Philosophical Review

Plato's Sophist: A Commentary by Richard S. Bluck; Gordon C. NealReview by: Fred D. Miller, Jr.The Philosophical Review, Vol. 86, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 261-264Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2184019 .

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PLA TO'S SOPHIST: A COMMENTARY. By RICHARD S. BLUCK. Edited by Gordon C. Neal. New York, Barnes & Noble Books, 1975. Pp. vi, 182. $14.00. Manchester, England, The University Press, 1975. Pp. vi, 182. ?14.50.

This book is flawed by circumstances: the author died in 1963 leaving both the crucial final chapter and his revisions undone. Neal attempts to augment Bluck's careful appraisal of the secondary literature by includ- ing discussions of the most significant studies of the Sophist since 1963, especially those by I. M. Crombie, M. Frede, and G. E. L. Owen; but, unfortunately, these are compressed and sometimes confused. For example, Neal's criticisms of Owen presuppose that he ascribes to Plato the view that being "may . . . be defined as 'possession of some property"' (pp. 20ff.), although Owen insists that "Plato can hardly have seen his project as that of displaying different senses of the verb ['to be'].... The expression 'partaking in being' is not used to identify a special sense of the verb" (in G. Vlastos (ed.), Plato I [New York, 1971], pp. 274ff.). Neal's difficulties, moreover, seem to reflect difficulties in Bluck's own interpretations.

Bluck defends three principal claims: (1) the method of collection and division (216a-231b) presupposes the theory of recollection; (2) Plato treats the problems of Being and Not-Being here in order to elucidate the distinction between "identity and attribution" or "identification and predication" (pp. 99,66 n.); and (3) Platonic Forms serve here both as "universals" or concepts and as "the only true designata of common nouns-as paradigms" or "standard instances" (p. 113 n.). Here, as in his earlier work, Bluck writes with a sensitivity for the Greek and with a determination to avoid anachronism and understand individual passages in close relation to Plato's entire corpus. His arguments for (2) and (3) especially deserve careful scrutiny by opponents as well as pro- ponents of his "unitarian" view that Plato's earlier doctrines survive, essentially intact, in the late dialogues.

Like H. Cherniss and others, Bluck maintains that Plato is trying here to distinguish between identitative and predicative senses of "is" and "is not." At times he seems to argue that Plato is looking for different expres- sions, such as "is identical with" and "is other than," which could be sub- stituted for "is" and "is not" when the latter have a specific sense (for example, identitative) in a specific context (compare pp. 66, 145, 152ff., 165ff.). But it is not clear that paraphrases can be substituted in all cases in which "is" is supposed to have the identitative sense without producing solecisms: for example, Plato's statement that Change and Rest are neither other nor the same becomes "Change and Rest are [iden-

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tical with] neither Other not the Same" (p. 138 on 255a4-5; compare p. 152 on 256c8). Admittedly, Bluck's awkward rendering here is pref- erable to Cornford's mistranslation. Most of Bluck's account is fortu- nately consistent with the less vulnerable thesis that Plato is trying to distinguish different uses of "is" and "is not," which may be described as identitative and predicative uses.

More importantly, Bluck does not clearly describe the identitative use of "is." At times it seems to be the use found in statements of identity or non-identity, for example, "Change is not [identical with] Rest" (p. 151; compare pp. 68, 78, 86, 161). Yet he generally seems to mean a quite different use of "is" when he says that Plato tries to distinguish between predication and identification, arguing, "a thing may have attributes, even necessary and permanent attributes, without their being part of its 'proper nature' or essence," so that "a 'thing that is' can have a nature of its own and be, not by being identical with Being or anything else, but by partaking of Being" (pp. 151, 153). Bluck is evidently not always clear on the fundamental difference between a statement to the effect that an object a is [identical with] an object b ("Paris is Alexandros") and one to the effect that an object a is [essentially] F ("Paris is human"). This is apparent from his treatment of the argument at 255a4-b6 that Change and Rest are distinct from Same- ness and Otherness, for he departs from other commentators and inter- prets Plato as maintaining that Rest cannot be predicated of Change without causing "a reversal of nature" and as inferring that if Rest is predicated of Change, Change will become identical with Rest (p. 142, compare pp. 154-156). Since there is no real basis in the text for this par- ticular inference, the confusion seems to be totally Bluck's.

I can consider only a couple of passages bearing on the claim that Plato is trying to distinguish between identification (essential predi- cation) and attribution. Bluck's proposal (pp. 97-102) that we read between the lines at 248d10-e4 to find a solution, in terms of the distinction, to the paradox of the immutability but knowability of the Forms presumes that the distinction can be made out elsewhere. (The solution is that a Form changes only in respect to an inessential attribute, such as being known by Socrates.) In 252e9-253c3, developing the analogy between vowels and Forms involved in the mixing of other Forms, Plato states that "there are, running through all [the Kinds], some [Kinds?] that hold them together (sunechonta) so that they can mix together." Although Bluck agrees (pp. 117-124) that mixing here involves predication and that the Form of Being is what holds the others together, he denies that by this Plato intends a connecting Form, namely, one which figures in the use of the copulative "is."

