plato's phaedrusby r. hackforth;plato's statesmanby j. b. skemp

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Philosophical Review Plato's Phaedrus by R. Hackforth; Plato's Statesman by J. B. Skemp Review by: John Robinson The Philosophical Review, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 1953), pp. 293-296 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2182801 . Accessed: 24/06/2014 21:52 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:52:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Plato's Phaedrusby R. Hackforth;Plato's Statesmanby J. B. Skemp

Philosophical Review

Plato's Phaedrus by R. Hackforth; Plato's Statesman by J. B. SkempReview by: John RobinsonThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 1953), pp. 293-296Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2182801 .

Accessed: 24/06/2014 21:52

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Philosophical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:52:08 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Plato's Phaedrusby R. Hackforth;Plato's Statesmanby J. B. Skemp

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

By virtue of their inner dialectic the kinds "gehen quer hindurch durch die Wirklichkeit." How they do this, however, is not made clear, and it is hard to see how anything in the text tends to support either of these extraordinary statements.

JOHN ROBINSON

University of Maryland

PLATO'S PHAEDRUS. By R. HACKFORTH. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1952. Pp. Vii, 172. $3.75.

PLATO'S STATESMAN. By J. B. SKEMP. New Haven, Yale Uni- versity Press, 1952. Pp. 244. $4.00.

The interest in Plato's later dialogues which began with Campbell's edition of the Sophist and Statesman in i867 has given rise to a series of valuable translations of these dialogues with accompanying com- mentaries. Professor Cornford began the series with his translations of the Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, and Parmenides. In 1943 Professor Hackford, his successor as Lawrence Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, brought out a translation of the Phile- bus, and now we are fortunate in being able to add to this list a new rendering of the Phaedrus by Professor Hackforth and a translation of the Statesman by Professor J. B. Skemp.

As Professor Hackforth points out, there has been little agreement as to the primary concern of the Phaedrus. He himself holds that its purpose is three-fold:

(i) To vindicate the pursuit of philosophy, in the meaning given to that word by Socrates and Plato, as the true culture of the soul (6vx-Is Oepwireta), by contrast with the false claims of contemporary rhetoric to provide that culture. This I regard as the most important purpose. (2) To make pro- posals for a reformed rhetoric, which should subserve the ends of philosophy and adopt its method. (3) To announce a special method of philosophy- the 'dialectic' method of Collection and Division-and to exemplify this both positively (in the two speeches of Socrates) and negatively (in the speech of Lysias).

How, then, are we to account for the prominence of love in the dia- logue? Professor Hackforth answers that for Plato philosophy is love:

vo-s in Plato is not mere intellect divorced from passion and desire, as a superficial reading of Phaedo and Republic might perhaps lead us to sup- pose; it is reason or thought moved by desire, by the desire of the soul for that which is akin to it, the desire to know and enjoy its object in that com- plete union which the great mystics have sought to describe, and which Plato himself so often describes in terms of sexual imagery.

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Page 3: Plato's Phaedrusby R. Hackforth;Plato's Statesmanby J. B. Skemp

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW

It is well to be reminded of this insight, which is fundamental to Plato. Yet it is precisely his faith in the power of reason that divides Plato so sharply from the great mystics, and leads him to put forward in the Phaedrus a new philosophical method. It is in the elucidation of this method, to which Plato attached the greatest importance, that Pro- fessor Hackforth's commentary is most deficient.

As Professor Hackforth states, the ostensible purpose of the method is to furnish definitions. Yet it is doubtful whether even in the Phae- drus itself this is its sole purpose. It is clear from his description of the "method of Hippocrates" at 269 E-270 C that Plato thought this method identical with the method of Collection and Division. Yet the two methods evidently have different purposes; for the orator who employs the "Hippocratic" method must not stop when he has got a definition of soul but go on to classify the different kinds of soul-a task in which the instrument used is again Division.

The details of the method of Collection and Division are not clear. What is it, for example, that we collect into a unity in Collection? Professor Hackforth suggests that whereas Division is concerned wholly with kinds, collection may be of particulars or of kinds. This is an advance over the view of Cornford and most others (including Pro- fessor Skemp) that both Collection and Division are concerned wholly with kinds, but it does not go far enough. At 249 B. in what is cer- tainly a generalized description of Collection, we are said to pass "from a plurality of perceptions to a unity gathered together by reasoning" (reading with Professor Hackforth ex 7roX OPTv CT' aclaOawOvTEW E'v

Xo~ycau.' vvaLpoljoevov). But sense-perception is always of particulars. Again, Plato calls this process "recollection," of which the Phaedo has already given us an account. Just as in the Phaedo it is the sight of equal things that leads us to recall equality itself, so in the Phaedrus it is the perception of beauty in this world that leads the lover to true beauty (249 D). This suggests that when Plato refers to the "dull or- gans" (a4uv~p6-ov 6pya'vwv) with which men approach the images of jus- tice and the like he is referring not to the reasoning powers but to the senses, of which sight is the sharpest (bwVTaT'q, 249 D).

