The Theaetetus and SophistPlato's Later Epistemology by W. G. RuncimanReview by: R. S. BluckThe Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1963), pp. 36-39Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/706795 .Accessed: 30/08/2012 22:47

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36 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

They and the griffins they fight are genuine creatures of Central Asiatic folk- lore. Like Gladisch, Tomaschek, Minns, and others Bolton inclines strongly to the opinion that the particular Hyperboreans mentioned above were hearsay picked up by the Issedones about the peaceful civilization of China (p. ioo). He makes a bold attempt to map Io's wanderings (Aeschylus, P.V. 707-35, 790-807) with the help of an unconventional 'Caucasus' displaced far north- ward to the fabulous Rhipaean mountains of the north wind: the Amazons mentioned are explained as the masculine ladies of the Sauromatae (p. i8o, and see the rather vertiginous Map i).

The account ofAristeas given by Herodotus has already traces ofa conflation of two versions. Was he a devotee of Apollo impelled to travel towards his god's favourite people 'beyond the north wind' and turning back at the Issedones, as he admits ? Bolton detects a ring of honesty here (pp. 3, 133). There were others less likely to confess such a failure: they claimed that their souls could leave their bodies and make long ecstatic journeys and return to tell of things seen anywhere in this world and the Beyond. Among such men were the native shamans or wizards in a wide area of European and Asiatic Scythia: they have been much discussed in this connexion since K. Meuli's paper in Hermes, 1935, especially pp. 153-64. The edifying soul-flight became quite a literary genre in Hellenistic times. Heraclides Ponticus, who was nearly elected head of the Academy in 338 B.c., did much to improve on such stories and develop a sort of popular philosophical romance. It was he who supposed Aristeas to be an associate of Pythagoras; hence the interest of later Pythagoreans in Aristeas, and hence also the date more usually assigned to him (sixth century B.c.).

It is pleasant to see so much intelligent attention and discussion being given to various geographical topics, like the eastward passage from the Black Sea and the dividing line between Europe and Asia (pp. 55-58, 190), the high northern mountain screen (pp. 42, 188), the tilted earth-disk theory (p. 198), the Hyperborean Utopia of Hecataeus of Abdera (pp. 24, 43), the Uttarakurus or Indian Hyperboreans (pp. 98-99), and many others.

Repeated readings confirm and enhance the highly favourable impressions of the first, and there is no doubt that this is a singularly fascinating and satisfying book, even if, with such a subject, one may fall into musings and wonder sometimes whether every question has been seen and answered.

A surprising omission from the bibliography is G. F. Hudson, Europe and China (1i931i), ch. I, though he is cited once in a note. It is a very tiny blemish that A. Hermann is somehow four times miswritten for Herrmann.

J. o. THOMSON

THE THEAETETUS AND SOPHIST W. G. RUNCIMAN: Plato's Later Epistemology. Pp. 138. Cambridge University Press, 1962. Cloth, 2Is. net.

THIS is a fellowship dissertation, primarily concerned with the questions 'How far did Plato arrive at a distinction between knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge by acquaintance?' and 'How closely did he approach a con- scious formulation of the notion of truth-value?' There are chapters on the logic and epistemology of the Theaetetus and the Sophist, with a few pages of introduction and conclusion. A number of interesting questions are raised, and the work is stimulating and useful.

THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 37

Runciman rejects Cornford's view that the Theaetetus is recommending Forms by withholding them. He likewise rejects the view that Plato is abandon- ing his 'gradational ontology'; but the eyewitness illustration shows that there can be knowledge, in some sense, of phenomena. The Berkeleyan position in- volved in the theory of perception was never Plato's own, though he may have accepted the mechanics of the theory, but is simply 'a necessary part of the doctrine of total flux', which in turn 'is introduced as a part of the theory that perception is knowledge'. Plato has three objects only in view: to deny that knowledge is perception, or true opinion, or true opinion plus logos; to consider the problem of error, which he cannot yet solve; and in the digression on rhetoric to give a reminder (but not an exposition) of the philosopher's world of unchanging truths.

