The Seal of the Author Paradigm, Logos and Myth in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In Partial Fulfillment of the requirements For a Ph.D in Philosophy Department of Philosophy Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © John Conor David Barry, Ottawa, Canada, 2014 Acknowledgements My advisor and the internal and external committee were instrumental in shaping the form of my thesis. I would like to thank Catherine Collobert, Francisco Gonzalez, Graeme Hunter, Antoine Côté and Louis-André Dorion. Many colleagues working on related areas of research have been instrumental in providing advice and support. Jean-Phillipe Ranger, Robbie Moser, Dave Zettel, Devin Shaw, Matt Wood, Andra Striowski, Matt Robinson, Matt McLennan, Monica Sandor and David Tkach. Many people supported me on the writing and editing challenges over the past few years, including Carol Robertson, Norah Mallory, Siobhan Kerr and Delores Furlong. I have appreciated their help. My greatest debt is to my parents, Tom and Carolyn Barry who have stayed with me on this long journey and continued to believe in me. I will forever be grateful. My sister, Catherine Barry, and my uncle and aunt, Lionel and Patsy O’Connor, as well as my aunt, Mary Reeves, reached out to me many times when the going was tough. There are many others who helped in countless different ways. The list is too lengthy but my sincere gratitude goes out to them. ii Abstract Recent trends in scholarship on Plato’s philosophy have shifted emphasis from an almost exclusive focus on inductive and deductive logical techniques, and even ethics, to the treatment of image, myth and the literary dimension, above all in the work of scholars such as Kahn, Rowe and Gonzalez. In keeping with this trend, recent scholars, like Gill, Notomi and Collobert, have postulated the need for a philosophical image on the basis of a reading of the Sophist and Statesman. This thesis examines the unique significance given to the term ‘paradigm’ in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman. Paradigm is Plato’s term for image. A close reading of these dialogues shows, however, that such an image is “philosophical” or dialectical only insofar as it leads to a proportionate grasp of higher, invisible, ethical realities. This is the connection the specialist work on image in the Sophist and Statesman bears to wider scholarship on the literary dimension of Plato. Plato provides, in the Sophist and Statesman, three ways of making use of paradigms: (1) the use of an analogy, like the city and the soul and the weaving analogy, which is functionally equivalent to the analogy of the city and the soul, (2) an inductively defined universal essence, for example, the universal essence of a human being, like Socrates, and (3) an ethical character, like the Socrates Plato presents in his dramatic composition, or other characters presented in myth. The distancing effect Plato uses in the Sophist and Statesman suggests that Plato, himself, is the philosophical artist or image-maker. This is an important topic for one unifying reason. The question of a philosophical image in Plato remains unanswered or inadequately answered. Although the Sophist and Statesman treat this question, the exceeding technicality of these dialogues has lead commentators, unanimously, to treat the exploration of image and essence in these Eleatic dialogues, as a kind of island, separated from Plato’s work. My study, by leading readers of Plato to a greater awareness of the importance of these works for Plato on image and Plato as artist, turns this island into a peninsula. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................ i Abstract ........................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. iii Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 Section I: Paradigm in the Sophist and Statesman: The Dialectical Use of an Image . 16 1.1 Imitation in Republic X and the Sophist ........................................................................ 18 1.1.1 Mimesis and the Dramatic Form of Dialogue ........................................................ 18 1.1.2 Republic X and the Sophist ..................................................................................... 25 1.1.3 Forms and Imitation ............................................................................................... 30 1.1.4 Paradigm and the Visible Model ............................................................................ 46 1.1.5 Sophist and Poet as Image-Maker .......................................................................... 49 1.2 Paradigm as Model which Brings True Judgment about the Invisible Ethical Order of the Soul ................................................................................................................................ 60 1.2.1 Paradigm of the City and the Soul in the Republic ................................................ 67 1.2.2 Paradigms of Angling and Weaving in the Sophist and the Statesman .................. 73 1.2.3 Paradigm and Correct Proportion ........................................................................... 78 1.2.4 The Paradigm of Weaving Defined through Collection and Division ................... 85 1.2.5 Paradigm and the True Art of Measurement .......................................................... 91 1.2.6 Paradigms as Visible Models which Lead to the Apprehension of Invisible, Ethical Realities ........................................................................................................................... 95 Section II: Dialectical Ethics: Elenchus and Division in the Sophist and Statesman ...... 104 2.1 Definition and Proof .................................................................................................... 118 2.1.1 The Complementarity of Dialectic Methods of Definition and Elenchic Refutation in Relation to Rhetoric in Plato’s Dialogues ................................................................. 118 2.1.2 Dialectic and Rhetorical Composition .................................................................. 141 2.2 The Method of Collection and Division ...................................................................... 151 2.2.1 Methodology of Division ..................................................................................... 151 2.2.2 Subordination of the Definitional Method of Division Ethics ............................. 159 2.2.3 Protagoras and Socrates in the Theaetetus ........................................................... 172 2.3 Truth and Falsity and the Plausible or Possible .......................................................... 183 iv 2.3.1 True Propositions as Measured Statements and False Propositions as Illusions.. 193 2.3.2 Correct Division as Measured Statement in the Statesman .................................. 203 2.4 Division of Statesman as Shepherd and the Human Animal ...................................... 219 Section III: Platonic Myth ............................................................................................... 220 3.1 Platonic Mimesis and Mythmaking ............................................................................. 224 3.1.1 The Construction of Platonic Myth ...................................................................... 224 3.1.2 Myth of Kronos, Exploration of Possibility and Plato’s Reworking of Antecedent Myth ............................................................................................................................... 227 3.1.3 Platonic Mimesis .................................................................................................. 232 3.2 Plato’s Creative Transformation of Hesiod’s Myth of Kronos ................................... 237 3.2.1 Principles of Platonic Myth .................................................................................. 237 3.2.2 Depiction of the Gods in Hesiod’s Myth of Kronos and Hesiod’s Ethical Counsel to Kings.............................................................................................................................. 245 3.2.3 Authorship of Platonic Myth ................................................................................ 257 3.2.4 Description of Golden Age and Narration of the Shift from the Age of Kronos to the Age of Zeus ............................................................................................................. 264 3.2.5 Two or Three World Periods ................................................................................ 274 3.2.6 The Visitor’s Description of the Divine and Poetic Instruction ........................... 285 3.3 Socrates as Paradigm: The Statesman, The Apology and the Theban Plays ............... 302 3.3.1 Parallels between Socrates and Oedipus .............................................................. 323 3.3.2 The Critique of Tragic Lamentation in Republic X .............................................. 327 3.3.3 Questioning the Socratic Paradigm and Choosing the Life of Philosophy .......... 336 3.3.4 Rhetoric and Myth in the Definitions of the Sophist and Statesman .................... 355 3.3.5 The Weaving Paradigm