HEGEL’S LECTURES ON THE
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
VOLUME TWO
Hegel’s Lectures on
THE HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY
_Translated from the German by_
E. S. HALDANE
_and_
FRANCES H. SIMSON, M.A.
_In three volumes_
VOLUME TWO
[Illustration]
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LTD
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4
_First published in England 1894
by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd_
_Reprinted 1955
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4_
_Reprinted by lithography in Great Britain by
Jarrold and Sons Limited, Norwich_
CONTENTS
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
SECTION ONE (CONTINUED)
PAGE
CHAPTER III.—FIRST PERIOD, THIRD DIVISION 1
A. The Philosophy of Plato 1
1. Dialectic 49
2. Philosophy of Nature 71
3. Philosophy of Mind 90
B. The Philosophy of Aristotle 117
1. Metaphysics 137
2. Philosophy of Nature 153
3. Philosophy of Mind 180
_a._ Psychology 180
_b._ Practical Philosophy 202
α. Ethic 202
β. Politics 207
4. Logic 210
SECTION TWO
SECOND PERIOD.—DOGMATISM AND SCEPTICISM 232
A. The Philosophy of the Stoics 236
1. Physics 243
2. Logic 249
3. Ethics 257
B. The Philosophy of the Epicureans 276
1. Canonic 281
2. Metaphysics 286
3. Physics 292
4. Ethics 300
C. The Philosophy of the New Academy 311
1. Arcesilaus 313
2. Carneades 319
D. Scepticism 328
1. Earlier Tropes 347
2. Later Tropes 357
SECTION THREE
THIRD PERIOD.—THE NEO-PLATONISTS 374
A. Philo 387
B. The Cabala and Gnosticism 394
1. Cabalistic Philosophy 394
2. The Gnostics 396
C. The Alexandrian Philosophy 399
1. Ammonias Saccas 403
2. Plotinus 404
3. Porphyry and Iamblichus 431
4. Proclus 432
5. Successors of Proclus 450
CHAPTER III
FIRST PERIOD, THIRD DIVISION: PLATO AND ARISTOTLE.
THE development of philosophic science as science, and, further, the
progress from the Socratic point of view to the scientific, begins with
Plato and is completed by Aristotle. They of all others deserve to be
called teachers of the human race.
A. PLATO.
Plato, who must be numbered among the Socratics, was the most renowned
of the friends and disciples of Socrates, and he it was who grasped
in all its truth Socrates’ great principle that ultimate reality
lies in consciousness, since, according to him, the absolute is in
thought, and all reality is Thought. He does not understand by this
a one-sided thought, nor what is understood by the false idealism
which makes thought once more step aside and contemplate itself as
conscious thought, and as in opposition to reality; it is the thought
which embraces in an absolute unity reality as well as thinking, the
Notion and its reality in the movement of science, as the Idea of a
scientific whole. While Socrates had comprehended the thought which
is existent in and for itself, only as an object for self-conscious
will, Plato forsook this narrow point of view, and brought the merely
abstract right of self-conscious thought, which Socrates had raised
to a principle, into the sphere of science. By so doing he rendered it
possible to interpret and apply the principle, though his manner of
representation may not be altogether scientific.
Plato is one of those world-famed individuals, his philosophy one
of those world-renowned creations, whose influence, as regards the
culture and development of the mind, has from its commencement down
to the present time been all-important. For what is peculiar in
the philosophy of Plato is its application to the intellectual and
supersensuous world, and its elevation of consciousness into the realm
of spirit. Thus the spiritual element which belongs to thought obtains
in this form an importance for consciousness, and is brought into
consciousness; just as, on the other hand, consciousness obtains a
foothold on the soil of the other. The Christian religion has certainly
adopted the lofty principle that man’s inner and spiritual nature
is his true nature, and takes it as its universal principle, though
interpreting it in its own way as man’s inclination for holiness;
but Plato and his philosophy had the greatest share in obtaining for
Christianity its rational organization, and in bringing it into the
kingdom of the supernatural, for it was Plato who made the first
advance in this direction.
We must begin by mentioning the facts of Plato’s life. Plato was an
Athenian, born in the third year of the 87th Olympiad, or, according to
Dodwell, Ol. 87, 4 (B.C. 429), at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
war, in the year in which Pericles died. He was, according to this,
thirty-nine or forty years younger than Socrates. His father, Ariston,
traced his lineage from Cadrus; his mother, Perictione, was descended
from Solon. The paternal uncle of his mother was the celebrated
Critias, who was for a time among the associates of Socrates, and
who was the most talented and brilliant, but also the most dangerous
and obnoxious, of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens (_supra_, Vol. I. p.
