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Did Socrates Separate the Forms?1 David O. Brink; UCSD Draft of 10-25-20 DID SOCRATES SEPARATE THE FORMS?1 Abstract: Aristotle tells us that Plato separates the forms whereas Socrates does not. Aristotle himself thinks that Plato was wrong to separate the forms and that Socrates was right not to. Commentators have focused on the meaning of separation and reconstructing and assessing Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato, for the most part accepting Aristotle’s claim that Socrates did not separate the forms. This essay challenges that assumption. Separation involves the capacity for independent existence. If so, Socratic assumptions about definition, knowledge, and the primacy of character imply that the forms of the virtues not only can but do exist uninstantiated. In addition to Plato’s early dialogues, Aristotle provides some of the most important and influential evidence we have about Socrates and his relationship to Plato.2 Among the things that Aristotle tells us is that Plato separates the forms whereas Socrates does not (Metaphysics I.6, 987a31-b10; XIII.4, 1078b29-31; XIII.9, 1086a30-b12). Aristotle himself thinks that Plato was wrong to separate the forms and that Socrates was right not to (1086b3-7). Though we are free to disagree with Aristotle’s philosophical verdict about the merits of separation, we have reason to take his testimony about the content of the views of Socrates and Plato quite seriously. He was a member of Plato’s Academy for twenty years, and he presumably had better information about the views of Socrates and Plato than is available to us. Aristotle’s testimony provides evidence for distinguishing within Plato’s dialogues between Socratic and Platonic dialogues and for a broadly developmental, rather than unitarian, reading of the relation between Socrates and Plato.3 Aristotle’s claims raise a number of interpretive and systematic issues. What exactly does it mean to separate the forms? Though there are several possible forms of separation (chōrismos), Gail Fine has made a strong case in her article “Separation” for thinking that the relevant kind of separation in this context for both Plato and Aristotle is the capacity for independent existence.4 On this conception of separation, forms are separate just in case they can exist uninstantiated by sensible particulars. But even if this is what separation involves, it leaves many questions about Aristotle’s testimony unanswered. In what sense does Socrates not separate the forms? Does Plato indeed separate the forms and, if so, why? What are Aristotle’s objections to separating forms, and are these good objections to Plato? 1 I am grateful for helpful feedback from Lesley Brown, Gail Fine, Monte Johnson, and Sam Rickless. 2 As is common, I assume that Plato’s early dialogues, supplemented by Aristotle’s testimony, provide our best evidence of the philosophical views of Socrates. In particular, I assume that by relying on a combination of philosophical content, dramatic content, and stylometric analysis we can provisionally divide Plato’s dialogues into different periods and groups: early Socratic dialogues (e.g. Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Laches, Charmides, Euthydemus and Lysis), transitional dialogues (e.g. Protagoras and Gorgias), middle period Platonic dialogues (e.g. Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Symposium, Phaedrus, Parmenides, and Theaetetus), and late period Platonic dialogues (e.g. Timaeus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, and Laws). I read transitional dialogues as ones in which Plato is reflecting on and exploring the presuppositions and implications of philosophical commitments in the Socratic dialogues. 3 For a good discussion of unitarian and developmental narratives in Plato, see Terence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), Chapter 1. 4 Gail Fine, “Separation” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984): 31-87 and reprinted in Gail Fine, Plato on Knowledge and Forms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003) (my pagination for this article is indexed to the reprint in Fine’s book). Also see Gregory Vlastos, Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 256-64. 2 The nature of forms and separation is just one dimension along which to assess Aristotle’s relation to Plato.5 Although many commentators accept Aristotle’s comparative claim that Plato separated the forms, whereas Socrates did not, there has been considerable focus on interpreting and assessing Aristotle’s claims about and disagreement with Plato. 