"…an infinite multiplicity of being…"
For all their differences of perspective and purpose, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle come together at their deepest moments into a shared metaphysics, one that might be called diversity in unity', or 'relative complementarity', or what Parmenides called an "infinite multiplicity of being"[144b].[i] Developed at length in the work of all three philosophers are diverse and interconnected perspectives on 'being' in all its various senses. Aristotle uses a different method than Socrates, to be sure, and both of these differ from Plato. But this is certainly because, as their collective metaphysics would indicate, as individuals, they each had different challenges and potentialities within the reaches and limits of their own unique histories and situations. In short, they had different 'best-selves'.
Whereas Socrates had his intellectual ancestors to answer to, and the apparent knack for reaching and challenging people by what Parmenides calls 'idle talk'[ii], Aristotle had his own predecessors to build upon, most importantly Socrates himself, and significantly, those who had misunderstood Socrates through Plato's explication of him. Complex as they recognized reality to be, these ancient philosophers were able to find and describe the order which organizes being into a system of systems which behaves for comprehensive reasons. This then must be a metaphysics which is accountable to the whole of reality, including both object known and subject knowing as part of that 'moment' where attention meets and participates in the changing world at the cutting edge of time.
It is the contention of this argument that much contemporary controversy hinges on our failure to remember the insights that these great souls revealed for us. And that our future academic struggles might be eased considerably by proper respect for this dialogical effort, this magnificent jewel from our past.
Taking these and all ancient views together, as a progression of thought -- a dialogue -- rather than as competing metaphysical conceptions, might bring us a long way toward reconciliation of many contemporary conflicts (including perhaps some of those involved in how we should view the Platonic Dialogues themselves[iii]).
My approach here is to follow through from dialogues involving the young Socrates to those involving the more mature, and, as he himself claims on his deathbed, more prophetic Socrates.[Phaedo][iv] This progression of thought gives a foundation to both the literary analysis that Plato would undertake, and the linguistic analysis that Aristotle would further endeavor. None of their ultimate purposes or objectives seems to be fundamentally different from Socrates' own in this, though often their more immediate purposes differed, effecting the means of expression they choose. Rather, each simply follows his own path toward the same center, as Socrates accounts for different views of justice in Republic [Rep 327][v], as Zeno and Parmenides account for the existence of both 'the one and the many'[vi], and as Aristotle accounts for unavoidable equivocation of terms in all out dialectical inquiries.[Metaphysics, 1030b][vii]
Plato and Aristotle alike perform their investigations under a light held high by Socrates, and my claim is that it is toward the basic insights which are made clear (though sometimes understated) by Socrates himself which Aristotle directs so-called Platonists, if not Plato himself, to look. If we allow for variation of means and emphasis in the way they expressed themselves, (such as Plato's recording in literary form what the Socratic elenchus does in oratory form, and Aristotle's analysis of linguistic forms vs. Plato's emphasis on the mathematics of nature, which (according to Vlastos) distinguish his philosophy from the historical Socrates, and clearly provokes Aristotle's sharp criticism), then we can better see that these philosophers together discover a great deal more about the whole truth of reality than we seem to recognize today.
Perhaps another look at what these great minds were up to would remind us why each of them held the whole truth to be the end of all inquiry...and hence, that inquiry has no real end.
Socrates says in the Republic:
"No measure that falls in the least degree short of the whole truth can be quite fair in so important a matter...though people sometimes think enough has been done and there is no need to look further."[Rep VI 503]
[T]he genuine lover of knowledge cannot fail, from his youth up, to strive after the whole of truth.(Rep VI 485)
“Now the whole course of study...has the corresponding effect of leading up the noblest faculty of the soul towards the contemplation of the highest of all realities...the main theme...the function of philosophic discussion, into what division it falls, and what are it's methods; for here, it seems, we have come to the procedure which should lead to the resting-place at our journey's end.”(Rep VII 533)
"Further...this whole course of study will, I believe, contribute to the end we desire and not be labour wasted, only if it is carried to the point at which reflection can take a comprehensive view of the mutual relations and affinities which bind all these sciences together.”(Rep VII 532]
“The detached studies...will now be brought together in a comprehensive view of their connexions with one another and with reality....a natural gift for Dialectic...is the same thing as the ability to see the connexions of things.”(Rep VII 537)
To this Aristotle adds:
"[D]ialecticians and sophists assume the same guise as the philosopher, for sophistic is Wisdom which exists only in semblance, and dialecticians embrace all things in their dialectic, and being is common to all things; but evidently their dialectic embraces these subjects because these are proper to philosophy. For sophistic and dialectic turn on the same class of things as philosophy, but this differs from dialectic in the nature of the faculty required and from sophistic in respect of the purpose of the philosophic life. Dialectic is merely critical where philosophy claims to know, and sophistic is what appears to be philosophy but is not."[Book IV/Chapter 2]
"Some of the sensible substances are generally admitted to be substances, so that we must look first among these. For it is an advantage to advance to that which is more knowable. For learning proceeds for all in this way--through that which is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from what is good for each and make what is without qualification good good for each, so it is our task to start from what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself. Now what is knowable and primary for particular sets of people is often knowable to a very small extent, and has little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which is barely knowable but knowable to oneself, and try to know what is knowable without qualification, passing, as has been said, by way of those very things which one does know."[Metaphysics: Book VII/Chapter 3]
"Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it....[N]o one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed"[Aristotle's Metaphysics: Book II/Chapter 1]
"It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought."[Metaphysics, Book II/Chapter I]
We can see this kind of dialectical progression then in the work of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. For example, to Socrates' emphasis on the sense in which the 'forms' or 'ideas' are unchanging and primary, Aristotle adds his own balancing view on the importance of understanding the nature of change and the fluctuation of appearances and relations. Forms of thought are causal, Aristotle emphasized, remembering from Socrates.[Socrates in Parm 131b-e, 133; Rep V 472; Rep VI 500; Rep IX 591][viii] Ideals exist as targets, as patterns, that is, as end of human action which, properly understood, might help humans move toward their higher potentials, their individual best selves.[Aristotle in Phy 193b7-12; Psy Book IV; and perhaps Meta 1029a51] This is a point Socrates emphasized time and again -- but one which many Platonists have casually neglected, then as now.
Some followers of this dialogue have externalized the ideas as if they somehow exist 'apart from' the human mind, while others took a more solipsist view of the matter, as if ideas could exist only within the mind. Both of these views seem to ignore Socrates' own account, which is that they exists both within and outside of the mind. As Socrates said, "In my opinion, the ideas are, as it were, patterns fixed in nature, and other things are like them, and resemblances of them--what is meant by the participation of other things in the ideas, is really assimilation to them."[Parm 132d] Ideas cannot exist merely 'apart from' the mind, as Parmenides says, for then they face problem of being separable from self, and thus confusing our conception of 'being', in the sense that it is one, unified, and whole. According to Aristotle, this is what had indeed occurred as a result of viewing the forms as if they are 'apart from' the minds which they are present in. But if we look close we can see that Socrates does not hold this to be the case. When asked by Parmenides whether he thinks ideas exist "apart from the likeness which we possess, and of the one and many"[Parm 129e], Socrates affirms only that there are such ideas, but not necessarily apart from the minds of individuals. "I have often been puzzled about those things, Parmenides," Socrates said, "whether one should say that the same thing is true in the case of humans as in the case of...trivial objects", like hair and dirt, which are not puzzling as they do not have a form.[Parm 129d][ix]
On the other hand, ideas, if merely "in us", are not connected to being, but exist only relative to one another: such as slavery/mastery; which are not absolutely real, not tethered to being, but only constructed relative to one another. Socrates was clear that nothing is absolute in human relations [Parm 133e]. But 'truth' is absolute, objective, and primary, and is recognized as such by a process which Socrates called 'tethering' our beliefs to being.[Meno 98; Parm 134b][x] Knowledge, in this strong sense, and even 'true belief', must be related to being by this oft' neglected process -- and so it is that we have little of it, as young Socrates reluctantly agrees with Parmenides.[Parm 134b] However, this is not a necessary effect. Socrates certainly thinks we can have knowledge[Parm 133b] -- if it weren't for the fact that we do too little of what is necessary to distinguish objective truth from subjective constructs. Only those ideas which are actually tethered to being are in any sense absolute, eternal, primary, and so not true merely 'in our sphere', yet not 'apart from' and outside of it either. Even the young Socrates answers to this apparent problem of the one being separated from itself in Parmenides by showing how being might indeed be thought to be, in a sense, inside itself.[Parm 145d][xi]/[xii] Humans are not merely 'like' nature, they are part of it -- though not 'part' in the sense we might typically use the term, as if separable from other parts [Parm 133]. Rather, as Plato and Aristotle seemed to agree, humans 'participate' (in a sense that is not easy to settle on) in the patterns of nature by degrees -- and whether this participation is by likeness, resemblance, or by assimilation [Parm 132d] -- which we can discover best by dialogue and deliberation.
As Aristotle showed throughout his works, reconciling equivocal terms is a life long task, but it is one he undertook for the sake of clearing up Platonist's confusion, despite Socrates clear mind on these matters. The metaphysical picture which emerges if we carry this dialogue through is a rich integration of many individual perspectives, an approach which indeed makes for an even more 'objective' picture of the truth than any narrower or less complex view can reveal. Just as two eyes provide depth to the dimensions which can be seen by a single eye, so "two heads are better than one", as Socrates often said.[Sym 174d] We can have evidence that our beliefs are true only by 'tethering' them with being, and only beliefs which have been sufficiently 'tethered' begin to approach objectively reality. These are distinct from that which we merely believe to be real, without this critical examination.
Aristotle took a similar approach to the analysis of words. Words, like untethered beliefs, can be what some postmoderns might call merely 'subjectively constructed', and thus not quite as 'real' as sometimes supposed by those who do not distinguish between 'knowledge' and something less, as Socrates worried. Aristotle helps reconcile this equivocation on the term 'real', among others, in his distinction between primary and secondary substance, which differentiates the most fundamental substance from that which is 'predicated of' and 'present in' it, and thus is 'real' only in a secondary sense -- which is to say, real in as much as it appears in our minds and language as we think and talk about primary reality -- which is real whether we notice it or not. Aristotle attempts, as did Socrates, to broaden our understanding of 'knowledge' such that we might distinguish stronger from the lesser, but nonetheless real, senses. Perhaps one key difference between these philosophers is then the disposition of their perceived audiences -- Socrates' treating 'knowledge' too weakly, while Aristotle's treating it, in a sense, too strong.
