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A Proof in the ΠΕΡΙ ΙΔΕΩΝ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. E. L. Owen
G. E. L. Owen
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

In his lost essay περὶ ἰδεῶν Aristotle retailed and rebutted a number of Academic arguments for the existence of Ideas. Several of these, together with Aristotle's objections to them, are preserved in Alexander's commentary on A 9 of the Metaphysics. The first object of the following discussion is to show the sense and the provenance of one, the most complex and puzzling, of these surviving arguments. For several reasons it seems to deserve more consideration than it has yet had. 1. Its length and technicality make it singularly fitted to illustrate the sort of material on which Aristotle drew in his critique. 2. Moreover, Alexander reports it by way of amplifying Aristotle's comment that, of the more precise arguments on Ideas, οἱ μὲν τῶν πρός τι ποιοῦσιν ἰδέας , ὧν οὔ φαμεν εἶναι καθ᾿ αὑτὸ γένος (Met. 990b15–17 = 1079a11–13); condensed and allusive form of this remark and its immediate neighbours in the Metaphysics can be taken to show that here Aristotle is epitomising parts of his περὶ ἰδεῶν that are independently known to us only through his commentator. We shall not understand the objection if we misidentify its target; and another purpose of this discussion is to show that the objection is not the disingenuous muddle that one recent writer labours to make it. 3. But Alexander's report of the argument is a nest of problems, and the same recent writer brands it as almost incredibly careless. To this extent, the success of our explanation will be a vindication of the commentator. But on all the heads of this discussion I am well aware that much more remains to be said.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , November 1957 , pp. 103 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1957

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References

1 It has been discussed by Robin, (who first assigned it to the περὶ ἰδεῶν), Théorie platonicienne des Idées et des Nombres, 19–21, 603–5, 607Google Scholar; Cherniss, , Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy, I, 229–33Google Scholar, esp. n. 137, and Wilpert, , Zwei aristotelische Frühschriflen, 41–4Google Scholar, each of whom knew only Robin's discussion; and Mansion, Suzanne, ‘La critique de la théorie des Idées dans le περὶ ἰδεῶν d'Aristote’, Revue Philosophique de Louvain, xlvii (1949), 181–3, esp. n. 42.Google Scholar I shall refer to these writings by the author's name.

2 The A of Bonitz and later edd. The version of the commentary in L and F excerpted in Hayduck's apparatus is later in origin (Hayduck, , Alexandri in Met. Commentario, pref. viii–ixGoogle Scholar and ix, n. 2). It modifies the text of our passage in a clumsy attempt to evade the difficulties discussed infra, pp. 104–6. (But notice that, where A uses Socrates and Plato as examples, LF at first uses Callias and Theaetetus, reverting then to those in A.) On Robin's attempt (l.c.) to assign LF equal authority with AM see Wilpert, n. 38, Cherniss, n. 137.

3 Cf. p. 107, n. 26 infra.

4 ‘We’ not of course the Platonists, who make no such error, but generally the unwary or unconverted to whom the argument is addressed. The objector envisaged at Phaedo 74b6–7, and Hippias, (Hipp. Maj. 288a and 289d)Google Scholar, see no objection to using and of sensible things.

5 in the Aristotelian sense but not, as we shall see, using Aristotelian criteria. Some will detect the influence of Speusippus in P.I, noticing that in it the vehicles of homonymy and its opposite seem to be not things but words, and that this is held to be characteristic of Speusippus by contrast with Aristotle (Hambruch, , Logische Regeln der plat. Schule, 27–9Google Scholar, followed by other scholars including Lang, , Speusippus, 25–6.Google Scholar Hambruch contrasts Aristotle, Cat. 1a1–12, with Boethus's account of Speusippus in Simplicius, Cat. 38.19). Quite apart from doubts about the tradition represented by Boethus, it is clear that Aristotle's usage is far from being as rigid as Hambruch supposes (see e.g. An. Post. 99a7, 12, Phys. H. 248b12–21: H. neglects such passages in detecting a book of Speusippus behind Topics A 15). Moreover in P. III the are things, not words. All that we can say is that P reflects a general academic usage.

6 De Part. An. 640b35–641a3, De An. 412b20–22, and on the traditional interpretation Cat. 1a1–6 (cf. Porphyry, Cat. 66.23–28, followed by later commentators, and see earlier Chrysippus fr. 143 (von Arnim). But ζῷον, the predicate cited, is ambiguous in a more ordinary sense: LS8s.v. II).

7 For a connected discussion I can refer now to Geach, P. T. in Philosophical Review, LXV (1956), 74.Google Scholar

8 See e.g. the instances cited by Vlastos, , Philosophical Review, LXIII (1954), 337–8.Google Scholar But Vlastos obscures the point by saying ‘any Form can be predicated of itself … F-ness is itself F’. The very fact that Plato could assume without question that is big (e.g. Phaedo 102e5, cf. Parmenides 150a7–b1 and 131d), whereas in English such an assumption about bigness makes no sense, should give us qualms at rendering the title of the Form conventionally in such contexts by an abstract noun (Vlastos' ‘F-ness’). V.'s formula misleads him into assimilating the two regresses in Parmenides 132–3. If the first can (but with reservations) be construed as confusing bigness with what is big, the second requires only that the Form should have the character it represents. If the first forces a choice between two possible functions of a Form, the second reduces one of these to absurdity.