6 For instance, there is lively controversy about whether Aristotle correctly understands Plato’s reasons for separating the forms and whether Aristotle’s reasons for refusing to separate the forms are sound.7 By contrast, there seems to be less controversy about Aristotle’s testimony about Socrates, in particular, his claim that Socrates did not separate the forms.8 However, I want to take seriously some skepticism about Aristotle’s testimony about Socrates. There is an interesting interpretation of Socratic commitments about the virtues that implies that the forms of the virtues are not just separable but in fact separate. The foundation of this argument for separation is Socratic intellectualism about the virtues. Because the virtues require knowledge of definitions of the virtues — definitions that must meet some fairly exacting criteria — we should conclude that Socrates believes that no one possesses the requisite knowledge and, hence, that no one is in fact virtuous. This is skepticism, not about the possibility of virtue, but about whether anyone is in fact virtuous. If no one is virtuous, then no one instantiates the virtues. This might seem to imply straightaway that the forms of the virtues exist uninstantiated. However, that is too quick a route to separation, because we might claim that there can be and are virtuous actions and institutions even if no one is in fact virtuous, because these are the actions that a virtuous person would perform or the institutions that a virtuous polis would enact. But we remove this obstacle to separation if we adopt a principle about the primacy of character that maintains that actions only count as genuinely virtuous if performed in the right way by a virtuous person and that institutions only count as genuinely virtuous if adopted in the right way by virtuous individuals or groups. Socratic skepticism about moral knowledge and virtues of character together with this thesis about the primacy of character imply that the forms of the virtues are separate. The primacy of character is perhaps the most controversial part of this argument for Socratic separation. It is neither obviously Socratic nor obviously correct, but it has some plausibility as both an interpretive and a systematic claim. At the very least, we can defend the interesting and non-trivial conclusion that Socrates does separate the forms insofar as he embraces the primacy of character. This should give us some pause about accepting Aristotle’s testimony about Socratic assumptions about the forms. 5 Famously, conflicting developmental narratives of Aristotle’s relation to Plato are presented in Werner Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, trs. R. Robinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934) and G.E.L. Owen, “The Platonism of Aristotle” Proceedings of the British Academy 51 (1966): 125-50. More nuanced views can be found in Gail Fine, On Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) and Christopher Shields, “Plato and Aristotle in the Academy” in The Oxford Handbook of Plato, ed. G. Fine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008). 6 See, e.g., J.D. Mabbott, “Aristotle and the Chorismos of Plato” Classical Quarterly 20 (1926): 72-79; Harold Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1944); W.D. Ross, Plato’s Theory of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), ch. 10; F.M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (London: Routledge, 1939), p. 74; Terence Irwin, Plato’s Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 148-57; and Fine, “Separation,” pp. 295-98. 7 See, especially, Fine “Separation” and On Ideas. 8 R.E. Allen appears to be an exception, claiming that Socrates did separate the forms, because he distinguished between forms (universals) and their instances. See R.E. Allen, Plato’s Euthyphro and the Earlier Theory of Forms (London: Routledge, 1970), p. 136. But that cannot be the meaning of separation for purposes of evaluating Aristotle’s testimony about Socrates and Plato forms, since Aristotle himself separated the forms in that sense. See, Fine, “Separation,” pp. 295-98. 3 1. ARISTOTLE’S TESTIMONY AND SEPARATION Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all recognize the existence of forms (eide) or universals (katholou, koina) and assign them epistemological importance. But they differ in their reasons for recognizing forms, their beliefs about the nature of forms, and the epistemological significance they ascribe to forms. As with many topics in the Metaphysics and elsewhere, Aristotle situates his own views in relation to those of his predecessors, especially Socrates and Plato. For instance, in Metaphysics I.6 Aristotle contrasts Socratic and Platonic reasons for recognizing forms and their conceptions of them. For, having in his youth first become familiar with Cratylus and with the Heraclitean doctrines (that all sensible things are ever in a state of flux and there is no knowledge about them), these views he [Plato] held even in later years. Socrates, however, was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions; Plato accepted his teaching, but held that the problem applied not to any sensible thing but to entities of another kind …. Things of this other sort, then, he called Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were apart [para] from these … [987a31-b7].9 Later in Metaphysics XIII Aristotle is discussing the forms for mathematical objects, such as triangles and circles, and their relation to actual material bodies.
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