421). Critias is usually represented by the ancients as an atheist,
with the Cyrenaic Theodoras and Diagoras of Melos; Sextus Empiricus
(adv. Math. IX. 51-54) has preserved to us a fine fragment from one
of his poems. Sprung from this noble race, and with no lack of means
for his culture, Plato received from the most highly esteemed of the
Sophists an education in all the arts which were then thought to befit
an Athenian. In his family he was called Aristocles; it was only later
that he received from his teacher the name of Plato. Some say that he
was so styled because of the breadth of his forehead; others, because
of the richness and breadth of his discourse; others again, because of
his well-built form.[1]
In his youth he cultivated poetry, and wrote tragedies—very much like
young poets in our day—also dithyrambs and songs. Various specimens of
the last are still preserved to us in the Greek anthology, and have as
subject his various loves; we have amongst others a well-known epigram
on a certain Aster, one of his best friends, which contains a pretty
fancy, found also in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:
“To the stars thou look’st, mine Aster,
O would that I were Heaven,
With eyes so many thus to gaze on thee.”[2]
In his youth he had every intention of devoting himself to politics.
He was brought by his father to Socrates when in his twentieth year,
and enjoyed intimate friendship with him for eight years. It is related
that Socrates dreamt on the preceding night that he had a young swan
perched on his knees, whose wings quickly developed, and which then
flew up to heaven, singing the sweetest songs. Many such incidents are
mentioned by the ancients, and they bear witness to the deep reverence
and love with which both contemporaries and those of later times
regarded the calm dignity of Plato, and that loftiness of demeanour
which he combined with extreme simplicity and lovableness, traits of
character which won for him the name of “the divine.” Plato did not
content himself with the society and wisdom of Socrates, but studied
in addition the older philosophers, particularly Heraclitus. Aristotle
(Met. I. 6) states that Plato, before he ever came to Socrates,
associated with Cratylus, and had been initiated into the doctrines of
Heraclitus. He also studied the Eleatics, and very particularly the
Pythagoreans, and he frequented the society of the most noted Sophists.
Thus deeply immersed in Philosophy, he lost his interest in poetry and
politics, and gave them up altogether, that he might devote himself
entirely to scientific pursuits. He fulfilled, like Socrates, his term
of military service as an Athenian citizen, and is said to have taken
part in three campaigns.[3]
We have already mentioned (Vol. I. p. 448) that, after Socrates
was put to death, Plato, like many other philosophers, fled from
Athens, and betook himself to Euclides at Megara. Leaving Megara
before long, he travelled first to Cyrene in Africa, where he turned
his attention specially to mathematics, under the guidance of the
celebrated mathematician Theodoras, whom he introduces as taking part
in several of his dialogues. Plato himself soon attained to high
proficiency in mathematics. To him is attributed the solution of the
Delian or Delphic problem, which was proposed by the oracle, and,
like the Pythagorean dogma, has reference to the cube. The problem
is, to draw a line the cube of which will be equal to the sum of two
given cubes. This requires a construction through two curves. The
nature of the tasks then set by the oracles is very curious; on this
particular occasion application had been made to the oracle in a time
of pestilence, and it responded by proposing an entirely scientific
problem; the change indicated in the spirit of the oracle is highly
significant. From Cyrene Plato went to Italy and Egypt. In Magna Græcia
he made the acquaintance of the Pythagoreans of that day, Archytas of
Tarentum, the celebrated mathematician, Philolaus and others; and he
also bought the writings of the older Pythagoreans at a high price.
In Sicily he made friends with Dion. Returning to Athens, he opened
a school of Philosophy in the Academy, a grove or promenade in which
stood a gymnasium, and there he discoursed to his disciples.[4] This
pleasure-ground had been laid out in honour of the hero Academus,
but Plato was the true hero of the Academy who did away with the old
significance of the name, and overshadowed the fame of the original
hero, whose place he so completely took that the latter comes down to
after ages only as connected with Plato.
