Apr

16

A Comment on Plato’s "Lovers"

Filed Under philosophy, plato 

I’m all over the place preparing for oral exams - I’ve always been one to read like 8 books at once, and not get any done, but I’m exceptionally bad nowadays.

The problem on my mind right now is from Plato’s “Lovers.” There, Socrates confronts a man trained in music (our equivalent - liberal arts, given all that went into drama/epic recitation then). That man claims that philosophy is noble, but he attempts two formulations of what it is that fail - first, he claims simply that philosophy is much learning. This fails because if what is good for the body is analogous to what is good for the soul, a certain “measure” must be taken into account for what the soul ingests. Then he tries to assert that the philosopher is not one who is expert at everything, but is second best at everything, sort of like a pentathlete. This fails because someone “second best” at everything probably can’t advise expertly on any given thing, and the philosopher might be one who could on any given thing.

Now I have summarized the dialogue so far in terms of quality and quantity of knowledge. Each attempt the interlocutor of Socrates makes to understand philosophy, he’s attempting to say a “quantity” of knowledge defines philosophy, but not adjusting appropriately for “quality.” The final attempt he makes is with Socrates and is incredibly cryptic. In it, Socrates begins by saying that punishment makes certain animals better - horses and dogs, for example. So it must make people better. But one would have to recognize good and evil in order to see whether people are getting better or how they may be bettered or whether they can actually get better.

Since that “one” would be a person, the same rule that applies to “one” would have to apply to “many,” and vice versa (137d). I hold this is the final “quality”/”quantity” confusion, and notice how the “confusion” is, literally, that of morality. This leads our interlocutor to hold all the sorts of rule are the same, tyrannical and kingly and political and household rule (see Aristotle, Politics, bk. 1 for a refutation of this), and makes him unable to see that yes, lawgiving is an art, but judging who is capable of doing it is probably not a task of the sort which common opinion can handle.

The confusion, of course, is that of neglecting quantity entirely for the sake of quality. The highest knowledge indeed can be known by all men: that’s precisely why it is so valuable, and so rare. Most men don’t give a damn about what could make them truly happy in life. Morality is actually a higher standard that has been lowered to be achievable by most men; the well-ordered soul would act as if the Torah was written on the heart. So what ends up happening is that knowledge of good and evil ends up being that which nearly every man has, and all men are fit to judge each other.

This impasse is gotten around by Socrates by turning knowledge of good and evil into a “ruling art,” and establishing that some rule and are just and moderate - i.e. Socrates gets around the impasse by saying gods rule men always, in effect. Then he plays a further trick by holding the interlocutor to what he started the conversation with, the idea that philosophy is noble. Philosophy would seem to involve rule, if it is noble, so philosophers rule everything since they couldn’t take second place or merely sit and learn all the time. Thus, with this “proof,” the argument ends.

The question we are left with is: what is the quality and quantity of knowledge necessary for a philosophic understanding? The answer is obvious: there has to be unlimited exploration and a continual taking in of knowledge, but what acts as a limit on that, what puts the philosopher in a role and makes him not a “sponge” but a person with a function, is the “punishing”/”bettering” agenda. Lawgivers punish, perhaps to better. The punishment the philosopher deals out literally does no harm - the interlocutor is humiliated - and there certainly is betterment. For all the gibberish that characterizes the argument at the end - which of course isn’t gibberish, it is packed for those who care to understand - at least one thing is clear: the interlocutors arguments can’t stand, and hints as to what philosophy really is are spread throughout the conversation.

Comments

Leave a Reply