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Plato and the Irrational1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

E. R. Dodds
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to enquire into Plato's attitude towards a group of related problems which at the present time have assumed an unusual importance. By ‘the irrational’ I mean that surd element in human experience, both in our experience of ourselves and in our experience of the world about us, which has exercised so powerful—and as some of us think, so perilous—a fascination on the philosophers, artists, and men of letters of our own day.

That contemporary problems and interests should determine the questions which we address to the great thinkers of the past is entirely natural and proper. But he who uses this approach needs to be alive to its dangers. Such contemporary interests have very frequently determined not only the questions which scholars have asked, but also the answers which they have put into the mouths of the defenceless dead. Too often we unconsciously identify a past thinker with ourselyes, and distort his thoughts to make him the mouthpiece of our own preconceptions; or else, unconsciously identifying him with our opponents, we belabour him with gusto, serene in the assured knowledge that he cannot hit back.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 65 , November 1945 , pp. 16 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1945

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References

2 Future historians will, I believe, recognise in this preoccupation with the surd element the governing impulse of our time, the δαίμων or Zeitgeist which in different guises has haunted minds as various as Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger in philosophy; Jung in psychology; Sorel, Pareto, Spengler in political theory; Yeats, Lawrence, Joyce, Kafka, Sartre in literature; Picasso and the surrealists in painting.

3 Phaedo 65B, 79CD, Rep. 509D ff., etc.

4 In the popular sense of the term, at least, Socrates was far from being an unqualified ‘rationalist’: his attitude to his δαιμόνιον is sufficient proof of his respect for that intuitive wisdom whose sources escape the probe of the intelligence; and his intellectualism did not prevent him from being, in Festugière's words, ‘un maître de vie intérieure’ (Conemptation et Vie Contemplative chez Platon 73). Cf. also Jaeger, , Paideia II. 65 ff.Google Scholar

5 And, it would seem, Democritus. : fr.83 .

6 Cf. Hackforth, , C.Q. 22 (1928) 39 ff.Google Scholar, whose arguments appear to me unanswerable.

7 Rep. 428E–9A, cf. Phd. 69C.

8 Phaedo 82AB, Rep. 500D, and the passages quoted below from Philebus and Laws.

9 Politicus 297DE, 301DE; cf. Laws 739DE.

10 21DE.

11 Rep. 486A.

12 663B, cf. 733A.

13 663D.

14 Apol. 38A. Prof. Hackforth has lately (CR 59 [1945] 1 ff.) sought to convince us that Plato remained loyal to this maxim throughout his life. But though he certainly paid lip service to it as late as the Sophist (230C–E), I see no escape from the conclusion that the educational policy of the Republic, and still more clearly that of the Laws, is in reality based on very different assumptions. Plato could never confess to himself that he had abandoned any Socratic principle; but that did not prevent him from doing it. Socrates' θεραπεία ψυχῆς surely implies respect for the human mind as such; the techniques of suggestion and other controls recommended in the Laws seem to me to imply just the opposite.

15 In the Laws ἔπῳδή and its cognates are continually used in this metaphorical sense (659E, 664B, 665C, 666C, 670E, 773D, 812C, 903B, 944B). Cf. Callicles' contemptuous use of the word, Gorg. 484A. Its application in the early dialogue Chamides (157A–C) is significantly different: here the ‘incantation’ turns out to be a Socratic cross-examination. But in the Phaedo, where the myth is an ἐπῳδή (114D, cf. 77E–78A), we already have a suggestion of the part which ἐπῳδαί were to play in the Laws.

16 Laws 731C, 860D.

17 Plato's recognition of an irrational element in the soul was seen in the Peripatetic School to mark an important advance beyond the intellectualism of Socrates (Magna Moralia 1.1,1182a 15 ff.); and his views on the training of he irrational soul, which will respond only to an irrational ἐθισμός, were later invoked by Poseidonius in his polemic against the intellectualist Chrysippus (Galen, , de placitis Hippocratis et Platonis p. 466Google Scholar f. Kühn, cf. 424 f.).

18 482BC.

19 351DE, 440B, 554D, 603D.

20 586E.

21 227D–28E.