Plato’s busy life in Athens was twice interrupted by a journey to
Sicily, to the Court of Dionysius the younger, ruler of Syracuse and
Sicily. This connection with Dionysius was the most important, if not
the only external relation into which Plato entered; it had, however,
no lasting result. Dion, the nearest relative of Dionysius, and other
respected Syracusans, his friends, deluded themselves with vain hopes
regarding Dionysius. He had been allowed by his father to grow up
almost without education, but his friends had instilled into him some
notion of and respect for Philosophy, and had roused in him a desire to
make acquaintance with Plato. They hoped that Dionysius would profit
greatly by his intimacy with Plato, and that his character, which was
still unformed, and to all appearance far from unpromising, would be so
influenced by Plato’s idea of the constitution of a true state, that
this might, through him, come to be realized in Sicily. It was partly
his friendship with Dion, and partly and more especially the high
hopes he himself cherished of seeing a true form of government actually
established by Dionysius, that induced Plato to take the mistaken step
of journeying to Sicily. On the surface it seems an excellent idea
that a young prince should have a wise man at his elbow to instruct
and inspire him; and on this idea a hundred political romances have
been based; the picture has, however, no reality behind it. Dionysius
was much pleased with Plato, it is true, and conceived such a respect
for him that he desired to be respected by him in turn; but this did
not last long. Dionysius was one of those mediocre natures who may
indeed in a half-hearted way aspire to glory and honour, but are
capable of no depth and earnestness, however much they may affect it,
and who lack all strength of character. His intentions were good, but
the power failed him to carry them out; it was like our own satirical
representations in the theatre, of a person who aspires to be quite
a paragon, and turns out an utter fool. The position of affairs
represented thereby can be nothing but this, seeing that lack of
energy alone allows itself to be guided; but it is also the same lack
of energy which renders impossible of execution even a plan made by
itself. The rupture between Plato and Dionysius took place on personal
grounds. Dionysius fell out with his relative Dion, and Plato became
involved in the quarrel, because he would not give up his friendship
with Dion. Dionysius was incapable of a friendship based on esteem and
sympathy in pursuits; it was partly his personal inclination to Plato,
and partly mere vanity, which had made him seek the philosopher’s
friendship. Dionysius could not, however, induce Plato to come under
any obligation to him; he desired that Plato should give himself up to
him entirely, but this was a demand that Plato refused to entertain.[5]
Plato accordingly took his departure. After the separation, however,
both felt the desire to be again together. Dionysius recalled Plato,
in order to effect a reconciliation with him; he could not endure
that he should have failed in the attempt to attach Plato permanently
to himself, and he found it specially intolerable that Plato would
not give up Dion. Plato yielded to the urgent representations,
not only of his family and Dion, but also of Archytas and other
Pythagoreans of Tarentum, to whom Dionysius had applied, and who were
taking an interest in the reconciliation of Dionysius with Dion and
Plato; indeed, they went so far as to guarantee safety and liberty
of departure to Plato. But Dionysius found that he could endure
Plato’s presence no better than his absence; he felt himself thereby
constrained. And though, by the influence of Plato and his other
companions, a respect for science had been awakened in Dionysius,
and he had thus become more cultured, he never penetrated beyond the
surface. His interest in Philosophy was just as superficial as his
repeated attempts in poetry; and while he wished to be everything—poet,
philosopher, and statesman—he would not submit to be under the
guidance of others. Thus no closer tie between Plato and Dionysius
was formed; they drew together again, and again parted, so that the
third visit to Sicily ended also in coldness, and the connection was
not again established. This time the ill-feeling with regard to the
continued relations with Dion ran so high, that when Plato wished to
leave Sicily, on account of the treatment his friend had met with from
Dionysius, the latter deprived him of the means of conveyance, and
at last would have forcibly prevented his departure from Sicily. The
Pythagoreans of Tarentum came at length to the rescue,[6] demanded
Plato back from Dionysius, got him conveyed away safely, and brought
him to Greece. They were aided by the circumstance that Dionysius was
afraid of an ill report being spread that he was not on good terms with
Plato.[7] Thus Plato’s hopes were shattered, and his dream of shaping
the constitution in accordance with the demands of his own philosophic
ideas, through the agency of Dionysius, proved vain.
At a later date, therefore, he actually refused to be the lawgiver of
other States, though they had made application to him for that very
purpose; amongst these applicants were the inhabitants of Cyrene and
the Arcadians. It was a time when many of the Greek States found their
constitutions unsatisfactory, and yet could not devise anything new.[8]
Now in the last thirty years[9] many constitutions have been drawn up,
and it would be no hard task for anyone having had much experience in
this work to frame another. But theorizing is not sufficient for a
constitution; it is not individuals who make it; it is something divine
and spiritual, which develops in history. So strong is this power
of the world-spirit that the thought of an individual is as nothing
against it; and when such thoughts do count for something, _i.e._
when they can be realized, they are then none other than the product
of this power of the universal spirit. The idea that Plato should
become lawgiver was not adapted for the times; Solon and Lycurgus
were lawgivers, but in Plato’s day such a thing was impracticable.
He declined any further compliance with the wishes of these States,
because they would not agree to the first condition which he imposed,
namely, the abolition of all private property,[10] a principle which
we shall deal with later, in considering Plato’s practical philosophy.
Honoured thus throughout the whole land, and especially in Athens,
Plato lived until the first year of the 108th Olympiad (B.C. 348); and
died on his birthday, at a wedding feast, in the eighty-first year of
his age.[11]
We have to speak, in the first place, of the direct mode in which
Plato’s philosophy has come down to us; it is to be found in those
of his writings which we possess; indubitably they are one of the
fairest gifts which fate has preserved from the ages that are gone.
