Method of Collections and Divisions

 

Socrates: To me it seems (E!moi\ me\n fai/netai) that the rest (ta\ me\n a1lla) really (tw~| o1nti) was playfully done, by way of amusement (paidia=| pepai=sqai); but by chance two principles of method of the following sort were expressed (tou/twn de/ tinwn e0k tu/xhj r9hqe/ntwn duoi=n ei0doi=n), and it would be gratifying if one could grasp their significance in a scientific way (ei0 au0toi=n labei=n du/naito/ tij, ou0k a1xari).

Phaedrus: What were these (Ti/nwn dh/;)?

Socrates: First, there is perceiving together and bringing into one form items that are scattered in many places (Ei0j mi/an te i0de/an sunorw~nta a1gein ta\ pollaxh=| diesparme/na), in order that one can define each thing (i3na e3kaston o9rizo/menoj) and make clear (dh=lon poih=|) whatever it is that one wishes to instruct one’s audience about on any occasion (peri\ ou[ a2n a0ei\ dida/skein e0qe/lh|). Just so with the things said now about love (w#sper ta\ nundh\ peri\ E!rwtoj), about what it is when defined (o4 e1stin o9risqe/n): whether it was right or wrong (ei1t’ eu] ei1te kakw~j e0le/xqh), the speech was able to say what was at any rate clear and self-consistent because of that (to\ gou=n safe\j kai\ to\ au0to\ au9tw~| o9mologou/menon dia\ tau=ta e1sxen ei0pei=n o9 lo/goj).

Phaedrus: And what is the second kind of principle you refer to (To\ d’ e3teron dh\ ei]doj ti/ le/geij), Socrates (w} Sw&kratej;)?

Socrates: Being able to cut it up again, form by form (To\ pa/lin kat’ ei1dh du/nasqai diate/mnein), according to its natural joints (kat’ a1rqra h[| pe/fuken), and not try to break any part into pieces (kai\ mh\ e0pixeirei=n katagnu/nai me/roj mhde/n), like an inexpert butcher (kakou= magei/rou tro/pw| xrw&menon); as just now the two speeches (a0ll’ w#sper a1rti tw_ lo/gw) took the unreasoning aspect of the mind as one form together (to\ me\n a1fron th=j dianoi/aj e3n ti ei]doj e0labe/thn), and just as a single body naturally has its parts in pairs, with both members of each pair having the same name (w#sper de\ sw~matoj e0c e9no\j dipla= kai\ o9mw&numa pe/fuke), and labelled respectively left and right (skaia/, ta\ de\ de/cia klhqe/nta), so too the two speeches regarded derangement as naturally a single form in us (ou3tw kai\ to\ th=j paranoi/aj w(j e4n e0n h9mi=n pefuko\j ei]doj h9ghsame/nw tw_ lo/gw), and the one cut off the part on the left-hand side (o9 me\n to\ e0p’ a0ristera\ temno/menoj me/roj), then cutting it again, and not giving up until it had found among the parts a love which is, as we say, ‘left-handed’ (ou0k e0panh=ken pri\n e0n au0toi=j e0feurw_n o0nomazo/menon skaio/n tina e1rwta), and abused it with full justice (e0loido/rhsen ma/l’ e0n di/kh|), while the other speech led us to the parts of madness on the right hand side (o9 d’ ei0j ta\ e0n decia=| th=j mani/aj a0gagw_n h9ma=j), and discovering and exhibiting a love which shares the same name as the other, but is divine (o9mw&numon me\n e0kei/nw|, qei=on d’ au] tina e1rwta e0feurw_n kai\ proteina/menoj), it praised it as cause of our greatest goods (e0ph=|nesen w(j megi/stwn ai1tion h9mi=n a0gaqw~n).

Phaedrus: Very true (A0lhqe/stata le/geij).

***

In my preceding post I pointed to Plato’s misrepresentation of Lysias’ speech, I did not discuss it. Yet, it deserves to be discussed. Let me turn back to the moment when Phaedrus finished reading the speech, and asked: ‘How does the speech seem to you, Socrates? Doesn’t it seem to you to be extraordinarily well done?’ Socrates replied: ‘Superhumanly, my friend; enough to make me beside myself. And it was because of you, Phaedrus, that I felt as I did, as I looked to you, because you seemed to me to be positively beaming with delight at the speech as you read it.’