Thus, Aristotle reminded us of the importance of understanding the language we share in common and which could help us to better navigate the whole truth about reality, that which changes along with that which lasts. As Socrates often suggested, words are important tools of understanding, but too often they rationalize injustice, and so the meaning of our words must needs be continually examined and justified with being, not merely constructed in relation to each other [Parm 134b], as is slave to master. Words too can prove to be simply different approaches to the same center. In this, again, Socrates gives a respectful nod to this important distinction Aristotle draws between primary and secondary being, both of which are 'real', though they are so in different senses. As Aristotle says in the Metaphysics, "it does not matter at all in which of the...ways one likes to describe the facts; this is evident, that [some terms]...in the primary and simple sense belong to substances. Still they belong to other things as well, only not in the primary sense." [Meta 1030b5-10] The metaphysics that grows out of this is one that concludes that it's all one and many, unity and plurality, for "[W]hat seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be."[Parm 166b]
And it is important to see how much is dependent upon how one looks at it -- for changes in perspective makes being appear to change, but accumulation of perspective might provide depth and broader vision. For as Socrates says:
"And such being when seen indistinctly and at a distance, appears to be one; but when seen near and with keen intellect, every single thing appears to be infinite, since it is deprived of the one, which is not?"[Parm 165c]
It is a question then of what we can conceive of, as "one cannot conceive the many without the one"[Parm 166b]
Because things appear relative to one another, appearances can confuse, and so the whole metaphysical truth then is going to have to involve both an affirmation and a denial of every arguable position. Thus, Socrates continually uses and recommends the dialectic method, which is illustrated in Parmenides, where discussion of Zeno's method gives rise to how this variability of perspective is why dialectic participation is necessary to learning and knowing.[Parm 165c] Zeno uses this 'method of controversy' to explore the physical world, but Parmenides advises Socrates to take it a step further -- and apply this method to the invisible world of abstract thought:
And what is the nature of this exercise, Parmenides, which you would recommend?
That which you heard Zeno practicing [Parm 135d-e] i.e. ""In a word, when you suppose anything to be or not to be, or to be in any way affected, you must look at the consequences in relation to the thing itself, and to any other things which you choose-to each of them singly, to more than one, and to all; and so of other things, you must look at them in relation to themselves and to anything else which you suppose either to be or not to be, if you would train yourself perfectly and see the real truth."[Parm 136c]
And "I think that you should go a step further, and consider not only the consequences which flow from a given hypothesis, but also the consequences which flow from denying the hypothesis; and that will be still better training for you."[Parm 135d-e]
"At the same time, I give you credit for saying to him that you did not care to examine the perplexity in reference to visible things, or to consider the question that way; but only in reference to objects of thought, and to what may be called ideas."[Parm 135d-e]
"I should be far more amazed if any one found in the ideas themselves which are apprehended by reason, the same puzzle and entanglement which you have shown to exist in visible objects."[Parm 129d]
And as he says in Phaedo:
"[F]irst principles, even if they appear certain, should be carefully considered; and when they are satisfactorily ascertained, then, with a sort of hesitating confidence in human reason, you may, I think, follow the course of the argument; and if this is clear, there will be no need for any further inquiry."[Phaedo p.40]
And as Plato says in his Seventh Epistle:
"The process however of dealing with all of these, as the mind moves up and down to each in turn, does after much effort give birth in a well-constituted mind to knowledge of that which is well constituted."[Seventh Epistle][xiii]
Thus, dialectic is seen to be a valuable method, and perhaps critical to good science. At least and at best, this approach could help us to fill in the gaps between what we think we know and the complex whole of what might be known by interconnection of our differing perspectives on and common center about which we speak. It could take western culture a long way to remember this, and perhaps admit to the 'diversity in unity' which Socrates did his best to reveal, knowing he would be unable to do for his students what we must do for ourselves.
Sadly, as Parmenides said, and as is still the case today, "most people are not aware that this round about progress through all things is the only way in which the mind can attain truth and wisdom."[Parm 136e][xiv]
Perhaps it is worth looking deeper then, in other of the Dialogues, for clues to a better understanding of what is meant by this dialectic progression. In the Republic he suggests love is key to understanding this process which leads to the good itself. In Symposium this is spelled out in finer resolution. Young Socrates gives us an interesting angle on this learning process in his discussion with Diotima from Mantinea, a woman who was an expert on many subjects, and who taught him by means of questions the meaning of love. And in the process 'proved to' him that everything is not necessarily either/or,[Sym 202][xv] as Eros is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, but that which exists in between these and all other opposing states, e.g. past and future, sleep and wake, rest and motion. The unity of several passages from Symposium offer critical insight into the dialectic interaction and the relation of knower to that which is known, and what's more, the relation of love to learning.
As per Phaedrus' account of love:
"Love, more than anything (more than family, or position, or wealth), implants in men the thing which must be their guide if they are to live a good life. And what is that? It is a horror of what is degrading, and a passionate desire for what is good. These qualities are essential if a state or an individual is to accomplish anything great or good."[Sym 178d] After all, as Socrates earlier said, learning is not imparted form one to another simply by contact, as if ideas can be transfused like liquid from one container to another by means of a string between them, as if those of us who had few good ideas could absorb them from those who had a lot.[Sym 175e]
As per Agathon's account:
"Eros is master of all forms of literary or artistic creation. After all, no one can impart, or teach, a skill which he does not himself possess or know. And who will deny that the creation of all living things is the work of Eros' wisdom, which makes all living things come into being and grow?"[Sym 196e-197] "He gives us the feeling, not of longing, but of belonging, since he is the moving spirit behind all those occasions when we meet and gather together."[Sym 197c]
And Socrates agreed:
"Eros is a spirit, spirits are midway between what is divine and what is human; he is a means of communication between gods and men. He takes requests and offerings to the gods, and brings back instructions and benefits in return...plays a vital role in holding the world together. He is the medium of all prophecy and religion...There is no direct contact between god and man. All association and communication between them, waking or sleeping, takes place through Eros. This kind of knowledge is knowledge of the spirit; any other knowledge...is purely utilitarian. Such spirits are many and varied, and Eros is one of them'."[Sym 202e-203]" Neither destitute nor affluent, neither wise nor foolish, Eros is of the intermediate class of spirits.[Sym 204b]
Pausanias emphasizes in his account:
"[T]he true position, I think, is that...there isn't one single form of love. So love is neither right nor wrong in itself. Done rightly, it is right; done wrongly, it is wrong.[Sym 183e] "It is in general true of any activity that, simply in itself, is neither good nor bad. Take what we're doing now, for example -- that is to say drinking, or singing, or talking. None of these is good or bad in itself, but each becomes so, depending on the way it is done. Well and rightly done, it is good; wrongly done, it is bad. And it's just the same with loving, and Eros. It's not all good, and doesn't all deserve praise. The Eros we should praise is the one which encourages people to love in the right way."[Sym 181].
And Diotima says to Socrates:
"Reproduction, Socrates, both physical and mental, is a universal human activity. At a certain age our nature desires to give birth....What is mortal tries, to the best of its ability, to be everlasting and immortal. It does this in the only way it can, by always leaving a successor to replace what decays. Think of what we call the life-span and identity of an individual creature. For example, a man is said to be the same individual from childhood until old age. The cells of his body are always changing, yet he is still called the same person, despite being perpetually reconstituted as parts of him decay. And when we come to knowledge, the situation is even odder....as far as knowledge goes; the same thing happens with each individual piece of knowledge. What we call studying presupposes that knowledge is transient. Forgetting is loss of knowledge, and studying preserves knowledge by creating memory afresh in us, to replace what is lost. Hence we have the illusion of continuing knowledge....This, Socrates, is the mechanism by which mortal creatures can taste immortality....Those whose creative urge is physical tend to...produce children....In others the impulse if mental or spiritual...and under the general heading 'thought'...".[Sym 205d]
"Such a person, "if he comes across a beautiful, noble, well-formed mind, then he finds the combination particularly attractive. He'll drop everything and embark on long conversations about goodness, with such a companion, trying to teach him about the nature and behavior of the good man. Now that he's made contact with someone beautiful, and joins with his friends in bringing his conception to maturity. In consequence such people have a far stringer bond between them than there is between the parents of children; and they form much firmer friendships, because they are jointly responsible for finer, and more lasting, offspring....at this state his offspring are beautiful discussions and conversations. Next he should realize that the physical beauty of one body is akin to that of any body, and that if he's going to pursue beauty of appearance, it's the height of folly not to regard the beauty which is in all bodies as one and the same. This insight will convert him into of lover of all physical beauty..." breaking his tie to a single beauty [Sym 209c];
"The next stage is to put a higher value on mental than on physical beauty. The right qualities of mind, even in the absence of any great physical beauty, will be enough to awaken his love and affection. he will generate the kind of discussions which are improving to the young. The aim is that, as the next step, he should be compelled to contemplate the beauty of customs and institutions...and from human institutions his teacher should direct him to knowledge, so that he may, in turn, see the beauty of different types of knowledge. Whereas before...he was dominated by the individual case...now he directs his eyes to what is beautiful in general, as he turns to gaze upon the limitless ocean of beauty. Now he produces many fine and inspiring thoughts and arguments, as he gives his undivided attention to philosophy. Here he gains in strength and stature until his attention is caught by that one special knowledge -- the knowledge of beauty....And when a man has reached this point in his education in love, studying the different types of beauty in correct order, he will come to the final end and goal of this education. Then suddenly he will see, a beauty of a breathtaking nature, Socrates, the beauty which is the justification of all his efforts so far. It is eternal, neither coming to be nor passing away, neither increasing nor decreasing.... If a man progresses (as he will do, if he goes about his love affairs in the right way) from the lesser beauties, and begins to catch sight of this beauty, then he is within reach of the final revelation. Such is the experience of the man who approaches, or is guided towards, love in the right way, beginning with the particular examples of beauty, but always returning from them to the search for that one beauty. He uses them like a ladder, climbing from the love of one person to love of two; from two to love of all physical beauty; from physical beauty to beauty in human behavior; thence to beauty in subjects of study; from them he arrives finally at that branch of knowledge which studies nothing but ultimate beauty. Then at last he understands what true beauty is."[Sym 211b]
"That, if ever, is the moment, my dear Socrates, when a man's life is worth living, as he contemplates beauty itself."[Sym 211d]
"That's what Diotima said to me, and I, for one, find it convincing. And it's because I'm convinced that I now try to persuade other people as well that man, in his search for this goal, could hardly hope to find a better ally than Eros. That's why I say that everyone should honour Eros, and why I myself honour him, and make the pursuit of Eros my chief concern, and encourage others to do the same. Now, and for all time, I praise the power and vigour of Eros, to the limits of my ability."[Sym 212c]
Socrates makes much of this conception of 'the moment' of understanding in Parmenides, where he explores how change finds it's locus in the 'now', the 'present', where attention meets the world at the cutting edge of time, where past meets future, sleeping meets waking, and where 'the one' participates in both rest and motion.
Plato adds in the Seventh Letter:
"After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers."[Epist]
And as he says in Republic:
Here at last, then, we come to the main theme, to be developed in philosophic discussion. It's...progress is like that of the power of vision...the summit of the intelligible world is reached in philosophic discussion by one who aspires, through the discourse of reason unaided by any of the senses, to make his way in every case to the essential reality and perseveres until he has grasped by pure intelligence the very nature of Goodness itself. This journey is what we call Dialectic.(Plato's Republic, p. 252]
It is this moment of choice then when one is tested and what was only potential becomes real. "The real Socrates -- I don't know if any of you has ever seen the figure inside. I saw it once, and it struck me as utterly godlike and golden and beautiful and wonderful...."[Sym 216e] Alcibiades has this to say, after having been unable to tempt Socrates with his beauty by sleeping next to him all night, all the while teasing and seducing him, but the pleasures of the body were unable to tempt Socrates to sin -- in this case, by exercise of the wrong love for the wrong reason at the wrong time. Alcibiades admits Socrates to be the love of his (or perhaps any other) life for this -- the only one, he said, who knew and could raise Alcibiades better self -- which made his actual and lessor self feel ashamed all the rest of the time. He cried rivers of tears for this great man, he said, who saved his life in battle, and raised his standard for humanity throughout a lifetime of respect, proven in that one moment of trial. And he was not the only one who felt this way about Socrates, he said, but one of many who crave what Socrates has to give -- but only to the right lover for the right reason at the right moment.
