the relation of reason to soul - richard mohr.pdf

THE RELATION OF REASON TO SOUL IN THE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY:SOPHIST 248e-249c

Since Chemiss' Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy I, there hasbeen nearly universal agreement among critics that Plato's God or divine Demiurgeis a soul.1 Yet the prima facie evidence is that the Demiurge is not. In all three ofPlato's major cosmological works the Timaeus, the Statesman myth, and thePhilebus (28c-30e), the Demiurge is fairly extensivly described and yet not once is hedescribed as a soul. Rather souls, and especially the World-Soul, and what rationali-ty souls have are viewed as products of the Demiurge (Timaeus 35a, 36d-e, Philebus30c-d, Statesman 269c-d).

Nonethelees, the overwhelming critical opinion is that since the demiurgic Godof these works is described as rational, this entails that God is a soul. Three texts areadduced to prove this, Timaeus 30b3, Philebus 30c9-10, and Sophist 249a. Thesetexts are taken as claiming A) that if a thing is rational, then it is a soul. Proclus sawthat at least the Timaeus passage can mean only B) that when reason is in somethingelse, what it is in must be an ensouled thing. The rhetoric of the Timaeus sentencestrongly suggests that reading B is correct1 and the argumentative context of thePhilebus sentence (properly understood) requires sense B.1 This leaves (as Chemissis willing to admit, ACPA, p. 606) the Sophist passage alone as bearing the wholeweight of Plato's alleged commitment to the view A) that everything that is rationalis a soul. I wish to give a new, tentative interpretation to this passage which showsthat it is, like the Timaeus and Philebus, committed only to the weaker claim B) thatwhen reason is in something, it is so along with soul. This leaves the Demiurge whois not in anything free to be rational without being a soul and to serve rather as amaker of souls.

The Sophist passage runs:STR. But for heaven's sake, shall we let ourselves easily be persuaded that

motion and life and soul and mind are really not present to absolute being,that it neither lives nor thinks, but awful and holy, devoid of mind, is fixedand immovable?

THEAET. That would be a shocking admission to make, Stranger.STR. But shall we say that it has mind, but not life?THEAET. How can we?STR. But do we say that both of these exist inJt, and yet go on to say that

it does not possess them in a soul?THEAET. But how else can it possess them?STR. Then shall we say that it has mind and life and soul, but, although

endowed with soul, is absolutely immovable?THEAET. All those things seem to me absurd.STR. And it must be conceded that motion and that which is moved exist.THEAET. Of course.STR. Then the result is, Theaetetus, that if there is no motion, there is no

mind in anyone about anything anywhere.THEAET. Exactly.STR. And on the other hand, if we admit that all things are in flux and

motion, we shall remove mind itself from the number of existing things by thistheory also.

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THEAET. How so?STR. Do you think that sameness of quality or nature or relations could

ever come into existence without the state of rest?THEAET. Not at all.STR. What then? Without these can you see how mind could exist or

come into existence anywhere?THEAET. By no means.STR. And yet we certainly must contend by every argument against him

who does away with knowledge or reason or mind and then makes anydogmatic assertion about anything.

THEAET. Certainly.STR. Then the philosopher, who pays the highest honour to these things,

must necessarily, as it seems, because of them refuse to accept the theory ofthose who say the universe is at rest, whether as a unity or in many forms, andmust also refuse utterly to listen to those who say that being is universal mo-tion; he must quote the children's prayer, "all things immovable and in mo-tion", and must say that being and the universe consist of both.

(248e6-249d4, Fowler).

