Plato, Republic, Paul Shorey (Translator), 7.524

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

← Previous Next →

[524] Or is the operation of each of them as follows? 524a In the first place, the sensation that is set over the hard is of necessity related also to the soft,¹ and it reports to the soul that the same thing is both hard and soft to its perception.” “It is so,” he said. Then, said I, “is not this again a case where the soul must be at a loss² as to what significance for it the sensation of hardness has, if the sense reports the same thing as also soft? And, similarly, as to what the sensation of light and heavy means by light and heavy, if it reports the heavy as light, and the light as heavy?” 524b “Yes, indeed,” he said, “these communications³ to the soul are strange and invite reconsideration.” “Naturally, then,” said I, “it is in such cases as these that the soul first summons to its aid the calculating reason⁴ and tries to consider whether each of the things reported to it is one or two.⁵” Of course. “And if it appears to be two, each of the two is a distinct unit.⁶” Yes. “If, then, each is one and both two, the very meaning⁷ of two is that the soul will conceive them as distinct.⁸ For if they were not separable, 524c it would not have been thinking of two, but of one.” Right. “Sight too saw the great and the small, we say, not separated but confounded.⁹ “Is not that so?” Yes. “And for¹⁰ the clarification of this, the intelligence is compelled to contemplate the great and small,¹¹ not thus confounded but as distinct entities, in the opposite way from sensation.” True. “And is it not in some such experience as this that the question first occurs to us, what in the world, then, is the great and the small?” “By all means.” “And this is the origin of the designation intelligible for the one, and visible for the other.” 524d “Just so,” he said.
“This, then, is just what I was trying to explain a little while ago when I said that some things are provocative of thought and some are not, defining as provocative things that impinge upon the senses together with their opposites, while those that do not I said do not tend to awaken reflection.” “Well, now I understand,” he said, “and agree.” “To which class, then, do you think number and the one belong¹²?” “I cannot conceive,” he said. “Well, reason it out from what has already been said. For, if unity is adequately¹³ seen by itself 524e or apprehended by some other sensation, it would not tend to draw the mind to the apprehension of essence, as we were explaining in the case of the finger.

Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Republic (English) (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 5-6. Shorey, Paul, translator. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1935-37 (printing).)

Editions (1)

Πολιτεία Perseus (Platonis Opera Tomus IV: Tetralogia VIII. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.) — 7.524 focus