"[I]n becoming, it gets to the point of time between "was" and "will be," which is "now"[Parm 152b]. "The moment. For the moment seems to imply a something out of which change takes place into either of two states; for the change is not from the state of rest as such, nor, from the state of motion as such; but there is this curious nature, which we call the moment lying between rest and motion, not being in any time; and into this and out of this what is in motion changes into rest, and what is at rest into motion....And the one then, since it is at rest and also in motion, will change to either, for only in this way can it be in both. And in changing it changes in a moment, and when it is changing it will be in no time, and will not then be either in motion or at rest."[Parm 156d-157b]
"[T]hat which is becoming cannot skip the present; when it reaches the present it ceases to become, and is then whatever it may happen to be becoming."[Parm 152c] "And when it arrives at the present it stops from becoming older, and no longer becomes, but is older, for if it went on it would never be reached by the present, for it is the nature of that which goes on, to touch both the present and the future, letting go the present and seizing the future, while in process of becoming between them."[Parm 152c] "Then the one always both is and becomes older and younger than itself" [Parm 152e] "[T]o be (einai) is only participation of being in present time, and to have been is the participation of being at a past time, and to be about to be is the participation of being at a future time."[Parm 152]
There is this at least, which is not either/or [Sym 202] -- as Eros is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad -- rather, there is an intermediate state between them, as true belief is between understanding and ignorance [Sym 202].
"And it will be in the same case in relation to the other changes, when it passes from being into cessation of being, or from not-being into becoming -- then it passes between certain states of motion and rest, and, neither is nor is not, nor becomes nor is destroyed....And on the same principle, in the passage from one to many and from many to one, the one is neither one nor many, neither separated nor aggregated; and in the passage from like to unlike, and from unlike to like, it is neither like nor unlike, neither in a state of assimilation nor of dissimilation; and in the passage from small to great and equal and back again, it will be neither small nor great, nor equal, nor in a state of increase, or diminution, or equalization....All these, then, are the affections of the one, if the one has being."[Parm 157b]
"Therefore they are neither the same, nor other, nor in motion, nor at rest, nor in a state of becoming, nor of being destroyed, nor greater, nor less, nor equal, nor have they experienced anything else of the sort; for, if they are capable of experiencing any such affection, they will participate in one and two and three, and odd and even, and in these, as has been proved, they do not participate, seeing that they are altogether and in every way devoid of the one....Therefore if one is, the one is all things, and also nothing, both in relation to itself and to other things."[Parm 160b]
"Then the one being always itself in itself and other, must always be both at rest and in motion....And must be the same with itself, and other than itself; and also the same with the others, and other than the others; this follows from its previous affections."[Parm 146b]
Thus, the epistemology which flows from this ontology is one John Stuart Mill would remember for us many centuries later. The fact is, we begin in different places in this world, thus we have differing experience, differing perspectives, learn different lessons, and thus follow different paths toward the single end we have in common with all living things -- that of their own good.[Sym 205] The truth then will depend upon a balance struck between opposing views on any given object of knowledge, and the whole truth, which is the end of all inquiry, will never fully be attainable, but is an ideal which is realized to the degree that we learn from one another. For we may all see the world differently, but it is nonetheless the same world that we share. So our perspectives are, as Socrates put it, “as if all lines of discourse converge on the same center'.[Rep 327] It follows from all this then that reality is not as ‘clear and distinct’ as many moderns have thought, but is rather a ‘multiplicity in unity,’ as the ancients understood. For there are indeed, as anyone who considers the metaphor will conclude, an infinite number of perspectives from which any object of knowledge might be viewed. And so if it is the whole truth we wish to discover, then we must consider all the objects of our knowledge from as many points of view as possible. What's more, when the object of our study is itself a subject, that is, living and conscious, then they have their own point of view as well, from inside looking out, which the whole truth must also include. Infinity…plus one! All these perspectives must be taken into account before we can claim to really know any living subject. But we can understand them without complete knowledge, simply by looking into ourselves.
And because one person's knowledge may be another person's blind spot, our worst enemy may very well be our best teacher. To be fair, we might rightly operate on the premise, quite foreign to us these days, that everyone’s point of view matters, and serves to round out the whole of truth. Arguably, this is the task each of these philosophers undertakes. And perhaps these great souls give nod here to some feminist and multicultural critiques of the academy.[xvi] Arguably, this is the task for all of us. For recognizing this inherent diversity of perspective in the whole truth gives immediate import to the need for dialogue, and at the very least, empathy. Seeing a certain logical complementarity in our perspectives becomes incentive to listen and to teach, for no one ever completely understands anything, and thus there is always something to learn -- even and most especially, Socrates would say, about what we might think we 'know' best. And while the whole truth is never grasped once and for all, it might be gleaned in a moment of honest contemplation by thoughtful individuals who put themselves through the process of examining as many perspectives as are available on any given object of knowledge, and most importantly -- of remembering them.
As Mill says in his autobiography:
"the title of Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been nourished in, and have endeavored to practice Plato's mode of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and which the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures."[xvii]
This is true, it is suggested, for the same reason Parmenides recommended 'idle talk' as the best training for Socrates -- because only in this way does the spark jump from one person to another, to another, and so on. Certainly the divine spark has jumped from Socrates to countless other great minds, contributing in every case to the good of the individual as an individual. It is only in the actualization of each individual good that the common good is ultimately accomplished. And so it is our individual work -- the creativity of our different kinds of 'children', as it were -- by which we participate in time by guide of Eros. And if this seems to be a reiteration of the lessons of 'love', then so be it -- for this is no less than Socrates and Aristotle would have us remember. As Socrates says, without hesitation -- "love is the only thing I ever claim to know anything about."[Sym 177e]
In conclusion, I think we have much to learn from the perspectives of our ancient, and largely neglected, philosophical heroes -- great souls whose vision held the light of reason so much higher than any has been able to reach since. The potential of these philosophies to find unity in a common center continues to go virtually unrecognized in the many centuries since ancient Greece. Yet it is a line of discourse which contemporary dialogues literally beg for, as well as continually reveals. Tending these days to ignore the legitimacy of multiple points of view which might be considered on any given object of knowledge, we tend to take differing perspectives as competing versions of truth, an assumption which locks us into cycles of conflict where defense and the will to win prevents our listening to diverse views and voices which are necessary to true understanding. The ancients tried to teach us a kind of inquiry which requires humility, a point which Socrates illustrated by his practice of elenchus, Aristotle illustrated by his multi-perspectival analysis, and which Sophistic arrogance apparently precludes.
This is, I think, the primary challenge of our age. Our situation has long called out for a deeper analysis of human relations than traditional sophistic methods allow. Taken to heart, key elements of the Socratic and Aristotelian methods together offer a potential for integration by dialogue of many diverse schools of thought. These philosophers could shed much light on the revelations of our age, which would be a giant step in the right direction toward true science.
This is perhaps the best lesson history has to teach contemporary discourse on the reaches and limits of its adopted methods. The unifying perspective they provide on our contemporary power struggles is powerful enough, I think, to help reconcile many a calculated, if not deliberate, misunderstanding. It is a metaphysical conception which is quite compatible with modern and even postmodern insights -- but one which differs from our contemporary scientific methods in its emphasis on the importance of dialectic interchange and dialogue as a necessary means to 'knowledge'. These great minds were -- as ours might better be -- guided by the will to reconcile differing experience, differing perspectives, reveal incompatible beliefs, and to follow reason in all cases to the truth which can never be refuted, and so is left standing when all the hardest questions have been asked.
[i] Plato's PARMENIDES, translated by Benjamin Jowett.
[ii] "I certainly do not see my way at present, said Socrates. Yes, said Parmenides; and I think that this arises, Socrates, out of your attempting to define the beautiful, the just, the good, and the ideas generally, without sufficient previous training. I noticed your deficiency, when I heard you talking here with your friend Aristoteles, the day before yesterday. The impulse that carries you towards philosophy is assuredly noble and divine; but there is an art which is called by the vulgar idle talking, and which is of imagined to be useless; in that you must train and exercise yourself, now that you are young, or truth will elude your grasp."[Parm 135c]
[iii] A recent book by Jacob Klagg examines the different approaches taken on the Socratic dialogues. He begins with Gain Fine's analytic analysis of the relationship between Socrates and Aristotle, and moves through a number of differing perspectives on this subject. In this paper, I am arguing that a dialogical reading of these ancient philosophers reveals a metaphysics which, in the end, dignifies all of these various perspectives on the Socratic dialogues, in the process, showing the true beauty of what is perhaps the greatest single work of art that human beings have ever produced. Working from the pattern of the ideal, Plato arguably created the closest thing to perfection in philosophical literature, and we would be wise to settle for no less than the whole truth about his work.
[iv] Plato's PHAEDO, translation by Benjamin Jowett.
[v] Plato's REPUBLIC, translated by Francis McDonald Cornford.
[vi] "I see, Parmenides, said Socrates, that Zeno would like to be not only one with you in friendship but your second self in his writings too; he puts what you say in another way, and would fain make believe that he is telling us something which is new. For you, in your poems, say The All is one, and of this you adduce excellent proofs; and he on the other hand says There is no many; and on behalf of this he offers overwhelming evidence. You affirm unity, he denies plurality. And so you deceive the world into believing that you are saying different things when really you are saying much the same. This is a strain of art beyond the reach of most of us."[Parm 128b]
[vii] Aristotle's METAPHYSICS, translated by W. D. Ross.
[viii] As Parmenides asks the young Socrates, "But I should like to know whether you mean that there are certain ideas of which all other things partake, and from which they derive their names; that similars, for example, become similar, because they partake of similarity; and great things become great, because they partake of greatness; and that just and beautiful things become just and beautiful, because they partake of justice and beauty?" "Yes, certainly," said Socrates, "that is my meaning."[Parm 131b-e]
"[W]hen we set out to discover the essential nature of justice and injustice and what a perfectly just and perfectly unjust man would be like, supposing them to exist, our purpose was to use them as ideal patterns; we were to observe the degree of happiness or unhappiness that each exhibited, and to draw the necessary inferences that our own destiny would be like that of the one we most resembled. We did not set out to show that these ideals could exist in fact."(Republic V 472) "[P]erhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and, seeing it, to found one in himself."(Rep IX 591) "[H]appiness can only come to a state when its lineaments are traced by an artist working after the divine pattern....He will take society and human character as his canvas, and begin by scraping it clean... Next, he will sketch in the outline of the constitution. Then as the work goes on, he will frequently refer to his model, the ideals of justice, goodness, temperance, and the rest, and compare with them the copy of those qualities which he is trying to create in human society...he will reproduce the complexion of true humanity, guided by that divine pattern whose likeness Homer saw in the men he called godlike. He will rub out and paint in again this or that feature, until he has produced, so far as may be, a type of human character that heaven can approve."(Rep VI 500, emphasis added)
"Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together. It was framed after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might resemble this as far as was possible; for the pattern exists from eternity, and the created heaven has been, and is, and will be, in all time. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of time....These things at some future time, when we are at leisure, may have the consideration which they deserve, but not at present."[Timeaus]
[ix] Plato's PARMENIDES, translated by Francis McDonald Cornford.
