Notes to Chapter 7: Plato troubles Socrates
Chapter 7: Plato troubles Socrates
1. Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, 3.26-4.1, ed, L.G. Westerink, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1962.
2. Donald Watt, ‘Introduction to Lysis’ in: Plato, Early Socratic Dialogues, Penguin classics, London, 1987, pp. 119-120.
3. B. Jowett’s felicitous translation of Plato’s halisketai de dê ho hairetheis, 253c6.
. The translation is Donald Watt’s in: Plato, Early Socratic Dialogues, Penguin Books, London, 1987. I shall draw on it in most of the passages that I shall quote from the Lysis. This dialogue resists any attempt at adequate translation; there is no English term that can be consistently used to translate the Greek term philos as an adjective, and as a noun, and the related noun philia and verb philein in its different moods and tenses. I have therefore frequently supplied in brackets the Greek original.
5. See Xenophon, Hellenica II,iv,19.
6. Thus in the Laws Plato speaks of the ‘dissolution of a political constitution’: polloi kairoi politeias luseôs eisin, 945c3. The Greeks loved to play with names, as we can see beginning with Homer. Thus in the first book of the Odyssey Athena asks Zeus why he is so angry with Odysseus (ti hoi toson ôdusao, Zeu, I 62); in the fifth book Odysseus knows well how angry (odôdistai) is Poseidon with him (V 423); in book nineteen we learn that his grandfather gave him the name in respect of his being angry with people (odussamenos, XIX 407): ‘let his name Odysseus be significant’ (tôi d’ Odusseus onom’ estô epônumon, XIX 409). And as to Plato’s – and Socrates’ (as we can learn from Xenophon, apart from Plato) – tendency to play with names and their significance, let me mention Phaedrus, Socrates’ main interlocutor in the Phaedrus. For a long time Platonic scholars considered his to be an invented name – phaidros means ‘beaming with joy’, ‘of glad countenance’ – for his name well corresponds to the state of mind in which Socrates met him, all inflamed by Lysias’ erotic piece, until an inscription was found in the Athenian agora that proved his historicity. Plato did not invent Phaedrus’ name, but his name certainly played an important role for Plato’s choosing him as Socrates’ interlocutor in his dialogue devoted to love.
Let me remain with the Phaedrus and mention just a passage from the introductory discussion in the Phaedrus, where Socrates ponders whether he is a more violent animal (mallon epitethummenon) than Typhon, or whether he has some divine un-Typhonic (atuphou) portion (230a). As Hackforth remarks, Plato connects the name of Typhon of “this hundred-headed monster with the verb tuphô, ‘to smoke’ [‘burn slowly’, ‘smoulder’, Liddle & Scott] and perhaps with the noun tuphos, ‘vanity’, ‘humbug’” (R. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedrus, Cambridge, University Press, 1952, repr. 1972, p. 24, n.2). And as Christopher Rowe writes: “ – ‘violent’ translates epitethummenon, from epituphesthai, ‘to be inflamed’, used e.g. by Aristophanes of someone consumed by lust ... un-Typhonic’ translates atuphou. The main point is obviously the further play on the name Typhon; the divine portion in us lacks those features being associated with Typhon. But atuphos also has a specific meaning of its own, i.e. ‘lacking tuphos’. As de Vries says, tuphos can mean ‘pride’ in fourth-century Greek; another meaning is ‘delusion’, ‘craziness’ (compare the related verb tuphoô). The original Typhon was certainly puffed-up, since he stood in Zeus’ path, as appetite stands in the path of reason.; but in the light of the theme of the later speeches on love (love as madness), the second connotation is also likely to be relevant.” (C.J. Rowe, Plato: Phaedrus, Aris & Phillips Classical Texts, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2nd edition 1988, p. 140-141, note on 230a3-6.)
7. By translating philoi as ‘a friend’ in the phrase ‘everybody will be a friend to you’ (pantes soi philoi esontai, 210d1-2) the essential connection with the verb ‘love’ philei from the preceding line is obscured; philos is here an adjectival noun that means ‘a person who has the quality of loving’; it would be therefore more accurate to translate ‘everybody will be loving you’. Such losses of meaning are unavoidable in translation, and this is why in any nation that prides itself on its culture it is essential to support a few people who are prepared to devote their life to reading and enjoying the ancient texts in the original, and who can open their authentic meaning to those who are interested in approaching the texts in translation and yet want to get as good an understanding of them as is possible.
8. In the Lysis the concept of love as agapê comes to the fore in 215a-d.
9. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia Socrates’ protreptic discussion with Euthydemus ends with the young man’s recognition of the wide gap that separates him in his state of ignorance from the elevated and highly desired state of wisdom: ‘I think I had better hold my tongue, for it appears that I simply don’t know anything.’ Xenophon adds that the young man went away very dejected, with a very low opinion of himself (kataphronêsas heautou), convinced that he was truly in a state of a slave (nomisas tôi onti andrapodon einai, IV.ii.39), yet eager to improve himself and therefore to spend as much time with Socrates as possible (IV.ii.40).
10. Donald Watt, op.cit. p. 124.
11. I accept Heindorf’s emendation of the text skopounta [ta] kata tous poiêtas, that is his omission of ta, recommended by Burnet.
12. Donald Watt, op.cit. n. 3 on p. 124.
13. Donald Watt, op.cit. 124-5.
14. See Xenophon, Hellenica ii.22: phaskontas beltistous einai.
15. Cf . Xenopon, Hellenica ii.38-40.
16. For Socrates’ identification of hostile with evil see 219a6-b3.
17. Donald Watt, op. cit. p. 157, n. 1.
18. Donald Watt translates the given passage in the Lysis as follows: ‘if one man desires another and adores him, he’d never desire or adore or love him, if he weren’t in some way in fact akin to the man he adored, either in his soul, or in some disposition of his soul, or in his conduct, or in his looks.’ I have italicised the words that distort Plato’s meaning, for Plato says ê kata ti tês psuchês êthos ê tropous ê eidos (222a3), which means ‘or some character or some ways of conduct or some form of his soul’. For tropoi, that is ‘ways of conduct’ and eidos, that is ‘form’, both qualify the soul; Watt’s ‘his looks’ mean that he reads the passage as if there was ‘his’ in the text, which is in fact not there. It could be argued that there is an ellipsis of ‘his’ that has to be supplied in mind, but Socrates speaks here clearly about the love-relationship between a lover and his beloved, where the beloved boy is beautiful whereas the lover, who is as a rule older, lacks physical beauty (cf. e.g. Phaedrus 240b-e); ‘looks’ are certainly not that in what the lover and the beloved are akin to each other. The passage needs to be read in the light of the Phaedrus where Socrates says that each lover selects a beloved ‘after his disposition’ (pros tropou, 252d6), and that the sight of the beauty of the beloved activates the lovers’ transcendental memory, which transports them to their god, so that they then themselves draw appropriate characters (ta ethê, 253a3) and manners of life (ta epitêdeumata, 253a4) from their god, and lead and educate their beloved boys (ta paidika, 253b5) accordingly, so that they too may acquire the same divine form (idean, 253b5).
19. Socrates’ identification of philon with oikeion, evokes the original meaning of philos, which is ‘one’s own’, as it is often used in Homer. See an example of this usage in Liddle and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (philos I.c.) when no affection is implied: mêtri philêi Althaiêi chôomenos kêr ‘angry with his own mother’, quoted from Homer, Il.ix. 555. Cf. The Iliad of Homer, ed. W. Leaf and M.A. Bayfield, London, MacMillan & Co Ltd, 1955, note on A 167.
|