9 This is unaffected by the fact that the Forms are standards. ‘That is a yard long’ has a different use when we are speaking of the standard yardstick and when we are speaking of other things (Geach, l.c.), but this does not entail that ‘yard’ has two meanings. Aristotle commonly treats the Forms as with their images (cf. de Lin. Insec. 968a9–10, ). The objection considered in Physics H 4, that need not be may well stem from the attempt to safeguard this thesis from the ‘Third Man’.

10 Instead of asking in set terms whether ‘equal’ can, without ambiguity, be predicated strictly of such things, II seems to introduce the compound predicate ‘strictly equal’ and ask whether this can, without ambiguity, be predicated of such things. This comes to the same thing (in fact the distinction is too hard-edged for the Greek), but it helped to seduce the author of LF into the absurd notion that the compound predicate could properly be used, in a derivative sense, of earthly things.

11 It may be said (I owe the objection to Mr. D. J. Furley) that the argument in 11(a) is designed to rule out 1(b) predication as well as 1(a), since even 1(b) would presumably require an identical λόγος in the various subjects. But in that case the conclusion of II would contradict V, as well as being a thesis foreign to Plato and never attacked by Aristotle; moreover the difference of λόγοι does not entail ambiguity since, as we shall see, they all have a common factor (p. 109 infra).

12 Cf. Alexander, Met. 86.11–12 Hayduck.

13 Alexander, Met. 51.11–15, 77.12–13. Cf. ps.-Alex. Met. 500.12–35, 786.15.

14 Cherniss, n. 102, citing Taylor, , Commentary on Plato's Timaeus 52a4–5.Google Scholar

15 Laws 757b; cf. Phil. 57b, which Cherniss (l.c.) misconstrues as saying that ‘the different mathematics, if ὁμώνυμον, are a single τέχνη’ when the point is that although they are ὁμώνυμα it would be wrong to infer that they are one τέχνη (57d6–8).

16 Republic 330b, Parmenides 126c.

17 Protagoras 311b, cf. n. 19 infra.

18 That Aristotle, who certainly knew that particulars were ‘called after the Ideas’ (Met. 987b8–9), did not recognise a sense of ὁμώνυμος in these contexts such that ‘the particular is ὁμώνυμον τᾤ εἴδει and not vice versa’ must be proved for Cherniss by Met. A 990b6, which reports that the Form is ὁμώνυμον with its particulars: here Cherniss is ready to find ‘Plato's sense of the word’ (n. 102).

19 Not however Parm. 133c–d, which Cherniss has misread (l.c.): it is not the ideas that are referred to as but the ‘likenesses-or-what-you-may-call-them’ in this world. Since the particulars are nevertheless said to be ὁμώνυμα to the Forms, this sentence alone, if he still takes it as seriously, explodes his thesis.

19a And a misreading of the text cited, Phil. 57b: cf. n. 15 supra.

20 I can refer now to Vlastos, op. cit. 337, n. 31; cf. Robinson, , Plato's Earlier Dialectic (2nd edn.), 2–3.Google Scholar

21 Cherniss, p. 230. To do this he omits the illustrations of the three types of predication in P.I. Yet (a) without the illustrations the analysis is merely formal and without explanatory force; (b) that the predicate cited in the first paragraph of Alexander's source was not ἴσον and was nota ‘relative’ term is implied by Alexander's remark that at any rate the proof goes on to deal with ἴσον, which is relative (83.23–4); and (c) in any case the illustration from portraits cannot be excised since it comes from the Platonic source (supra, p. 105). This in addition to theconsiderations adduced in the following pages.

22 Cherniss, n. 186.

23 Similarly those given to illustrate similar formulae at Phaedo 76d, 78d, Rep. 479a–d. The one passage in which Plato seems unequivocally to require a Form for every predicate (Rep. 596a) cannot be ingenuously cited by any critic wedded to the ‘unity of Plato's thought’ since (even if Parmenides 130 is brushed aside) taken literally it contradicts Politicus 262a–3e and incidentally leaves Aristotle's criticism of the argument valid for every negatively defined predicate (Met. 990b13: cf. Alexander and Ross ad loc.). Readers other than those στασιῶται τοῦ ὅλου are likely to find the comment of Allan, D. J. in Mind LV (1946), 270–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sound and to the point.

24 Alexander, Met. 83.24–26, 86.13–20. The relevance of this dichotomy was pointed out by D. G. Ritchie against Henry Jackson: cf. Watson, J., Aristotle's Criticisms of Plato, 32.Google Scholar

25 Sophist 255c–d, Philebus 51c, cf. Republic 438b–d, Charmides 168b–c, Theaetetus 160b. Xenocrates, fr. 12 (Heinze) = Simplicius, Cat. 63.21–4. I am not concerned here with the development and supplementation of this dichotomy in the early Academy, which hasbeen the subject of recent studies. The subsequent conflation of the Platonic ‘categories’ with the Aristotelian, e.g. in Albinus (Witt, , Albinus, 62–7Google Scholar), may derive from Aristotle himself (E.N. 1096a19–21).