[x] "But the knowledge which we have, will answer to the truth which we have; and again, each kind of knowledge which we have, will be a knowledge of each kind of being which we have?"[Parm 134b]
[xi] "Then each individual partakes either of the whole of the idea or else of a part of the idea? Can there be any other mode of participation?
There cannot be, he said.
Then do you think that the whole idea is one, and yet, being one, is in each one of the many?
Why not, Parmenides? said Socrates.
Because one and the same thing will exist as a whole at the same time in many separate individuals, and will therefore be in a state of separation from itself.
Nay, but the idea may be like the day which is one and the same in many places at once, and yet continuous with itself; in this way each idea may be one; and the same in all at the same time.
I like your way, Socrates, of making one in many places at once. You mean to say, that if I were to spread out a sail and cover a number of men, there would be one whole including many-is not that your meaning?...And would you say that the whole sail includes each man, or a part of it only, and different parts different men?
The latter.
Then, Socrates, the ideas themselves will be divisible, and things which participate in them will have a part of them only and not the whole idea existing in each of them?
That seems to follow. But..."[Parm 131b-d]
He goes on:
"Let us abstract the one which, as we say, partakes of being, and try to imagine it apart from that of which, as we say, it partakes"[Parm 143b]
"And if each of them is one, then by the addition of any one to any pair, the whole becomes three?...And three are odd, and two are even?...And if there are two there must also be twice, and if there are three there must be thrice; that is, if twice one makes two, and thrice one three? There are two, and twice, and therefore there must be twice two; and there are three, and there is thrice, and therefore there must be thrice three?...If there are three and twice, there is twice three; and if there are two and thrice, there is thrice two?...Here, then, we have even taken even times, and odd taken odd times, and even taken odd times, and odd taken even times....And if this is so, does any number remain which has no necessity to be? Then if one is, number must also be..."[[Parm 143e-144]
"But if there is number, there must also be many, and infinite multiplicity of being; for number is infinite in multiplicity, and partakes also of being: am I not right? And if all number participates in being, every part of number will also participate?...Then being is distributed over the whole multitude of things, and nothing that is, however small or however great, is devoid of it? "[Parm 144b]
"And it is divided into the greatest and into the smallest, and into being of all sizes, and is broken up more than all things; the divisions of it have no limit."[Parm 144c] And so, "Then the one attaches to every single part of being, and does not fail in any part, whether great or small, or whatever may be the size of it?"[Parm 144d] "Then the one if it has being is one and many, whole and parts, having limits and yet unlimited in number?"[Parm 145]
Consider this, he says later on:[Parm 148d]
"Again, how far can the one touch or not touch itself and others?-Consider.
I am considering.
The one was shown to be in itself which was a whole?
True.
And also in other things?
Yes.
In so far as it is in other things it would touch other things, but in so far as it is in itself it would be debarred from touching them, and would touch itself only.
Clearly.
Then the inference is that it would touch both?
It would.
But what do you say to a new point of view? Must not that which is to touch another be next to that which it is to touch, and occupy the place nearest to that in which what it touches is situated?
True.
Then the one, if it is to touch itself, ought to be situated next to itself, and occupy the place next to that in which itself is?
It ought.
And that would require that the one should be two, and be in two places at once, and this, while it is one, will never happen.
No.
Then the one cannot touch itself any more than it can be two?
It cannot.
Neither can it touch others.
Why not?
The reason is, that whatever is to touch another must be in separation from, and next to, that which it is to touch, and no third thing can be between them....Two things, then, at the least are necessary to make contact possible?....And if to the two a third be added in due order, the number of terms will be three, and the contacts two?...And every additional term makes one additional contact, whence it follows that the contacts are one less in number than the terms; the first two terms exceeded the number of contacts by one, and the whole number of terms exceeds the whole number of contacts by one in like manner; and for every one which is afterwards added to the number of terms, one contact is added to the contacts....Whatever is the whole number of things, the contacts will be always one less."[Parm 148d-149c]]
"But if all the parts are in the whole, and the one is all of them and the whole, and they are all contained by the whole, the one will be contained by the one; and thus the one will be in itself."[Parm 145d]
"And yet the one, being itself in itself, will also surround and be without itself; and, as containing itself, will be greater than itself; and, as contained in itself, will be less; and will thus be greater and less than itself."[Parm 151].
"[W]hat seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be."[Parm 166b]
[xii] As an important aside, it is a curious, but not altogether surprising, phenomenon that twenty-three hundred years later we should rediscover this insight of this nestedness with the recognition and proliferation of what is widely called 'chaos theory', which is perhaps better called 'fractal geometry' in this context. Aristotle long ago gave us logical evidence of the 'nestedness' of being, but it has apparently taken until now to discover the empirical evidence for it. In a nutshell, chaos theory reminds us of what we, the cultural beneficiaries of ancient Greece, have long known:
"Nature forms patterns. Some are orderly in space but disorderly in time, others orderly in time but disorderly in space. Some patterns are fractal, exhibiting structures self-similar in scale... The dynamics seem so basic--shapes changing in space and time--yet only now are the tools available to understand them."[James Gleick, CHAOS: Making a New Science (Penguin Books: New York) p. 311]
"To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being."
"The microscopic pieces were perfectly clear; the macroscopic behavior remained a mystery. The tradition of looking at systems locally--isolating the mechanisms and then adding them together--was beginning to break down. For pendulums, for fluids, for electronic circuits, for lasers, knowledge of the fundamental equations no longer seemed to be the right kind of knowledge at all."[Gleick, p. 44]
"There was always one small compromise, so small that working scientists usually forgot it was there, lurking in a corner of their philosophies like an unpaid bill. Measurement could never be perfect. ... Given an approximate knowledge of a system's initial conditions and an understanding of natural law, one can calculate the approximate behavior of the system. This assumption lay at the philosophical heart of science...[that] arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.'"[Gleick, p. 15] "[S]mall errors proved catastrophic."[Gleick, p. 17]
"[S]omething was philosophically out of joint. The practical import could be staggering."[Gleick, p. 17] "[T]he spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the computer will not know about, tiny deviations from the average."[Gleick, p. 21] "[A]ny physical system that behaved nonperiodically would be unpredictable."[Gleick, p. 18] "The Butterfly Effect was no accident; it was necessary."[Gleick, p. 22]
"The Butterfly Effect acquired a technical name: sensitive dependence on initial conditions."[Gleick, p. 23] "In science as in life, it is well known that a chain of events can have a point of crisis that could magnify small changes. But chaos meant that such points were everywhere. They were pervasive. In systems like the weather, sensitive dependence on initial conditions was an inescapable consequence of the way small scales intertwined with large."[Gleick, p. 23]
"It completely changes what it means to know something."[Gleick, p.175]
"Chaos breaks across the lines that separate scientific disciplines. Because it is a science of the global nature of systems, it has brought together thinkers from fields that had been widely separated. ... Chaos poses problems that defy accepted ways of working in science. It makes strong claims about the universal behavior of complexity. ... Believers in chaos--and they sometimes call themselves believers, or converts, or evangelists--speculate about determinism and free will, about evolution, about the nature of conscious intelligence. They feel that they are turning back a trend in science toward reductionism, the analysis of systems in terms of their constituent parts: quarks, chromosomes, or neurons. They believe that they are looking for the whole."[Gleick, p. 5]
Thus, what we have here is both an ancient and a revolutionary method of knowing -- but only revolutionary because we have nearly forgotten Socrates' dictum of humility and Plato's ideal of integrated truth. This method provides a way of understanding the universe, indeed, the multiverse, even human beings themselves, as interconnected in nested systems, constrained but not determined by their contexts. Just "as a growing snowflake falls to earth, typically floating in the wind for an hour or more, the choices made by the branching tips at any instant depend sensitively on such things as temperature, the humidity, and the presence of impurities in the atmosphere...[thus], any pair of snowflakes will experience very different paths...[and] the final flake records the history of all the changing weather conditions it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite."[Gleick, p. 311] So the choices made by a growing human at any instant depend sensitively on many things, and thus, any pair of human beings, even those who share quite similar initial conditions, will experience very different paths. The final person records the history of all the changing conditions it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite.
As fractal geometry is the geometry of movement and growth, the physics of flow. The ideal form of motion is seen in the complex circular flow of matter through time, contained but infinite, ever-deeper in its convexity. But motion is contrast with movement in interaction where consciousness is involved.[Laban] Our potential for growth is subject to many interacting forces which change human potentials into their actualized forms, by the woven effects of the interacting causes in the course of the life-process. The parts played by attention and intention in such a process are critical variables which steer us by ever finer choices inherent within life-plans and policies. It is a principle similar to that of the half way to the door paradox, in which it seems as if one can never really get out the room because one always has to go half-way first; time is the force perpendicular to the space between us and the door which changes as we choose to move toward the door, thus changing our conditions such that the choice is ever new, and always in need of reevaluation. The geometry of deep psychological reality and growth is non-linear, and as it is an emergent reality, understanding it calls for a sort of psychological travel or penetration of the generic human subject/object to be known. Such that that persons under consideration become subject to the psychologist when they can empathize, inside-looking-out. When we are able to get beyond objectivity in the human sciences, and see from inside the systems we wish to know, our method is no longer observation, but consideration, and what's evident from this view is often something we have long known.
This is an insight which helps us answer many an ancient question, including those involving free-will, determination, and social conditioning -- and it is especially important for the light that it sheds on the importance of choice in the process. A snowflake may 'choose' in a different sense than a community or a culture 'chooses,' and all of these differently than an individual human being makes a choice. But the role of self-determination of an individual system within the context of other systems is made far more comprehensive within the context of this world-view which we have remembered...with a vengeance.
What could better support the humble ideal of Socratic ignorance, after all, than the discovery that there actually are an infinite number of points of view from which any object of knowledge might be viewed? What better to keep us remembering how little we know and much we still have left to learn? We are compelled then to reiterate the key Socratic question, what does it mean, after all, to 'know' something -- most especially something fundamental and primary; something objective, not constructed; something of the natural world, not the artificial?
[xiii] Plato's SEVENTH EPISTLE, translated by J. Harward.
[xiv] Perhaps because, as Thomas Hobbes reiterated from Socrates, to know others in this way, one must first know oneself.[Hobbes, Author's Introduction: Leviathan] And as Meiklejohn reminds us that "We must try, therefore, to think in the terms of Socrates and Jesus -- to first 'Know thyself' and then to 'Love thy neighbor as thyself'. Only this will "bring intelligibility back into the social order."[Meiklejohn, The Meaning of America; p. 30]
[xv] Plato's SYMPOSIUM, translated by Tom Griffith.
[xvi] Contemporary contraversy swarms with resistence to 'multicultural' voices in the academy. The primary substance of contemporary discourse is quickly lost in argument over methods and perspectives; e.g. whose is most right, most accurate, most reliable and valid. Any student of contemporary philosophy readily sees the venom flow between so-called 'objectivists' and 'subjectivists', between 'absolutists' and 'relativists', 'traditionalists' and 'multiculturalists', 'right' and 'left', as between 'analytic' and 'postmodern' philosophers -- all without real dialogue between them, which certainly does not enhance the liklihood of reconciliation between these polarized oppositions on the whole of truth. Contraversy swarms, but the method used is not one of dialogue, and so the issues seem unlikely to be resolved.
[xvii] Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (Humphrey Milford: Oxford Univeristy Press: London) p.19.