His philosophy is not, however, properly speaking, presented there in
systematic form, and to construct it from such writings is difficult,
not so much from anything in itself, as because this philosophy has
been differently understood in different periods of time; and, more
than all, because it has been much and roughly handled in modern times
by those who have either read into it their own crude notions, being
enable to conceive the spiritual spiritually, or have regarded as the
essential and most significant element in Plato’s philosophy that which
in reality does not belong to Philosophy at all, but only to the mode
of presentation; in truth, however, it is only ignorance of Philosophy
that renders it difficult to grasp the philosophy of Plato. The form
and matter of these works are alike of interest and importance. In
studying them we must nevertheless make sure, in the first place, what
of Philosophy we mean to seek and may find within them, and, on the
other hand, what Plato’s point of view never can afford us, because
in his time it was not there to give. Thus it may be that the longing
with which we approached Philosophy is left quite unsatisfied; it is,
however, better that we should not be altogether satisfied than that
such conclusions should be regarded as final. Plato’s point of view is
clearly defined and necessary, but it is impossible for us to remain
there, or to go back to it; for Reason now makes higher demands. As for
regarding it as the highest standpoint, and that which we must take for
our own—it belongs to the weaknesses of our time not to be able to bear
the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit,
to feel crushed before them, and to flee from them faint-hearted. We
must stand above Plato, _i.e._ we must acquaint ourselves with the
needs of thoughtful minds in our own time, or rather we must ourselves
experience these needs. Just as the pedagogue’s aim is to train up men
so as to shield them from the world, or to keep them in a particular
sphere—the counting-house, for instance, or bean-planting, if you wish
to be idyllic—where they will neither know the world nor be known
by it; so in Philosophy a return has been made to religious faith,
and therefore to the Platonic philosophy.[12] Both are moments which
have their due place and their own importance, but they are not the
philosophy of our time. It would be perfectly justifiable to return
to Plato in order to learn anew from him the Idea of speculative
Philosophy, but it is idle to speak of him with extravagant enthusiasm,
as if he represented beauty and excellence in general. Moreover, it is
quite superfluous for Philosophy, and belongs to the hypercriticism
of our times, to treat Plato from a literary point of view, as
Schleiermacher does, critically examining whether one or another of the
minor dialogues is genuine or not. Regarding the more important of the
dialogues, we may mention that the testimony of the ancients leaves not
the slightest doubt.
Then of course the very character of Plato’s works, offering us in
their manysidedness various modes of treating Philosophy, constitutes
the first difficulty standing in the way of a comprehension of his
philosophy. If we still had the oral discourses (ἄγραφα δόγματα) of
Plato, under the title “Concerning the Good” (περὶ τἀγαθοῦ), which his
scholars noted down, we should have had his philosophy before us in
simpler, because in more systematic form.[13] Aristotle seems to have
had these discourses before him, when dealing with the philosophy of
Plato, and he quotes them in his work “On Philosophy,” or, “On the
Ideas,” or, “On the Good” (Brandis has written on this topic). But,
as it happens, we have only Plato’s Dialogues, and their form renders
it all the more difficult for us to gather a definite idea of his
philosophy. For the dialogue form contains very heterogeneous elements;
Philosophy proper in the treatment of absolute Being, and, intermingled
with that, its particular mode of representation. It is just this which
constitutes the manysidedness of Plato’s works.
A second difficulty is said to lie in the distinction drawn between
exoteric and esoteric philosophy. Tennemann (Vol. II. p. 220) says:
“Plato exercised the right, which is conceded to every thinker, of
communicating only so much of his discoveries as he thought good, and
of so doing only to those whom he credited with capacity to receive it.
Aristotle, too, had an esoteric and an exoteric philosophy, but with
this difference, that in his case the distinction was merely formal,
while with Plato it was also material.” How nonsensical! This would
appear as if the philosopher kept possession of his thoughts in the
same way as of his external goods: the philosophic Idea is, however,
something utterly different, and instead of being possessed by, it
possesses a man. When philosophers discourse on philosophic subjects,
they follow of necessity the course of their ideas; they cannot keep
them in their pockets; and when one man speaks to another, if his
words have any meaning at all, they must contain the idea present
to him. It is easy enough to hand over an external possession, but
the communication of ideas requires a certain skill; there is always
something esoteric in this, something more than the merely exoteric.
This difficulty is therefore trifling.
