reason to follow Olympiodorus (In Platonis Phaedonem commentaria, CII, p. 169 (Norvin)) in supposing that the two comparative adverbs express a technical distinction, of which no kind of use seems to be made in the argument. The second comparative seems redundant and merely emphatic. A parallel has been brought to my notice in the Hippocratic Corpus, , chap. xvi. The more a man cools himself by taking a cold bath or the like, the warmer his body becomes when he dresses himself again,.

^{page 16 note 2} Such appears to have been the line taken by ancient commentators. Themistius and Philoponus believed that Socrates here maintains that an attunement does admit of degrees. Themistius in his commentary on Aristotle's de Anima writes p. 24. 25 ff. (Heinze). For Philoponus see in Aristotelis de Anima libros p. 142.22 (Hayduck): . It seems possible that Aristotle's argument in the Eudemus, quoted by Philoponus (fr. 45 (Rose) is a reformulation of the argument in the Phaedo which was believed to depend on the proposition that attunement admits of degrees, as has been suggested by Jaeger, (Aristotle (English translation, 1934), pp. 40Google Scholar ff.), but Aristotle's argument is notably free from the illogicalities which we should have to suppose that he attributed to Plato (see Jaeger, 's reconstruction, op. cit., p. 41)Google Scholar, and it can hardly be considered as safe evidence for Aristotle's interpretation of the argument in the Phaedo. Olympiodorus takes the opposite view: (loc. cit.), though later in the same passage he qualifies his assertion: .

^{page 17 note 1} Archer-Hind, , The Phaedo of Plato, pp. 78 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 17 note 2} See Denniston, , The Greek Particles es, pp. 487–8,Google Scholar especia y note 1 on p. 488, and Thompson, , Excursus II to his edition of the Meno, pp. 258 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 17 note 3} Philoponus, (op. cit., p. 142. 22 ff.) treats 93 a 11 as the beginning of a new argument, but attempts to find no ess than three separate arguments in the passage 93 a 11–94 b 3, the first of which corresponds to Archer-Hind's argument from the admission that attunement admits of degrees except that he does not try to make it depend on admissions (a). His next argument is compleat 93 c 10, and the ast runs from 93 d 1 to 94 b 3. His account, especially of the second of these arguments, seems to me interesting (see p. 21), but by dividing his first from his third argument he great y over simplifies the atter and takes no account of the material in 93 d 1–e 6 which appears to depend on the admissions made in 93 a 11–b 7, nor indeed is there anything in the text at 93 c 9–10 to correspond to his Simmias is shaken but not yet defeated.Google Scholar

^{page 18 note 1} ‘Plato had to guard against the rejoinder that although harmony, as such, admits of degrees, there may yet be particular kinds of harmony, whereof soul is one, which do not admit of degrees’ (op. cit., p. 78). Philoponus notes that if the argument is to be clearly cogent Plato should have argued not he most certain y does not. Philoponus, , op. cit., pp. 143. 31 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 18 note 2} Archer-Hind, oc. cit.

^{page 18 note 3} Ibid.

^{page 18 note 4} Burnet, Plato's Phaedo, ad loc.

^{page 18 note 5} Taylor, , Plato ⁴, pp. 196 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 19 note 1} p. 17.

^{page 19 note 2} I havefound no exception to this, although I have not examined every dia ogue. See, for example, Phaedo 100 a 7 ff.; Rep. 413 a 2 ff., 429.c4ff., 438b3ff.; Theaet. 164d 3 S.; Soph. 222 d 9 ff., 228 a 3 ff., 262 a 12 ff., 265 b 7 ff.; Politicus 306 a 11 ff.

^{page 20 note 1} Archer-Hind, , op. cit., p. 81: ‘There is no difficulty about if we understand “that particular harmony which is sou”.’ The a ternative solution to this difficult passage, to fo ow Schmidt in bracketing , is at first sight attractive. It would be particularly easy for a scribe who had just read in 93 d 2 to repeat the pattern in 93 d 4. But if is the subject of . in 93 d 3–4, it must also be understood with in d 6, and this, as Archer-Hind remarks in his note to this passage, is to anticipate the piece of reasoning which begins at 93 d 12.Google Scholar

^{page 21 note 1} So too Philoponus, who treats the passage 93 c 3–10 as an argument complete in itself. op. cit. p. 142, 26 ff. So too the fourteenth-century monk, Sophonias: In libros Aristotelis de Anitma paraphrasis, p. 25. 24 ff. (Hayduck).