Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T03:24:11.582Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plato and the ἈΡΧΗ ΚΑΚѠΝ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

M. Meldrum
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Cook Wilson remarks that one of the chief doctrines of the Timaeus ‘relates to the existence of evil … all cosmogonies which attribute the world to some divine activity find a difficulty here. Some assume another spirit, an evil one, though partly subordinate to the good one; others, to avoid making an evil spiritual principle, assume an unintelligent matter, or in general some form of Necessity beside the Good Spirit. We should suppose that Plato, if not monist, would incline to the latter and should have thought he clearly adopted it in the Timaeus.’ In Laws X, ‘soul’ is the cause of evil as of good. So Plato says one thing at one time, another at another. But his interpreters do not like to admit this. Professor Cornford found the spiritual view of evil lurking in the Timaeus too. Mr. Vlastos and lately the Rév. Père Festugière, though they differ about the meaning of Laws X, agree that for Plato the κακοποιόν is always matter. I think that we should not try too hard to smooth over the discrepancies in what Plato says about evil. They call attention to something obscure, perhaps incoherent, in his metaphysical thinking.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 70 , November 1950 , pp. 65 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1950

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Statement and Inference II, 867 Google Scholar.

2 CQ, XXXIII, 71 f.

3 Rev. de philologie, XXI.

4 Plato's, Cosmology, 209–10Google Scholar.

5 We must distinguish the matter which is equivalent to ὔλη from the Workman's materials, of which χώρα is one, and from the material world, the product.

6 That is, the physical object is a fiction; the fact that causal properties are manifested in a certain region of space is an ultimate fact. The objection is that if a region has causal properties, it is a substance and not a region. (Perhaps this is the real cause of Taylor's reluctance to call χώρα matter. A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, 347.) On the other hand, the contents of the receptacle, the (50c), migh t suggest sensibilia. Is it possible that Plato's Heracliteanism is an anticipation of the Event Theory of Continuance (see e.g., Theaetetus 157bc), and that he regards the material thing as a continuous stream of sensuously qualified particulars which come into being apart from any observer? On this view πάντα ῥεῑ has a plain meaning, and the objectionable substratum of change is even more thoroughly eradicated than by the generally accepted Aristotelian interpretation.

7 Cf. Tim. 27d f.

8 Both γένεσις and κίνησις have a wider and a narrower meaning. In the Timaeus γένεσις includes κίνησις = locomotion. In Laws X κίνησις includes γένεσις = coming-to-be. (See also Parm. 155e–156b and Cornford, , Plato and Parmenides, 197 Google Scholar.)

9 Mr. Vlastos argues that we should be satisfied to accept Aristotle's statement that Plato thought time γενητός (251b 17), on the ground that he thought of it in terms of circular movement, which is a feature of cosmos, not chaos. (CQ XXXIII, 73–77. Cf. Cornford, op. cit., p. 103.) Chaos is not a world already in existence before God intervenes. The materials of creation are not the sort of entities that exist in time; Plato is hard put to it to describe the odd kind of being Space has, timeless like the οὐσία of the Forms, but far less ‘real’ (Tim. 52a–c), while there can be no κίνησις in the absence of all order. But we can deny that chaos existed before creation, without asserting like Cornford that there never was a moment of creation (p. 37). Some philosophers find a meaning in the idea of continuous creation, but the Design argument need not be so understood. The First-Cause argument requires a beginning. Plato has not given us a satisfactory theory of time, but he clearly implies in the Timaeus that it is not infinite. We do best to take him at his word.