Thirdly, as one of the circumstances that render it difficult to
comprehend Plato’s own speculative thought, we can scarcely reckon the
external consideration that in his Dialogues he does not speak in his
own person, but introduces Socrates and many others as the speakers,
without always making it plain which of them expresses the writer’s
own opinion. By reason of this historic circumstance, which seems
to bear out the manysidedness of Plato, it has of course been often
said, by ancients as well as moderns, that he merely expounded, from
a historical point of view, the system and doctrine of Socrates, that
he adapted much in the Dialogues from various Sophists, and avowedly
advanced many theorems belonging to an earlier date, especially those
of the Pythagoreans, Heraclitics, and Eleatics, even adopting, in
the last case, the Eleatic mode of treatment. Hence it was said that
to these philosophies the whole matter of the treatise belonged,
the outward form alone being Plato’s. It is therefore necessary to
distinguish what is peculiarly his and what is not, or whether the
component parts are in harmony. In the Socratic Dialogues that we have
from Cicero, the personages can be much more readily made out; but in
Cicero there is nothing of real interest offered to us. With Plato
there can be no talk of this ambiguity, and the difficulty is only in
appearance. In the Dialogues of Plato his philosophy is quite clearly
expressed; they are not constructed as are the conversations of some
people, which consist of many monologues, in which one person expresses
a certain opinion and another person differs from him, and both hold
to their own way of thinking. Here, on the contrary, the divergency
of opinions which comes out is examined, and a conclusion arrived at
as to the truth; or, if the result is negative, the whole process of
knowledge is what is seen in Plato. There is, therefore, no need to
inquire further as to what belongs to Socrates in the Dialogues, and
what belongs to Plato. This further observation we must, however, make,
that since Philosophy in its ultimate essence is one and the same,
every succeeding philosopher will and must take up into his own, all
philosophies that went before, and what falls specially to him is their
further development. Philosophy is not a thing apart, like a work of
art; though even in a work of art it is the skill which the artist
learns from others that he puts into practice. What is original in the
artist is his conception as a whole, and the intelligent use of the
means already at his command; there may occur to him in working an
endless variety of ideas and discoveries of his own. But Philosophy
has one thought, one reality, as its foundation; and nothing can be
put in the place of the true knowledge of this already attained; it
must of necessity make itself evident in later developments. Therefore,
as I have already observed (Vol. I. p. 166), Plato’s Dialogues are
not to be considered as if their aim were to put forward a variety of
philosophies, nor as if Plato’s were an eclectic philosophy derived
from them; it forms rather the knot in which these abstract and
one-sided principles have become truly united in a concrete fashion.
In giving a general idea of the history of Philosophy, we have already
seen (Vol. I. p. 54) that such points of union, in which the true is
concrete, must occur in the onward course of philosophical development.
The concrete is the unity of diverse determinations and principles;
these, in order to be perfected, in order to come definitely before
the consciousness, must first of all be presented separately. Thereby
they of course acquire an aspect of one-sidedness in comparison with
the higher principle which follows: this, nevertheless, does not
annihilate them, nor even leave them where they were, but takes them
up into itself as moments. Thus in Plato’s philosophy we see all
manner of philosophic teaching from earlier times absorbed into a
deeper principle, and therein united. It is in this way that Plato’s
philosophy shows itself to be a totality of ideas: therefore, as the
result, the principles of others are comprehended in itself. Frequently
Plato does nothing more than explain the doctrines of earlier
philosophers; and the only particular feature in his representation
of them is that their scope is extended. His Timæus is, by unanimous
testimony, the amplification of a still extant work of Pythagoras;[14]
and, in like manner, his amplification of the doctrine of Parmenides
is of such a nature that its principle is freed from its one-sided
character.
These last two difficulties having been disposed of, if we would
likewise solve the first mentioned, we must proceed to describe the
form in which Plato has propounded his ideas, keeping it, on the other
hand, distinct from Philosophy proper, as we find it with him. The
form of the Platonic philosophy is, as is well known, the dialogue.
The beauty of this form is highly attractive; yet we must not think,
as many do, that it is the most perfect form in which to present
Philosophy; it is peculiar to Plato, and as a work of art is of course
to be much esteemed.
In the first place, scenery and dramatic form belong to what is
external. Plato gives to his Dialogues a setting of reality, both as
regards place and persons, and chooses out some particular occasion
which has brought his characters together; this in itself is very
natural and charming. Socrates takes the leading part, and among the
other actors there are many stars well known to us, such as Agathon,
Zeno, and Aristophanes. We find ourselves in some particular spot; in
the Phædrus (p. 229 Steph.; p. 6 Bekk.) it is at the plane tree beside
the clear waters of the Ilyssus, through which Socrates and Phædrus
pass; in other dialogues we are conducted to the halls of the gymnasia,
to the Academy, or to a banquet. By never allowing himself to appear
in person, but putting his thoughts always in the mouth of others, any
semblance of preaching or of dogmatizing is avoided by Plato, and the
narrator appears just as little as he does in the History of Thucydides
or in Homer. Xenophon sometimes brings himself forward, sometimes he
entirely loses sight of the aim he had in view, of vindicating by what
he tells of them the life of Socrates and his method of instruction.
With Plato, on the contrary, all is quite objective and plastic; and he
employs great art in removing from himself all responsibility for his
assertions, often assigning them even to a third or fourth person.
As regards the tone of the intercourse between the characters in these
Dialogues, we find that the noblest urbanity of well-bred men reigns
supreme; the Dialogues are a lesson in refinement; we see in them the
_savoir faire_ of a man acquainted with the world. The term courtesy
does not quite express urbanity; it is too wide, and includes the
additional notion of testifying respect, of expressing deference and
personal obligation; urbanity is true courtesy, and forms its real
basis. But urbanity makes a point of granting complete liberty to all
with whom we converse, both as regards the character and matter of
their opinions, and also the right of giving expression to the same.