It seems unlikely that anyone ever really managed to combine this total-flux doctrine-which is introduced as the view that you cannot say of anything that it is OIroCovo v i-t (152 d)-with any theory of knowledge. One may even ques- tion Runciman's remark that in Plato's own view the world would be in total flux but for the Forms. As for the knowledge which attempts are made to define, this is surely (for Plato) only knowledge of Forms. A criterion is sought, but not found, whereby knowledge of an object could be shown to differ from a true idea of it in the way in which an eyewitness's knowledge differs from a juryman's true opinion. Runciman remarks that there can be no such difference. But since (as Runciman allows) Plato still believed that knowledge was of simples and that knowledge was different from true opinion, the im- plication surely is that he believed the difference to be explicable if Forms were the objects ofknowledge-as he did when he wrote the Timaeus (51 d). Runci- man says that ability to recognize must be the criterion both of a true idea and of recognitive knowledge; but the two may be differentiated if we are concerned with recognizing copies of things (viz. Forms), for my ability to recognize them for what they are may be more sure and lasting if I have myself seen the originals. Of course an eyewitness is not 'transported into the realm of pure philosophical contemplation', but as the eyewitness has personal (empirical) knowledge of events, so the philosopher has personal (intuitive) acquaintance with Forms. The eyewitness illustration should be regarded as an analogy, as the 'road to Larisa' illustration in the Meno must be.

Runciman rightly affirms that for Plato ui-r'cyau

depend not so much on knowing how or knowing that as on a kind of knowledge by acquaintance. But he takes the treatment of the arguments brought against Protagoras-especially the one at 186 e (perception is not knowledge because it is not of &A4EOcEa and therefore not of oidaua)-as showing that Plato had not distinguished clearly between the three kinds of knowing. This may be so, but caution is needed. For example, 186 e may mean not that 'truth and existence are taken to entail each other' but that genuineness and essence entail each other. The dvadoylauara rrpds

•E ojaaV KaGl d~aELv and avhAAoywaCds of 186 c-d may be, for Plato, not

'logoi' (p. 8, n. 4), but the sort of Aoycudts which is anamnesis (Meno 98 a). And if for Plato skill depends on knowledge by acquaintance, this does not mean that he equated the two. There is certainly a surprising failure to dis- tinguish between kinds of knowing if Runciman's interpretation of the dream- theory is correct. But in fact it looks as though this theory declared, not that simples 'become knowable' in propositions and that knowledge is essentially propositional, but that only physical objects are knowable. Incidentally, it is

38 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

rash to infer from Plato's 'demonstrating' that 'a complex is no more than the sum of its parts' (204 a-205 a) that the dream-theory treated a complex as something other than its parts, for at 205 d-e Plato himself allows that this may be the case.

Further sub-headings are needed in chapter I, after p. 26. Pages 26-58 are not all about 'Philosophy and Rhetoric'.

Runciman finds no evidence in the Sophist that Plato did not still believe the highest knowledge to consist in the apprehension of Forms. Division 'assumes the pre-existence of an ontological structure', and Plato never aban- doned his gradational ontology. But 248 a 4-e 5 means that Forms have the capacity to affect and (by being known) to be affected, although the 'change' involved in their being known does not affect their permanent character. In one sense Forms are changeless, in another they are not. This is a very plausible interpretation. Runciman then explains most of the passages that have been supposed to deny the possibility of mutual predication between Change and Rest (252 d, 254 d, 255 a-b) as excluding only a complete commingling of opposite natures involving total mutual predication or identity; while 256 b 6 f.

(KV EL 7T7l tLETE)aI at• KLV7aLS OVov avr~wv

lTpovayopEUEV;) he takes to mean that Kv)a•LS

does partake in a way of a-ruacs. When the Stranger says at 254 d 7T< y~E 8t0 (sc. KCV7ULv and ardav) qa~iv at3rov

cL/ECK-TW iTpo cAA4Ajw, Runciman declares that 'the word

LtLElKTw- at d 7 without

question expresses a relation of non-identity..,. it is the non-identity of Change and Rest which is reasserted without any assertion that mutual predication would be impossible'. But the Stranger's next

remark---r 6' ye Sv tLEK7KV

4qoo9 v" o*urbv ydp •tdyw rrovu-cannot mean that Being is identical with Change

and Rest, and thereby shows that the preceding LE~IKTwr does not refer to non-identity; and the statement at 252 d that it is impossible K V7Galv 7

Lgc-7au~o KaGL

a-7c•v KVEL~eCOa is without qualification. Plato seems to forget the

/LELLS with urc&~'

that is necessary to the changelessness of any Form, and (if Runci- man is right) the

/•':LS with KIV7CSr involved in its being known. It is perhaps

a pity that Runciman does not consider, if only to dismiss, interpretations according to which the

Ef8•&/ydv7) here discussed are not Platonic Forms. But

if they are Forms, and self-predicational, possibly these passages are deliberate over-statements of the case against mutual predication, which 256 b 6 f. is intended to modify. A rather similar difficulty arises at 255 d, where OdraEpov is treated as not partaking of rd Ka' ai;7d. Here perhaps 0J7Epov is specially used in distinction from -r OJ7Epov as 'that which is different'. However that may be, to deny (with Runciman) that LETr'XEW here stands for the copula does not solve the problem, and is therefore hazardous.

