Platonic Aporiai

Der Sinn der Aporien in den Dialogen Platons: bungsstcke zur Anleitung im
philosophischen Denken by Michael Erler
Review by: Robert Wardy
The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1990), pp. 65-67
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 65
Laws X
(903b-d, 904ab).
There are two
taproots
of the
conception
of the Ultimate
Source of Motion. One is that
perfection
of movement and rest that has self-rotation
on a constant axis as its
physical representation.
Called the motion of vois at Laws
X
897cd,
it is not
bodily
in itself. The Politicus
myth says
that the cosmos cannot
partake
in it because the cosmos has a
body.
This
implies
that the ultimate
apXVr
of
movement is not embodied in the sense that
physical
embodiment is the
necessary
condition of its
existing,
but rather that it is the
prius
of what we see in embodied soul.
It is a 'mobile' rather than a 'static'
apXq7.
It is a
simplification, though
it is a
breakthrough
in
thought,
to
say
that it is
bvXr j
as Phaedrus 245c
says
it
is, stating
it
in its most
general
terms.
Can we
agree, then,
with
O.,
that Plato in his latest
phase
of
thought thought
about
the
/vXj
in terms close to Aristotle's
concept
of
entelechy
? This
step
could be
made,
and indeed we see Aristotle
taking
it in the de anima. But there are hesitations on
Plato's side. Even when
dealing
with
physical
and medical
teachings,
Plato remains
aware of the noetic
system
which characterises microcosm as well as
macrocosm,
and
he never
clearly
abandons the doctrine of
transmigration.
Plato cannot
escape
the bite
of Aristotle's
searching
criticism that those who believe in it must believe that
any
soul
can enter
any body. Although
at
every transmigration adaptation
of
body
to soul
may
take
place
and the
psychophysical
formula
may
remain in this
perpetual
rise and fall
in the scale of
being,
it is alien to the
biologist's assumption
of the
specific
form
being
constantly recaptured
in the
offspring
of some fixed
species.
Here Aristotle shows his true
genius
and his basic contribution to
physical
science.
It does
not,
of
course,
settle all
psychophysical questions
- the
age-long questions
about the Active Intellect remain.
Plato,
for his
part,
has a faith in creative
benevolence at work in a universe which is less than
perfect
but as
good
as it can be.
An
outgoing
creative force
intelligible
and rational has also been of
age-long
encouragement
to
interpreters
of the
cosmos,
who have
sought
to trace its
outworking
in verifiable details and mathematical
meaning.
So we have the
great
masters with their own aims and
achievements,
but we are
indebted to Dr Ostenfeld for
compelling
us to face the
questions
latent in the
dynamic-telic approach
seen in Plato's later
thought.
It
ought
to be
added,
in view
of earlier criticism of the format of the
work,
that each section has a
summing-up
and
the work as a whole has a clear and valuable conclusion
(pages
275 to
280).
Bristol J. B. SKEMP
PLATONIC APORIAI
MICHAEL ERLER: Der Sinn der
Aporien
in den
Dialogen
Platons.
Ubungssticke
zur
Anleitung
im
philosophischen
Denken.
(Unter-
suchungen
zur antiken Literatur und
Geschichte, 25.) Pp.
xi+330.
Berlin and New York: de
Gruyter,
1987. DM 154.
E. focuses on the
perennial problem confronting
readers of the
aporetic dialogues.
To
struggle
free from the
disturbing
conclusion voiced so often
by
his
smarting
interlocutors
-
Socrates has
manipulated
the discussion in a
nastily ironic, sophistical
manner-we must choose between
apparently incompatible interpretations.
His-
toricists understand them as
genuine
reflections of Plato's
philosophical development:
if a
dialogue
ends in unresolved
puzzlement,
it is because Plato himself had no
way
out. It came as a
surprise
to this
reviewer,
at
least,
to learn
very early
on that the
THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 65
Laws X
(903b-d, 904ab).