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Rather, he says, "participation in Being may be regarded as logically prior to having communion with any other Form," for "by pervading all the Forms, Being enables them to be what they are; and it is because of this that a Form can mix together with other Forms and reflect their characters as attributes of itself." While such a meaning for sunechonta is not possible (compare Hippias Minor, 374d8-9), the inter- pretation has an awkward result: Since Change cannot be other than Rest without having a nature of its own, Plato should have spoken ot Being as responsible for division as well as for communion; yet he implies that other Forms (namely Otherness) are responsible for division. Again, at 255e8-256e6 Bluck states (pp.151-153, 158) the main point as a contrast between "Change is [identical with] Being" and "Change is [by partaking of Being]"; thus, "a 'thing that is' can have a nature of its own and be, not by being identical with Being or with anything else, but by partaking of Being." But Bluck feels con- strained to read 256e5-6: "in the case of each Form its 'being' is plentiful and its 'not-being' unlimited in number-it is many things and it 'is not' an unlimited number of things." The statement that the Form "is" many things seems to refer to its various predicates (for example, Change is other, the same, and so on), and Bluck takes it thus. But since Plato's preceding line reads, "because they partake of Being, [we shall be right in saying of all alike] that they 'are' and are things that are," Plato does not seem to reserve "partaking in Being" as an explanation for a thing having its "proper nature."

Finally, in asserting that Plato sometimes speaks of Forms as concepts and sometimes as "paradigmatic standards," Bluck is, in part, making the important point that Plato uses "change" not only to refer to a universal, but also as a common noun to designate particular instances of change. It need not follow that "change," so used, must designate special paradigmatic instances. But according to Bluck some crucial passages must be interpreted in terms of a tacit theory of paradigmatic Forms, especially the account of negative predication (257c7-258c3), in which being not beautiful, for example, is explained in terms of par- taking of Difference-from-Beauty, which is a part of the Nature of Otherness. Though Bluck ascribes to Plato a view that is simple and naively direct (pp. 161-171), it is hard to see how Plato could have thought it illuminating to propose that a thing is not beautiful because it partakes of a paradigmatic standard. Bluck confesses uncertainty as to whether or not the Not-Beautiful is thought of as a paradeigmatic Form, but either way the interpretation seems untenable. If it is sup- posed that a thing is not tall because it partakes of a standard Thing- that-is-not-tall, which stands in a certain contrast to the paradigm,

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the Tall, it is unclear what sort of nature the Not-Tall has and how it is supposed to be related to the Tall. The Not-Tall can have no de- terminate or positive nature of its own, of which its instances partake, since when we speak of something as not tall, we may just as well mean by the expression what is equal as what is small (257b6-7). The Not- Tall, then is nothing like the Small, which is the opposite of the Tall. But it seems incredible that Plato would put forward, as a paradeigmatic instance alongside the Equal and the Small, something whose nature is such that it is, wholly and simply, not tall (compare 257e2-4). Alter- natively, if "the Not-Tall" does not refer to a full-fledged Form but is a "shorthand expression" referring to two paradeigmatic Forms, the Other and the Tall, it is difficult to see how Plato could have sup- posed that the negative predication, "x is not tall," could be explained in terms of x standing in some sort of relation to these two standard instances-a relation which Bluck prudently avoids characterizing.

Although the book is an interesting attempt to revive a view of Plato no longer in fashion, it suffers from a tendency not to carry out analyses or pursue difficulties fully (for example, it is never explained how Plato could have supposed that different things could obtain distinct "proper natures" by partaking of the same paradeigmatic Form of Being). Though this is due, in part, to the author's untimely death, the deeper reason, I suspect, is that the arguments of the Sophist cannot be elucidated without a more sophisticated conceptual apparatus of the sort which Bluck eschews as anachronistic.

FRED D. MILLER, JR.

Bowling Green State University

KANT'S CRITICISM OF METAPHYSICS. By W. H. WALSH. Edin- burgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1975. Pp. ix, 265. $14.50.

W. H. Walsh admits that Kant's Criticism of Metaphysics may be mis- leadingly titled, since it offers "not so much a specialist study of a particular aspect of Kant's philosophy as an essay on the central argu- ments of the Critique of Pure Reason" (p. vii). In fact, I was misled; expecting a detailed examination, systematic or historical, of Kant and the problem of metaphysics, I found instead one more in a long line of brief commentaries on the Critique. The book is by no means without value. Lecturers and students alike will find parts of it useful and even suggestive in their Kant courses, even though many of

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