26 Alexander, Met. 83.17, 22, 85.7. But the text of 82.11 should not be amended, for this comes from the and not from Alexander.

27 Pace Wilpert, 109, who cannot think that Alexander would allow himself such an interjection. But see Mansion, n. 79, Cherniss, 301–2.

28 ἐναντία, in a sense that includes any prima facie incompatibles (e.g. different numbers).

29 With Republic 479a–b cf. 331c and 538d–e and Shorey, , Republic, vol. i, 530Google Scholar, n. a.

30 ‘actions’: but Plato seems to have in mind types of action (refs. in last note; cf. Δισσοὶ Λόγοι 3.2–12). The Symposium 180e–1a makes the necessary distinction but here, as elsewhere, seems a step beyond the Republic.

31 The debate on this passage has doubtless lived too long, but the natural sense is surely that given above. The κοινωνία of the opposites with each other is a characteristic of those ‘manifestations’ in the physical world which seem to make a plurality of the Form; this is the only sort of pluralisation in question in the passage (cf. 476b, 479a–b), and any attempt to read back the κοινωνία τῶν γενῶν of the Sophist into this text simply fits the argument too loosely. Plato is talking in terms of pairs of opposites—the unity of a Form is proved by contrasting it with its opposite, and the same λόγοζ is said to hold good of the rest (476a)—but the corresponding pluralisation that is marked by the reconciling in one object of such a pair of opposites has nothing to do with the Sophist. Good and bad cannot ‘communicate’ inthe Sophist sense (Soph. 252d). Cf. rather the of Tht. 152d7 and, with due reserve, xv.

32 Yet, as many have said, for Plato at this time equality and other relations are attributes of the individual. (It is worth recalling that ἴσον could be used to mean ‘of middle size’ and in this use is not overtly relational.) Geach's conviction (op. cit., 76) that Plato must have thought of any case of equality, including the Form, as a pair of related terms cannot be justified by the bare of Phaedo 74c 1. Geach writes that the Form ‘has to consist of two equals, or there wouldn't be equality at all’; Aristotle in the discussing the same line of thought in Plato, said ‘What is equal must be equal to something, so the must be equal to a second (Alexander, Met. 83.26–8), and whatever we think of Aristotle's methods of polemic this would have been absurd if Geach were right. See infra, 110.

33 The argument of Phaedo 74b–c is probably better construed on these lines, taking the of 74b8–9 (despite the then misleading dative in 74c1) as neuter and governed by ἴσα. This at any rate seems to be the sense that the argument in P makes of its chief source (infra, 109). Otherwise it turns directly on relativity to different observers (cf. Symp. 211a4–5).

34 Republic 524e2, 525a4, 523c1 and d5, ἀεί, 479b8, cf. Phaedo 74b8 with Parm. 129b6 and Phaedo 102b–c.

35 Parmenides 130c–d. Parmenides' explanation of Socrates' choice, that he rejects Ideas of γελοῑα, is applied only to mud, hair and dirt (130C5). In any case it is a diagnosis of motive and not a characterisation of the reasons that Socrates could have offered.

36 Hermodorus apud Simpl., Phys. 247.30 ff., Diogenes Laertius III. 108, Sextus Empiricus adv. Math. X. 263.

37 = opposed to cf. An. Post. 87334–7, Met. 982a25–8 and 1078a9–13, E.N. 1148a11.

38 Or the sense may be that different cases involve specifying different measurements; but this would leave the senses of λόγος in 11(a) and 11(c) unconnected. And 11(c) may mean just that nothing is equal without being unequal too. But, besides robbing Aristotle's reply of its immediate point (infra, 110), these interpretations neglect a parallel of thought and language in the Eudemian Ethics. In the discussion of three types of friendship in E.E. VII. 2 it is said that one λόγος does not fit all the cases (1236a26), but the λόγος of friendship in the primary sense (κυρίως) is an element in the λόγοι of the rest (1236a 20–22: ‘the rest’ are here of course species and not, as in P, individuals). For whereas friendship in the strict sense is to choose and love a thing because it is good and pleasant ἁπλῶς, friendship in its derivative senses is to do this because it is good πρός τι or pleasant τινι. In other words a definition that fits primary friendship without qualification ( in P. 11(c)) needs to be completed to give the λόγοι of the derivative cases. So in P: the similarity of language is very striking.

39 Met. 990b11–17. The proofs and do so because they are logically unrestricted in scope. For the see Alexander, Met. 79.13–15.

40 Cf. Cornford, , Plato and Parmenides, 78, n. 1Google Scholar, and for a later parallel Martin, R. M., Phil. and Phen. Research. XIV, 211.Google Scholar

41 Cherniss, 279–85.