Review: [untitled]

Author(s): David R. Lachterman

Source: Noûs, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1979), pp. 106-112
Published by: Blackwell Publishing
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2214801 .
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 Klein, Jacob, Plato's Trilogy: Theaetetus, The Soph-
ist, and The Statesman (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1977). 200 pp.

DAVID R. LACHTERMAN

SWARTHMORE
COLLEGE

Rarely does a new study of Plato published in English require much in the
way of historical and methodological introduction. The authors of most
such works share the same convictions as to appropriate procedure and as to
the goals of analysis; they are likely to be interlocutors in an on-going
discussion whose etiquette, even if it remains implicit, is nonetheless re-
spected by all. However, when a work is as oblique to this main line of
discussion as Jacob Klein's is, so 'alien' to what exercises most contemporary
British and American readers of Plato, one cannot simply assess its
arguments and conclusions with standards drawn unreflectively from the
tradition it rejects. Instead, if we want to situate Klein's work, we must take
into account, from the outset, a genuine clash between interpretive para-
digms.
The now-dominant paradigm, at least in the English-speaking com-
munity, is ajoint production of two traditions, one philosophical, the other
more narrowly philological, although with important philosophical over-
tones. The first is the tradition of analytical philosophy, in a sense broad
enough to encompass, e.g., Frege and Ryle, Wittgenstein and Quine, where
issues in the philosophy of language are at the center of attention, but
usually with a view to the eventual resolution or dissolution of questions in
metaphysics, epistemology and, perhaps, ethics. The second contributor is
the developmentalstudy of the Platonic dialogues, the attempt to chart the
sequence in which they were originally composed and to infer from this
sequence the changing tenor and commitments of Plato's philosophical
activity. Although sequential arrangements of the dialogues were familiar in
Antiquity and among the Arabs (e.g., Al-Farabi), it was only in the 19th
century that these were allegedly put on a scientific footing thanks to the
technique of stylometry. This technique, when joined to a close analysis of
arguments, is meant to eliminate or 'rationalize' apparent incongruities and
incompatibilities among particular dialogues or groups of dialogues; the
basic schema that it yields-Early-Middle-,Late-is, unsurprisingly, ac-
cepted by almost all scholars, even though vexed cases remain in which
stylometry is not decisive (e.g., 7imaeus) or where the stylometric result,
sometimes backed by ancient testimony, seems to be at odds with philo-
sophical content (e.g., the argument for the Forms in Laws, Bk. XII).
This union of analytical philosophy and developmental study leaves its
signature on nearly every page of current English-language Plato scholar-
ship. I want to draw attention to several of its key effects.
NOUS 13 (1979) 106
?1979 by Indiana University
KLEIN'S PLATO'S TRILOGY 107