Socrates’ reply can best be seen in the light of his discussion of Lysias’ speech at 262c-264e. At 262c Socrates suggests investigating the speech of Lysias and his two speeches in order to see what was done scientifically and unscientifically in them. He begins by investigating Lysias’ speech, asking Phaedrus to read its beginning. Phaedrus reads: ’You know how the matters are with me, and you have heard me say how I think it is to our advantage that this should happen; and I claim that I should not fail to achieve what I ask because I happen not to be in love with you. Those in love repent of the services they do when their desire ceases –‘

At this point Socrates stops Phaedrus, for he has heard enough: ‘Stop. We must say, then, where Lysias goes wrong and what he does unscientifically.’

What follows is a discussion about two kinds of words; words like ‘iron’ or ‘silver’, about the meaning of which we all agree, and the words like ‘just’ or ‘good’, about which ‘we disagree both with each other, and with ourselves (263a9-10). As Socrates points out, it is in discussion of this second, disputable words and concepts that rhetoric can display its power (263b). Having established this, Socrates asks whether ‘love’ belongs with the undisputed cases or the disputed ones. Phaedrus answers: ‘With the disputed, surely’ (263c9).

At 263d1-3 Socrates asks: ‘Tell me this, whether I defined love when beginning my speech.’ Phaedrus: ‘Yes indeed you did, most emphatically.’ Socrates asks: ‘Did Lysias too compel us when beginning his speech on love to take love as some one definite thing, which he himself had in mind, and did he then bring the whole speech which followed to its conclusion by ordering it in relation to that? Shall we read the beginning again?’ Phaedrus hesitates: ‘If you think we should; but what you’re looking for, isn’t there.’ But Socrates insists: ‘Quote it, so that I can hear the man himself.

Phaedrus reads: ’You know how the matters are with me, and you have heard me say how I think it is to our advantage that this should happen; and I claim that I should not fail to achieve what I ask because I happen not to be in love with you. Those in love repent of the services they do when their desire ceases –‘

Socrates has heard enough: ‘Indeed he seems to be a long way from doing what we’re looking for, since he doesn’t even begin at the beginning, but from the end, trying to swim through his speech in reverse, on his back, and begins from the things which the lover would say to his beloved when he has already finished. Or am I wrong, Phaedrus, my dear?’ Phaedrus cannot but agree: ‘What he makes his speech about, Socrates, is certainly an ending.’

Socrates asks: ‘What about the rest? Don’t the elements of the speech seem to have been thrown in a random heap?’ (264b3-4) It is his conviction that with Lysias’ speech it could not have been otherwise, which makes him see it in terms of the epigram inscribed on the tomb of Midas. Socrates explains: ‘it makes no difference whether any part of it is put first or last’.

Dramatically, the discussion took place before 415, for in 415 Phaedrus was accused of sacrilege in profaning the Eleusinian mysteries and fled to exile. Dramatically, it was Phaedrus’ enchantment that prevented Socrates from paying attention to what Lysias wrote. But when Plato wrote the Phaedrus, what prevented him from paying attention to what Lysias actually wrote in the speech, which would have shown to Plato that viewing it through the lens of the Midas epigram grossly misrepresented the speech? I believe that Plato dictated the Phaedrus to a scribe. When he read the quoted beginning of Lysias’ speech, he had enough of it and tossed it to the scribe, asking him to copy the rest of it.

Plato’s misrepresentation of Lysias’ speech may be inexcusable, but it is understandable. Far more difficult is to understand Plato’s misrepresentation of his Palinode, which he committed in his outline of the method of collections and divisions, with which I’ve opened this post.

Pointing at Plato’s misrepresentation of the Palinode I probably stand alone among the students of Plato. True, R. Hackforth noticed some aspects of the incongruence between the Palinode and Plato’s reference to it in his methodical outline, but glossed over it: ‘Socrates’ account of the dialectical procedure followed in his speeches is far from exact. Nevertheless it may be said to be substantially true.’ My claim is that Socrates’ account of the Palinode in his discussion of the method of divisions is substantially untrue.

Let me give Socrates’ outline of the method:

Collecions: ‘First, there is perceiving together and bringing into one form items that are scattered in many places, in order that one can define each thing and make clear whatever it is that one wishes to instruct one’s audience about on any occasion. Just so with the things said now about love, about what it is when defined: whether it was right or wrong, the speech was able to say what was at any rate clear and self-consistent because of that.

Divisions

Phaedrus: And what is the second kind of principle you refer to?