The context is important. Plato has just wrested from the materialists the con-cession that at least some small part of reality is non-material ( 247c9-10). He then gives two arguments to show complementarity that the friends ofthe Ideas are committed to the view that at least some small part of the really real isin motion, that the sum total of reality cannot consist merely of the immutably realobjects of reason, on the one hand, and the phenomenal flux, on the other (248a).4The first of the two arguments (248a-e) appears to be one of the most glaringblunders in the whole Platonic corpus. The argument is that if we take acting andbeing-acted-on as marks of the real, then the (heretofore) immutable objects ofreason, insofar as they are known, are affected, and so are real insofar as they aremoved in this way. The category mistake of transferring the passivity of the gram-matical form "to be known" to the objects it picks out is a howler on a par perhapswith the string of fallacies of division which open the Cratylus. Some would claimthat sense can be made of the argument if the passage is in fact a disclaimer ofPlato's former belief in the timeless eternity of the Ideas.5 Others would claim theargument does not mean what it appears to say, and is to be rehabilitated in light ofthe second argument (248e-249d).6 My view is that the argument is so bad that nodoctrinal consequences can be drawn from it.

One small but crucial point made in the first argument, though, is that when inthe passage reason is viewed as the participation in the really real, the only reasonhere being discussed is our reason achieved by our souls through thought ( , 248alO-ll).

Our passage (248e6 ff.) begins with a shift from talking of the really real to talk-ing of the completely real (e7). Now, what counts as part of complete reality will beanything that is not in flux; otherwise, of course, there would be no need to establishmotion as part of complete reality one could simply point to the phenomenalflux.7 The argument to show there is motion in complete reality has two prongs.First it is claimed that our reason entails soul, which in turn entails motion and so isdifferent than the immutably real. Second it is claimed that our rational soul cannot



be in flux, and so is part of complete reality. Jointly the two prongs establish motionas part of complete reality. The steps of the argument run, I suggest, as follows:

1) when mind exists or comes to be in something anywhere at all (,249al; , a2; ', a6; , bo1; , c4)', then that thingis ensouled.

2) soul entails some sort of motion (249alO).3) if, though, this motion is merely flux, we have not really shown that there is

something other than the immutable and that which is in flux (249b8-10).4) the motion of rational soul is uniform and not in flux (249bl2-cl).5) therefore, rational soul, if it exists, is different both from the immutably real

and that which is in flux.6) but, reason is in us (those who deny this contradict themselves) (249c5-8 with

248alO-ll).7) therefore, something moving exists which is part of complete reality

(249clO-d4).We have in this short argument five indicators (step 1) that we are not here talk-

ing of mind simpliciter, but only mind as it is possessed by something else or presentin something else. And it is sufficient for the argument to succeed for Plato only tobe claiming that when reason is present in something, it is so in an ensouled thing,when he writes the crucial line "but, do we say that both of these [reason and life]exist in it [complete reality], and yet not go on to say that it does not possess them ina soul?" (249a6-7). The sentence need not be construed as claiming all reason dwellsin soul. I think Cherniss is wrong to claim that "Plato could not have formulated[the argument at 249a] if he had believed that there is any real which does notimply soul" (ACPA, p. 607). For, all that is required for the argument to succeed isthat a) there exists some soul and b) that this soul is not chaotic. Both a) and b) areestablished by claiming that rationality exists in us.

Cherniss needs to construe the argument the way he does, for he wants the argu-ment to end here (249a7) and wants the new contrasting point starting at 249b8 ( . . . , step 3 on my construction) to constitute the (allegedly) neededrehabilitation of the disastrous first argument (248a-e), rather than to complete thesecond ("Relation", p, 352, n.5). He construes this section (249b8 ff) to mean that ifthe Ideas really move, as per the first argument, reason will be destroyed, that theobjects of reason must remain immutable while only the soul moves.10 Chernisstakes here (249bl2) as referring tothe Ideas, as a similar phrasing at 248al2 seems to. To so construe the argument,though, is to require that and (249b8) apply to the Ideas, thatbeing known entails locomotion (), as a result of the first argument(248a-d). This is unlikely. Rather the phrase is a generaldescription here for flux; it is equivalent to (248al2-13).Flux here (249b8) is being entertained as a possible type of motion for soul; if fluxdoes characterize soul, then the soul, for the purposes at hand, is ontologically nodifferent than the phenomena. It turns out, though, that the soul while in onerespect is like the flux as being in motion, in another, insofar as it is rational, is inpart at rest and so is in this respect like its objects, the Ideas. This seeming paradox,which also appears in the Timaeus when it is said that the soul is in part made out ofthe Ideas and part made out of the phenomenal flux (3Sa), is resolved not by claim-ing with Cherniss that the soul here is autokinetic and the exclusive instantiation of