If we turn to Division, other questions arise. Why, for example, does Plato tell us that we must keep dividing until we reach something that permits of no further division (roi Trl'Trov, 277 B) if we have al- ready isolated what we wish to define? A discussion of such difficulties as these would have been especially welcome from Professor Hack- forth, whose good sense and scholarship are apparent throughout the book.

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Page 4: Plato's Phaedrusby R. Hackforth;Plato's Statesmanby J. B. Skemp

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

Professor Skemp, instead of interpolating commentary between sec- tions of the text, has made fuller use of footnotes and has prefaced his translation with essays on the political thought of the dialogue (unfortunately it is impossible to discuss this essay here), certain philosophical questions, and the myth at 268 D-274 D.

It has been the fate of the Statesman to be treated piecemeal. Writers on Greek political thought have seized upon those passages in it which were relevant to their purpose and ignored the rest; others have fastened upon passages illustrating the use of Division in the late dialogues. But no earlier writer has attempted to present the dialogue as a unified whole. Professor Skemp's attempt to do so is vitiated at the outset by his conviction that the real importance of the dialogue lies in its political content. It is true, Professor Skemp says, that Plato seems to suggest that the Statesman is primarily an exercise in philo- sophical method. But it would be dangerous, he holds, to take him too literally. The early divisions "prove to be faulty and even when cor- rected they are inadequate to reveal the statesman's real nature. In the end the 'example' of weaving provides the key, and the various 'divisions' are relegated to a subordinate function."

To this it must be objected that Plato does not merely 'suggest' that the search for the statesman is primarily an exercise in method; he tells us so very plainly. Its purpose, he says, is to make us better dialec- ticians (&aXeXrTLXWTpots, 285 D), and there is nothing in the dialogue to suggest that he does not mean exactly what he says. To suppose that the results of the earlier divisions are abandoned for the example of weaving is to mistake the function of example. At 279 A the Stranger observes that "since there are countless others who contend that they, rather than the kingly sort, have the care of states, we must accordingly remove all these and isolate the king; and, as we said, to accomplish this we need an example" (7rapa8ce15yEgaros). Thus the use of example is not a substitute for Division but is subordinate to it- and at 287 B the Stranger accordingly takes up the division where he left it at 276 D.

We must now turn to Professor Skemp's further contention that the early divisions constitute "a gentle satire on the over-enthusiastic use of the method of Division by some members of the Academy itself." Professor Skemp suggests that Plato is laughing at us when he tells us that "the true political art is the art of the nurture of wingless bipeds in herds rather than, for instance, the art of the nurture of fishes in shoals." He points out that the young Socrates is twice rebuked for supposing that a sound definition has been reached. And he interprets

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Page 5: Plato's Phaedrusby R. Hackforth;Plato's Statesmanby J. B. Skemp

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW

Plato's insistence that Division need not be dichotomous as a defiance of Speusippos.

None of these considerations seem very weighty. The note of satire is quite absent from the divisions leading to the art of herding wing- less bipeds (which Plato himself admits is not a satisfactory account of the statesman's art). Indeed, Plato's attitude to these divisions is exactly that imputed to him in the famous fragment of Epicrates, satirizing the attempt of the young men of the Academy to define, under Plato's direction, a pumpkin (cf. 286 D). The rebuking of the young Socrates is merely a device for bringing out such important points as the distinction between division into kinds and division into parts (262 A ff), and dichotomy is abandoned at 287 B simply because Plato is about to embark on a classification of the goods of the state. When he is not concerned with classification he insists on cutting in two (e.g., 264 E; cf. 262 E).

Professor Skemp says a number of worthwhile things about the method of Division, but his treatment of Collection is disappointing. It is true that Plato does not carry out any formal collection in the early divisions; but this is because collection is not (except in the Philebus) a formal procedure, i.e., one governed by rules such as we find given for division. Nevertheless there are many examples of it. At 259 B-C, for example, the Stranger points out that the statesman, the king, the slave-master, and the master of a household are alike in that they practice one art, the art of ruling. To see the many as one is precisely the work of collection as described at 285 B. It is Plato's habit of indicating the collection after the division it logically precedes that confuses.

Professor Skemp's translation is unnecessarily wordy. To translate 278 C 2-6, for example, he uses 86 words as against Fowler's 39 and the text's 29; to translate 295 A 4-7, 76 words as against Fowler's 3i and the text's 30. The effect is misleading, and there are a number of passages in which Professor Skemp's rendering seems highly ques- tionable (e.g., 264 E). In at least one instance (278 E) words appear to have fallen out in translation.

JOHN ROBINSON

University of Maryland

CULTURE AND FAITH. By RICHARD KRONER. Chicago, The Uni- versity of Chicago Press, I95I. PP. xv, 278. $5.00.

As the title suggests, the basic concern of this book is with the re-

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