Long on Plato Part II

Long on Plato Part II
by Fred Seddon

PHAEDO

P: So let’s begin with the Phaedo. All of my works are dramatic and have their own individual dramatic setting or context, if I may use a word much favored, and with good reason, by Rand and the Objectivists. The Phaedo has a mythical setting. And the specific myth that I had in mind I tell the reader, or at least a certain kind of reader, right at the very beginning of the dialogue.

S: You’re referring to Theseus and the Minotaur story.

P: Yes, and you can see that from the following line: “The Athenians say that it is the [ship] in which Theseus sailed away to Crete with the seven youths and seven maidens, and saved their lives and his own as well.” Most of the myth is summarized in 58a-58c.

S: What else?

P: Even the “life of Socrates” that I have the character Socrates relate, is hardly the actual story of his life. It is really a shortened and very selective history of thought from the physicists, through Anaxagoras and up to Socrates himself.

S: What about Long’s use of the Phaedo?

P: He ignores what I take much pains to develop, that the Phaedo is a mythic tale, not sometime that contains my explicit philosophy. It’s a myth.

S: And are there specific complaints?

P: Yes. His first quotation from that work occurs at footnote 14. Recall, this is supposed to represent what Long calls my “substantive account of rationality” and he quotes from 100a Socrates’ statement, “But anyway, then, I set out in just this way as in each case supposing the account I judge to he strongest, I posit as true those things that seem to be me to harmonise [sic] with it … and those that do not, I posit as not true.”

S: And what is your complaint?

P: Among the things this ignores is the fact that Socrates refers to this as his second best way to answer the question of the section under consideration.

S: And what is that question? Does it concern a “substantive account of rationality” as Long claims?

P: No. It is a reply that Socrates gives to Cebes in answer to his “Wear-out” objection to the argument Socrates gave about the immortality of the soul. Socrates says, “My reply to your objection would involve a full treatment of the cause(s) of generation and destruction.” (96a)

S: But doesn’t that involve keeping the context and remembering what question is on the table even if that question came into play four pages before the Long citation?

P: It does, and that is part of my complaint. If I took great pains to state what is at issue, a commentator could at least take cognizance of what I wrote.

S: But surely that is not the total context.

P: Right. The total context is the dialogue as a whole. Cebes “Wear-out” objection isn’t the first time he objected to one of Socrates’ arguments for immortality of the soul. The first time occurs at 70a. Notice that when Cebes states his second objection at 86e I have him say, “For me the argument stills appears to be at the same point [as my previous objection]. So Cebes is expressing his dissatisfaction with the whole argument from 70a to 84a which was supposed to answer his first objection.

S: And that would lead us back to the discussion before Cebes’ first objection.

P: Exactly. But you would never know this reading Long.

S: When you put it that way, it does seems that Long is ripping things out of context without any consideration of that very context.

P: Of course.

MENO

S: Let’s move on to the Meno.

P: Long references the Meno twice.

S: No, he refers to it three times, don’t forget there a quotation that occurs in the text to footnote 23.

P: I stand corrected.. Anyway, to begin. Long quotes the Meno in order to address two points, the ineptly named “Meno’s paradox” and the even more ineptly named “Plato’s Theory of Recollection.”

S: Let’s deal with the former first.

P: Ok. Who is the speaker? Do you remember?

S: Meno isn’t it? No, wait, I think its Socrates. I know for sure it isn’t Anytus, but since I haven’t taught this dialogue in years, I’m not sure.

P: Perhaps it will help us to have exactly what I wrote along with the names of the characters who are speaking.

S: Characters? You mean character-singular--don’t you.

P: No, Long’s ellipsis indicates not just the omission of a few words from one speaker, but the joining of two speakers into one quotation! (Imagine joining Galt and Mouch in one quotation) And notice Long doesn’t tell us that. He treats the text like an essay instead of a dialogue.

S: Well, give us the text. .

P: MENO: But how will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don't know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know?
SOCRATES: I know what you mean. Do you realize that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for. (80d-81a)

S: And what did Long’s quotation look like.

P: Long 14. “For how do you propose to search for something you do not know? Or even if you should happen upon it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know? . . . For one cannot search for what one knows anyway--for one knows it, and for such a thing at least there is no need to search: for what one does not know--for one does not know what to search for either!”

S: Now I see why I couldn’t guess the author of the quotation--it was actually a quilt quotation made from two different statements of the paradox by two different speakers, Meno and Socrates.

P: Yes and by doing that Long is led to believe that the paradox has two parts, which he names the Search Paradox and the Recognition paradox.

S: Instead of what?

P: Instead of one paradox, which was a fairly standard “trick argument” that Meno’s second handed memory has deranged. (In fact, in Greek MENWN (meno) is a deranged form of MNHMH (memory) and I have it make a jingle at one point in the text--I didn’t think of English at the time.) I have Socrates straighten the paradox out before proceeds. Meno doesn’t even notice the change Socrates makes and simply asks Socrates if he thinks it’s a good argument. To which Socrates replies that he doesn’t think it is a good argument at all.

S: So if you’re right, Jesus, listen to me saying “If you’re right” You’re PLATO. On Plato you’re the expert. What I wanted to say is that there is no Recognition Paradox, that’s just a mistake on Meno’s part.

P: Right. The “real” paradox is the one Socrates gives, i.e., that one can’t enquire into that which one knows, nor that which one doesn’t know.

S: And the recollection story follows immediately after that.

P: Which Long quotes on p. 15. He then calls the recollection story “Plato’s theory.”

S: It’s not?

P: No way. If I actually held such a theory my best student, Aristotle, would have mentioned it in his little treatise On Memory and Recollection (PERI MNHMHS KAI ANAMNHSEWS) but my name does not appear even once in that work.

S: What about the demonstration with the slave boy? No, on second thought let me withdraw the question.

P: Why?

S: I just recollected that every time I teach the Meno I asked the class after we have read the slave boy episode How many think that Socrates’ argument actually demonstates that learning is recollection? I’ve never had even one student who thought it did. It is so transparent that Socrates is leading the witness. This coupled with the fact that Socrates points out to Meno that what the slave really recollects is not the math answer but that he (the slave) does not know the correct answer. He learns his own ignorance. Very Socratic.

P: Right. And don’t forget the final hint I left in the work. At 86b I have Socrates express his lack of confidence in the whole recollection story except for one point, viz., that we should always struggle to learn what we do not know. This will make up better and braver. This refers back to 81d where he said we must have courage and not faint in the search for wisdom.

S: I recollect.

P: You can stop that. Anyway, so much for my so-called theory of recollection. Shall we proceed to the SYMPOSIUM quotation?

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