There are two
taproots
of the
conception
of the Ultimate
Source of Motion. One is that
perfection
of movement and rest that has self-rotation
on a constant axis as its
physical representation.
Called the motion of vois at Laws
X
897cd,
it is not
bodily
in itself. The Politicus
myth says
that the cosmos cannot
partake
in it because the cosmos has a
body.
This
implies
that the ultimate
apXVr
of
movement is not embodied in the sense that
physical
embodiment is the
necessary
condition of its
existing,
but rather that it is the
prius
of what we see in embodied soul.
It is a 'mobile' rather than a 'static'
apXq7.
It is a
simplification, though
it is a
breakthrough
in
thought,
to
say
that it is
bvXr j
as Phaedrus 245c
says
it
is, stating
it
in its most
general
terms.
Can we
agree, then,
with
O.,
that Plato in his latest
phase
of
thought thought
about
the
/vXj
in terms close to Aristotle's
concept
of
entelechy
? This
step
could be
made,
and indeed we see Aristotle
taking
it in the de anima. But there are hesitations on
Plato's side. Even when
dealing
with
physical
and medical
teachings,
Plato remains
aware of the noetic
system
which characterises microcosm as well as
macrocosm,
and
he never
clearly
abandons the doctrine of
transmigration.
Plato cannot
escape
the bite
of Aristotle's
searching
criticism that those who believe in it must believe that
any
soul
can enter
any body. Although
at
every transmigration adaptation
of
body
to soul
may
take
place
and the
psychophysical
formula
may
remain in this
perpetual
rise and fall
in the scale of
being,
it is alien to the
biologist's assumption
of the
specific
form
being
constantly recaptured
in the
offspring
of some fixed
species.
Here Aristotle shows his true
genius
and his basic contribution to
physical
science.
It does
not,
of
course,
settle all
psychophysical questions
- the
age-long questions
about the Active Intellect remain.
Plato,
for his
part,
has a faith in creative
benevolence at work in a universe which is less than
perfect
but as
good
as it can be.
An
outgoing
creative force
intelligible
and rational has also been of
age-long
encouragement
to
interpreters
of the
cosmos,
who have
sought
to trace its
outworking
in verifiable details and mathematical
meaning.
So we have the
great
masters with their own aims and
achievements,
but we are
indebted to Dr Ostenfeld for
compelling
us to face the
questions
latent in the
dynamic-telic approach
seen in Plato's later
thought.
It
ought
to be
added,
in view
of earlier criticism of the format of the
work,
that each section has a
summing-up
and
the work as a whole has a clear and valuable conclusion
(pages
275 to
280).
Bristol J. B. SKEMP
PLATONIC APORIAI
MICHAEL ERLER: Der Sinn der
Aporien
in den
Dialogen
Platons.
Ubungssticke
zur
Anleitung
im
philosophischen
Denken.
(Unter-
suchungen
zur antiken Literatur und
Geschichte, 25.) Pp.
xi+330.
Berlin and New York: de
Gruyter,
1987. DM 154.
E. focuses on the
perennial problem confronting
readers of the
aporetic dialogues.
To
struggle
free from the
disturbing
conclusion voiced so often
by
his
smarting
interlocutors
-
Socrates has
manipulated
the discussion in a
nastily ironic, sophistical
manner-we must choose between
apparently incompatible interpretations.
His-
toricists understand them as
genuine
reflections of Plato's
philosophical development:
if a
dialogue
ends in unresolved
puzzlement,
it is because Plato himself had no
way
out. It came as a
surprise
to this
reviewer,
at
least,
to learn
very early
on that the
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University
Press 1990
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$3.00 ? Oxford
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Press 1990
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communis
opinio
now dismisses this line as unviable
(p. 6).
