becomes sundered, and thereby organizes itself more completely into
a scientific system, this content, according to Plato, begins to
fall into three parts which we distinguish as the logical, natural,
and mental philosophy. The logical Philosophy the ancients called
dialectic, and its addition to philosophy is by the ancient writers on
the subject ascribed to Plato (Vol. I. p. 387). This is not a dialectic
such as we met with in the Sophists, which merely brings one’s ideas
altogether into confusion, for this first branch of Platonic philosophy
is the dialectic which moves in pure Notions—the movement of the
speculatively logical, with which several dialogues, and particularly
that of Parmenides, occupy themselves. The second, according to Plato,
is a kind of natural philosophy, the principles of which are more
especially propounded in the Timæus. The third is the philosophy of
the mind—an ethical philosophy—and its representation is essentially
that of a perfect state in the Republic. The Critias should be taken
in connection with the Timæus and the Republic, but we need not make
further reference to it, for it is only a fragment. Plato makes these
three dialogues one connected conversation. In the Critias and the
Timæus the subject is so divided that while the Timæus dealt with the
speculative origin of man and of nature, the Critias was intended to
represent the ideal history of human culture, and to be a philosophical
history of the human race, forming the ancient history of the Athenians
as preserved by the Egyptians. Of this, however, only the beginning
has come down to us.[29] Hence if the Parmenides be taken along with
the Republic and the Timæus, the three together constitute the whole
Platonic system of philosophy divided into its three parts or sections.
We now wish to consider the philosophy of Plato more in detail in
accordance with these three different points of view.
1. DIALECTIC.
We have already remarked by way of preparation that the Notion of true
dialectic is to show forth the necessary movement of pure Notions,
without thereby resolving these into nothing; for the result, simply
expressed, is that they are this movement, and the universal is just
the unity of these opposite Notions. We certainly do not find in Plato
a full consciousness that this is the nature of dialectic, but we find
dialectic itself present; that is, we find absolute existence thus
recognized in pure Notions, and the representation of the movement of
these Notions. What makes the study of the Platonic dialectic difficult
is the development and the manifestation of the universal out of
ordinary conceptions. This beginning, which appears to make knowledge
easier, really makes the difficulty greater, since it introduces us
into a field in which there is quite a different standard from what
we have in reason, and makes this field present to us; when, on the
contrary, progression and motion take place in pure Notions alone, the
other is not remembered at all. But in that very way the Notions attain
greater truth. For otherwise pure logical movement might easily appear
to us to exist on its own account, like a private territory, which has
another region alongside of it, also having its own particular place.
But since both are there brought together, the speculative element
begins to appear as it is in truth; that is, as being the only truth,
and that, indeed, through the transformation of sensuous opinion into
thought. For in our consciousness we first of all find the immediate
individual, the sensuous real; or there are also categories of the
understanding which are held by us to be ultimate and true. But
contrasted with merely external reality, it is rather the ideal that
is the most real, and it was Plato who perceived that it was the only
real, for he characterized the universal or thought as the true, in
opposition to what is sensuous.
Thus the aim of many of Plato’s Dialogues, which conclude without any
positive affirmation (Vol. I. p. 406; II. p. 13), is to show that the
immediately existent, the many things that appear to us, although we
may have quite true conceptions of them, are still not in themselves,
in an objective sense, the true, because they alter and are determined
through their relation to something else and not through themselves;
thus we must even in the sensuous individuals consider the universal,
or what Plato has called the Idea (p. 29). The sensuous, limited,
and finite is, in fact, both itself and the other, which is also
considered as existent; and thus there is an unsolved contradiction,
for the other has dominion in the first. We have been before reminded
(Vol. I. p. 404; II. p. 33) that the aim of the Platonic dialectic is
to confuse and to resolve the finite ideas of men, in order to bring
about in their consciousness what science demands, the consideration
of that which is. By being thus directed against the form of the
finite, dialectic has in the first place the effect of confounding the
particular, and this is brought about by the negation therein present
being shown forth, so that, in fact, it is proved that it is not what
it is, but that it passes into its opposite, into the limitations
which are essential to it. But if this dialectic is laid hold of,
the particular passes away and becomes another than that which it is
taken to be. Formal philosophy cannot look at dialectic in any other
way than as being the art of confusing ordinary conceptions or even
Notions, and demonstrating their nullity, thus making their result to
be merely negative. For this reason, Plato in his Republic (VII. pp.
538, 539, Steph.; pp. 370, 371, Bekk.) advised the citizens not to
allow dialectic to be studied before the thirtieth year, because by its
means anyone might transform the beautiful, as he had received it from
his masters, into that which is hateful. We find this dialectic a great
deal in Plato, both in the more Socratic and moralizing dialogues, and
in the many dialogues which relate to the conceptions of the Sophists
in regard to science.
