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Philebus 55c-62a and Revisionism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard Mohr
Richard Mohr*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

Philebus 5Sc-62a has traditionally been viewed as one of the more likely passages in the late Platonic dialogues where the theory of Ideas may be construed to be present in the same manner as in the Republic with its sharply dualistic epistemology and ontology. There is certainly a similarity of language between the passage and the Republic: in the Philebus the pure, clear, certain/stable, true, unalloyed, eternally existing, always changlessly the same, really real objects of the philosopher's reason and knowledge sound like Platonic Ideas. Roger A. Shiner, following in the steps of G.E.L. Owen, has offered four new arguments which attempt to show that in this passage Plato in fact is not committed to the theory of Ideas in the form in which it appears in the Republic, that in this passage there is no Republic-style gulf between knowledge and opinion, reality and becoming. I wish to argue that none of these arguments succeed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 9: New Essays on Plato , 1983 , pp. 165 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1983

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References

1 Tò σαϕὲζ χαὶ τὸ χαθαρόν, 57cl; τὸ βέβαιον χαὶ τὀ ἀƛηθὲζ χαὶ ϵἰƛίχρινϵζ, 59c2-3; τὰ ὄν τα ἀϵί, 59a7; τὰ ἀϵὶ χατὰ αὐτὰ ὡσαύτωζ ἀμϵιχτότατα ἔχοντα, 59c3-4; ἡ τῶν ϕιƛοσοϕούντων [τέχνη], 57c2; [νοῦζ χαὶ ϕρόνησιζ, 59dl] ἐν ταῖζ πϵρὶ τὸ ὂν ὄντωζ ἐν νοίαιζ … χϵίμϵνα, 59d4-5.

2 Shiner, Roger A., Knowledge and Reality in Plato's Philebus (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974) 53–66Google Scholar. For two sympathetic reviews see Woodruff, Paul, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 17 (1979) 79–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Huby, Pamela, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 9 (1979) 351-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a critique and redefense see Fahrnkopf, Robert, ‘Forms in the Philebus,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy, 15 (1977) 202-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Shiner, , ‘Must Philebus 59a-c Refer to Transcendent Forms?', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 17 (1979) 71-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. J.C.B. Gosling in his recent commentary does not even suppose that the similarity in language between the two dialogues constitutes prima facie evidence for similarity of doctrine and therefore does not bother offering arguments to defuse the similarities in language (Plato|Philebus, [Oxford: Clarendon 1975], 222-4 and see his notes on 58a2, 58a4, and 59b4).