Yesterday I
opened my post with the words: ‘Socrates says in the Phaedrus that in his two speeches on love ‘two forms’ (eidê) were involved, and ‘that it would
be very agreeable if we could seize their significance in a scientific fashion’
(ei autoin tên dunamin technê̢ labein
dunaito tis, ouk achari, 265c9-d1; translations from the Phaedrus in this entry are R.
Hackforth’s, unless stated otherwise).’ In doing so I combined a direct
quotation with my paraphrase. I did so, for Hackforth made two mistakes in
translating the words I paraphrased, and I didn’t want to distract attention
from the important remark with which he commented on the way in which Plato
referred his outline of dialectic to his two speeches on love. But the mistakes
he made deserve attention. In his translation the paragraph is as follows:
‘For the
most part I think our festal hymn has really been just a festive entertainment;
but we did casually allude to a certain pair of procedures, and it would be
very agreeable if we could seize their significance in a scientific fashion
(265c8-d1).’
Hackforth’s ‘For
the most part I think our festal hymn has really been just a festive
entertainment’ stands for Socrates’ Emoi
men phainetai ta men alla tô̢ onti paidia̢ pepaisthai. But Socrates’ words
are not limited to his second speech, ‘the festal hymn’. Rowe translates: ‘To
me it seems that the rest really was
playfully done, by way of amusement.’ Rowe correctly avoids limiting Socrates’
reflection to the ‘festal hymn’, but he wrongly translates ta men alla as ‘the rest’, as if Socrates
contrasted ‘the rest’ with the ‘two principles of method’ (duoin eidoin) of which he is going to talk. Walter Hamilton in his translation
of the dialogue makes the same mistake as Rowe: ‘though the rest of the speech was
really no more than a jeu d’esprit’,
combining it with the mistake Hackforth made, i.e. limiting Socrates’
reflection to the ‘festal hymn’.
Hackforth’s ‘but
we did casually allude to a certain pair of procedures, and it would be very
agreeable if we could seize their significance in a scientific fashion’ stands
for Socrates’ toutôn de tinôn ek tuchês
rêthentôn duoin eidoin, ei autoin tên dunamin technê̢ dunaito labein tis,
ouk achari. Hackforth refers Socrates’ toutôn
de tinôn ek tuchês rêthentôn (which Jowett brilliantly translates ‘in
these chance fancies of the hour’) ‘to a certain pair of procedures’, i.e. to
Socrates’ duoin eidoin, which is
wrong. Socrates’ toutôn de tinôn ek
tuchês rêthentôn (‘in these chance fancies of the hour’) refers to
Socrates’ two speeches on love in their totality. Rowe makes the same mistake: ‘but
by chance two principles of method of the following sort were expressed’. Hamilton
in this respect correctly: ‘yet in its [‘in their’ Socrates speaks in plural
about his two speeches (toutôn de tinôn),
reserving the dual for the ‘two forms’ ,duoin
eidoin, i.e. Hackforth’s ‘pair of procedures’, Rowe’s ‘two principles of
method’, Hamilton’s ‘two methods of reasoning’] random utterances two methods
of reasoning can be discerned’.
Jowett translated: ‘I mean to say that the composition was
mostly playful (Emoi men phainetai ta men alla tô̢ onti paidia̢ pepaisthai). Yet in these chance fancies
of the hour (toutôn de tinôn ek tuchês rêthentôn)
were involved two principles (duoin eidoin) of which we should be too
glad to have a clearer description if art could give us one (ei autoin tên
dunamin technê̢ dunaito labein tis, ouk achari).’
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