[524] ἢ 524a ὧδε ποιεῖ ἑκάστη αὐτῶν· πρῶτον μὲν ἡ ἐπὶ τῷ σκληρῷ τεταγμένη αἴσθησις ἠνάγκασται καὶ ἐπὶ τῷ μαλακῷ τετάχθαι, καὶ παραγγέλλει τῇ ψυχῇ ὡς ταὐτὸν σκληρόν τε καὶ μαλακὸν αἰσθανομένη;
οὕτως, ἔφη.
οὐκοῦν, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, ἀναγκαῖον ἔν γε τοῖς τοιούτοις αὖ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπορεῖν τί ποτε σημαίνει αὕτη ἡ αἴσθησις τὸ σκληρόν, εἴπερ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ μαλακὸν λέγει, καὶ ἡ τοῦ κούφου καὶ ἡ τοῦ βαρέος, τί τὸ κοῦφον καὶ βαρύ, εἰ τό τε βαρὺ κοῦφον καὶ τὸ κοῦφον βαρὺ σημαίνει; 524b
καὶ γάρ, ἔφη, αὗταί γε ἄτοποι τῇ ψυχῇ αἱ ἑρμηνεῖαι καὶ ἐπισκέψεως δεόμεναι.
εἰκότως ἄρα, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις πρῶτον μὲν πειρᾶται λογισμόν τε καὶ νόησιν ψυχὴ παρακαλοῦσα ἐπισκοπεῖν εἴτε ἓν εἴτε δύο ἐστὶν ἕκαστα τῶν εἰσαγγελλομένων.
πῶς δʼ οὔ;
οὐκοῦν ἐὰν δύο φαίνηται, ἕτερόν τε καὶ ἓν ἑκάτερον φαίνεται;
ναί.
εἰ ἄρα ἓν ἑκάτερον, ἀμφότερα δὲ δύο, τά γε δύο κεχωρισμένα 524c νοήσει· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἀχώριστά γε δύο ἐνόει, ἀλλʼ ἕν.
ὀρθῶς.
μέγα μὴν καὶ ὄψις καὶ σμικρὸν ἑώρα, φαμέν, ἀλλʼ οὐ κεχωρισμένον ἀλλὰ συγκεχυμένον τι. ἦ γάρ;
ναί.
διὰ δὲ τὴν τούτου σαφήνειαν μέγα αὖ καὶ σμικρὸν ἡ νόησις ἠναγκάσθη ἰδεῖν, οὐ συγκεχυμένα ἀλλὰ διωρισμένα, τοὐναντίον ἢ ʼκείνη.
ἀληθῆ.
οὐκοῦν ἐντεῦθέν ποθεν πρῶτον ἐπέρχεται ἐρέσθαι ἡμῖν τί οὖν ποτʼ ἐστὶ τὸ μέγα αὖ καὶ τὸ σμικρόν;
παντάπασι μὲν οὖν.
καὶ οὕτω δὴ τὸ μὲν νοητόν, τὸ δʼ ὁρατὸν ἐκαλέσαμεν. 524d
ὀρθότατʼ, ἔφη.
ταῦτα τοίνυν καὶ ἄρτι ἐπεχείρουν λέγειν, ὡς τὰ μὲν παρακλητικὰ τῆς διανοίας ἐστί, τὰ δʼ οὔ, ἃ μὲν εἰς τὴν αἴσθησιν ἅμα τοῖς ἐναντίοις ἑαυτοῖς ἐμπίπτει, παρακλητικὰ ὁριζόμενος, ὅσα δὲ μή, οὐκ ἐγερτικὰ τῆς νοήσεως.
μανθάνω τοίνυν ἤδη, ἔφη, καὶ δοκεῖ μοι οὕτω.
τί οὖν; ἀριθμός τε καὶ τὸ ἓν ποτέρων δοκεῖ εἶναι;
οὐ συννοῶ, ἔφη.
ἀλλʼ ἐκ τῶν προειρημένων, ἔφην, ἀναλογίζου. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἱκανῶς αὐτὸ καθʼ αὑτὸ ὁρᾶται ἢ ἄλλῃ τινὶ αἰσθήσει 524e λαμβάνεται τὸ ἕν, οὐκ ἂν ὁλκὸν εἴη ἐπὶ τὴν οὐσίαν, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τοῦ δακτύλου ἐλέγομεν·

Notes on the current edition

Republic

1. Cf. Theaet. 186 ff., Tim. 62 B, Taylor, Timaeus, p. 233 on 63 D-E, Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 222 and 225, Diels, Dialex. 5 (ii.3 p. 341). Protag. 331 D anticipates this thought, but Protagoras cannot follow it out. Cf. also Phileb. 13 A-B. Stallbaum also compares Phileb. 57 D and 56 C f.

2. Plato gives a very modern psychological explanation. Thought is provoked by the contradictions in perceptions that suggest problems. The very notion of unity is contradictory of uninterpreted experience. This use of ἀπορεῖν (Cf. 515 D) anticipates much modern psychology supposed to be new. Cf. e.g. Herbert Spencer, passim, and Dewey, How We Think, p. 12

we may recapitulate by saying that the origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion, or doubt

; also ibid, p. 62. Meyerson, Déduction relativiste p. 142, says

Mais Platon . . . n’avait-il pas dit qu’il était impossible de raisonner si ce n’est en partant d’une perception?

citing Rep. 523-524, and Rodier, Aristot. De anima, i. p. 191. But that is not Plato’s point here. Zeller, Aristot. i. p. 166 (Eng.), also misses the point when he says

Even as to the passage from the former to the latter he had only the negative doctrine that the contradictions of opinion and fancy ought to lead us to go further and to pass to the pure treatment of ideas.

