UUID: 49c361f4-82d8-11e5-9783-119a1b5d0361
This ebook was created with StreetLib Write (http://write.streetlib.com)by Simplicissimus Book Farm
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The
Philebus appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which
the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element
has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the
development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the
Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a
corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in
the persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of
confusion and incompleteness in the general design. As in the
speeches of Thucydides, the multiplication of ideas seems to
interfere with the power of expression. Instead of the equally
diffused grace and ease of the earlier dialogues there occur two or
three highly-wrought passages; instead of the ever-flowing play of
humour, now appearing, now concealed, but always present, are
inserted a good many bad jests, as we may venture to term them. We
may observe an attempt at artificial ornament, and far-fetched modes
of expression; also clamorous demands on the part of his companions,
that Socrates shall answer his own questions, as well as other
defects of style, which remind us of the Laws. The connection is
often abrupt and inharmonious, and far from clear. Many points
require further explanation; e.g. the reference of pleasure to the
indefinite class, compared with the assertion which almost
immediately follows, that pleasure and pain naturally have their seat
in the third or mixed class: these two statements are unreconciled.
In like manner, the table of goods does not distinguish between the
two heads of measure and symmetry; and though a hint is given that
the divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of this in the
final summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences does not
appear; though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the highest
good, the sciences and arts and true opinions are enumerated in the
fourth class. We seem to have an intimation of a further discussion,
in which some topics lightly passed over were to receive a fuller
consideration. The various uses of the word 'mixed,' for the mixed
life, the mixed class of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of
pleasure and pain, are a further source of perplexity. Our ignorance
of the opinions which Plato is attacking is also an element of
obscurity. Many things in a controversy might seem relevant, if we
knew to what they were intended to refer. But no conjecture will
enable us to supply what Plato has not told us; or to explain, from
our fragmentary knowledge of them, the relation in which his doctrine
stood to the Eleatic Being or the Megarian good, or to the theories
of Aristippus or Antisthenes respecting pleasure. Nor are we able to
say how far Plato in the Philebus conceives the finite and infinite
(which occur both in the fragments of Philolaus and in the
Pythagorean table of opposites) in the same manner as contemporary
Pythagoreans.