First, such studies tend to be focussed largely, if not exclusively, on

particular arguments in the dialogues, especially those that generate puzzles
and paradoxes which can be analyzed with formal or quasi-formal tech-
niques. For the sake of analysis such arguments are usually separated out
from the dialogue in which they appear; the now enormous literature on the
Third Man Problem is a sufficient example of this. Secondly, the agenda of
investigation is mainly set by themes and results of contemporary philoso-
phy; these provide a touchstone by which Plato's successes and failures can
be measured. In addition, they allow the critic to avoid mere antiquarianism
or what Ryle once called "philosophical paleontology". Kant seems to have
been the first to give expression to this attitude when he wrote of "under-
standing Plato better than he understood himself' (KdrV,B 370). (The style
of Plato-interpretation practiced by the Neo-Kantians is, in this respect, the
direct ancestor of the analytical paradigm.) Thirdly, the sequence of the
dialogues is quite often taken in a teleological spirit: as Plato advances
beyond the self-instituted crisis of the middle-period Theory of Forms, he
moves closer and closer to a more recognizably modern conception of the
logical analysis of propositional structure and truth-conditions. Finally-
and this is perhaps the major discrepancy between the two paradigms-
adherents of the dominant approach are usually indifferent to the literary
form of Plato's writing and to its bearing on the arguments. More generally,
it is thought that we can distinguish without difficulty or loss of significance
between the "poetic" and the "philosophical" sides of Plato's work; to get at
the heart of his arguments requires stripping away their "unessential verbi-
age" (G. Vlastos). Hegel might be said to be the patron saint of this line of
thinking, since, for him, too, a dialogue can and should be transformed into
an Aristotelian treatise (Hegel [1]).
The rival paradigm (the "recessive paradigm," as it should possibly be
called) is also a combination of elements, not all of which figure with equal
prominence, if at all, in every representative work. This paradigm is
marked, first, by an intense concern for the dramatic or mimetic form of the
dialogues, in the belief, inspired by Aristotle (Poetics, 1446b 9-1 1), and first
articulated in the modern period by Schleiermacher, that literary form and
philosophical content are inseparable and reciprocally illuminating. On this
view, the dialogic form, including what might otherwise seem purely orna-
mental stage-setting and character-drawing, is uniquely suited to the basic
therapeutic or psychagogic intention of Platonic communication; that is, the
dialogues, instead of being somewhat awkward and riddling presentations
of "Platonic" doctrine, for which Socrates (or, e.g., the Eleatic Stranger) is a
mere mouthpiece, are imitative embodiments of Socratic conversation, in
which the opinions and, eventually, the souls of the interlocutors (and
hence, of the readers) are put to the test. Accordingly, attention is trained
less on individual arguments in a particular dialogue or on the place a
certain doctrine holds in the historical sequence of the dialogues, than on
each dialogue as a peculiar whole, integrating what is said (logos)and what is
done (ergon) by the participants.
The second element is closely linked to the first: Plato's deprecatory
attitude towards the written word in general (Phaedrus 274c ff.) casts its
shadow over his entire literary production. This shadow is darkened by
Plato's notorious comment in the SeventhLetter (34 1c-e) that knowledge of
the highest matters cannot be put into writing and by his studied absence
108 NOOS

from his own dialogues; we are therefore forced to wonder whether we have
any access to Plato's genuine teachings. Into this breach step the so-called
agrapha dogmata ("unwritten doctrines"), reported mainly by Aristotle in
Books A, M and N of the Metaphysics.Two conceptions apparently stood at
the heart of this esoteric teaching: a theory of the objects of mathematics
which brought Forms and numbers (positive integers) into an intimate
alliance, and the claim that the principles archaic) of Forms and numbers
alike are the One and the Indeterminate Dyad. All of this is enormously
controversial; in particular, the relation between the "unwritten doctrines"
and the written dialogues is often left enigmatic. In any case, the rival
paradigm places great emphasis on the mathematical dimensions of both
the exoteric and the esoteric version of Plato's work.
Husserl and Heidegger are responsible for the final component: Hus-
serl, with his notion of sedimentation, the process through which the sense
and evidence behind fundamental concepts are lost to view as the latter
become increasingly "self-evident"; Heidegger, thanks to his effort to
ground philosophical speech and conceptualization in the pre-
philosophical domain of"everydayness." For the rival paradigm the Platonic
dialogue exhibits, in unparalleled fashion, the route philosophy should take
from the everyday to the theoretical (and back), inasmuch as it takes its start
and its bearings mostly from the lives, desires and opinions of the inhabit-
ants of the city, and only secondarily from the theories of professional
philosophers (most of these being, in Socrates' eyes, sophists).
Jacob Klein, who was born in Russia in 1899 and who died inJuly, 1978,
has left as his valedictory work a book that unites the three elements of the
rival paradigm in exemplary fashion. He has already won distinction among
students of Ancient Philosophy and the history of mathematics for his
Commentaryon Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill, 1965) and his GreekMathematical
Thoughtand the Origin ofAlgebra (Cambridge, Mass., 1968; German original,
1934-36), now recognized as the most penetrating scholarly account of
Platonic "ideal numbers."
His new book is devoted to three dialogues, two of which (7heaetetusand
Sophist)have been at the focus of analytical attention during the past twenty
or thirty years (while The Statesman has remained a marginal presence).
Readers who come to this work anticipating a direct confrontation with the
themes debated within the dominant tradition (e.g., knowledge by ac-
quaintance and by description in the 7heaetetus, term-negation vs.
sentence-negation, or predicative, existential and identificatory uses of
einai, in the Sophist),will be frustrated; the latest work in his bibliography is
Skemp's translation of The Statesman(1962). Thus, Klein makes no attempt
to contrast his interpretation with any of its analytical rivals or to spell out
the consequences his views would have for the partisans of the dominant
paradigm. What, then, does he attempt to do?
Klein's six methodological premisses, stated with lapidary boldness on
pages 1-2, are in harmony with what I have said about the components of the
rival paradigm. (He stresses, in addition, the admixture of playfulness and
seriousness characteristic of each dialogue and the irreplaceable status of
Aristotle's testimony for our knowledge of Plato's oral teachings.) These
premisses are not defended (the interested reader can find a more detailed
account of these procedural commitments in Klein's earlier book on the
Meno, pp. 3-31); it is only the illumination their application to particular
KLEIN'S PLATO'S TRILOGY 109