3. For ἑρμηνεῖαι Cf. Theaet. 209 A.

4. Cf. Parmen. 130 A

τοῖς λογισμῷ λαμβανομένοις

5. Cf. Theaet. 185 B, Laws 963 C, Sophist 254 D, Hipp. Major 301 D-E, and, for the dialectic here, Parmen. 143 D.

6. Or, as the Greek puts it, both one and other. Cf. Vol. 1. p. 516, note f on 416 A. For ἕτερον Cf. What Plato Said, pp. 522, 580, 587-588.

7. γε vi termini Cf. 379 B, 576 C, Parmen. 145 A, Protag. 358 C.

8. κεχωρισμένα and ἀχώριστα suggest the terminology of Aristotle in dealing with the problem of abstraction.

9. Plato’s aim is the opposite of that of the modern theorists who say that teaching should deal integrally with the total experience and not with the artificial division of abstraction.

10. The final use of διά became more frequent in later Greek. Cf. Aristot. Met. 982 b 20, Eth. Nic. 1110 a 4. Gen. an. 717 a 6, Poetics 1450 b 3, 1451 b 37. Cf. Lysis 218 B, Epin. 975 A, Olympiodorus, Life of Plato,Teubner vi. 191, ibid. p. 218, and schol. passim, Apsines, Spengel i. 361, line 18.

11. Plato merely means that this is the psychological origin of our attempt to form abstract and general ideas. My suggestion that this passage is the probable source of the notion which still infests the history of philosophy, that the great-and-the-small was a metaphysical entity or principle in Plato’s later philosophy, to be identified with indeterminate dyad, has been disregarded. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, 84. But it is the only plausible explanation that has ever been proposed of the attribution of that clotted nonsense to Plato himself. For it is fallacious to identify

μᾶλλον καὶ ἦττον

in Philebus 24 C, 25 C, 21 E, and elsewhere with the μέγα καὶ σμικρόν. But there is no limit to the misapprehension of texts by hasty or fanciful readers in any age.

12. To waive metaphysics, unity is, as modern mathematicians say, a concept of the mind which experience breaks up. The thought is familiar to Plato from the Meno to the Parmenides. But it is not true that Plato derived the very notion of the concept from the problem of the one and the many. Unity is a typical concept, but the consciousness of the concept was developed by the Socratic quest for the definition.

13. Cf. 523 B. The meaning must be gathered from the context.

Commentary

Commentary on Plato, Republic (Plato. The Republic, Vol 1-2. Adam, James, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902-1903.) focus

παραγγέλλει κτλ. : ‘intimates to the soul that the same thing is both hard and soft when it perceives it to be so.’ With παραγγέλλει (needlessly suspected by Stephanus) cf. Tim. 70 B τοῦ λόγου παραγγείλαντος ὥς τις ἄδικος περὶ αὐτὰ γίγνεται πρᾶξις. The English translators, together with Schneider, appear to take ὡς with αἰσθανομένη (“that it feels the same thing to be both hard and soft” D. and V.). But such a construction is difficult (cf. Kühner Gr. Gr. II p. 652) and the meaning scarcely satisfactory. It should be remembered that touch does not always report that an object is both hard and soft, but only when it feels the object hard in relation to one thing and soft in relation to another, and similarly in other cases. This limitation is expressed by αἰσθανομένη (as well as by <*>ν τοῖς τοιούτοις), and explains its emphatic position. I have sometimes thought that < οὕτως> should be added after αἰσθανομένη, but the object can be supplied from ὡς—μαλακόν. Prantl understands the construction in somewhat the same way as I do.

ἀπορεῖν . The word is Socratic: see on 515 D. It is worthy of note that Plato, like Socrates, makes intellectual ἀπορία the beginning of Education. See App. II.