the Idea of motion ("Relation", p. 352), but rather simply by noting that the motionof rational soul is the uniform motion of rotation, which is at rest with respect to itscenter. The phrase does not lookbackward to 248a, but rather describes the rational soul's uniform motion, which assuch distinguishes the soul both from the Ideas and the phenomenal flux. The phrase ... describes the uniform rotary mo-tion of rational soul at Laws 898a9-10" and is an essential attribute ofthe motion of the rational World-Soul in the Timaeus (36c2). Without such motionsouls would not be rational. Our rationality assures that there will be motion whichis not flux and so assures that motion is part of complete reality. This sought-forconclusion is achieved even if not all reason dwells in soul.

We can then let stand the prima facie evidence that Plato did not consider Godto be a soul. One could try to resort to an argument from silence, claiming that in theTimaeus, Statesman, and Philebus Plato in fact did believe that God was a soul, butfailed to mention it in these texts since there was no good reason for him to do so.Such a move, though, is considerably weakened if one cannot produce a clear in-stance somewhere in the corpus where the single, rational Demiurge is said to be asoul.11 It should be a minimum requirement for arguments from silence that theallegedly held but unstated doctrine is in fact a doctrine that the author explicitlydoes state elsewhere. In the Sophist itself, near the end, we are told that there is ademiurgic God with divine knowledge (26Sc), but again here there is nothing to leadus to believe that this demiurgic God is a soul and yet he is said to make all the en-souled creatures, plants and animals. It seems then that Plato wishes to claim thatthat which produces soul is not itself a soul and that that which is the source of struc-ture and composition is not itself a composed entity, as is soul. These would be goodreasons for Plato not to assert that God is a soul.

I think Hackforth is on the right track in asserting Plato's general motivationfor holding the Demiurge not to be a soul:

To identify him [the Demiurge] with would be to deny histranscendence or externality, since is a principle operativeonly in the realm of and : and thereby to deny hisperfection, since perfection does not and cannot belong to and . (. 447)

I would formulate this motivation as follows: insofar as Plato considers theDemiurge to be a necessary existent whose essence is rationality, then it behooveshim not to have that rationality inhere in soul, which has the potentiality for beingirrational. Comparing the Demiurge to the World-Soul here is illustrative of thepoint. The rationality of the World-Soul as a qualification of soul is clearly subjectto the buffetings and disruptive incursions of the bodily, which cause the soul tobecome irrational (Statesman 273a-d, and for human rational souls see Timaeus43a-c, 47b-c). The Demiurge by contrast, though in his craftings of the World-Bodyis not able to triumph completely over the inherent cussedness of the corporeal,nonetheless is, unlike the World-Soul, not corrupted by the corporeal. TheDemiurge's essential rationality and capacity to act as an initiator of order and ra-tionality in others is assured, then, only if he is not a soul. If the Demiurge is to serveas a crafting agent that constantly forms by bringing that which falls away from a



paradigmatic Form into accord with it, then he can be assimilated neither to a con-tingent soul nor (along neo-platonic lines) to the Forms themselves.

Richard Mohr,University of Illinois,

Urbana, Illinois. U.S.A.

