Schleiermacher's Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato. Translated from the German by W. Dobson

Front matter

INTRODUCTIONS TO THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO. SCHLEIERMACHER'S INTRODUCTIONS TO THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN By WILLIAM DOBSON, M.A. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE. CAMBRIDGE: PMNTEU AT THE PITT PRESS, BY JOHN SMITH, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY. FOR J. & J. J. DEIGHTON, TRINITY STREET, LONDON: JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND. M.DCCC.XX.X.VI.

ADVERTISEMENT.

. The apparently unfinished state in which the present work conies before the public requires some explanation. The Author of the following Introductions died in the year 1834, having then completed the translation, into German, of all the Dialogues the Introductions to which are here given. It was his intention to have published the whole of the works of Plato upon this plan ; and we have thus to regret the loss of Introductions to the Timæus, the Critias, the Laws, and all those smaller and spurious pieces not found in the Appendices to the first and second of the three parts into which Schleiermacher divided the Platonic works. The German translation, moreover, is furnished with various notes, critical and explanatory ; a circumstance which I consider it necessary to mention, as the reader of these introductions will find in them occasional allusions to those notes.

Introduction

. The Greek Editions of the works of Plato generally prefix to them the biography of the Author from the well-known collection of Diogenes. But only the most indiscriminating attachment to an old custom could honour so crude a compilation, put together as it is without any judgment, with a translation. And Tennemann, in the life of Plato prefixed to his system of the Platonic philosophy, has already subjected to a sifting process this and the other old biographies of Plato, compared with what is found scantily dispersed in other sources. As, .then, since that time neither materially deeper investigations have been published, nor new facts discovered, affording any well-grounded hope of leaving far behind them, in their application, the labour already bestowed upon this subject, it is best to refer such readers as wish to be instructed upon that point, to what they will there find.

And there is the less need for anything further, as no one who would be a worthy reader of Plato can entertain the notion of wishing to strike out a light upon the sentiments of the philosopher, which might illuminate his works, from multifariously A ■>. told and deformed trifles, or epigrammatic answers, even were they of undoubted authenticity — especially as, in the case of such an Author, the intelligent reader under takes to learn the sentiments from the works themselves. And as regards the more important circumstances of his life, those more accurate relations, from a knowledge of which, probably, a more thorough understanding of many details in his writings might be developed, seem to be for ever so far withdrawn without the range of modern investigation, that any supposition which one might feel inclined to contribute upon these subjects, would be made at a venture; and very often in his writings we can point out, in the most decisive manner, where an allusion exists to some personal relation, without however being able to guess what it is.

Nay, even with regard to the more well-known circumstances of his life, his remarkable travels for instance, so little that is definite can be with certainty made out, that no particular use can be made of them for the chronology and arrangement of his writings, and the most we can do is, here and there to guess, with a degree of probability, at the place where the former interrupt the series of the latter. Such par ticular conjectures, therefore, will be brought forward to more advantage in those places immediately in which they may perhaps spread some light around them. It would certainly be more to the purpose, provided it were possible within the prescribed limits, to adduce something relative to the scientific condition of the Hel lenes at the time when Plato entered upon his career, to the advances of language in reference to the expression of philosophical thoughts, to the works of this class at that time in existence, and the probable extent of their circulation.

For upon these points there is not only much to explain more accurately than has been hitherto done, and some quite new matter to investigate, but there may perhaps still be questions to throw out, which, though to the professor in these subjects they must be anything but indifferent, have, however, up to the present time, been as good as not thought of at all. But to pursue in connexion what is new and ambiguous in such investi gations, would not be adapted to this place ; and some particulars even in this province, whether in the way of illustration, or of suspicion tending to confute what has been hitherto assumed, are better by all means to remain reserved for the particular places to which they refer. And what is common and well known is, moreover, pertinently set forth in the works of German writers illustrative of the history of that period of philosophy, as far as is absolutely necessary to prepare the way for the reading of the Platonic writings, so as not to grope about in the dark, and thus completely to miss, from first to last, the right point of view for the understanding and estimation of them.