10 ‘Necessity’ is a name for τὸ σωματοειδές, more precisely for the causal powers of matter, for the (46e). Professor Dodds writes, ‘In the Timaeus, however, besides these physical συναίτια which are popularly but falsely described as causes, we meet also with a real cause which is non-rational—the πλανωμένη αἰτία, or Errant Cause, alias “Necessity,” which shares with Mind the responsibility for the constitution of the Universe.’ ( JHS LXV, 20 Google Scholar). I think the avvama of 46cd are causes, though never the sole sufficient causes of any event in the material world—Plato remarks because he does not want us to forget the teleological action of νοῦς—and I think that ἀνάγκη does not stand for anything distinct from these συνάιτια. When they are described in 46c as ‘pushed by other things and pushing a third lot of things ἐξ ἀνάγκης’, the phrase refers to that mysterious bond for which Hume professed he had looked in vain; it is sometimes called ‘enforcement.’ The words (46e) forbid us to interpret Necessity in terms of Regularity of Sequence or natural law. Any order in the world is the work of νοῦς. ‘Necessity in Plato was the very antithesis of natural law’ ( Cornford, , Plato's Cosmology, 171 Google Scholar). What we mean by natural law was expressed by Plato in terms of order.

11 κακοποιόν but not κακόν. See La, Robin Théorie Platonicienne des Idées et des Nombres, 573–80Google Scholar.

12 ἀνωμαλότης is the condition of κίνησις, not the ἀρχή. (57c, with 58c and 57a. Cf. Vlastos, , CQ. XXXIII, 80 Google Scholar.)

13 ‘Since no bodily changes can occur without the self-motion of soul, the other factor present in this chaos must be irrational motions of the World-Soul, considered in abstraction from the ordered revolutions of Reason’ (op. cit. 205).

14 This motion is surely inconceivable, but see Cornford op. cit., 82, n. 1.

15 See 36c and 37a–c and Cornford's Tables of Celestial Motions, op. cit., 136.

16 (1071 b 37). The reason suggested for Plato's silence is not satisfactory. If ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ have any temporal meaning, the World-Soul is older than its body. (34bc.)

17 τὸ λογιστικόν here = αὐτὸ τὸ νοητόν. (See Cornford, op. cit. 95 n. 3.)

18 i.e., according to the science of Plato's time. (Tim. 39c, 40 b and Laws 822a.)

19 ‘Six irrational motions’ is misleading, for they are irrational only in the odd sense that they are not axial rotation— (34a)- Again in Laws 897c κυκλοφορία is th e physical εἰκών of νοῦ κίνησις. But the other six motions need not want τάξις. (In Tim. 43ab they have none because νοῦ is not operative in infancy.) The Laws suggests that the impulse to aesthetic activity is the pleasure we get from the perception of τάξις, i.e., pattern, in all kinds of κίνησις (see Laws 653d. Cf. Ar. Problemata 920 b 33.)

20 op. cit., 78.

21 Platon, 228.

22 M. Robin may connect the Different with change and even disorder on the more general ground that he equates the Different with ‘l'Illimité’ (p. 156.) He argues that Forms, as well as particulars, are mixtures of πέρας and ἄπειρον. ‘Toute Idée est, comme le disait Aristote, un mixte déterminé d'Un et d'Infini: l'infinité de l'Autre limitée par l'unité du Même’ (p. 152.) Is the Different to be identified with the Indeterminate Dyad? I venture no opinion on so difficult a question. But the Different cannot be a very subversive element if it is present in every Form, when Forms are notoriously changeless.

23 op. cit., 78.

24 M. Robin assumes that the rebellion of the World-Soul against the Demiurge in the Politicus has a parallel in the Timaeus. It is true that the Same is given supremacy over the Different in Tim. 36c, where the κράτος has an astronomical significance, but there is not the smallest hint that this supremacy is ever threatened in the World-Soul. In the infant human soul it is, but not really by the rebellion of the Different. … … (43cd. Cf. 44a) Matter is to blame. Even in the Politicus the material view of evil is fundamental. (See Vlastos op. cit., 80.) The World-Soul grows forgetful and careless— (273b).

According to M. Robin the responsibility for evil falls on the World-Soul but in his view the World-Soul is not God (Platon, 229).

25 Cf. p. 72 infra.

26 Professor Dodds thinks primarily of the contrast between Reason and the Passions. When he turns ‘from Plato's view of man to his view of Nature,’ he suggests that Plato ‘has projected into his conception of Nature that stubborn irrationality which he was more and more compelled to admit in man’ (op. cit., 21). Plato may have grown more despondent over human nature, but recognition of the surd-element in the world is not in itself a proof of pessimism. If you choose to describe the world in the Pythagorean πέρας ἄπειρον language, you cannot have one term without the other.