αὕτη ἡ αἵσθησις means ‘this present sensation,’ not the sense of touch in general, and similarly with ἡ τοῦ κούφου κτλ., which J. and C. erroneously understand as a special sense, apparently ‘the same which modern philosophers call the sense of resistance.’ But Plato nowhere recognises any such sense, and if he did, he would call it ἡ τοῦ κούφου καὶ βαρέος, and not ἡ τοῦ κούφου καὶ ἡ τοῦ βαρέος. The parallel in τί ποτε σημαίνει—λέγει shews that Plato means: ‘what do the sensation of light and the sensation of heavy mean by light and heavy, if they indicate, the one that the heavy is light and the other that the light is heavy?’ The last clause contains an elegant chiasmus. Schneider understands αὕτη ἡ αἴσθησις as ἡ αἴσθησις τοῦ σκληροῦ, but it is better taken as deictic: cf. 516 B, 523 C. Otherwise his view agrees with mine.

ἄτοποι . Herwerden's ἄποροι is an elegant conjecture, in view of ἀπορεῖν in A and 524 E; but the text is more forcible.

ἑρμηνεῖαι =‘communications,’ not ‘interpretations,’ as D. and V. translate. αἴσθησις is as it were the ἑρμηνεὺς καὶ ἄγγελος ( Crat. 407 E ) between the object of the perception and the soul: cf. παραγγέλλει in A.

λογισμόν . See on λογιστικῷ 525 B.

οὐκοῦν ἐὰν κτλ. Thus: Perception reports ‘This finger’ (let us say) ‘is big-and-little.’ Thereupon the soul is puzzled ( ἀπορεῖ), and calls in νόησις. If big-and-little appear (viz. to νόησις) not one but two, then each of them appears distinct from the other, and one: cf. V 476 A and Parm. 143 D . ‘Accordingly—if each appears one, and both together two— νόησις, conceiving as it does of two ( τά γε δύο), will conceive of them as separate; for otherwise it would have conceived, not of two, but of one.’ Plato's object is to make out that νόησις, in order to clear up the συγκεχυμένον τι of sensation ( διὰ τὴν τούτου σαφήνειαν) is compelled to view sensation's μέγα‐καὶσμικρόν (for example) separately, i.e. as τὸ μέγα and τὸ σμικρόν. These antinomies consequently force us to ask ‘What is the great?’ ‘What is the small?’ etc.; and just herein consists their periagogic or educative value, for to such questions the theory of Ideas alone furnishes an adequate and final answer ( Phaed. 99 B ff.). κεχωρισμένα νοήσει perhaps=‘are separate to νόησις,’ but the ordinary view, which understands νόησις as subject to νοήσει, is better. It may have been this passage of the Republic, or Phaed. 96 E ff., or both which inspired the line of Theopompus τὰ δὲ δύο μόλις (sic) ἕν ἐστιν, ὥς φησιν Πλάτων (D. L. III 26).

καὶ ὄψις : ‘sight also’ sc. as well as νόησις.

ἠναγκάσθη . See 523 D note

ποτέρων is intrinsically better than πότερον, which has considerable MS authority (including Α^{1}, Ξ and Μ), and is read by Hermann and Baiter. Cf. τῶν ἀγωγῶν ἂν εἴη κτλ. 525 A. For the error see Introd. § 5.

εἰ δ’ ἀεί τι κτλ. A visible ἕν is always seen both as ἕν and πολλά (one wood, many trees; one tree, many branches etc.).

ἐν αὐτῷ is not ἐν τῷ ἑνί, but ‘in the case in question,’ ‘in such a case,’ “dabei” (Schneider): cf. I 339 E note

αὐτὸ τὸ ἕν . See on αὐτῶν τῶν ἀριθμῶν 525 D.

Plato Republic 7.524

Paul Shorey (Translator)

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

Current edition Perseus

Notes on the current edition

Commentary

Stable identifiers