For these writings are through out full of clear and covert references to almost every thing, both earlier and cotemporary. And in like man ner, also, whoever does not possess a competent know ledge of the deficient state of the language for philo sophical purposes, to feel where and how Plato is cramped by it, and where he himself laboriously extends its grasp, must necessarily misunderstand his author, and that, for the most part, in the most remarkable passages. Of the Philosophy itself we are here purposely to avoid giving any preliminary account, even were it ever so easy to do so, or possible to dispatch it in ever so small a space, inasmuch as the whole object of this new exposition of his works is to put it within the power of every one to have, through an immediate and more accurate knowledge of them alone, a view of his own of the genius and doctrines of the philosopher, quite new it may be, or at all events more perfect.

And nothing certainly could work more effectually towards preventing the accomplishment of this object than an endeavour, just at the outset, to instil into the mind of the reader any preconception whatever. Whoever, therefore, has not yet been hitherto acquainted immediately with these works, let him leave all that external reports have taught him respecting their contents, and the consequences to be drawn from them, to rest mean while upon its own merits, and endeavour to forget it ; but whoever from his own knowledge of them has already formed an opinion for himself, will soon feel how far, by means of the classification in which he here finds these writings arranged, even his own views experience an alteration, or at least combine themselves better, and gain a greater comprehensiveness and unity, from his learning to know Plato more strictly as a Philosophical Artist, than, certainly, has been hitherto the case.

For of all philosophers who have ever lived, none have had so good a right as Plato, in many respects, to set up the only too general complaint of being misunderstood, or even not understood at all. The grossest indeed of these misunderstandings have been for the most part severally removed by modern exertions deserving all our gratitude ; meanwhile, whoever observes how superficially, or with a feeling of uncertainty which they try in vain to conceal, even the best interpreters speak of the objects of particular works of Plato, or how slightly and loosely they treat of the connexion of the subject with the form in detail, as well as in ■■> general, will find traces enough to shew him that the authors of these views, however superior, have not yet generally gone upon a perfect understanding of the matter in hand, and that this is not yet brought to the point to which we might ourselves bring it even with the insufficient means we possess.

And thus that feeling of satisfaction seems to be somewhat premature, which maintains that we might now be able to understand Plato better than he understood himself; and it may excite a smile to observe how unplatonically one who entertains such a feeling comes to the investigation of Plato, who puts so high a value upon the consciousness of ignorance. He deceives himself by at least one half — by all that, I mean, in the philosophy of Plato which can only be understood by an ability duly to estimate the pervading presence of a purpose in the connexion of his writings, and, as far as possible, to divine it when not obvious at first sight. And in this view, especially, an attempt like the present is a supplement, not very easily to be dispensed with, to what others have done in other ways, and must, in proportion as it succeeds, contribute to advance the right understanding of Plato.

This must certainly be self-evident to every one ; for it cannot be denied, that besides the ordinary difficulties in the province of Philosophy of thoroughly understanding any one except a sympathetic thinker, a peculiar and additional cause exists as regards Plato, in his utter deviation from the ordinary forms of phi losophical communication. For of these forms there are two in particular, the most choice vehicles of the great bulk of what generally goes by the name of Phi losophy. First, that which is called the systematic form, because it divides the whole field into several particular compartments of sciences, and to every one of the separate parts of the whole devotes its particular work or section, in which it is regularly built up, according to plan, with rooms and stories, so that any one whose memory and fingers do not refuse to work, may measure and point out, if not without trouble, at all events without error, every particular detail ; whence an opinion easily arises, that there is something in the system, and that the student has followed and understood it.

For, however weak the foundations of these structures often are, and their compartments taken at random, they have still an attractive look of firmness and arrangement, and it is con sidered easy to understand not only the details in them selves, but also in connexion with the other parts of the edifice; and the Author himself must afford a clear guide to this by references not to be overlooked. The second form, neither more rarely used nor less favoured, is the fragmentary, which has only to deal with particular investigations, and which, from disconnected pieces, with regard to which it is difficult to be sure whether or no they are real members, or only masses capriciously and unnaturally separated from the whole body, professes, notwithstanding, to make Philosophy comprehensible. Although, then, in this case superficiality and ignorance are perfectly natural, because the authors have not even come to an understanding with themselves as to the centre point and ground upon which they stand, yet does this method assume an appearance of ease and certainty, for the reason that it defines and names at starting the object in view, and makes at once straight for it.