dialogues provides that can prove their soundness. Nonetheless, it is worth

mentioning that they are by no means exotic novelties. For instance, it was a
commonplace of Neo-Platonic interpretation that each dialogue is like a
cosmosin which every element has a significant part to play; furthermore, we
have evidence that the question whether Socrates may be taken, without
further ado, to be Plato's spokesman, already exercised some of the An-
cients (cf. the Oxyrhyncus Papyrus-fragment recently published and ana-
lyzed by Michael W. Haslam (Haslam [2]).
How are these premisses put to work in Klein's interpretation? First he
tries to read these three dialogues as a dramatic ensemble, in accordance
with Plato's own indications of their temporal and thematic continuities.
Moreover, he sees this trilogy as embedded in an even wider and graver
context which makes its presence felt throughout, namely, Socrates' trial
and death, since at the end of the 7heaetetus Socrates goes off for his fateful
meeting with the King Archon. It is consonant with this wider context that
the question hovering over all parts of the trilogy is "What (or, who) is a
philosopher?" We might even say, following Klein's suggestion, that Plato
presents two parallel versions of the Defense of Socrates: one in the se-
quence Apology-Crito-Phaedo,the other, in the three dialogues under scru-
tiny here. (The dramatic sequence T7heaetetus-Sophist-Statesman notwith-
standing, Klein chooses to discuss 7he Sophistfirst, arguing that the theoreti-
cal armature on which the 7heaetetus turns is brought to sight only in The
Sophist. This departure from Plato's order is a bit disconcerting, especially
since it contravenes Klein's own claim that each dialogue must be under-
stood "in its own terms" and independently of "anything that is said or is
happening in any other dialogue" (p. 2). Moreover, a purely immanent
reading of the 7heaetetuswould, I think, have exhibited the same fundamen-
tal issues of sameness and otherness, identity and difference he takes over
from The Sophist.)
Within this general framework, Klein's discussion is extraordinarily
reticent. For the most part he paraphrases or translates, in a most elegant
and accurate way, the dialogues in question, with only occasional asides
concerning the tone of a remark, (e.g., "As the Stranger says, smilingly, we
may assume.") or the response Plato wants to elicit from the reader. Ex-
tended examples of the claims at issue are sparse (see p. 52). In all this his
approach is reminiscent of the third kind of Aristotelian commentary pro-
duced by Medieval Arabic authors, alongside the Large and Middle Com-
mentaries. Only in three instances does he turn from literal paraphrase to
state the fundamental conclusions to which his reading has brought him:
once in connection with The Sophist (pp. 60-64), once, as a summary of his
analysis of the 7Theaetetus(p. 145), and once in regard to a prominent feature
of The Statesman(p. 161). (These three discussions are singled out by being
printed in italics.) What lies behind this reticence is, I would assume, Klein's
conviction that "the ultimate goal of the dialogues is to make us repeat and
continue the questioning and answering." (p. 6). Thus, in place of sustained
exegesis of certain crucial passages, Klein ainmsat re-enacting the act and art
of reading each dialogue in its entirety so as to experience the full force of
the questions it raises.
Let me examine, very briefly, the main conclusions and suggestions
Klein makes in regard to each of these dialogues. Afterwards, I shall offer
some sample points of criticism.
110 NOUS
(1) The Sophist, devoted to "The Search for the Professor of Wisdom,"