22 86B–87B. The passage is quoted by Galen (Scripta Minora II. 49. 12Google Scholar ff. Müller) as showing that Plato recognised the influence of body on mind.

23 644DE.

24 803B–4B.

25 713CD.

26 716C.

27 902B, 906A; cf: Critias 109B.

28 716A: for the implication cf. e.g. 774C.

29 486A, cf. Theaet. 173C–E, Ar. E.N. 1123b 32.

30 Meno 100A, Phaedo 62B.

31 81E–82B.

32 6. 7. 6 Cf. ibid. Porphyry apud Aug. Civ. dei 10. 30; Iamblichus apud Nemes. nat. hom. 2 (P.G. 40, 584A); Proclus, in Tim. III. 294. 22 ff.Google Scholar

33 Laws 942AB: ‘The principal thing is that no man and no woman should ever be without an officer set over him, and that none should get the mental habit of taking any step, whether in earnest or in jest, on his individual responsibility: in peace as in war he must live always with his eye on his superior officer, following his lead and guided by him in his smallest actions … in a word, we must train the mind not even to consider acting as an individual or know how to do it.’

34 On later developments of the theme of the unimportance τὰ ἀνθρώπινα see Festugière, in Eranos 44 (1946) 376 ff.Google Scholar For man as a puppet cf. M. Ant. 7. 3, Plot. Enn. 3.2.15(I. 244. 2 Volk.).

35 W. Theiler, Zur Geschichte der Teleologischen Naturbe trachtung bis auf Arisloteles; Pease, A. S., ‘Coeli Enarrant,’ Harvard Theol. Rev. 34 (1941) 163 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 98B–99C.

37 46CD.

38 709AB; cf. 677A, Tim. 22CD.

39 896E.

40 Strom. 5. 14. 92. 5f.

41 897B. Cf. Politicus 270A.

42 e.g., Grube, in his excellent book Plato's, Thought, 146Google Scholar.

43 Grube translates ‘Is there only one soul, or are there more than one?’ But the context surely requires us to supply, not, but εἴναι τὸν οὐρανὸν διοικεῑν.

44 906A.

45 897D.

46 791A.

47 30A.

48 176A.

49 For the relation between order in the human soul and order in Nature cf. esp. Tim. 90CD, Epin. 982AB.

50 Philosophy 9 (1934) 285Google ScholarPubMed.

51 364B–E.

52 905D–7D.

53 909D–10E. Cf. Harv. Theol. Rev. 33 (1940) 174Google Scholar.

54 909B, 933A–E. He clearly disbelieves in necromancy; on magic his attitude is agnostic, but seems to incline towards scepticism.

55 248D. For Plato's opinion of μάντεις cf. also Politicus 290C, Laws 908D. But he did not reject such people entirely: he gives them a function in his State (Laws 828B), and we hear of a μάντις who hap studied under him in the Academy (Plut., Dion 22Google Scholar).

56 Apol. 22BC, Meno 99CD.

57 Tim. 71D–72B. Cornford contrasts Pindar fragm. 131S. (116B.) and Ar. π. φιλοσ. fragm. 10.

58 67C, 80E, 83A–C. Cf. Festugière, , Contemplation et Vie Contemplative chez Platon 61 ff., 123 ff.Google Scholar

59 Glaube der Hellenen II. 250Google Scholar.

60 Tim. 40DE, Phdr. 246C. Cf. Epinomis 984D, where the one seems definitely contemptuous.

61 247A. But here one may suspect that they have an astral status: see below, p. 25.

62 Tim. 41A–D.

63 Rep. 427B; Laws 717AB.

64 loc. cit.

65 Laws 904A; cf. 885B and (if the text is sound) 891E.

66 Euthyphro 6A–C; Rep. 377D ff.

67 Phdr. 229C–30A.

68 Laws 738BC.

69 Rep. 427BC; cf. Laws 828A.

70 Rep. 414B–15D; Laws 663D.

71 On this attitude towards popular religion and its deplorable consequences, cf. the remarks of Walbank, F. W., JHS 64 (1944) 14 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It seems to me, however, misleading to suggest as Professor Walbank does that Plato's motive ‘was unquestionably the maintenance of privilege.’ Plato was not so simple a character as all that.