In this sense even the dialogistic treatment has been often applied ; and many a writer has crept into a reputation of being a happy imitator of Plato, perhaps still more Socratic and clear than he, who yet could make nothing of Plato's form of art but a loose dress for this loose method of discussion. Whoever then is spoiled by use of the expedients which these methods seem to afford, will necessarily find everything in Plato strange, and either devoid of meaning or mysterious. For although the division of Philosophy into different compartments of science was so far from being unknown to him, that he may be looked upon much rather as the first originator of it to a certain degree^ still hardly any of his writings are confined to any one of these compart ments in particular. But since he considered their es sential unity and their common law as of the greater importance, and made it pre-eminently the object of his aim, the various problems are in consequence every where multifariously involved one with another.

But whoever, on the other hand, would on this account de grade these works to the denomination of fragmentary, will yet find himself constantly embarrassed as to the real subject-matter, which is seldom verbally enunciated, and and he will be compelled secretly to confess that the Philosopher does not appear to have had the modest intention of treating only of particular subjects, but that he either was completely devoid of this, or had one much more comprehensive. Hence, then, the twofold incorrect opinions upon Plato and his writings which have been given almost from the earliest times. The one, that it is in vain to search in his writings for any thing entire, nay, even for the very first principles of a consistent and pervading philosophical turn of thought or doctrine ; on the contrary, that every thing in them vacillates and wavers, and that scarce any thing whatever stands in regular relation to the rest ; nay, that frequently one part contradicts another, because he is more of a dialectician than a logical Philosopher, more desirous of contradicting others, than capable of, or caring to produce, a well-founded structure of his own ; and that when he has to deal with the plausibility of his own propositions, he first seeks up his elements sometimes from this, sometimes from that, elsewhere perhaps disputed doctrine, according as his object may be on each occasion.

Now such an opinion is nothing else but a disguised confession of a total absence of any understanding of the Platonic works, and that especially on account of their form, when it is only the ground of the sentiment that is misapprehended, and instead of being looked for in the judge, it is transferred to the thing judged. But it is not necessary to honour this depreciating view with a lengthened discussion, as it yields in itself a sufficient testimony against itself. For while it adduces accusations about contradiction and want of connexion, it does not, however, prove that it has rightly understood the details ; otherwise whence those strange inquiries, in what persons' mouths Plato has brought forward his own opinion at least upon this or that subject ; a question which, as it supposes that his dialogistic form is only a somewhat useless and more confusing than illustrative embellishment of the perfectly common method of expressing thoughts, can only be thrown out by one who does not understand Plato at all.

This view, therefore, is founded upon nothing, and explains nothing, but leaves the whole problem as it was before, and may, without going further, be contradicted by fact, if a successful attempt is made to bring our Platonic works into a connexion by means of which every detail with the doctrines therein contained be comes intelligible. And the demand for such an attempt is in this point of view so much the more pressing, as the majority of those who pass so mean an opinion upon the writings of Plato still cannot resist a certain feeling of admiration for the Philosopher. Now as we have no other tangible proof of his greatness and preeminence except these writings, the two will not agree together, that opinion, I mean, and this admiration, and the latter will scarcely have any other object except those beauties of language and composition lavished on matter of no importance, or particular fine passages as they are called, or moral sentiments and principles, all pointing to very subordinate if not very dubious merit, so that if these men would advance uninterruptedly in their admiration, they must themselves wish to find something more in him than they have hitherto found.

Hence, therefore, others, with quite as little of a correct insight but with more good will, induced partly by particular expressions of Plato himself, partly also by a far-spread tradition preserved from ancient times, of an esoteric and exoteric in his Philosophy, have adopted the opinion that in the writings of Plato his own peculiar wisdom is either not contained at all, or only in secret allusions, and those very difficult to discover. This notion, in itself utterly vague, has shaped itself into the most multifarious forms, and the writings of Plato have been robbed of sometimes more and sometimes less of their subject-matter, and his genuine wisdom, on the contrary, sought for in secret doctrines which he as good as not at all confided to these writings ; nay, extensive investigations have been entered upon in order to determine what writings of Plato were exoteric and what esoteric, and so to dis cover where most a trace might be sought out of his genuine and secret widom.

Setting aside therefore the E liulli contained in this proposition, in so far as what is secret and difficult to find out is so only in a relative point of view, and there may always be something obscure and hard to find for some person or other; the whole is only a tissue of mis-apprehensions and confused conceptions which must first of all be unravelled and exposed. For these conceptions of an exoteric and esoteric philosophy demand a critical sifting, inasmuch as they appear at different times with quite different meanings. For among the earliest Pythagoreans this distinction referred so immediately to the matter, that subjects were denoted as esoteric concerning which they would not commit themselves without the limits of their most in timate circle of connections ; and it is to be supposed that their political system occupied the place of the eso teric far more than their metaphysical speculations, which were as imperfect as unsuspicious.

