Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Summer 2005 The Limits of Philosophy: Plato's Sophist and Statesman Mark Brouwer Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Brouwer, M. (2005). The Limits of Philosophy: Plato's Sophist and Statesman (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/350 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Limits of Philosophy: Plato’s Sophist and Statesman A Dissertation Presented to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Mark Brouwer April 15, 2005 Brouwer / 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER ONE: THE ENIGMA AS UNIVERSAL PROBLEM..................................................... 17 SECTION ONE: THE NECESSSARY CONDITIONS OF LOGOS ................................................................... 17 SECTION TWO: KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF META-CRITIQUE............................................................ 26 CHAPTER TWO: THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CAPACITIES OF EXPERTISE.......... 43 SECTION ONE: MUSIC, THE ART OF HOW THINGS MIX AND DON'T..................................................... 43 SECTION TWO: UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND EXTERNAL QUESTIONS.................................................. 56 SECTION THREE: NORMAL AND EXCEPTIONAL SITUATIONS................................................................ 70 CHAPTER THREE: DIALECTIC, THE CAPACITY TO ACT AND BE ACTED UPON .......... 83 SECTION ONE: DISCERNING THE LIMITS OF REASON ........................................................................... 83 SECTION TWO: F.M. CORNFORD, THE INTUITIONISTIC ACCOUNT OF DIALECTIC .............................. 93 SECTION THREE: J.L. ACKRILL, THE STIPULATIVE ACCOUNT OF DIALECTIC...................................114 CHAPTER FOUR: PLATONIC INDIRECTION AS META-PHILOSOPHY .............................130 SECTION ONE: ESTABLISHING A NORMAL SITUATION .......................................................................130 SECTION TWO: ARGUMENT ABOUT ARGUMENT IN THE PHAEDO.......................................................134 SECTION THREE: THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE GODS AND GIANTS, EXPERT DISAGREEMENT .........146 CHAPTER FIVE: THE RULE OF LAW AND EXTERNAL AUTHORITY................................159 SECTION ONE: THE INTERDICTION OF INQUIRY..................................................................................159 SECTION TWO: REASON AND LAW IN THE CRITO................................................................................177 SECTION THREE: DWORKIN AND THE ARBITRARINESS OF EXPERT JUDGMENT................................201 CHAPTER SIX: DUE MEASURE, DISCERNING THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY ..............224 SECTION ONE: RELATIVE MEASURE AND THE FALLIBILITY OF FIRST PRINCIPLES...........................224 SECTION TWO: INQUIRY, THE CRITERION OF DUE MEASUREMENT...................................................236 SECTION THREE: POLITICAL AUTHORITY FOR THE SAKE OF LAW.....................................................251 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................269 WORKS CITED......................................................................................................................................283 Brouwer / 2 Introduction The Sophist and Statesman, read together and read as philosophical drama, are Plato’s attempt to answer one of philosophy’s most vexing questions: What is Philosophy? This dissertation will demonstrate the extent to which this question is vexing and the extent to which Plato succeeds in answering it. The fundamental problem that Plato must face—hence, the fundamental problem of this dissertation—is that it is necessary to employ philosophy in order to define philosophy if you want the resultant definition to be something more than just mere opinion. My three-year-old son is able to say “Philosophy is to think, write and talk about the most important things.” I believe it is possible for my son to be right, for his definition to be true; indeed, I believe that philosophy is primarily an activity. Nevertheless, insofar as I am an aspiring philosopher, my confidence in my son’s definition is dependent upon a justification of the definition. I assume that philosophical activity is essentially, not to say exclusively, the activity of giving accounts or explaining why. If my son is right, then the thinking, writing and talking of philosophers must be the giving of accounts or logoi. Have I not thereby assumed what philosophy is? Perhaps. What argument, or logos, justifies my assumption that to philosophize is to make arguments? Assuming that I could provide such an argument, what justifies my confidence that argument is the best way to justify things? It would certainly be a strange argument indeed that could argue for the conclusion that argument is the best way to foster confidence in the things we think; that argument is a proper way to proceed is the Brouwer / 3 premise of all argument, as a premise it is necessarily presupposed not argued for. Yet, Plato has Socrates offer just this sort of “argument” right before his execution; this is the 1 Phaedo’s argument against misology: Phd 89c-91c. I will address this passage in detail in Chapter Four, Section Two; nevertheless, it is clear that any “argument” for the importance of argument faces an immediate problem: I must first assume that argument is at least one way to arrive at (even tentative) truth before I could be convinced by an argument for the conclusion that argument is one way to arrive at truth. It seems that any argument for the validity of argument must necessarily presuppose what it is trying to prove. Yet, Plato provides just such an argument in the Phaedo. I believe that Plato succeeds, not only in arguing against the hatred of argument, but also in arguing well that argument is the best way to proceed. How is this possible? It is possible only on the condition that the argument about argument is of an essentially different “sort” from the argument about which it argues. The difficulty with distinguishing these different “sorts” of arguments should not dissuade us from recognizing the necessity of the distinction if the argument about argument is to be a good one, nor should the difficulty dissuade us from attempting to understand the distinction. Basically, Plato provides a good argument in favor of argument by writing a dialogue. Readers of the Phaedo can be rightly convinced of the value of argument by interpreting the dialogue as a dialogue, sensitive to the dramatic situation and the 1 I shall adopt the following convention for all citations from Plato: I use dialogue abbreviations with Stephanus pages and letters either to refer to general passages, e.g., Sph.217c-d, or to cite another translation, as indicated by the translator’s name within the parenthetical citation, e.g., (Sts.299b, Rowe). I shall add line numbers to Stephanus letters to indicate my own translations from Burnet’s Platonis Opera, Tomvs I-IV, e.g., Sph.232a1-6. I use my own translations in most of the dissertation and I confess that they serve the purpose of precision, as opposed to literary style or readability. Brouwer / 4 idiosyncrasies of interlocutors. That is, Plato argues for the value of argument, but only indirectly. The contrived indirection of the Platonic dialogue is just the “sort” of argument that Plato uses to argue for argument. The distinction between the argument of the Sophist and Statesman and the interlocutors’ arguments within them, is the distinction that allows Plato to do the impossible… or, at least, the ostensibly impossible. I say “impossible” because, strictly speaking, philosophy cannot define itself and have confidence in the resultant definition, at least not the sort of confidence provided by philosophical argumentation. The underlying reason that no expertise can define itself has to do with the peculiar natures of definition and expertise. We don’t need any explicit definition of ‘definition,’ in order to see the problem of self-definition. Roughly, the ‘definition’ of something demarcates that thing’s limits or boundaries; following Aristotle, definitions articulate the essence of a thing: “a definition is the account that indicates the-being-what-it-is (i.e., essence) [¶sti dÉ ˜row m¢n lÒgow ı tÚ t¤ !n e‰nai shma¤nvn]” (Topics i 5.101b37-102a1); likewise, “there is the-being-what-it-is / essence for as many as of which the account (of it) is a definition [ırismÒw] (Metaphysics Z 4.1030a6-7). For a thing to be what-it-is requires it to have definite limits; for something to be what it is requires that it be something definite and being something definite means having distinct limits according to which this thing could be distinguished from anything else. All and only things of this sort meet the condition or conditions posed by the essence. An expertise is a capacity to do something well; indeed, I would say that it is only with recourse to an