Thus in our counter-statements and contradictions we make it evident
that what we have ourselves to say against the statement made by our
opponent is the mere expression of our subjective opinion; for this
is a conversation carried on by persons as persons, and not objective
reason talking with itself. However energetically we may then express
ourselves, we must always acknowledge that our opponent is also a
thinking person; just as one must not take to speaking with the air
of being an oracle, nor prevent anyone else from opening his mouth
in reply. This urbanity is, however, not forbearance, but rather
the highest degree of frankness and candour, and it is this very
characteristic which gives such gracefulness to Plato’s Dialogues.
Finally, this dialogue is not a conversation, in which what is said
has, and is meant to have, a merely casual connection, without any
exhaustive treatment of the subject. When one talks only for amusement,
the casual and arbitrary sequence of ideas is quite to be expected. In
the introduction, to be sure, the Dialogues of Plato have sometimes
this very character of being mere conversations, and consequently
appear to take an accidental form; for Socrates is made to take his
start from the particular conceptions of certain individuals, and from
the circle of their ideas (Vol. I. p. 397). Later, however, these
dialogues become a systematic development of the matter in hand,
wherein the subjective character of the conversation disappears,
and the whole course of the argument shows a beautifully consistent
dialectic process. Socrates talks, turns the conversation, lays down
his own views, draws a conclusion, and does all this through the
apparent instrumentality of the question; most questions are so framed
as to be answered by merely Yes or No. The dialogue seems to be the
form best adapted for representing an argument, because it sways hither
and thither; the different sides are allotted to different persons, and
thus the argument is made more animated. The dialogue has, however,
this disadvantage, that it seems to be carried on arbitrarily, so that
at the end the feeling always remains that the matter might have turned
out differently. But in the Platonic Dialogues this arbitrary character
is apparent only; it has been got rid of by limiting the development
to the development of the subject in hand, and by leaving very little
to be said by the second speaker. Such personages are, as we already
saw in connection with Socrates (Vol. I. p. 402), plastic personages
as regards the conversation; no one is put there to state his own
views, or, as the French express it, _pour placer son mot_. Just as
in the Catechism the answers are prescribed to the questions asked,
so is it in these dialogues, for they who answer have to say what the
author pleases. The question is so framed that a quite simple answer
is alone possible, and, thanks to the artistic beauty and power of the
dialogues, such an answer appears at the same time perfectly natural.
In the next place, there is connected with this outward aspect of
personality the circumstance that the Platonic philosophy does not
proclaim itself to be one particular field, where some one begins a
science of his own in a sphere of his own; for it sometimes enters
into the ordinary conceptions of culture, like those of Socrates,
sometimes into those of the Sophists, at other times into those of
earlier philosophers, and in so doing brings before us exemplifications
from ordinary knowledge, and also uses the methods of the same. A
systematic exposition of Philosophy we cannot in this way find; and of
course it is all the less easy for us to take a comprehensive view of
the subject, since there are at hand no means of judging whether the
treatment has been exhaustive or not. Nevertheless, there is present
there one spirit, one definite point of view as regards Philosophy,
even though Mind does not make its appearance in the precise form which
we demand. The philosophic culture of Plato, like the general culture
of his time, was not yet ripe for really scientific work; the Idea was
still too fresh and new; it was only in Aristotle that it attained to a
systematic scientific form of representation.
Connected with this deficiency in Plato’s mode of representation, there
is also a deficiency in respect of the concrete determination of the
Idea itself, since the various elements of the Platonic philosophy
which are represented in these dialogues, namely the merely popular
conceptions of Being and the apprehending knowledge of the same,
are really mixed up in a loose, popular way, so that the former
more especially come to be represented in a myth or parable; such
intermingling is inevitable in this beginning of science proper in its
true form. Plato’s lofty mind, which had a perception or conception
of Mind, penetrated through his subject with the speculative Notion,
but he only began to penetrate it thus, and he did not yet embrace
the whole of its reality in the Notion; or the knowledge which
appeared in Plato did not yet fully realize itself in him. Here it
therefore happens sometimes that the ordinary conception of reality
again separates itself from its Notion, and that the latter comes
into opposition with it, without any statement having been made that
the Notion alone constitutes reality. Thus we find Plato speaking of
God, and again, in the Notion, of the absolute reality of things, but
speaking of them as separated, or in a connection in which they both
appear separated; and God, as an uncomprehended existence, is made to
belong to the ordinary conception. Sometimes, in order to give greater
completeness and reality, in place of following out the Notion, mere
pictorial conceptions are introduced, myths, spontaneous imaginations
of his own, or tales derived from the sensuous conception, which no
doubt are determined by thought, but which this has never permeated in
truth, but only in such a way that the intellectual is determined by
the forms of ordinary conception. For instance, appearances of the body
or of nature, which are perceptible by the senses, are brought forward
along with thoughts regarding them, which do not nearly so completely
exhaust the subject as if it had been thoroughly thought out, and the
Notion allowed to pursue an independent course.