But at that time even Philosophy was bound up with political views, and the schools were connected by a practical fraternization which did not afterwards exist among the Hellenes. In later times, on the contrary, that was chiefly called esoteric which could not be communicated in the popular method of instruction, to which, after the admixture of the Sophists with the Socratic Philosophers, certain teachers condescended, and the distinction therefore referred immediately to the mode of delivery ; and only mediately, and on account of the other first, to the subject-matter. Plato now stands in the intermediate period between these two ; but in whichever of the two senses it should be attempted to apply these notions to the Platonic writings and Philosophy, in order thereby to divide the two into two parts, hesitation and doubt generally must ensue.

For the last signification could hardly be embraced by those, who would make such an application of it, as they start with asserting that the works collectively are hardly intelligible, and consequently must allow that Plato might as easily have committed to them what was most difficult and mysterious in his wisdom, as what was otherwise. And as regards the first signification, of doctrines of his Philosophy, concerning which he purposely delivered himself, without the interior circle of his confidential friends, either not at all, or in mysterious hints, it must be either regularly maintained and demonstrated that such was the case by a connected exposition of such doctrines, and the indications referring to them, however slight, or at least shown in a less degree, by some kind of historical traces.

Therefore, of all the advocates of this opinion, the so-called modern Platonists are deserving of most praise, inasmuch as they have actually attempted to accomplish the first. But the other parties would not have anything to show in support of their view of the subject. For apart from theosophistic matter, and unless they would ascribe to Plato some sort of physical sciences which he could not possess, and which his own writings moreover would at once disavow, they would be at a loss to discover anything in the whole region of philosophy upon which some opinion, either directly and distinctly, or at least as far as a notice of the principles goes, is not to be met with in these writings. And those indeed who reduce the distinction of what is esoteric, merely to the war against Polytheism and the vulgar religion, do, in fact, completely cancel the same, and reduce it to a piece of political caution, which would be unsatisfactory in the extreme, as Plato's principles upon these points may be read distinctly enough in his writings, so that one can scarcely believe that his scholars needed still further instructions about them, from the publication of which he shrank, or to a puerile contrivance which indulged itself in delivering in a loud voice with closed doors, what might indeed have been as well said with open ones in a lower.

And quite as little would really genuine historical traces be discoverable, supporting the opinion of a distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric in Plato. For if it refers merely to the sub ject-matter, and we are to suppose the secret doctrines to have been contained in the esoteric writings in the same manner in which the commoner are in the exoteric; the first and most indispensable point must then be to make it probable, somehow, that those writings were made public in some way different from these, since otherwise the whole endeavour would have been useless ; but of doing this no one seems seriously to have thought. And, further, how should it happen that Aristotle, who indisputably was concerned with a true understanding of the true Philosophy of Plato, and from whom, as many years an intimate scholar of that philosopher, nothing could easily remain concealed, does never, notwithstanding, either appeal to other sources, or appear to found his own writings upon a secret understanding of these.

On the contrary, he ap peals in every instance in the most unconstrained and simple manner to the works open to ourselves, and even when, as is now and then the case, other lost writino-s or perhaps oral lectures are quoted, these quotations do in no way contain any thing unheard of in the writings we possess, or completely different from them. If therefore these either did not contain at all the true doctrines of Plato, or only conformably to a secret interpretation, how could Aristotle, especially considering the manner in which he attacks his master, have been able to escape the most severe censures from the genuine followers of that Philosopher, if, contrary to his better knowledge, he had then fought only against a shadow ? Now in order to make these misapprehensions and their causes perfectly manifest, and to bring even those who are involved in them to a confession and consciousness of the same, it is certainly a praiseworthy under taking to work out analytically the philosophical subject matter from the Platonic works, and thus to expose the Philosopher to view, dissected and in detail, divested of his superfluities and combinations, and with as little as may be of his own peculiar form.