Existentialists also
regard
the
dnropL'al
as
authentic, not, however,
on account of Plato's
immaturity,
but rather
because truth
really
is unattainable or at
any
rate ineffable: still
they
fare no better
than the historicists. On the other side are
paedagogic
unitarians who
suppose
that
Plato started off with at least the essentials of his
philosophy
to
hand,
but clothed his
lessons in riddles to test the reader. On neither
side,
as it
were,
are esotericists of a
more or less
neoplatonic persuasion,
for whom
literary
and dramatic
clues,
'Ironiesignale',
indicate that all the
problems
and
paradoxes just
dissolve
away
into
nothing.
E. himself subscribes to an elaborate and rather irenic
position.
The
d7ropLaL
are not
intrinsically insoluble,
nor did Plato
imagine they
were.
Against
the
esotericists,
he
maintains that the interlocutor's
miscomprehension
is
responsible
for the
puzzles,
and
that indeed within the limits set
by
his
'
Verstandnishorizont'
they
are
fully legitimate.
Furthermore,
Socrates is innocent of bad intellectual
faith,
since he is
obliged
to
remain within those limits. Yet this view of the dialectic does not
preclude
the
expectation
that the
adropt'a yield
to
analysis
at a
higher
level of
understanding:
'Vielmehr ware sie in diesem Fall insofern
kiinstlich,
als
Platon,
der Gestalter des
Dialoges,
durch die Wahl des
Gesprachspartners
fur Sokrates
gleichsam
das Niveau
schon
vorgegeben hat, welches die
Aporie bedingt' (pp. 13-14).
Further, investigation
of the function of the
aporetic dialogues
should not be
divorced from the
question
of the r6ole ascribed to written
philosophy.
E. resists the
inclination to correlate, to the detriment of the
dialogues,
the
spoken/written
and
esoteric/exoteric polarities.
Instead he seeks an accommodation with Gaiser's and
Kramer's contention that most of Plato's
philosophy
must be construed in the terms
of an Unwritten Doctrine, by drawing
on his distinction between Diskussionniveaus.
That the level on which the ar
optLa
disappear
is not realised in
writing might
recommend
application
of
something
like the
Gaiser/Kramer
thesis to the
early
dialogues.
E.
accordingly
sets himself an
ambitious, tri-partite programme: first, to derive
from the Phaedrus' celebrated
critique guidance concerning
Plato's
conception
of how
writing might
be
reasonably employed,
and to set this
conception against
the
historical
background
of
sophistic practice. Second, to examine whether and how
the
puzzles
thrown
up
in a number of
dialogues
can be resolved. Third,
to
bring
the
results of the first two
projects
into
conjunction,
and decide if it is
actually possible
to harmonise Plato's
aporetic practice
with his
critique
of
writing.
E.'s close
readings
of the
dialogues
are often
helpful
and
repay study,
but in the nature of the case are
not amenable to
proper
treatment in a short review. I shall thus concentrate on the
challenging principles underlying
the first
stage
of E.'s
programme.
E. starts
promisingly enough
with the contention that Plato's relative valuation of
soul and
script
need not entail the exclusion of
any given
material from
philosophical
writing (pp. 30-1,
on Phaedrus
278d8). Basically,
E. endorses Gaiser's claim that the
dialogues
themselves fall within the
scope
of the strictures on
writing,
and that one
must attribute to the
early productions,
at
least,
a
broadly
rhetorical function directed
at the
ignorant.
His
only
modification of this
position
is to
emphasise
an alternative
function directed at the
knowing,
i.e. that the
dialogues might
work as
6vrotivnrara
or aides-mdmoire. The Phaedrus
clearly
does
say something
like
that; unfortunately,
E.
barely recognises
how
paltry
the concession
appears,
at
any
rate without
imaginative
and
speculative expansion,
such as John Ferrari delivers
(Listening
to the
Cicadas
[CUP, 1987]).
Far too much of this
part
of the book is a flat-footed
journey
over well-trodden
ground,
in the worst tradition of the Habilitation.
66 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
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E.'s historical excursion is devoted to
establishing
a contrast between Plato's and
the
sophists'
evaluation of
writing.
