PLATO AND ART

A NEW ANALYSIS OF THE "PHILEBUS" *

BY

H. J. M. BROOS ' To state our problem right away: is there any manner of recon- ciling, in our own minds, the writer of so many beautiful pages, the immortal author of the Dialogues, and, in a certain sense and in the estimation of the ages, the highpriest of the Beautiful,-with the castigator of Art, who surprises his modern readers by launching very severe criticisms of it on the same pages, that eternalize his own genius? There is nobody who does not get from reading Plato a strong impression of inner coherence of thought and of logical consistency. In all probability, Plato was a harmonious personality; the question is, in our case: how can we prove, that he was so? How can we solve the paradox, that seems to exist between his receptivity to beauty and his hostility to art? . The answer to these questions must be found in Plato's Dialogues; we may find a clue especially in the "Philebus", a dialogue that still conceals much conclusive material: conceals indeed, for the under- standing of our material depends on the understanding of the inner coherence of the dialogue, which. in itself is a much vexed problem. Thus, it seems most appropriate to present both problems together and interlacing, and to accept the principal line of development in our dialogue as a guide.

The opening question is about the good i): is this identical with

*) I would very much like to acknowledge here the great debt that I feel to owe to Mrs. Dr J. Ch. Hofkes-Brukker for her constant encouragement and actual assistance. Without evading my own responsibility for the opinions expressed I would like to declare that this article is as much hers as my own. Mr. C. D. Bicknell of Cambridge has had the invaluable kindness to improve my lapses in English idiom. 1) Both Bury and Hackforth take ocyod36vin the sense of r6 ay«66v. I gladly take the opportunity to express my admiration for the fundamental work done 114 pleasure or with intelligence? The first discussion of this point leads up to the acknowledgment, that for the solution of this problem it is necessary to investigate the notions of and in all their aspects. Here, it would seem, Socrates introduces the Ideas as a preparation for this investigation. But actually he refuses to use these Ideas as a reliable foundation for further discussion; on the contrary he starts to ask questions about them (15 bc): 1-whether they are real, 2-how it is possible, that such Ideas though separate yet most firmly constitute that Unity (which appa- rently must be known to the reader, vlmv 3-whether an Idea can communicate itself to the world of appearances. However, far from leaving these questions unanswered (as it is sometimes assumed that he does), Plato has made it the object of this very dialogue to find an answer for them. Socrates' words (64 a 1-3) make it clear, that he doesn't investigate the nature of To &YiX8óv in the human soul only for its own sake. By the knowledge so acquired he expresses his desire to be enlightened about the nature of To &YiX8óv in the kosmos (iv T0 and as to "what form he should divine it to possess". At the end of the dialogue (65 a 2) Socrates suggests, both that and also how the Idea of Tà C'Xya0o'vcan be thought of as composed: "let us secure the Good by the conjunction of three forms, Beauty, Proportion, and Truth". This is his way of expressing the highest principle of Being, the very essence of reality, cf. Rep. 509 b 7, where he finds analogous expressions: "In like manner the good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence" 2). Recalling to our minds the words vi«v T«uTrw just mentioned, we seem inevitably to have to conclude, that by "that unity" Plato must have meant the very Idea of r6 which he had no need to speak of explicitly,because his hearers and original readers (so we probably must suppose) all the time thought about nothing other than about To by R. G. Bury in his edition of the Philebus with commentary (Cambridge 1897) and for the felicitous way this work has been continued by R. Hackforth, Plato's Examination of Pleasure (Cambridge 1945). I propose to quote from the "Phile- bus" in Professor Hackforth' translation. ." 1- ._____«,_ 2) In Jowett's translation.