72 Rep. 500CD, 613AB; Theaet. 176B. Cf. Tim. 29E.

73 Ep. II 314A.

74 Cf.Stocklein, , ‘Über die philosophische Bedeutung von Platons Mythen,’ Philol. Supp. Band xxx. iii (1937)Google Scholar.

75 Gorg. 527A, Phaedo 114D. Tim. 29CD.

76 Unless they are to be identified with the άίδιοι θεοί of Tim. 37C6. Cornford's interpretation of this disputed passage can hardly, I think, be right: it destroys the antithesis between ἀιδίων and γεγονός. But θεῶν may be a gloss (Taylor).

77 Maker also of the Forms, if we are to generalise from the passage about the ‘ideal bed’ in the Republic (597B–D).

78 Cf. Hackforth, , C.Q., 30 (1936) 4 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Festugière, , L'Idéal religieux des Grecs et l'Évangile 187 ff.Google Scholar; Solmsen, , Plato's Theology 113 f.Google Scholar

79 Mind N.S. 47 (1938) 190.

80 323D.

81 28C. In this sense I cannot fully agree with Grube's remark (Plato's, Thought 178Google Scholar) that there was never, for Plato, any antagonism between his religion and his philosophy.

82 Phaedo 114D.

83 508A.

84 335A. For the sense of μηνύουσιν cf. Rep. 366B.

85 85CD.

86 Platon I. 234 ff.

87 Aristotle 131 ff. (English edition).

88 ‘Plato und Zarathustra,’ Vorträge Bibliothek Warburg 1924–1925, 20 ff.Google Scholar

89 Bidez, J., ‘Platon, Eudoxe de Cnide, et l'Orient,’ Bull. Acad. Belg., Classe des Lettres, 1933, 195 ff., 273 ff.Google Scholar ‘Les Couleurs des Planètes dans le Mythe d'Er,’ ibid. 1935, 257 ff; Bidez-Cumont, , Les Mages Hellénisés I. 12 ff.Google Scholar

90 78A.

91 Index Acad. Herculan. col. iii, p. 13 Mekler.

92 Pliny N.H. 30. 3; cf. Jaeger l.c. The avatar idea is a speculative inference from the 6000-year interval said by Eudoxus to separate Zoroaster from Plato (cf. the cautious remarks of Nock, , JHS 49 [1929] 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

93 122A.

94 Aristotle frs. 6, 8, 12, 19 Walzer, , Met. 1091 b8Google Scholar; Hermodorus, , Diog. L. prooem. 2Google Scholar; Ponticus, Heraclides, Plut., adv. Col. 14, 1115AGoogle Scholar.

95 886A.

96 Theophrastus attributed a dualism of this type to Plato and the Pythagoreans in common (Metaph. 33, p. 322Google Scholar. 14 Br.). Other passages in Ritter and Preller, § 71.

97 Crat. 397CD.

98 fragm. 752 Pearson; cf. also O. T. 660.

99 Symp. 220D (a passage which will hardly be claimed as reflecting Persian influence).

100 Diels, , Vors. 14Google Scholar A 12.

101 For the deep impression made on himby the new astronomy cf. Laws 821A–E.

102 Cf. Laws 967B, Ar. π. φιλοσ. fr. 21 Walzer; and Cornford, Plato's, Cosmology 173Google Scholar.

103 Cumont has quoted Renan's remark that ‘Avant que la religion fût arrivée à proclamer que Dieu doit être mis dans l'absolu et l'idéal, c'est à dire hors du monde, un seul culte fut raisonnable et scientifique, ce fut le culte du Soleil’ (Dialogues et fragments philosophiques 168).

104 Cf. Nilsson, in Harv. Theol. Rev. 33 (1940) 1 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who concludes that between them ‘Greek philosophy and popular belief paved the way for the lasting and dominating belief in the stars.’

105 987D–88A, cf. 986E–87A.

106 252C–53C, 247A; cf. Bidez, , Bull. Acad. Belg. 1933, 287 ff.Google Scholar

107 Bidez' posthumous work Eos is not yet available to me.