The
latter,
with certain
qualifications (notably
in
Isocrates),
conceive of written texts as essential to the
learning-process,
in which
sample
discourses served as models for
rote-learning.
This estimation of
writing
corresponds fully
with their
conception
of the
acquisition
of
expertise, according
to
which wisdom is an almost
quasi-concrete
item
capable
of direct transmission from
sophist
to student. In stark
opposition,
Plato concedes to the written text only an
inessential
job, given
that
according
to his
epistemological
convictions
knowledge
cannot be bestowed
by
some
authoritative,
authoritarian
figure.
This is
hardly
news to either the Platonic scholar or the student of
fifth-century
intellectual and social
history.
Where E.
emerges
from the
worthily
obvious is in his
discussion of the recurrent Platonic theme
of'escape',
whether of
fugitive
conclusions
in
hunting-metaphors
or in the
image
of Daedalus' mobile statues. E. asserts that all
such
language
should
put
us in mind of Socrates'
injunction
to bind
propositions
a'iTas
AoyLa
uL,
in the
hope
of
eventually converting
mere correct
opinion
into
knowledge (E. disconcertingly
lets
slip only
at a
very
advanced
stage
of his
argument
that in his
opinion
the Meno
presupposes
the Forms
[p. 96]).
All admissions of
'escape'
in the
dialogues
should therefore be taken as behests to the reader to
recapture
and secure the errant conclusion.
But how? Here an unfortunate unitarianism breaks cover. After
promiscuous
reference to the Theaetetus, Gorgias, Republic
and Crito,
E. concludes: 'Die
Ursachen, auf welche sich das
begriindende
Denken richtet, waren dann die Ideen.
Platon
sagt
im Phaidon
jedenfalls,
daB das Gute zu binden
vermag' (p. 90).
Apparently
the Forms are not just themselves eternal, they
were
eternally present
to
Plato's mind. E. does at last confront this
problem,
but
only
at the end of the first
section of his book, and
revealingly
in a footnote
(beware
when an author hides a
substantial
methodological
statement at the bottom of the
page):
Doch steht diese
Moglichkeit
[viz
'daB Platons Lehre eine
Entwicklung
durchlaufen haben
kann'] nicht ein
grundsatzliches
Hindernis fur den hier
vorgefiihrten
Versuch dar. Wenn also
von
platonischer
Lehre oder Ideenlehre die Rede ist, dann
geschieht
das in einem
grundsdtzlichen
Sinn...
(pp. 95-6,
n. 59
-
emphasis added)
This declaration is
disarmingly frank,
but can
hardly satisfy
a reader not
already
wedded to some sort of transcendental view. In
protest against
E.'s
approach,
one
might very
well
grant
that
e.g.
the Tractatus is illuminated
by
the
Philosophical
Investigations,
and
yet
deny
that it either contains or even hints at the later
Wittgenstein's
reactions to the
impasse
which his first work reaches. If
philosophical
evolution
happens,
then it matters, and
genetic
decisions cannot be dismissed as
insignificant
for
major interpretative issues, as E. maintains. One can make the crucial
point
without
engaging
in
any particular
controversies: if Plato's
thought really
changed
and
moved, then there is at least the
open possibility
that
aporetic
expressions
in
dialogues
of different
periods
are of
radically
different
significance.
Ostensible
&aropia
in a later
dialogue might
indeed
signify
'hidden' answers:
apparently
identical
language
in an earlier
dialogue might
record honest frustration.
E.'s monolithic
appraisal
of Plato cannot tolerate such
possibilities. Despite
the
magnitude
of his
undertaking
and the
scrupulous
care with which on the whole he
carries it
out,
in the end he leaves the reader
fundamentally puzzled by
Plato
-
but
perhaps
therein lies the
truly
Socratic Sinn der
Aporien
in den
Dialogen
Platons.
St Catharine's
College, Cambridge
ROBERT WARDY
67
THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
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