For if they could thus survey the pure treasure, and convince themselves on authentic grounds that it is actually taken from those writings, they must be fain to confess that it was the fault of themselves alone not to discern it, and that it is useless to lament over, or to dream of, other lost riches of Platonic wisdom. Thus much therefore may be attained by this method, that the ungrounded sus picion against the works of Plato vanishes, and the fact of his not being understood is brought more to light. And it is even certain that he who is thus to expose this truth thoroughly and completely must have himself understood Plato in the same degree : and quite as certain also is it, that the understanding of Plato as concerns others is neither facilitated nor advanced there by : but that, on the contrary, whoever should stick exclusively to even the best exposition of this kind might easily attain to an imaginary knowledge only, and on that very account remove himself still further from the true.

For though he must be accurately acquainted with the whole nature of a body who is to separate the particular vessels or bones in it for the purpose of comparison with corresponding parts of another similarly dissected, which would be the fullest use to which that philosophical process could be put ; still the mere passive spectator of the exhibition and comparison of these parts will not attain, by those means alone, to a knowledge of the proper natures of the whole. So also will those spectators of the analysis fail altogether to attain to a knowledge of the Philosophy of Plato, for in that, if in any thing, form and subject are inseparable, and no proposition is to be rightly understood, except in its own place, and with the combinations and limitations which Plato has assigned to it. And still less will they comprehend the Philosopher. himself; and least of all, will his purpose have succeeded in their case, tending as it did not only to exhibit vividly his own thought to others, but by that very means vividly to excite and awaken theirs.

Hence, therefore, to that analytical exposition which we have now been in possession of for a short time, in a perfection far exceeding former attempts, it is a necessary supplementary process to restore to their natural connection those limbs, which without dissection, usually appear so very deplorably involved one with another, I mean, not the particular opinions but the particular works — to restore them to the connection in which, as expositions continuously more complete as they advance, they gradually developed the ideas of the writer, so that while every dialogue is taken not only as a whole in itself, but also in its connection with the rest, he may himself be at last un derstood as a Philosopher and a perfect Artist. Now whether there is any such connection, and such an undertaking is not, perhaps, unsuitable to the subject and far too great ever to succeed, will best appear from the first conception which Plato himself suggests to us with regard to his writings and their objects, and which we shall shortly hear him propound in the Phædrus.

Treating the subject in a somewhat trifling manner, he complains of the uncertainty which always attaches to written communication of thoughts, as to whether the mind also of the reader has spontaneously conformed to such communication, and in reality appropriated it to itself, or whether, with the mere ocular apprehension of the words and letters a vain conceit is excited in the mind that it understands what it does not understand. Hence, that it is folly to build too much upon this, and that true reliance can be placed only upon oral and living instruction. But, he continues to argue, writing must be hazarded at a venture, and more for what it is as regards the writer and those who already share in his knowledge, than for what it can do for those who as yet know nothing. Whoever then will consider what that so ex alted preference for oral instruction means and upon what it rests, will find no other ground but this, that in this case the teacher, standing as he does in the presence of the learner, and in living communication with him, can tell every moment what he understands and what not, and thus assist the activity of his under standing when it fails ; but the actual attainment of this advantage rests, as any one must see, upon the form of the dialogue, which, accordingly, truly living instruction must necessarily have.

To this also is to be referred what Plato says, that a sentence orally delivered may always be supported by its Father and re ceive his protection, and that not only against the objections of one who thinks otherwise, but also against the intellectual stubbornness of one as yet ignorant, while the written sentence has no answer to make to any further inquiries. Whence it is at once clear, in passing, to what a degree that man has forfeited all right to utter even a single word about Plato who could take up with a notion that that Philosopher, in his esoteric and oral instruction could have availed himself of the Sophistical method of long and continuous discourses, when, even by his own declaration, such a method appears to Plato farthest removed from that preeminence which he gives to its opposite.

But in every way, not accidentally only, or from practice and tradition, but necessarily and na turally Plato's was a Socratic method, and indeed, as regards the uninterrupted and progressive reciprocation, and the deeper impression made upon the mind of the hearer, to be certainly as much preferred to that of his master, as the scholar excelled him as well in constructive Dialectics, as in richness and coVnpass of subjective intuition. As then, notwithstanding this complaint, Plato wrote so much from the period of his early manhood to that of his most advanced age, it is clear that he must have endeavoured to make written instruction as like as possible to that better kind, and he must also have succeeded in that attempt. For even if we look only to the immediate purpose, that writing, as regarded him self and his followers was only to be a remembrance of thoughts already current among them ; Plato considers all thought so much as spontaneous activity, that, with him, a remembrance of this kind of what has been al ready acquired, must necessarily be so of the first and original mode of acquisition.