Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/413

Rh PLATO. appearance. Plato was obliged, therefore, to un- dertake tliis task, — to find a Being instead of a Becoming^ and vice versa, and then to show how the manifold existences stand in relation to each other, and to the changeable, i. e. to phenomena. Existence, Plato concludes, can of itself consist neither in Rest nor in Motion, yet still can share in both, and stand in reciprocal community (p. 250, a. &c.). But certain ideas absolutely exclude one an- other, as rest, for example, excludes motion, and sameness difference. What ideas, then, are capable of being united with each other, and what are not 80, it is the part of science {dialectics) to decide (p. 252, e.). By the discussion of the relation wb'ch the ideas of rest and motion, of sameness and difference, hold to each other, it is explained how motion can be the same, and not the same, how it can be thought of as being and yet not being ; consequently, how the non-existent denotes only the variations of existence, not the bare nega- tion of it (p. 256, d. &c.). That existence is not at variance with becoming, and that the latter is not conceivable apart from the former, Plato shows in the case of the two principal parts of speech, and their reciprocal relation (p. 258. c, &c. 262). From this it becomes evident in what sense dialectics can be characterised at once as the science of under- standing, and as the science of the self-existent, as the science of sciences. In the Phaedrus (p. 261 ; comp. pp. 266, b. 270, d.) it is presented to us in the first instance as the art of discoursing, and there- with of the true education of the soul and of intel- lection. In the Sophistes (p. 261, e, &c.) it appears as the science of the true connection of ideas ; in the Philebus (p. 16, c.) as the highest gift of the gods, as the true Promethean fire ; while in the Books on the Republic (vi. p. 511, b.) pure ideas, freed from all fm-m and presupposition, are shown to be grasped and developed by it. In the Theaetetus simple ideas, reached only by the spontaneous activity of thought, had presented themselves as the necessary conditions of know- ledge ; in the Sophistes, the objects of knowledge come before us as a manifold existence, containing in itself the principles of all changes. The existence of things, cognisable only by means of conception, is their true essence, their idea. Hence the asssr- tion {Parmen. p. 135,b.) that to deny the reality of ideas is to destroy all scientific research. Plato, it is true, departed from the original meaning of the word idea (namely, that of former figure) in which it had been employed by Anaxagoras, Diogenes of ApoUonia, and probably also by Democritus ; inas- much as he understood by it the unities (tmSes, fxoj/aSey) which lie at the basis of the visible, the changeable, and which can only be reached by pure thinking {(ltKpiprjs Siduoia) [Phaedr. p. 247, de Rep. ii. p. 380, ix. p. 585, b. vi. p. 507, b., Phileb. p. 15, Tim. p. 51, b.); but he retained the characteristic of the intuitive and real, in opposi- tion to the mere abstractness of ideas which be- long simply to the thinking which interposes itself. He included under the expression idea every thing stable amidst the changes of mere phenomena, all really existing and unchangeable definitudes, by which the changes of things and our knowledge of them are conditioned, such as the ideas of genus and species, the laws and ends of nature, as also the principles of cognition, and of moral action, and the essences of individual, concrete, VOL. lu. PLATO. 401 thinking souls (Phileb. p. 15, a., de Rep. vii. p. 582, a., Tiin. p. 51, Fhaedo, p. 100, b. p. 102. c. &c). To that only which can be conceived as an entirely formless and undetermined mass, or as a part of a whole, or as an arbitrary relation, do no ideas whatever correspond {Parm. p. 130,c.). But how are we to understand the existence of ideas in things ? Neither the whole concep- tion, nor merely a part of it, can reside in the things ; neither is it enough to understand the ideas to be conceptions, which the soul beholds togetJier with the things (that is, as we should call them, subjectively valid conceptions or categories), or as bare thoughts without reality. Even when viewed as the archetypes of the changeable, they need some more distinct definition, and some security against obvious objections. This question and the difficul- ties which lie against its solution, are developed in the Parmenides, at the beginning of the dialogue, with great acuteness. To introduce the solution to that question, and the refutation of these diffi- culties, is the evident intention of the succeeding dialectical antinomical* discussion of the idea of unity, as a thing being and not being, according as it is viewed in relation to itself and to what is different. How far Plato succeeded in separating ideas from mere abstract conceptions, and making their reality distinct from the natural causality of motion, we cannot, here inquire. Neither can we enter into any discussions respecting the Platonic methods of division, and of the antinomical defini- tions of ideas, respecting the leading principles of these methods, and his attempt in the Cratj'lus to represent words as the immediate copy of ideas, that is, of the essential in things, by means of the fundamental parts of speech, and to point out the part which dialectics must take in the development of language. While the foundation which Plato lays for the doctrine of ideas or dialectics must be regarded as something finished and complete in itself, yet the mode in which he carries it out is not by any means beyond the reach of objections ; and we can hardly assume that it had attained any remarkably higher development either in the mind of Plato himself, or in his lectures, although he appears to have been continually endeavouring to grasp and to represent the fundamental outlines of his doctrine from different points of view, as is manifest especially from the argumentations which are preserved to us in Aristotle's work on Plato's ideas. (Brandis, de perditis Aristotelis Libris de Ideis et de Bono, p. 14, &c, ; also Hand- buch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Romisclien Philo- sophies vol. ii. p. 227, &c.) That Plato, however, while he distinctly sepa- rated the region of pure thinking or of ideas from that of sensuous perception and the world of phe- nomena, did not overlook the necessity of the com- munion between the intelligible and the sensible world, is abundantly manifest from the gradations which he assumes for the development of our cog- nition. In the region of sense — perception, or con- ception, again, he distinguishes the comprehensioa of images, and that of objects (flKaala and tt/o-tis), while in the region of thinking he separates the knowledge of those relations which belong indeed convenient, word, antinomical (afitifiomisch) will be evident to any one who examines the Greek word di/Ttvo/iiKos, to which it is equivalent. [Transl.J D D
 * The meaning of the somewhat novel, though