27 It is surely misleading to suggest that the notion of scientific probability is applicable to a metaphysical theory. Cf. Vlastos, op. cit., pp. 71–3.

28 See Cornford, , Plato's Cosmology, 34 Google Scholar, n. 1. He assumes that in 30b τῇ ἀληθείᾳ stamps the Ȝῷον language as literal truth, whereas the rest of the sentence is ‘myth.’

29 Hume, , Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 224 Google Scholar.

30 Unless those who regard the Demiurge as a symbol for the Form of the Good or who identify Forms with Minds (see p. 72, n. 49). In spite of 50d, I assume that νοῦς δημιουργός is not a Form.

31 op. cit., 211.

32 Cornford has to add—‘Of course it is not made; it is an eternal animal.’ With some malice Hume had remarked that, if you say the world is an animal, you more or less have to say it arose from generation. ‘Plato, too, so far as he is intelligible, seems to have adopted some such idea in his Timaeus.’

33 A History of Western Philosophy, 226–7.

34 Consider the reasoning of Laws 895c or Phaedrus 245c We easily imagine that the sight of an animal moving itself suggests th e principle that ψυχή is the ἀρχὴ κινήσεως, and that Plato, having reached the general principle, should then on the strength of it feel justified in calling the world an animal, Yet as Laws 898e.f. shows, he realised that it is not necessary that the soul which is the ἀρχή should be related to the body moved as our soul is to our body.

35 411 b 7.

36 Philebus 30 a–c does suggest that the (σωμασκία and ἰατρική we apply to our own bodies will illustrate the activity of the cosmic νοῡς, but the argument is most obscure.

37 op. cit., 81. Mr. Vlastos asks, ‘How much could Plato mean when he says that the soul is the cause of all becoming and perishing? At its face-value this asserts that the soul is itself the cause of the instability of becoming; that apart from soul reality would be untroubled by transience. But this is grotesquely unPlatonic. When Plato does ask himself, “Is soul more akin to being or becoming?” he can only answer, “It is in every way more like being.” (Phaidon 79e).’ Vlastos has surely forgotten Sophist 248e f. where change and life and soul are given a place in ‘that which is perfectly real.’

38 The Design argument is formally impeccable, if it does not insist on omniscience and omnipotence. The First-Cause argument is based on the false assumption that every series must have a first term.

39 Assuming that the existence of a Devil is definitely denied in Pol. 270a, and that the words indicate a Good and a Bad Soul, this denial is irrelevant to our interpretation of the Laws, as the general attitude to evil is different in the two works. The Politicus takes the material view, the Laws the spiritual. (The R. P. Festugière traces above all in the Politicus ‘une certaine influence du dualisme iranien,’ with definite limits. Rev. de philologie, XXI 43–4Google Scholar.)

40 Or by human souls. Perhaps this possibility should be considered.

41 Professor Dodds will not take the Devil seriously on the ground that ‘the inferior soul has no more than a potentiality of evil, which it realises, as we are told further on (897b), only when “it associates with mindlessness”’ ( JHS LXV, 21 Google Scholar ‘Plato and the Irrational’). But in 897b3 ψυχή is not yet differentiated into souls good and bad. (See note 43.) We might as well say that the Good Soul is only potentially good.

42 See Laws 898d–899b. The question of number also is left unsettled in the summing-up. (899b5). It was not the number so much as the quality of souls that interested Plato.

43 In 897a ‘soul’ includes plenty of evil passions, but at once in b7, a division is made into souls of opposite quality. ;

44 See p. 66, supra.

45 The Laws is not altogether silent about (966e f.) I t looks like an element in the Good Soul (898c). In 897b () the meaning of νοῦς is fixed as ‘reasonableness’ by contrast with ἄνοια, and ψυχή is not necessarily importing an ally from outside.