Looking at this as it bears on the question of how Plato’s philosophy
is to be apprehended, we find, owing to these two circumstances, that
either too much or too little is found in it. Too much is found by the
ancients, the so-called -, who sometimes dealt with Plato’s philosophy
as they dealt with the Greek mythology. This they allegorized and
represented as the expression of ideas—which the myths certainly
are—and in the same way they first raised the ideas in Plato’s myths
to the rank of theorems: for the merit of Philosophy consists alone in
the fact that truth is expressed in the form of the Notion. Sometimes,
again, they took what with Plato is in the form of the Notion for the
expression of Absolute Being—the theory of Being in the Parmenides, for
instance, for the knowledge of God—just as if Plato had not himself
drawn a distinction between them. But in the pure Notions of Plato the
ordinary conception as such is not abrogated; either it is not said
that these Notions constitute its reality, or they are to Plato no more
than a conception, and not reality. Again, we certainly see that too
little is found in Plato by the moderns in particular; for they attach
themselves pre-eminently to the side of the ordinary conception, and
see in it reality. What in Plato relates to the Notion, or what is
purely speculative, is nothing more in their eyes than roaming about
in abstract logical notions, or than empty subtleties: on the other
hand, they take that for theorem which was enunciated as a popular
conception. Thus we find in Tennemann (Vol. II. p. 376) and others an
obstinate determination to lead back the Platonic Philosophy to the
forms of our former metaphysic, _e.g._ to the proof of the existence of
God.
However much, therefore, Plato’s mythical presentation of Philosophy is
praised, and however attractive it is in his Dialogues, it yet proves a
source of misapprehensions; and it is one of these misapprehensions, if
Plato’s myths are held to be what is most excellent in his philosophy.
Many propositions, it is true, are made more easily intelligible by
being presented in mythical form; nevertheless, what is not the true
way of presenting them; propositions are thoughts which, in order to
be pure, must be brought forward as such. The myth is always a mode
of representation which, as belonging to an earlier stage, introduces
sensuous images, which are directed to imagination, not to thought;
in this, however, the activity of thought is suspended, it cannot yet
establish itself by its own power, and so is not yet free. The myth
belongs to the pedagogic stage of the human race, since it entices and
allures men to occupy themselves with the content; but as it takes away
from the purity of thought through sensuous forms, it cannot express
the meaning of Thought. When the Notion attains its full development,
it has no more need of the myth. Plato often says that it is difficult
to express one’s thoughts on such and such a subject, and he therefore
will employ a myth; no doubt this is easier. Plato also says of simple
Notions that they are dependent, transitory moments, which have their
ultimate truth in God; and in this first mention of God by Plato, He is
made a mere conception. Thus the manner of conception and the genuinely
speculative element are confounded.
In order to gather Plato’s philosophy from his dialogues, what we have
to do is to distinguish what belongs to ordinary conception—especially
where Plato has recourse to myths for the presentation of a philosophic
idea—from the philosophic idea itself; only then do we know that what
belongs only to the ordinary conception, as such, does not belong to
thought, is not the essential. But if we do not recognize what is
Notion, or what is speculative, there is inevitably the danger of these
myths leading us to draw quite a host of maxims and theorems from the
dialogues, and to give them out as Plato’s philosophic propositions,
while they are really nothing of the kind, but belong entirely to
the manner of presentation. Thus, for instance, in the Timæus (p. 41
Steph.; p. 43 Bekk.) Plato makes use of the form, God created the
world, and the dæmons had a certain share in the work; this is spoken
quite after the manner of the popular conception. If, however, it is
taken as a philosophic dogma on Plato’s part that God made the world,
that higher beings of a spiritual kind exist, and, in the creation of
the world, lent God a helping hand, we may see that this stands word
for word in Plato, and yet it does not belong to his philosophy. When
in pictorial fashion he says of the soul of man that it has a rational
and an irrational part, this is to be taken only in a general sense;
Plato does not thereby make the philosophic assertion that the soul
is compounded of two kinds of substance, two kinds of thing. When he
represents knowledge or learning as a process of recollection, this
may be taken to mean that the soul existed before man’s birth. In
like manner, when he speaks of the central point of his philosophy,
of Ideas, of the Universal, as the permanently self-existent, as the
patterns of things sensible, we may easily be led to think of these
Ideas, after the manner of the modern categories of the understanding,
as substances which exist outside reality, in the Understanding of
God; or on their own account and as independent—like the angels, for
example. In short, all that is expressed in the manner of pictorial
conception is taken by the moderns in sober earnest for philosophy.