(Ch. 2) reaches its theoretical climax in the digression on the meaning of
Being (to on), the intelligibility of Not-Being and the interweaving of the
'greatest kinds' (megistagene). It is only by defying Parmenides and granting
some sort of being to not-being that we can ground the possibility of false
opinion and false speech (and, thus, explain what a sophist is); it is only by
coming to understand how some kinds can be combined with others that we
can secure a basis for articulate (and potentially true) discourse and thought.
According to Klein, Plato's repeated and pointed use of the Greek
words for "both" and "both together" is meant to prepare the reader,
subliminally, as it were, for three decisive theses: (i) Being is just the to-
getherness of Motion and Rest, not some third kind in addition to these two.
(In fact, it is, Klein suggests, "the Eidetic Two," the first in the series of
"eidetic assemblages" or "ideal numbers".) (ii) The Other, into which not-
being is analyzed, is present only in the relation between one item and
another item from which it differs; that is, The Other "denotes an indeter-
minate pair," indeed, that Indeterminate Dyad to which Aristotle refers as
one of the two principles of the Forms. (iii) The Same, paired here with the
Other, corresponds to the Limit (peras) in the Philebus, the One in the
Parmenides,the Good in 7The Republicand 'The Precise-Itself in 7TheStatesman
(pp. 60-63). Consequently, the digression, which is intended to unmask the
true visage of the sophist, ushers in, in a veiled way, the central terms of
Plato's unwritten teaching. It should be noted that Klein does not furnish
detailed arguments for any of these suggestions; he tacitly appeals to the
reader's familiarity with the arcana of the unwritten teaching and to his
antecedent conviction that philosophical sense can be given to these.
(2) These conclusions from The Sophist provide the format for Klein's
interpretation of the 7heaetetus. Most important is his claim that the real
theme of that dialogue is not so much the nature of knowledge as it is the
possibility of error. Theaetetus' three definitions of knowledge are said to
rest on a "false assessment" of the relation between Same and Other, once
again understood as the two fundamental principles or "ruling beginnings"
(p. 145). Thus, the unqualified identification of knowledge with perception
fails to distinguish the Same from the Other at all (self-contradiction); the
second proposal, that right opinion is the same as knowledge, mistakes the
Other for the Same, while nonetheless distinguishing them; finally, the
suggestion that knowledge is right opinion plus an account (logos) treats the
Same (i.e., the added account) as though it were the Other (i.e., other than
the content of right opinion) and, hence, amounts to a tautology. The
possibility of error in general comes from the kinship or affinity between the
two chief principles and so the project of the 7Theaetetus blends smoothly into
the inquiry launched in the digression in The Sophist. This suggests that
learning to distinguish and to negotiate between these principles and all that
depends on them points the way to the avoidance of error and the achieve-
ment of knowledge. (These issues and possibilities are foreshadowed or
mimicked by Plato's references to the physiognomic and psychic similarities
between Socrates and his "look-alike" Theaetetus.)
(3) Klein's analysis of The Statesman does not include a summary or
climactic statement, although he does call attention (p. 161) to the pervasive
motif of faultiness and defectiveness in this dialogue. This motif points to
the weighty human consequences faulty statesmanship is bound to have in
KLEIN'S PLATO'S TRILOGY 111

