Sunday, February 18, 2018

2a Rhetoric in the Phaedrus [and in the Gorgias – with reference to Plato’s Seventh Letter]

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).’

No comments:

Post a Comment