Runciman thinks that the Form of Being is a vowel-Form presupposed in every subject-predicate sentence. 'Theaetetus sits' means 'Theaetetus partakes of Being in relation to Sitting'. This view receives no support from the text elsewhere, and is fraught with serious difficulties. Does 'Being is different from Identity' mean 'Being partakes of Being in relation to Difference in relation to Identity'? Again, the auvvdxovra of 253 c enable Kinds auvLpplyvvaOa. If Being achieves this through its own ability to 'mix', then how is it, since all that is blends with Being, that some Forms cannot be combined ? It seems odd, too, that the

avU•yAOK') 7i6v EL&OV involved in such a sentence as 'Theaetetus

sits'-on Runciman's view simply the (UtIy•AOK'4 of Being with Sitting-should bear so little relation to the meaning of the statement.

THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 39

Inevitably there are points that one would wish to query. Would Plato have said that in the Philebus he had 'solved to his satisfaction' the problem of the Theaetetus, how (or why) we make mistakes? At 250 c, is KaG- 72)V a;i70-oi uay apa r7 0v or'7E E7r)KEV

OJ'•E KELvra~L an erroneous deduction' from the argument

that Being is a Form distinct from Change and Rest? It need not mean that Rest and Change cannot be predicated of Being, but only that changing and resting are not parts of the essential nature or dbat of r- Ov. (On p. 94, for 255 c 1-4 read 250 c 1-4.) But Runciman is convincing in his argument that while Plato distinguishes the identitative sense of dvat, he in general assimilates the existential and copulative senses. He well remarks that at 256 e 3-6 IErd'EXEL 70ro 5vro cannot mean 'partakes of Existence' because of the

iroA;i•iy dEr' rm 0v that follows. It would seem that for Plato existing not only entailed, but virtually consisted in, being such-and-such. Several good suggestions are made, for example that in the Theaetetus the exposition of the dream-theory ends at 202 b 7 (this avoids a discrepancy); in b 8-c 5 Plato is simply tying in the 'dream' with his present context. Again, at 244 b 9-1o Plato is not confusing attribution and identity, but means that 'for those who say there is only one thing in the universe, it is ridiculous to say that there can be two of anything, whether names or anything else'. In general, this is a useful and interesting study. University of Manchester R. S. BLUCK

ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICAL THEORIES

FRIEDRICH SOLMSEN: Aristotle's System of the Physical World. (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, xxxiii.) Pp. ix+468. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press (London: Oxford University Press), I960. Cloth, 6os. net. THE sub-title of this work is 'A Comparison with his Predecessors', and though this indicates Solmsen's method of approach to the elucidation of Aristotle's physical system-or systems-it does less than justice to the analytical acumen and sympathetic appreciation with which he interprets Aristotle's own physical theories. Aristotle emerges as a more tentative and more flexible genius than the conclusiveness of many of his arguments and the uncompromising clarity of his logic have sometimes seemed to indicate, and Solmsen gives us a more realistic judgement of his greatness and a keener appreciation of his significance, both in the questions he raises and in the answers he gives, than could be achieved by any attempt to distort his discussions into one comprehensively consistent theory. He does this not only by emphasizing the positive merits of Aristotle's thinking, but by showing clearly the defects. 'Patience is a virtue, and we may try to be patient with Aristotle's forgetfulness; but this forgetfulness goes astonishingly far when Aristotle asserts that there are "no more than two simple movements" (scil. upward and downward). And when we read that a body neither heavy nor light could move only by compulsion and would thereby be carried an infinite distance, our patience is beginning to be over- taxed' (p. 299). 'His belief in the four Platonic elements is unshakable.... It would be naive to think that the deduction of our treatise produces results that he did not know beforehand.... "Powers" which cannot serve or would complicate the theory unduly are ruthlessly eliminated-or arguments valid