practice; Socrates' impending trial and execution serve as transparent

examples. In addition, four other major themes stand out in his account: (i)
7TheStatesmanimplies an answer to the question that inaugurated 7TheSophist:
Are the philosopher, the sophist and the statesman one and the same or are
they two or even three distinct types? The statesman, Klein argues (p. 177
and p. 200), is necessarily a philosopher, since the knowledge he must
possess "has to encompass the ability to argue about the most comprehen-
sive entities." (ii) The Statesman corrects the defects in the procedure of
division (diairesis) by means of the notion of "due measure" (to metrion).
Division 'neutralizes' the comparative value of the classes it distinguishes (cf.
the louse-catcher and the general at Sophist 227b); it is only by recurring to
"due measure," the "fitting,' etc., that we can restore the distinctions be-
tween better and worse. (iii) The Statesman has a rather marvelous self-
reflexivity, in virtue of which, e.g., the paradigm of the art of weaving is
exemplified in the Stranger's interlacing of the vertical demonstration
(apodeixis)of the nature of the statesman, carried out via the divisions, with
the horizontal models of the statesman (pp. 163-166). What the Stranger
and Young Socrates are doing is simultaneously the theme of their conver-
sation. Finally (iv), the close relationship, not to say equivalence, between
due measure, the Precise-Itself, and the One (pp. 172-7) is meant to bring
home once more how crucial the unwritten doctrines are to the interpreta-
tion of these dialogues.
Needless to say, all of these theses are controversial, whether one comes
to them from within Klein's own interpretive perspective or from without. I
shall indicate a few of the areas in which I found obscurities or lacunae.
Klein construes Being, in The Sophist, not simply or abstractly as the
togetherness of motion and rest, but, more fully, as the union of the motion
of intellect (nous) and the rest or motionlessness of the intelligible forms.
This appears to follow from the Stranger's criticism of the "friends of the
forms," for whom everything that has being is at rest, thereby undercutting
the possibility of comingto know anything that is. What is most striking in this
phase of the argument is that the soul is suddenly made the locus of Being
and, by implication, of the other 'greatest kinds' (Soph. 250b 7-10). On the
one hand, this is at odds with the rejection of a conceptualistic or mentalistic
interpretation of the forms in the Parmenides( 132b-c); on the other, it agrees
with the strangely subjectivistic tenor of several of the Stranger's other
remarks, for instance, that knowing is some sort of making (Soph. 248e) and
that "that which wholly and completely is" (to pantelgs on) must possess
"motion and life and soul and thought" (248e-249a). Do these views square
with the Socratic teaching of, say, RepublicV-VII? The second, in particular,
seems closer to the doctrine of "The Living Thing Itself' in the 7imaeus. Is
there an undercurrent of tension between the Stranger's point of view and
that customarily associated with Socrates, for whom the forms are the
objects of thinking, but do not themselves think? Are the Stranger's kinds
(gene) indeed forms (eidF)in Socrates' sense? (Cf. p. 51).
Klein's thesis that Being is the first iii the series of eidetic numbers,
while deeply provocative, leaves a number of questions unsettled. For
example, if the Other is taken to be the Indeterminate Dyad, then it is one of
the two principles of the forms and the eidetic numbers; however, the Other
must participate in, or mingle with, Being, according to the Stranger. It is
112 NOUS

unclear how a principle can participate in one of the items ontologically

subordinate to it, or under its command.
It comes as a surprise that Klein does not make more of Theaetetus'
mathematical analysis of commensurable and incommensurable line-
segments (7heaet. 147d-148a). After all, Socrates recommends that
Theaetetus imitate his answer about "roots" when he tries to define knowl-
edge. This raises the question whether a positive account of knowledge
could be retrieved from the negative conclusions of the dialogue if the
discussion were to be re-elaborated in terms of this mathematical paradigm.
The latter is a lesson in how to negotiate sameness and difference so as to
bring genuine unities or wholes into evidence. What makes the 7Theaetetus in
many respects a dialogue of missed opportunities is that an additive or
'one-dimensional' model of the combination of parts into wholes is substi-
tuted (e.g., in Socrates' dream and in Theaetetus' third definition) for the
more complex, multi-dimensional schema of combination and relation ex-
hibited in the initial paradigm. Consequently, we might expect to find,
alongside the expose of the roots of error, at least the traces of an account of
knowledge and learning not very different from that of Republic VI-VII.
These are samples of the kinds of issues that arise from a purely
immanent reading of Klein's book. The 'analytical' reader will, of course,
discover difficulties and, I hope, challenges of a still different kind. (E.g., the
account of Protagoras' self-refutation in the 7heaetetus overlooks the fact
that no contradiction occurs so long as the key predicates ("... . is true," ". ..
is not true,") are kept in relativized form (..6. . is true for Protagoras"); hence
the final refutation of relativism, implied but not worked out by Socrates,
has to take a subtler route.)
At all events, what might at first blush seem a mere paraphrase of these
texts will show itself, on subsequent readings, to be a remarkable and
provocative lesson in what is worth reflecting upon and interrogating in a
Platonic dialogue. In keeping with his understanding of the dialogue-form,
Klein leaves it to his readers to perform the "bringing-together" (synagoge)
that must be accomplished before the measure of his many suggestions can
be duly taken. In this respect, this book is a prolegomenon to a full account
of these Platonic dialogues and teachings. It is, at the same time, meant as an
exhortation to the contemporary student to let what Plato himself says and
emphasizes set the guidelines for his analysis. It is just possible that when
Plato is left intact in this way attempts to make him relevant to present-day
philosophical concerns will acquire a new integrity.

REFERENCES

[1] Hegel, G.W.F., SamtlicheWerke(Theorie-Werkausgabe), Bd. 11, pp. 270-1.

[2] Haslam, Michael W., "Plato,-Sophron and the Dramatic Dialogue," Bulletin of the
Institute of Classical Studies 19(1972), pp. 17-38.