Such a representation of Plato’s philosophy can be supported by Plato’s
own words; but one who knows what Philosophy is, cares little for such
expressions, and recognizes what was Plato’s true meaning.
In the account of the Platonic philosophy to which I must now proceed,
the two cannot certainly be separated, but they must be noted and
judged of in a very different manner from that which has prevailed
amongst the moderns. We have, on the one hand, to make clear Plato’s
general conception of what Philosophy and Knowledge really are, and on
the other to develop the particular branches of Philosophy of which he
treats.
In considering his general conception of Philosophy, the first point
that strikes us is the high estimation in which Plato held Philosophy.
The lofty nature of the knowledge of Philosophy deeply impressed him,
and he shows a real enthusiasm for the thought which deals with the
absolute. Just as the Cyrenaics treat of the relation of the existent
to the individual consciousness, and the Cynics assert immediate
freedom to be reality, Plato upholds the self-mediating unity of
consciousness and reality, or knowledge. He everywhere expresses the
most exalted ideas regarding the value of Philosophy, as also the
deepest and strongest sense of the inferiority of all else; he speaks
of it with the greatest energy and enthusiasm, with all the pride of
science, and in a manner such as nowadays we should not venture to
adopt. There is in him none of the so-called modest attitude of this
science towards other spheres of knowledge, nor of man towards God.
Plato has a full consciousness of how near human reason is to God, and
indeed of its unity with Him. Men do not mind reading this in Plato, an
ancient, because it is no longer a present thing, but were it coming
from a modern philosopher, it would be taken much amiss. Philosophy
to Plato is man’s highest possible possession and true reality; it
alone has to be sought of man. Out of many passages on this subject I
shall quote in the first instance the following from the Timæus (p. 47
Steph.; p. 54 Bekk.): “Our knowledge of what is most excellent begins
with the eyes. The distinction between the visible day and the night,
the months and courses of the planets, have begotten a knowledge of
time, and awakened a desire to know the nature of the whole. From this
we then obtained Philosophy, and no greater gift than this, given by
God to man, has ever come or will come.”
The manner in which Plato expresses his opinions on this subject in
the Republic is very well known, as it is greatly decried, because
it so completely contradicts the common ideas of men, and it is all
the more surprising in that it concerns the relation of Philosophy
to the state, and therefore to actuality. For before this, though
a certain value might indeed be attributed to Philosophy, it still
remained confined to the thoughts of the individual; here, however,
it goes forth into questions of constitution, government, actuality.
After Plato made Socrates, in the Republic, expound the nature of a
true state, he caused Glaucon to interrupt by expressing his desire
that Plato should show how it could be possible for such a state to
exist. Socrates parries the question, will not come to the point,
seeks evasive pleas, and tries to extricate himself by asserting that
in describing what is just, he does not bind himself to show how it
might be realized in actuality, though some indication must certainly
be given of how an approximate, if not a complete realization of it
might be possible. Finally, when pressed, he says: “Then it shall
be expressed, even though a flood of laughter and utter disbelief
overwhelm me. When philosophers rule the states, or the so-called kings
and princes of the present time are truly and completely philosophers,
when thus political greatness and Philosophy meet in one, and the many
natures who now follow either side to the exclusion of the other, come
together, then, and not till then, can there be an end, dear Glaucon,
either to the evils of the state or, as I believe, to those of the
human race. Then only will this state of which I spoke be possible or
see the light of day.” “This,” adds Socrates, “is what I have so long
hesitated to say, because I know that it is so much opposed to ordinary
ideas.” Plato makes Glaucon answer, “Socrates, you have expressed what,
you must recollect, would cause many men, and not bad men either, to
pull off their coats and seize the first weapon that comes to hand, and
set upon you one and all with might and main; and if you don’t know how
to appease them with your reasons, you will have to answer for it.”[15]
Plato here plainly asserts the necessity for thus uniting Philosophy
with government. As to this demand, it may seem a piece of great
presumption to say that philosophers should have the government of
states accorded to them, for the territory or ground of history is
different from that of Philosophy. In history, the Idea, as the
absolute power, has certainly to realize itself; in other words,
God rules in the world. But history is the Idea working itself out
in a natural way, and not with the consciousness of the Idea. The
action is certainly in accordance with general reflections on what is
right, moral, and pleasing to God; but we must recognize that action
represents at the same time the endeavours of the subject as such for
particular ends. The realization of the Idea thus takes place through
an intermingling of thoughts and Notions with immediate and particular
ends. Hence it is only on the one side produced through thoughts, and
on the other through circumstances, through human actions in their
capacity of means. These means often seem opposed to the Idea, but that
does not really matter; all those particular ends are really only means
of bringing forth the Idea, because it is the absolute power. Hence the
Idea comes to pass in the world, and no difficulty is caused, but it is
not requisite that those who rule should have the Idea.