46 Theaetetus 176 b (Rep. 379c wa s more explicit).

47 Plato's Cosmology, 39.

48 Laws 896a.

49 M. Robin says that Forms are minds. ‘Quel est en effet dans la théologie de Platon le rôle du Démiurge? C'est de conférer la réalité à un vivant qui soit l'image d'un autre vivant. Il isole donc mythiquement le pouvoir causal des Idées, l'efficacité génératrice qui appartient aux réalités du monde intelligible à la fois formelles et vivantes’ (Platon, 248). On the next page, ‘le Démiurge symboliserait done l'Intellect contemplant l'Intelligible et en organisant une copie….’ (249.) For a clue we turn to M. Robin's interpretation of Sophist 248c ‘Comment l'Etre “qui est totalement être,” qui est à la fois l'être et le tout, pourrait-il ne pas posséder l'intellect?… En les rapprochant de ce morceau du Sophiste, on est incliné a considerer en effet le monde idéal comtne un intellect dans laquelle chaque pensée est un être ou chaque être une pensée et qui possède vie et activité.’ (p. 154.) ‘Enfin, si l'Etre “totalement” ou “absolument existant,” dont il est question dans le Sophiste (248e sqq.) est la même chose que le Bien et si le Bien est la même chose que Dieu, ou réciproquement, on ne s'étonnera plus alors que Platon ait justement attribué à cette plénitude de l'Etre la vie, l'âme et l'intellect, c'est à dire la plus haute personnalité’. (251.)

50 See Cornford, , Plato and Parmenides, 79 Google Scholar n. 1. Aristotle's criticism is a fair inference from the Phaedo, but I think that Plato saw he had claimed too much and withdrew. (Cf. Robin, , La Théorie Platonicienne des Idées et des Nombres, 88–92, 110–11, 106-14Google Scholar.)

51 Brochard maintained that νοῦς δημιουργός. Plato's God, is a ‘mélange d'Idées,’ subordinate to a superior principle. (Études de Philosophic Ancienne, 95–8.)

52 Diès sums up the ambiguous position. ‘Ainsi, pour la pensée platonicienne, on peut et l'on doit dire que l'Intellect est Dieu, mais que l'Etre est plus divin que l'Intellect, parce que l'Etre ou le divin est la source à laquelle Dieu luimême participe. La pensée philosophique est restée, depuis Xénophane, profondément hostile à tout anthropomorphisme. Elle ne peut créer l'intelligence et le monde sans faire appel à quelque chose de vivant qui tend, quoi qu'elle fasse, vers la personnalité humaine et vers des modes humains de penser et d'agir. Mais elle se protège contre ce danger en accentuant toujours davantage l'immuable et impassible impersonnalité der l'Etre,et, pour elle, des vocables masculins comme ὁ νοῦς, ὁ θεός, ne sont que secondaires et derives par rapport aux vocables neutres, τὸ ὄν, τὸ θεῑον. (Autour de Platon, 564.)

53 Festugière, , Rev. de philologie XXI, 41 Google Scholar.

54 op. cit., 20.

55 See note 5.

56 Festugière calls χώρα ‘une possibilité de mutation’ (p. 34), but the World-Soul is the ἀρχή (p. 39).

57 Professor Hackforth takes this to mean that the soul is a γένεσις, not a thing created in time, but one whose being depends on something more ultimate. (CQ XXX, 5) This doctrine will not suit with Laws X. There ψυχὴ ἀρχὴ κινήσεως is itself the cause of becoming and perishing of all things. It is not made dependent on νοῦς. Hackforth tries to explain away Plato's silence on this point by arguing that, in the Laws, ‘his object is to lay down the necessary minimum of philosophical doctrine required for a sound basis of religion and morality.’

58 Proclus, In Tim. I p. 402(Diehl). See Hackforth, op. cit., 8, n. 1.

59 The Timaeus is against the hypothesis that νοῦς and ψυχή form one transcendent mind. But ψυχή need not be immanent, as Plato admits in Laws 898e f., so the single transcendent mind is a possible development of Plato's thought.

60 Continuation des Pensées diverses. (CVI p. 508 Google Scholar).