Note1. H.F. Chemiss, ACPA I (Baltimore, 1944), appendix XI, which is in part an attack on Hackforth's

"Plato's Theism" (1936) rpt. in R.E. Allen (ed.), Studies in Plato's Metaphysics (London, 1965),pp. 439-447. Chemiss' view on this point has been accepted by a wide range of critics: L. Taran,"The Creation Myth in Plato's Timaeus" in J.P. Anton and G.L. Kustas (eds.). Essays in AncientGreek Philosophy (Albany, N.Y., 1971), n. 34; E.N. Lee, "Reason and Rotation" in W.H.Werkmeister (ed.), Phronesis suppl. vol. II (Assen, 1976), p. 89; T.M. Robinson, Plato'sPsychology (Toronto, 1970), pp. 68, 102, 114, 142; G. Vlastos, "Creation in the 'Timaeus': Is it aFiction?" (1964) in Allen, p. 407. W.K.C. Guthrie, though, maintains Hackforth's position that theDemiurge is not a soul (History of Greek Philosophy V [Cambridge, 1978], pp. 215, 275n. 1).

2. The argument at Timaeus 30a-b would go through if Plato simply said "all reason is soul or is en-souled". There is nothing here or elsewhere in the corpus to keep him from saying this, if this iswhat he meant. And this may have been what he meant here if he had said only [], but in fact what he says is . The emphatic position of, the use of rather than (in a passage which is critically concerned withdistinguishing the terms, cf. esp. 27d5-28c3 and n.b. , 30cl), and the use of the suffix-, all look like conspicuous literary consumption in an otherwise highly economical passage, ifthey do not affect the sense of the sentence. The sentence, then, seems to be the articulation of ageneral metaphysical principle that when reason comes to be in anything whatsoever, that in which itcomes to be is an ensouled thing. The principle comes into play in the case at hand in the Timaeusbecause Plato is trying to establish "the nature of the visible" as "possessing reason" (30bl, 2). Theprinciple is not said to hold exclusively of material objects (contra Hackforth, p. 445). Timaeus46d5-6, which is sometimes viewed as committing Plato to the view that all reason is in soul, shouldbe interpreted in light of 30b.

3. As in the Timaeus passage, the use of (Philebus 30clO) and (d2) rather than is probably not accidental. The argument of which the claim "reason cannot come to be apartfrom soul" (c9-10) is part runs as follows: Premise 1) there are in the World-Body traces ofrationality represented by the orderly years, season, and months. This rationality in the Timaeus iscalled "the circuits of intelligence in the heavens" (47b7, cf. 34a). Reason here is a qualification ofthe bodily rather than a qualification of soul. Premise 2) just as our bodies naturally are given overto disorder represented by disease, so the whole universe left on its own is in chaotic flux. Conclu-sion: therefore, the World-Body requires a soul whose function is to maintain the homeostatic con-ditions of the rational, orderly motions of the bodily against the natural propensity to disorder. Soulin this sense is necessary for reason in this sense. Therefore, the argument requires that 30c9-10mean that when reason is in something it is so in an ensouled thing and not that reason is necessarilya qualification of soul.

4. In contrasting the phenomenal world to the eternally immutable, when Plato describes thephenomenal world as (248al2-13) or simply (alO), he is assertingthat the phenomenal world is constantly in flux, not merely that it is capable of change (cf. Philebus59a7-bl).

5. G.E.L. Owen, "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present", Monist 50 (1966), 336-40.6. Chemiss, "The Relation of the Timaeus to Plato's Earlier Dialogues", (1957) in Allen, p, 352, esp.

n. 5.

7. Therefore cannot refer just to the phenomenal world as Hackforth would have it(pp. 444-5).

8. ! means "not in anyone" (so Fowler), as the objects of reason are covered by the phrase (249b6).

9. I take as qualifying both OVra and , 249c3.10. A weakness of this whole approach is that, however read, 249b8ff is a list of dogmatic assertions. As

such, these lines do little to counter the first argument, if in fact the first argument has any weight atall as an argument. Even if 249b8 ff. reads as a recantation and it does not , the recantationwould have to offer reasons why the earlier argument was wrong.



11. On this passage see E.N. Lee's article listed in note 1.

12. Even in the Laws X the single divine Demiurge called simply "our King" at 904a6 seems to be con-trasted to ensouled things, which he observes and which are generated (904a6-9).



the relation of reason to soul - richard mohr.pdf

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