Socrates: Being able to cut it up again, form by form, according to its natural joints, and not try to break any part into pieces, like an inexpert butcher; as just now the two speeches took the unreasoning aspect of the mind as one form together, and just as a single body naturally has its parts in pairs, with both members of each pair having the same name, and labelled respectively left and right, so too the two speeches regarded derangement as naturally a single form in us, and the one cut off the part on the left-hand side, then cutting it again, and not giving up until it had found among the parts a love which is, as we say, ‘left-handed’, and abused it with full justice, while the other speech led us to the parts of madness on the right hand side, and discovering and exhibiting a love which shares the same name as the other, but is divine, it praised it as cause of our greatest goods.’

The question we must ask is: how did Plato’s lover discover true – platonic – love in the Palinode? To this question I devoted my post ‘The philosopher-lover catches his boy’, published on September 29. Let me quote:

‘Just as at the beginning of this tale we divided each soul into three forms, two like horses and the third with the role of charioteer, so now let this still stand. Of the horses, one, we say, is good, the other not; but we did not describe what the excellence of the good horse was, or the badness of the bad horse, and that is what we must now say. Well then, the first of the two, which is on the nobler side, is erect in form and clean-limbed, high-necked, nose somewhat hooked, white in colour, with black eyes, a lover of honour when joined with restraint and a sense of shame, and a companion of true glory, needing no whip, responding to the spoken command alone; the other is crooked in shape, gross, a random collection of parts, with a short, powerful neck, flat-nosed, black-skinned, grey-eyed, bloodshot, companion of excess and boastfulness, shaggy around the ears, deaf, hardly yielding to whip and goad together. So when the charioteer first catches sight of the light of his love, warming the whole soul through the medium of perception, and begins to be filled with tickling and pricks of longing, the horse which is obedient to the charioteer, constrained then as always by shame, holds itself back from leaping on the loved one; while the other no longer takes notice of goading or the whip from the charioteer, but springs powerfully forward, and causing all kinds of trouble to the companion and the charioteer forces them to move towards the beloved and mention to him the delights of sex. At the start the two of them resist, indignant of being forced to do terrible and improper things; but finally, when there is no limit to their plight, they follow its lead, giving in and agreeing to do what it tells them. Now they come close to the beloved and see the flashing of his face. As the charioteer sees it, his memory is carried back to the nature of beauty, and again sees it standing together with self-control on a holy pedestal; at the sight he becomes frightened, and in sudden reverence he falls on his back, and is forced at the same time to pull back the reins so violently as to bring both horses down on their haunches, the one willingly, because of its lack of resistance to him, but the unruly horse much against its will. When they are a little way off, the first horse drenches the whole soul with sweat from shame and alarm, while the other, when it has recovered from the pain caused to it by the bit and its fall, scarcely gets its breath back before it breaks into angry abuse, repeatedly reviling the charioteer and its companion for cowardly and unmanly desertion of their agreed position; and again it tries to compel them to approach, unwilling as they are, and barely concedes when they beg him to postpone it until a later time. When the agreed time comes, and they pretend not to remember, it reminds them; struggling, neighing, pulling, it forces them to approach the beloved again to make the same proposition, and when they are nearby, head down and the tail outstretched, teeth clamped on its bit, it pulls shamelessly; but the same happens to the charioteer as before, only still more violently, as he falls back as if from a husplex; still more violently he wrenches the bit back, and forces it from the teeth of the unruly horse, spattering its evil-speaking tongue and its jaws with blood, and thrusting its legs and haunches to the ground delivers it over to the pains. When the same thing happens to the evil horse many times, and it ceases from its excesses, now humbled it allows the charioteer with his foresight to lead, and when it sees the boy in his beauty, it nearly dies with fright; and the result is that now the soul of the lover follows the beloved in reverence and awe. So because he receives every kind of service, as if equal to the gods, from a lover who is not pretending but genuinely in love, and because he naturally feels affection for a man who renders him service, even if perhaps in the past he had been prejudiced against him by hearing his schoolfellows or others say it is shameful to associate with a lover, and repulses the lover for that reason, as time goes on he is lead both by his age, and by necessity, to admit him to his company; for it is fated that evil will never be friend to evil, nor good fail to be friend to good.

I cannot see how Plato’s description in the Palinode, of how the lover and his beloved found true love, can be squared with finding and exhibiting a divine love presented in his outline of the method of divisions.