For all their differences of perspective and purpose, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle come together at their deepest moments into a shared metaphysics, one that might be called diversity in unity', or 'relative complementarity', or what Parmenides called an "infinite multiplicity of being"[144b].[i] Developed at length in the work of all three philosophers are diverse and interconnected perspectives on 'being' in all its various senses. Aristotle uses a different method than Socrates, to be sure, and both of these differ from Plato. But this is certainly because, as their collective metaphysics would indicate, as individuals, they each had different challenges and potentialities within the reaches and limits of their own unique histories and situations. In short, they had different 'best-selves'.
Whereas Socrates had his intellectual ancestors to answer to, and the apparent knack for reaching and challenging people by what Parmenides calls 'idle talk'[ii], Aristotle had his own predecessors to build upon, most importantly Socrates himself, and significantly, those who had misunderstood Socrates through Plato's explication of him. Complex as they recognized reality to be, these ancient philosophers were able to find and describe the order which organizes being into a system of systems which behaves for comprehensive reasons. This then must be a metaphysics which is accountable to the whole of reality, including both object known and subject knowing as part of that 'moment' where attention meets and participates in the changing world at the cutting edge of time.
It is the contention of this argument that much contemporary controversy hinges on our failure to remember the insights that these great souls revealed for us. And that our future academic struggles might be eased considerably by proper respect for this dialogical effort, this magnificent jewel from our past.
Taking these and all ancient views together, as a progression of thought -- a dialogue -- rather than as competing metaphysical conceptions, might bring us a long way toward reconciliation of many contemporary conflicts (including perhaps some of those involved in how we should view the Platonic Dialogues themselves[iii]).
My approach here is to follow through from dialogues involving the young Socrates to those involving the more mature, and, as he himself claims on his deathbed, more prophetic Socrates.[Phaedo][iv] This progression of thought gives a foundation to both the literary analysis that Plato would undertake, and the linguistic analysis that Aristotle would further endeavor. None of their ultimate purposes or objectives seems to be fundamentally different from Socrates' own in this, though often their more immediate purposes differed, effecting the means of expression they choose. Rather, each simply follows his own path toward the same center, as Socrates accounts for different views of justice in Republic [Rep 327][v], as Zeno and Parmenides account for the existence of both 'the one and the many'[vi], and as Aristotle accounts for unavoidable equivocation of terms in all out dialectical inquiries.[Metaphysics, 1030b][vii]
Plato and Aristotle alike perform their investigations under a light held high by Socrates, and my claim is that it is toward the basic insights which are made clear (though sometimes understated) by Socrates himself which Aristotle directs so-called Platonists, if not Plato himself, to look. If we allow for variation of means and emphasis in the way they expressed themselves, (such as Plato's recording in literary form what the Socratic elenchus does in oratory form, and Aristotle's analysis of linguistic forms vs. Plato's emphasis on the mathematics of nature, which (according to Vlastos) distinguish his philosophy from the historical Socrates, and clearly provokes Aristotle's sharp criticism), then we can better see that these philosophers together discover a great deal more about the whole truth of reality than we seem to recognize today.
Perhaps another look at what these great minds were up to would remind us why each of them held the whole truth to be the end of all inquiry...and hence, that inquiry has no real end.
Socrates says in the Republic:
"No measure that falls in the least degree short of the whole truth can be quite fair in so important a matter...though people sometimes think enough has been done and there is no need to look further."[Rep VI 503]
[T]he genuine lover of knowledge cannot fail, from his youth up, to strive after the whole of truth.(Rep VI 485)
“Now the whole course of study...has the corresponding effect of leading up the noblest faculty of the soul towards the contemplation of the highest of all realities...the main theme...the function of philosophic discussion, into what division it falls, and what are it's methods; for here, it seems, we have come to the procedure which should lead to the resting-place at our journey's end.”(Rep VII 533)
"Further...this whole course of study will, I believe, contribute to the end we desire and not be labour wasted, only if it is carried to the point at which reflection can take a comprehensive view of the mutual relations and affinities which bind all these sciences together.”(Rep VII 532]
“The detached studies...will now be brought together in a comprehensive view of their connexions with one another and with reality....a natural gift for Dialectic...is the same thing as the ability to see the connexions of things.”(Rep VII 537)
To this Aristotle adds:
"[D]ialecticians and sophists assume the same guise as the philosopher, for sophistic is Wisdom which exists only in semblance, and dialecticians embrace all things in their dialectic, and being is common to all things; but evidently their dialectic embraces these subjects because these are proper to philosophy. For sophistic and dialectic turn on the same class of things as philosophy, but this differs from dialectic in the nature of the faculty required and from sophistic in respect of the purpose of the philosophic life. Dialectic is merely critical where philosophy claims to know, and sophistic is what appears to be philosophy but is not."[Book IV/Chapter 2]
"Some of the sensible substances are generally admitted to be substances, so that we must look first among these. For it is an advantage to advance to that which is more knowable. For learning proceeds for all in this way--through that which is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from what is good for each and make what is without qualification good good for each, so it is our task to start from what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself. Now what is knowable and primary for particular sets of people is often knowable to a very small extent, and has little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which is barely knowable but knowable to oneself, and try to know what is knowable without qualification, passing, as has been said, by way of those very things which one does know."[Metaphysics: Book VII/Chapter 3]
"Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it....[N]o one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed"[Aristotle's Metaphysics: Book II/Chapter 1]
"It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought."[Metaphysics, Book II/Chapter I]
We can see this kind of dialectical progression then in the work of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. For example, to Socrates' emphasis on the sense in which the 'forms' or 'ideas' are unchanging and primary, Aristotle adds his own balancing view on the importance of understanding the nature of change and the fluctuation of appearances and relations. Forms of thought are causal, Aristotle emphasized, remembering from Socrates.[Socrates in Parm 131b-e, 133; Rep V 472; Rep VI 500; Rep IX 591][viii] Ideals exist as targets, as patterns, that is, as end of human action which, properly understood, might help humans move toward their higher potentials, their individual best selves.[Aristotle in Phy 193b7-12; Psy Book IV; and perhaps Meta 1029a51] This is a point Socrates emphasized time and again -- but one which many Platonists have casually neglected, then as now.
Some followers of this dialogue have externalized the ideas as if they somehow exist 'apart from' the human mind, while others took a more solipsist view of the matter, as if ideas could exist only within the mind. Both of these views seem to ignore Socrates' own account, which is that they exists both within and outside of the mind. As Socrates said, "In my opinion, the ideas are, as it were, patterns fixed in nature, and other things are like them, and resemblances of them--what is meant by the participation of other things in the ideas, is really assimilation to them."[Parm 132d] Ideas cannot exist merely 'apart from' the mind, as Parmenides says, for then they face problem of being separable from self, and thus confusing our conception of 'being', in the sense that it is one, unified, and whole. According to Aristotle, this is what had indeed occurred as a result of viewing the forms as if they are 'apart from' the minds which they are present in. But if we look close we can see that Socrates does not hold this to be the case. When asked by Parmenides whether he thinks ideas exist "apart from the likeness which we possess, and of the one and many"[Parm 129e], Socrates affirms only that there are such ideas, but not necessarily apart from the minds of individuals. "I have often been puzzled about those things, Parmenides," Socrates said, "whether one should say that the same thing is true in the case of humans as in the case of...trivial objects", like hair and dirt, which are not puzzling as they do not have a form.[Parm 129d][ix]
On the other hand, ideas, if merely "in us", are not connected to being, but exist only relative to one another: such as slavery/mastery; which are not absolutely real, not tethered to being, but only constructed relative to one another. Socrates was clear that nothing is absolute in human relations [Parm 133e]. But 'truth' is absolute, objective, and primary, and is recognized as such by a process which Socrates called 'tethering' our beliefs to being.[Meno 98; Parm 134b][x] Knowledge, in this strong sense, and even 'true belief', must be related to being by this oft' neglected process -- and so it is that we have little of it, as young Socrates reluctantly agrees with Parmenides.[Parm 134b] However, this is not a necessary effect. Socrates certainly thinks we can have knowledge[Parm 133b] -- if it weren't for the fact that we do too little of what is necessary to distinguish objective truth from subjective constructs. Only those ideas which are actually tethered to being are in any sense absolute, eternal, primary, and so not true merely 'in our sphere', yet not 'apart from' and outside of it either. Even the young Socrates answers to this apparent problem of the one being separated from itself in Parmenides by showing how being might indeed be thought to be, in a sense, inside itself.[Parm 145d][xi]/[xii] Humans are not merely 'like' nature, they are part of it -- though not 'part' in the sense we might typically use the term, as if separable from other parts [Parm 133]. Rather, as Plato and Aristotle seemed to agree, humans 'participate' (in a sense that is not easy to settle on) in the patterns of nature by degrees -- and whether this participation is by likeness, resemblance, or by assimilation [Parm 132d] -- which we can discover best by dialogue and deliberation.
As Aristotle showed throughout his works, reconciling equivocal terms is a life long task, but it is one he undertook for the sake of clearing up Platonist's confusion, despite Socrates clear mind on these matters. The metaphysical picture which emerges if we carry this dialogue through is a rich integration of many individual perspectives, an approach which indeed makes for an even more 'objective' picture of the truth than any narrower or less complex view can reveal. Just as two eyes provide depth to the dimensions which can be seen by a single eye, so "two heads are better than one", as Socrates often said.[Sym 174d] We can have evidence that our beliefs are true only by 'tethering' them with being, and only beliefs which have been sufficiently 'tethered' begin to approach objectively reality. These are distinct from that which we merely believe to be real, without this critical examination.
Aristotle took a similar approach to the analysis of words. Words, like untethered beliefs, can be what some postmoderns might call merely 'subjectively constructed', and thus not quite as 'real' as sometimes supposed by those who do not distinguish between 'knowledge' and something less, as Socrates worried. Aristotle helps reconcile this equivocation on the term 'real', among others, in his distinction between primary and secondary substance, which differentiates the most fundamental substance from that which is 'predicated of' and 'present in' it, and thus is 'real' only in a secondary sense -- which is to say, real in as much as it appears in our minds and language as we think and talk about primary reality -- which is real whether we notice it or not. Aristotle attempts, as did Socrates, to broaden our understanding of 'knowledge' such that we might distinguish stronger from the lesser, but nonetheless real, senses. Perhaps one key difference between these philosophers is then the disposition of their perceived audiences -- Socrates' treating 'knowledge' too weakly, while Aristotle's treating it, in a sense, too strong.
Thus, Aristotle reminded us of the importance of understanding the language we share in common and which could help us to better navigate the whole truth about reality, that which changes along with that which lasts. As Socrates often suggested, words are important tools of understanding, but too often they rationalize injustice, and so the meaning of our words must needs be continually examined and justified with being, not merely constructed in relation to each other [Parm 134b], as is slave to master. Words too can prove to be simply different approaches to the same center. In this, again, Socrates gives a respectful nod to this important distinction Aristotle draws between primary and secondary being, both of which are 'real', though they are so in different senses. As Aristotle says in the Metaphysics, "it does not matter at all in which of the...ways one likes to describe the facts; this is evident, that [some terms]...in the primary and simple sense belong to substances. Still they belong to other things as well, only not in the primary sense." [Meta 1030b5-10] The metaphysics that grows out of this is one that concludes that it's all one and many, unity and plurality, for "[W]hat seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be."[Parm 166b]
And it is important to see how much is dependent upon how one looks at it -- for changes in perspective makes being appear to change, but accumulation of perspective might provide depth and broader vision. For as Socrates says:
"And such being when seen indistinctly and at a distance, appears to be one; but when seen near and with keen intellect, every single thing appears to be infinite, since it is deprived of the one, which is not?"[Parm 165c]
It is a question then of what we can conceive of, as "one cannot conceive the many without the one"[Parm 166b]
Because things appear relative to one another, appearances can confuse, and so the whole metaphysical truth then is going to have to involve both an affirmation and a denial of every arguable position. Thus, Socrates continually uses and recommends the dialectic method, which is illustrated in Parmenides, where discussion of Zeno's method gives rise to how this variability of perspective is why dialectic participation is necessary to learning and knowing.[Parm 165c] Zeno uses this 'method of controversy' to explore the physical world, but Parmenides advises Socrates to take it a step further -- and apply this method to the invisible world of abstract thought:
And what is the nature of this exercise, Parmenides, which you would recommend?
That which you heard Zeno practicing [Parm 135d-e] i.e. ""In a word, when you suppose anything to be or not to be, or to be in any way affected, you must look at the consequences in relation to the thing itself, and to any other things which you choose-to each of them singly, to more than one, and to all; and so of other things, you must look at them in relation to themselves and to anything else which you suppose either to be or not to be, if you would train yourself perfectly and see the real truth."[Parm 136c]
And "I think that you should go a step further, and consider not only the consequences which flow from a given hypothesis, but also the consequences which flow from denying the hypothesis; and that will be still better training for you."[Parm 135d-e]
"At the same time, I give you credit for saying to him that you did not care to examine the perplexity in reference to visible things, or to consider the question that way; but only in reference to objects of thought, and to what may be called ideas."[Parm 135d-e]
"I should be far more amazed if any one found in the ideas themselves which are apprehended by reason, the same puzzle and entanglement which you have shown to exist in visible objects."[Parm 129d]
And as he says in Phaedo:
"[F]irst principles, even if they appear certain, should be carefully considered; and when they are satisfactorily ascertained, then, with a sort of hesitating confidence in human reason, you may, I think, follow the course of the argument; and if this is clear, there will be no need for any further inquiry."[Phaedo p.40]
And as Plato says in his Seventh Epistle:
"The process however of dealing with all of these, as the mind moves up and down to each in turn, does after much effort give birth in a well-constituted mind to knowledge of that which is well constituted."[Seventh Epistle][xiii]
Thus, dialectic is seen to be a valuable method, and perhaps critical to good science. At least and at best, this approach could help us to fill in the gaps between what we think we know and the complex whole of what might be known by interconnection of our differing perspectives on and common center about which we speak. It could take western culture a long way to remember this, and perhaps admit to the 'diversity in unity' which Socrates did his best to reveal, knowing he would be unable to do for his students what we must do for ourselves.
Sadly, as Parmenides said, and as is still the case today, "most people are not aware that this round about progress through all things is the only way in which the mind can attain truth and wisdom."[Parm 136e][xiv]
Perhaps it is worth looking deeper then, in other of the Dialogues, for clues to a better understanding of what is meant by this dialectic progression. In the Republic he suggests love is key to understanding this process which leads to the good itself. In Symposium this is spelled out in finer resolution. Young Socrates gives us an interesting angle on this learning process in his discussion with Diotima from Mantinea, a woman who was an expert on many subjects, and who taught him by means of questions the meaning of love. And in the process 'proved to' him that everything is not necessarily either/or,[Sym 202][xv] as Eros is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, but that which exists in between these and all other opposing states, e.g. past and future, sleep and wake, rest and motion. The unity of several passages from Symposium offer critical insight into the dialectic interaction and the relation of knower to that which is known, and what's more, the relation of love to learning.
As per Phaedrus' account of love:
"Love, more than anything (more than family, or position, or wealth), implants in men the thing which must be their guide if they are to live a good life. And what is that? It is a horror of what is degrading, and a passionate desire for what is good. These qualities are essential if a state or an individual is to accomplish anything great or good."[Sym 178d] After all, as Socrates earlier said, learning is not imparted form one to another simply by contact, as if ideas can be transfused like liquid from one container to another by means of a string between them, as if those of us who had few good ideas could absorb them from those who had a lot.[Sym 175e]
As per Agathon's account:
"Eros is master of all forms of literary or artistic creation. After all, no one can impart, or teach, a skill which he does not himself possess or know. And who will deny that the creation of all living things is the work of Eros' wisdom, which makes all living things come into being and grow?"[Sym 196e-197] "He gives us the feeling, not of longing, but of belonging, since he is the moving spirit behind all those occasions when we meet and gather together."[Sym 197c]
And Socrates agreed:
"Eros is a spirit, spirits are midway between what is divine and what is human; he is a means of communication between gods and men. He takes requests and offerings to the gods, and brings back instructions and benefits in return...plays a vital role in holding the world together. He is the medium of all prophecy and religion...There is no direct contact between god and man. All association and communication between them, waking or sleeping, takes place through Eros. This kind of knowledge is knowledge of the spirit; any other knowledge...is purely utilitarian. Such spirits are many and varied, and Eros is one of them'."[Sym 202e-203]" Neither destitute nor affluent, neither wise nor foolish, Eros is of the intermediate class of spirits.[Sym 204b]
Pausanias emphasizes in his account:
"[T]he true position, I think, is that...there isn't one single form of love. So love is neither right nor wrong in itself. Done rightly, it is right; done wrongly, it is wrong.[Sym 183e] "It is in general true of any activity that, simply in itself, is neither good nor bad. Take what we're doing now, for example -- that is to say drinking, or singing, or talking. None of these is good or bad in itself, but each becomes so, depending on the way it is done. Well and rightly done, it is good; wrongly done, it is bad. And it's just the same with loving, and Eros. It's not all good, and doesn't all deserve praise. The Eros we should praise is the one which encourages people to love in the right way."[Sym 181].
And Diotima says to Socrates:
"Reproduction, Socrates, both physical and mental, is a universal human activity. At a certain age our nature desires to give birth....What is mortal tries, to the best of its ability, to be everlasting and immortal. It does this in the only way it can, by always leaving a successor to replace what decays. Think of what we call the life-span and identity of an individual creature. For example, a man is said to be the same individual from childhood until old age. The cells of his body are always changing, yet he is still called the same person, despite being perpetually reconstituted as parts of him decay. And when we come to knowledge, the situation is even odder....as far as knowledge goes; the same thing happens with each individual piece of knowledge. What we call studying presupposes that knowledge is transient. Forgetting is loss of knowledge, and studying preserves knowledge by creating memory afresh in us, to replace what is lost. Hence we have the illusion of continuing knowledge....This, Socrates, is the mechanism by which mortal creatures can taste immortality....Those whose creative urge is physical tend to...produce children....In others the impulse if mental or spiritual...and under the general heading 'thought'...".[Sym 205d]
"Such a person, "if he comes across a beautiful, noble, well-formed mind, then he finds the combination particularly attractive. He'll drop everything and embark on long conversations about goodness, with such a companion, trying to teach him about the nature and behavior of the good man. Now that he's made contact with someone beautiful, and joins with his friends in bringing his conception to maturity. In consequence such people have a far stringer bond between them than there is between the parents of children; and they form much firmer friendships, because they are jointly responsible for finer, and more lasting, offspring....at this state his offspring are beautiful discussions and conversations. Next he should realize that the physical beauty of one body is akin to that of any body, and that if he's going to pursue beauty of appearance, it's the height of folly not to regard the beauty which is in all bodies as one and the same. This insight will convert him into of lover of all physical beauty..." breaking his tie to a single beauty [Sym 209c];
"The next stage is to put a higher value on mental than on physical beauty. The right qualities of mind, even in the absence of any great physical beauty, will be enough to awaken his love and affection. he will generate the kind of discussions which are improving to the young. The aim is that, as the next step, he should be compelled to contemplate the beauty of customs and institutions...and from human institutions his teacher should direct him to knowledge, so that he may, in turn, see the beauty of different types of knowledge. Whereas before...he was dominated by the individual case...now he directs his eyes to what is beautiful in general, as he turns to gaze upon the limitless ocean of beauty. Now he produces many fine and inspiring thoughts and arguments, as he gives his undivided attention to philosophy. Here he gains in strength and stature until his attention is caught by that one special knowledge -- the knowledge of beauty....And when a man has reached this point in his education in love, studying the different types of beauty in correct order, he will come to the final end and goal of this education. Then suddenly he will see, a beauty of a breathtaking nature, Socrates, the beauty which is the justification of all his efforts so far. It is eternal, neither coming to be nor passing away, neither increasing nor decreasing.... If a man progresses (as he will do, if he goes about his love affairs in the right way) from the lesser beauties, and begins to catch sight of this beauty, then he is within reach of the final revelation. Such is the experience of the man who approaches, or is guided towards, love in the right way, beginning with the particular examples of beauty, but always returning from them to the search for that one beauty. He uses them like a ladder, climbing from the love of one person to love of two; from two to love of all physical beauty; from physical beauty to beauty in human behavior; thence to beauty in subjects of study; from them he arrives finally at that branch of knowledge which studies nothing but ultimate beauty. Then at last he understands what true beauty is."[Sym 211b]
"That, if ever, is the moment, my dear Socrates, when a man's life is worth living, as he contemplates beauty itself."[Sym 211d]
"That's what Diotima said to me, and I, for one, find it convincing. And it's because I'm convinced that I now try to persuade other people as well that man, in his search for this goal, could hardly hope to find a better ally than Eros. That's why I say that everyone should honour Eros, and why I myself honour him, and make the pursuit of Eros my chief concern, and encourage others to do the same. Now, and for all time, I praise the power and vigour of Eros, to the limits of my ability."[Sym 212c]
Socrates makes much of this conception of 'the moment' of understanding in Parmenides, where he explores how change finds it's locus in the 'now', the 'present', where attention meets the world at the cutting edge of time, where past meets future, sleeping meets waking, and where 'the one' participates in both rest and motion.
Plato adds in the Seventh Letter:
"After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers."[Epist]
And as he says in Republic:
Here at last, then, we come to the main theme, to be developed in philosophic discussion. It's...progress is like that of the power of vision...the summit of the intelligible world is reached in philosophic discussion by one who aspires, through the discourse of reason unaided by any of the senses, to make his way in every case to the essential reality and perseveres until he has grasped by pure intelligence the very nature of Goodness itself. This journey is what we call Dialectic.(Plato's Republic, p. 252]
It is this moment of choice then when one is tested and what was only potential becomes real. "The real Socrates -- I don't know if any of you has ever seen the figure inside. I saw it once, and it struck me as utterly godlike and golden and beautiful and wonderful...."[Sym 216e] Alcibiades has this to say, after having been unable to tempt Socrates with his beauty by sleeping next to him all night, all the while teasing and seducing him, but the pleasures of the body were unable to tempt Socrates to sin -- in this case, by exercise of the wrong love for the wrong reason at the wrong time. Alcibiades admits Socrates to be the love of his (or perhaps any other) life for this -- the only one, he said, who knew and could raise Alcibiades better self -- which made his actual and lessor self feel ashamed all the rest of the time. He cried rivers of tears for this great man, he said, who saved his life in battle, and raised his standard for humanity throughout a lifetime of respect, proven in that one moment of trial. And he was not the only one who felt this way about Socrates, he said, but one of many who crave what Socrates has to give -- but only to the right lover for the right reason at the right moment.
"[I]n becoming, it gets to the point of time between "was" and "will be," which is "now"[Parm 152b]. "The moment. For the moment seems to imply a something out of which change takes place into either of two states; for the change is not from the state of rest as such, nor, from the state of motion as such; but there is this curious nature, which we call the moment lying between rest and motion, not being in any time; and into this and out of this what is in motion changes into rest, and what is at rest into motion....And the one then, since it is at rest and also in motion, will change to either, for only in this way can it be in both. And in changing it changes in a moment, and when it is changing it will be in no time, and will not then be either in motion or at rest."[Parm 156d-157b]
"[T]hat which is becoming cannot skip the present; when it reaches the present it ceases to become, and is then whatever it may happen to be becoming."[Parm 152c] "And when it arrives at the present it stops from becoming older, and no longer becomes, but is older, for if it went on it would never be reached by the present, for it is the nature of that which goes on, to touch both the present and the future, letting go the present and seizing the future, while in process of becoming between them."[Parm 152c] "Then the one always both is and becomes older and younger than itself" [Parm 152e] "[T]o be (einai) is only participation of being in present time, and to have been is the participation of being at a past time, and to be about to be is the participation of being at a future time."[Parm 152]
There is this at least, which is not either/or [Sym 202] -- as Eros is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad -- rather, there is an intermediate state between them, as true belief is between understanding and ignorance [Sym 202].
"And it will be in the same case in relation to the other changes, when it passes from being into cessation of being, or from not-being into becoming -- then it passes between certain states of motion and rest, and, neither is nor is not, nor becomes nor is destroyed....And on the same principle, in the passage from one to many and from many to one, the one is neither one nor many, neither separated nor aggregated; and in the passage from like to unlike, and from unlike to like, it is neither like nor unlike, neither in a state of assimilation nor of dissimilation; and in the passage from small to great and equal and back again, it will be neither small nor great, nor equal, nor in a state of increase, or diminution, or equalization....All these, then, are the affections of the one, if the one has being."[Parm 157b]
"Therefore they are neither the same, nor other, nor in motion, nor at rest, nor in a state of becoming, nor of being destroyed, nor greater, nor less, nor equal, nor have they experienced anything else of the sort; for, if they are capable of experiencing any such affection, they will participate in one and two and three, and odd and even, and in these, as has been proved, they do not participate, seeing that they are altogether and in every way devoid of the one....Therefore if one is, the one is all things, and also nothing, both in relation to itself and to other things."[Parm 160b]
"Then the one being always itself in itself and other, must always be both at rest and in motion....And must be the same with itself, and other than itself; and also the same with the others, and other than the others; this follows from its previous affections."[Parm 146b]
Thus, the epistemology which flows from this ontology is one John Stuart Mill would remember for us many centuries later. The fact is, we begin in different places in this world, thus we have differing experience, differing perspectives, learn different lessons, and thus follow different paths toward the single end we have in common with all living things -- that of their own good.[Sym 205] The truth then will depend upon a balance struck between opposing views on any given object of knowledge, and the whole truth, which is the end of all inquiry, will never fully be attainable, but is an ideal which is realized to the degree that we learn from one another. For we may all see the world differently, but it is nonetheless the same world that we share. So our perspectives are, as Socrates put it, “as if all lines of discourse converge on the same center'.[Rep 327] It follows from all this then that reality is not as ‘clear and distinct’ as many moderns have thought, but is rather a ‘multiplicity in unity,’ as the ancients understood. For there are indeed, as anyone who considers the metaphor will conclude, an infinite number of perspectives from which any object of knowledge might be viewed. And so if it is the whole truth we wish to discover, then we must consider all the objects of our knowledge from as many points of view as possible. What's more, when the object of our study is itself a subject, that is, living and conscious, then they have their own point of view as well, from inside looking out, which the whole truth must also include. Infinity…plus one! All these perspectives must be taken into account before we can claim to really know any living subject. But we can understand them without complete knowledge, simply by looking into ourselves.
And because one person's knowledge may be another person's blind spot, our worst enemy may very well be our best teacher. To be fair, we might rightly operate on the premise, quite foreign to us these days, that everyone’s point of view matters, and serves to round out the whole of truth. Arguably, this is the task each of these philosophers undertakes. And perhaps these great souls give nod here to some feminist and multicultural critiques of the academy.[xvi] Arguably, this is the task for all of us. For recognizing this inherent diversity of perspective in the whole truth gives immediate import to the need for dialogue, and at the very least, empathy. Seeing a certain logical complementarity in our perspectives becomes incentive to listen and to teach, for no one ever completely understands anything, and thus there is always something to learn -- even and most especially, Socrates would say, about what we might think we 'know' best. And while the whole truth is never grasped once and for all, it might be gleaned in a moment of honest contemplation by thoughtful individuals who put themselves through the process of examining as many perspectives as are available on any given object of knowledge, and most importantly -- of remembering them.
As Mill says in his autobiography:
"the title of Platonist belongs by far better right to those who have been nourished in, and have endeavored to practice Plato's mode of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only by the adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn mostly from the least intelligible of his works, and which the character of his mind and writings makes it uncertain whether he himself regarded as anything more than poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures."[xvii]
This is true, it is suggested, for the same reason Parmenides recommended 'idle talk' as the best training for Socrates -- because only in this way does the spark jump from one person to another, to another, and so on. Certainly the divine spark has jumped from Socrates to countless other great minds, contributing in every case to the good of the individual as an individual. It is only in the actualization of each individual good that the common good is ultimately accomplished. And so it is our individual work -- the creativity of our different kinds of 'children', as it were -- by which we participate in time by guide of Eros. And if this seems to be a reiteration of the lessons of 'love', then so be it -- for this is no less than Socrates and Aristotle would have us remember. As Socrates says, without hesitation -- "love is the only thing I ever claim to know anything about."[Sym 177e]
In conclusion, I think we have much to learn from the perspectives of our ancient, and largely neglected, philosophical heroes -- great souls whose vision held the light of reason so much higher than any has been able to reach since. The potential of these philosophies to find unity in a common center continues to go virtually unrecognized in the many centuries since ancient Greece. Yet it is a line of discourse which contemporary dialogues literally beg for, as well as continually reveals. Tending these days to ignore the legitimacy of multiple points of view which might be considered on any given object of knowledge, we tend to take differing perspectives as competing versions of truth, an assumption which locks us into cycles of conflict where defense and the will to win prevents our listening to diverse views and voices which are necessary to true understanding. The ancients tried to teach us a kind of inquiry which requires humility, a point which Socrates illustrated by his practice of elenchus, Aristotle illustrated by his multi-perspectival analysis, and which Sophistic arrogance apparently precludes.
This is, I think, the primary challenge of our age. Our situation has long called out for a deeper analysis of human relations than traditional sophistic methods allow. Taken to heart, key elements of the Socratic and Aristotelian methods together offer a potential for integration by dialogue of many diverse schools of thought. These philosophers could shed much light on the revelations of our age, which would be a giant step in the right direction toward true science.
This is perhaps the best lesson history has to teach contemporary discourse on the reaches and limits of its adopted methods. The unifying perspective they provide on our contemporary power struggles is powerful enough, I think, to help reconcile many a calculated, if not deliberate, misunderstanding. It is a metaphysical conception which is quite compatible with modern and even postmodern insights -- but one which differs from our contemporary scientific methods in its emphasis on the importance of dialectic interchange and dialogue as a necessary means to 'knowledge'. These great minds were -- as ours might better be -- guided by the will to reconcile differing experience, differing perspectives, reveal incompatible beliefs, and to follow reason in all cases to the truth which can never be refuted, and so is left standing when all the hardest questions have been asked.
[i] Plato's PARMENIDES, translated by Benjamin Jowett.
[ii] "I certainly do not see my way at present, said Socrates. Yes, said Parmenides; and I think that this arises, Socrates, out of your attempting to define the beautiful, the just, the good, and the ideas generally, without sufficient previous training. I noticed your deficiency, when I heard you talking here with your friend Aristoteles, the day before yesterday. The impulse that carries you towards philosophy is assuredly noble and divine; but there is an art which is called by the vulgar idle talking, and which is of imagined to be useless; in that you must train and exercise yourself, now that you are young, or truth will elude your grasp."[Parm 135c]
[iii] A recent book by Jacob Klagg examines the different approaches taken on the Socratic dialogues. He begins with Gain Fine's analytic analysis of the relationship between Socrates and Aristotle, and moves through a number of differing perspectives on this subject. In this paper, I am arguing that a dialogical reading of these ancient philosophers reveals a metaphysics which, in the end, dignifies all of these various perspectives on the Socratic dialogues, in the process, showing the true beauty of what is perhaps the greatest single work of art that human beings have ever produced. Working from the pattern of the ideal, Plato arguably created the closest thing to perfection in philosophical literature, and we would be wise to settle for no less than the whole truth about his work.
[iv] Plato's PHAEDO, translation by Benjamin Jowett.
[v] Plato's REPUBLIC, translated by Francis McDonald Cornford.
[vi] "I see, Parmenides, said Socrates, that Zeno would like to be not only one with you in friendship but your second self in his writings too; he puts what you say in another way, and would fain make believe that he is telling us something which is new. For you, in your poems, say The All is one, and of this you adduce excellent proofs; and he on the other hand says There is no many; and on behalf of this he offers overwhelming evidence. You affirm unity, he denies plurality. And so you deceive the world into believing that you are saying different things when really you are saying much the same. This is a strain of art beyond the reach of most of us."[Parm 128b]
[vii] Aristotle's METAPHYSICS, translated by W. D. Ross.
[viii] As Parmenides asks the young Socrates, "But I should like to know whether you mean that there are certain ideas of which all other things partake, and from which they derive their names; that similars, for example, become similar, because they partake of similarity; and great things become great, because they partake of greatness; and that just and beautiful things become just and beautiful, because they partake of justice and beauty?" "Yes, certainly," said Socrates, "that is my meaning."[Parm 131b-e]
"[W]hen we set out to discover the essential nature of justice and injustice and what a perfectly just and perfectly unjust man would be like, supposing them to exist, our purpose was to use them as ideal patterns; we were to observe the degree of happiness or unhappiness that each exhibited, and to draw the necessary inferences that our own destiny would be like that of the one we most resembled. We did not set out to show that these ideals could exist in fact."(Republic V 472) "[P]erhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and, seeing it, to found one in himself."(Rep IX 591) "[H]appiness can only come to a state when its lineaments are traced by an artist working after the divine pattern....He will take society and human character as his canvas, and begin by scraping it clean... Next, he will sketch in the outline of the constitution. Then as the work goes on, he will frequently refer to his model, the ideals of justice, goodness, temperance, and the rest, and compare with them the copy of those qualities which he is trying to create in human society...he will reproduce the complexion of true humanity, guided by that divine pattern whose likeness Homer saw in the men he called godlike. He will rub out and paint in again this or that feature, until he has produced, so far as may be, a type of human character that heaven can approve."(Rep VI 500, emphasis added)
"Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together. It was framed after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might resemble this as far as was possible; for the pattern exists from eternity, and the created heaven has been, and is, and will be, in all time. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of time....These things at some future time, when we are at leisure, may have the consideration which they deserve, but not at present."[Timeaus]
[ix] Plato's PARMENIDES, translated by Francis McDonald Cornford.
[x] "But the knowledge which we have, will answer to the truth which we have; and again, each kind of knowledge which we have, will be a knowledge of each kind of being which we have?"[Parm 134b]
[xi] "Then each individual partakes either of the whole of the idea or else of a part of the idea? Can there be any other mode of participation?
There cannot be, he said.
Then do you think that the whole idea is one, and yet, being one, is in each one of the many?
Why not, Parmenides? said Socrates.
Because one and the same thing will exist as a whole at the same time in many separate individuals, and will therefore be in a state of separation from itself.
Nay, but the idea may be like the day which is one and the same in many places at once, and yet continuous with itself; in this way each idea may be one; and the same in all at the same time.
I like your way, Socrates, of making one in many places at once. You mean to say, that if I were to spread out a sail and cover a number of men, there would be one whole including many-is not that your meaning?...And would you say that the whole sail includes each man, or a part of it only, and different parts different men?
The latter.
Then, Socrates, the ideas themselves will be divisible, and things which participate in them will have a part of them only and not the whole idea existing in each of them?
That seems to follow. But..."[Parm 131b-d]
He goes on:
"Let us abstract the one which, as we say, partakes of being, and try to imagine it apart from that of which, as we say, it partakes"[Parm 143b]
"And if each of them is one, then by the addition of any one to any pair, the whole becomes three?...And three are odd, and two are even?...And if there are two there must also be twice, and if there are three there must be thrice; that is, if twice one makes two, and thrice one three? There are two, and twice, and therefore there must be twice two; and there are three, and there is thrice, and therefore there must be thrice three?...If there are three and twice, there is twice three; and if there are two and thrice, there is thrice two?...Here, then, we have even taken even times, and odd taken odd times, and even taken odd times, and odd taken even times....And if this is so, does any number remain which has no necessity to be? Then if one is, number must also be..."[[Parm 143e-144]
"But if there is number, there must also be many, and infinite multiplicity of being; for number is infinite in multiplicity, and partakes also of being: am I not right? And if all number participates in being, every part of number will also participate?...Then being is distributed over the whole multitude of things, and nothing that is, however small or however great, is devoid of it? "[Parm 144b]
"And it is divided into the greatest and into the smallest, and into being of all sizes, and is broken up more than all things; the divisions of it have no limit."[Parm 144c] And so, "Then the one attaches to every single part of being, and does not fail in any part, whether great or small, or whatever may be the size of it?"[Parm 144d] "Then the one if it has being is one and many, whole and parts, having limits and yet unlimited in number?"[Parm 145]
Consider this, he says later on:[Parm 148d]
"Again, how far can the one touch or not touch itself and others?-Consider.
I am considering.
The one was shown to be in itself which was a whole?
True.
And also in other things?
Yes.
In so far as it is in other things it would touch other things, but in so far as it is in itself it would be debarred from touching them, and would touch itself only.
Clearly.
Then the inference is that it would touch both?
It would.
But what do you say to a new point of view? Must not that which is to touch another be next to that which it is to touch, and occupy the place nearest to that in which what it touches is situated?
True.
Then the one, if it is to touch itself, ought to be situated next to itself, and occupy the place next to that in which itself is?
It ought.
And that would require that the one should be two, and be in two places at once, and this, while it is one, will never happen.
No.
Then the one cannot touch itself any more than it can be two?
It cannot.
Neither can it touch others.
Why not?
The reason is, that whatever is to touch another must be in separation from, and next to, that which it is to touch, and no third thing can be between them....Two things, then, at the least are necessary to make contact possible?....And if to the two a third be added in due order, the number of terms will be three, and the contacts two?...And every additional term makes one additional contact, whence it follows that the contacts are one less in number than the terms; the first two terms exceeded the number of contacts by one, and the whole number of terms exceeds the whole number of contacts by one in like manner; and for every one which is afterwards added to the number of terms, one contact is added to the contacts....Whatever is the whole number of things, the contacts will be always one less."[Parm 148d-149c]]
"But if all the parts are in the whole, and the one is all of them and the whole, and they are all contained by the whole, the one will be contained by the one; and thus the one will be in itself."[Parm 145d]
"And yet the one, being itself in itself, will also surround and be without itself; and, as containing itself, will be greater than itself; and, as contained in itself, will be less; and will thus be greater and less than itself."[Parm 151].
"[W]hat seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be."[Parm 166b]
[xii] As an important aside, it is a curious, but not altogether surprising, phenomenon that twenty-three hundred years later we should rediscover this insight of this nestedness with the recognition and proliferation of what is widely called 'chaos theory', which is perhaps better called 'fractal geometry' in this context. Aristotle long ago gave us logical evidence of the 'nestedness' of being, but it has apparently taken until now to discover the empirical evidence for it. In a nutshell, chaos theory reminds us of what we, the cultural beneficiaries of ancient Greece, have long known:
"Nature forms patterns. Some are orderly in space but disorderly in time, others orderly in time but disorderly in space. Some patterns are fractal, exhibiting structures self-similar in scale... The dynamics seem so basic--shapes changing in space and time--yet only now are the tools available to understand them."[James Gleick, CHAOS: Making a New Science (Penguin Books: New York) p. 311]
"To some physicists chaos is a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being."
"The microscopic pieces were perfectly clear; the macroscopic behavior remained a mystery. The tradition of looking at systems locally--isolating the mechanisms and then adding them together--was beginning to break down. For pendulums, for fluids, for electronic circuits, for lasers, knowledge of the fundamental equations no longer seemed to be the right kind of knowledge at all."[Gleick, p. 44]
"There was always one small compromise, so small that working scientists usually forgot it was there, lurking in a corner of their philosophies like an unpaid bill. Measurement could never be perfect. ... Given an approximate knowledge of a system's initial conditions and an understanding of natural law, one can calculate the approximate behavior of the system. This assumption lay at the philosophical heart of science...[that] arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.'"[Gleick, p. 15] "[S]mall errors proved catastrophic."[Gleick, p. 17]
"[S]omething was philosophically out of joint. The practical import could be staggering."[Gleick, p. 17] "[T]he spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the computer will not know about, tiny deviations from the average."[Gleick, p. 21] "[A]ny physical system that behaved nonperiodically would be unpredictable."[Gleick, p. 18] "The Butterfly Effect was no accident; it was necessary."[Gleick, p. 22]
"The Butterfly Effect acquired a technical name: sensitive dependence on initial conditions."[Gleick, p. 23] "In science as in life, it is well known that a chain of events can have a point of crisis that could magnify small changes. But chaos meant that such points were everywhere. They were pervasive. In systems like the weather, sensitive dependence on initial conditions was an inescapable consequence of the way small scales intertwined with large."[Gleick, p. 23]
"It completely changes what it means to know something."[Gleick, p.175]
"Chaos breaks across the lines that separate scientific disciplines. Because it is a science of the global nature of systems, it has brought together thinkers from fields that had been widely separated. ... Chaos poses problems that defy accepted ways of working in science. It makes strong claims about the universal behavior of complexity. ... Believers in chaos--and they sometimes call themselves believers, or converts, or evangelists--speculate about determinism and free will, about evolution, about the nature of conscious intelligence. They feel that they are turning back a trend in science toward reductionism, the analysis of systems in terms of their constituent parts: quarks, chromosomes, or neurons. They believe that they are looking for the whole."[Gleick, p. 5]
Thus, what we have here is both an ancient and a revolutionary method of knowing -- but only revolutionary because we have nearly forgotten Socrates' dictum of humility and Plato's ideal of integrated truth. This method provides a way of understanding the universe, indeed, the multiverse, even human beings themselves, as interconnected in nested systems, constrained but not determined by their contexts. Just "as a growing snowflake falls to earth, typically floating in the wind for an hour or more, the choices made by the branching tips at any instant depend sensitively on such things as temperature, the humidity, and the presence of impurities in the atmosphere...[thus], any pair of snowflakes will experience very different paths...[and] the final flake records the history of all the changing weather conditions it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite."[Gleick, p. 311] So the choices made by a growing human at any instant depend sensitively on many things, and thus, any pair of human beings, even those who share quite similar initial conditions, will experience very different paths. The final person records the history of all the changing conditions it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite.
As fractal geometry is the geometry of movement and growth, the physics of flow. The ideal form of motion is seen in the complex circular flow of matter through time, contained but infinite, ever-deeper in its convexity. But motion is contrast with movement in interaction where consciousness is involved.[Laban] Our potential for growth is subject to many interacting forces which change human potentials into their actualized forms, by the woven effects of the interacting causes in the course of the life-process. The parts played by attention and intention in such a process are critical variables which steer us by ever finer choices inherent within life-plans and policies. It is a principle similar to that of the half way to the door paradox, in which it seems as if one can never really get out the room because one always has to go half-way first; time is the force perpendicular to the space between us and the door which changes as we choose to move toward the door, thus changing our conditions such that the choice is ever new, and always in need of reevaluation. The geometry of deep psychological reality and growth is non-linear, and as it is an emergent reality, understanding it calls for a sort of psychological travel or penetration of the generic human subject/object to be known. Such that that persons under consideration become subject to the psychologist when they can empathize, inside-looking-out. When we are able to get beyond objectivity in the human sciences, and see from inside the systems we wish to know, our method is no longer observation, but consideration, and what's evident from this view is often something we have long known.
This is an insight which helps us answer many an ancient question, including those involving free-will, determination, and social conditioning -- and it is especially important for the light that it sheds on the importance of choice in the process. A snowflake may 'choose' in a different sense than a community or a culture 'chooses,' and all of these differently than an individual human being makes a choice. But the role of self-determination of an individual system within the context of other systems is made far more comprehensive within the context of this world-view which we have remembered...with a vengeance.
What could better support the humble ideal of Socratic ignorance, after all, than the discovery that there actually are an infinite number of points of view from which any object of knowledge might be viewed? What better to keep us remembering how little we know and much we still have left to learn? We are compelled then to reiterate the key Socratic question, what does it mean, after all, to 'know' something -- most especially something fundamental and primary; something objective, not constructed; something of the natural world, not the artificial?
[xiii] Plato's SEVENTH EPISTLE, translated by J. Harward.
[xiv] Perhaps because, as Thomas Hobbes reiterated from Socrates, to know others in this way, one must first know oneself.[Hobbes, Author's Introduction: Leviathan] And as Meiklejohn reminds us that "We must try, therefore, to think in the terms of Socrates and Jesus -- to first 'Know thyself' and then to 'Love thy neighbor as thyself'. Only this will "bring intelligibility back into the social order."[Meiklejohn, The Meaning of America; p. 30]
[xv] Plato's SYMPOSIUM, translated by Tom Griffith.
[xvi] Contemporary contraversy swarms with resistence to 'multicultural' voices in the academy. The primary substance of contemporary discourse is quickly lost in argument over methods and perspectives; e.g. whose is most right, most accurate, most reliable and valid. Any student of contemporary philosophy readily sees the venom flow between so-called 'objectivists' and 'subjectivists', between 'absolutists' and 'relativists', 'traditionalists' and 'multiculturalists', 'right' and 'left', as between 'analytic' and 'postmodern' philosophers -- all without real dialogue between them, which certainly does not enhance the liklihood of reconciliation between these polarized oppositions on the whole of truth. Contraversy swarms, but the method used is not one of dialogue, and so the issues seem unlikely to be resolved.
[xvii] Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (Humphrey Milford: Oxford Univeristy Press: London) p.19.