In connection with this, the second part of dialectic makes its first
aim the bringing of the universal in men to consciousness, which, as
we formerly remarked when speaking of Socrates (Vol. I. p. 398), was
the main interest of Socratic culture. From this time on, we may look
at such an aim as having been discarded, and simply remark that a
number of Plato’s Dialogues merely aim at bringing to consciousness a
general conception, such as we have without taking any trouble at all
(Vol. I. pp. 403, 404); hence this prolixity on Plato’s part often
wearies us. This dialectic is, indeed, also a movement of thought,
but it is really only necessary in an external way and for reflecting
consciousness, in order to allow the universal, what is in and for
itself, unalterable and immortal, to come forth. Hence these first two
sides of the dialectic, directed as they are towards the dissolution of
the particular and thus to the production of the universal, are not yet
dialectic in its true form: it is a dialectic which Plato has in common
with the Sophists, who understood very well how to disintegrate the
particular. A subject which Plato very often treats of with this end in
view, is virtue, which he proves to be only one (Vol. I. pp. 405, 411),
and thereby he makes the universal good emerge from the particular
virtues.
Now because the universal which has emerged from the confusion of the
particular, _i.e._ the true, beautiful and good, that which taken by
itself is species, was at first undetermined and abstract, it is, in
the third place, a principal part of Plato’s endeavours further to
determine this universal in itself. This determination is the relation
which the dialectic movement in thought bears to the universal, for
through this movement the Idea comes to these thoughts which contain
the opposites of the finite within themselves. For the Idea, as the
self-determining, is the unity of these differences, and thus the
determinate Idea. The universal is hence determined as that which
resolves and has resolved the contradictions in itself, and hence it
is the concrete in itself; thus this sublation of contradiction is the
affirmative. Dialectic in this higher sense is the really Platonic;
as speculative it does not conclude with a negative result, for it
demonstrates the union of opposites which have annulled themselves.
Here begins what is difficult for the understanding to grasp. The
form of Plato’s methods being not yet, however, developed purely on
its own account, this is the reason that his dialectic is still often
merely reasoning, and that it proceeds from individual points of view
and frequently remains without result. On the other hand, Plato’s own
teaching is directed against this merely reasoning dialectic; yet we
see that it gives him trouble properly to show forth the difference.
The speculative dialectic which commences with him, is thus the most
interesting but also the most difficult part of his work; hence
acquaintance is not usually made with it when the Platonic writings are
studied. Tennemann, for example, did not at all comprehend what was
most important in the Platonic philosophy, and only gathered some of
it together in the form of dry ontological determinations—for that was
what he could comprehend. But it shows the greatest lack of intellect
in a historian of Philosophy only to see in a great philosophic form
whether there is anything yielding profit to himself or not.
What we have thus to deal with in the dialectic of Plato is the
pure thought of reason, from which he very clearly distinguishes
the understanding (διάνοια), (_supra_, p. 47). We may have thoughts
about many things—if indeed, we do have thought at all—but this is
not what Plato means. Plato’s true speculative greatness, and that
through which he forms an epoch in the history of Philosophy, and
hence in the history of the world, lies in the fuller determination
of the Idea; this extension of knowledge is one which some centuries
later constituted the main element in the ferment which took place
in universal history, and in the transformation which the human mind
passed through. This fuller determination may, from what has gone
before, be understood thus: Plato first comprehended the Absolute as
the Being of Parmenides, but as the Universal which, as species, is
also end, _i.e._ which rules, penetrates, and produces the particular
and manifold. Plato, however, had not yet developed this self-producing
activity, and hence often stumbled into an external teleology. As the
union of the preceding principles, Plato further led this Being into
determinateness and into difference, as the latter is contained in
the triad of Pythagorean number-determinations, and expressed the
same in thought. That is, he grasped the Absolute as the unity of
Being and non-being—in Becoming, as Heraclitus says—or of the one and
the many,[30] &c. He further now took into the objective dialectic
of Heraclitus the Eleatic dialectic, which is the external endeavour
of the subject to show forth contradiction, so that in place of an
external changing of things, their inward transition in themselves,
_i.e._ in their Ideas, or, as they are here, in their categories, has
come to pass out of and through themselves. Plato finally set forth the
belief of Socrates, which the latter put forward in regard to the moral
self-reflection of the subject only, as objective, as the Idea, which
is both universal thought and the existent. The previous philosophies
thus do not disappear because refuted by Plato, being absorbed in him.
In addition to Being and non-being, one and many, the unlimited and
limiting are, for instance, likewise pure thoughts such as these, in
whose absolute contemplation, from an all-embracing point of view, the
Platonic investigation occupies itself. The purely logical and quite
abstruse consideration of such objects certainly contrasts strongly
with our conception of the beautiful, pleasing, and attractive content
of Plato. Such consideration to him signifies all that is best in
Philosophy, and it is that which he everywhere calls the true method
of Philosophy, and the knowledge of the truth; in it he places the
distinction between philosophers and Sophists. The Sophists on their
part look at appearances, and these they obtain in opinion; this,
indeed, implies thought, but not pure thought, or what is in and for
itself. This is one reason why many turn from the study of Plato’s
works unsatisfied. When we commence a Dialogue, we find, in the free
Platonic method of composition, beautiful scenes in nature, a superb
introduction (p. 14) that promises to lead us through flowery fields
into Philosophy—and that the highest Philosophy, the Platonic. We meet
with elevated thoughts, which are responded to more specially by youth,
but these soon disappear. If at first we have allowed ourselves to be
carried away by these bright scenes, they must now be all renounced,
and as we have come to the real dialectic, and truly speculative, we
must keep to the wearisome path, and allow ourselves to be pricked
by the thorns and thistles of metaphysics. For behold, we then come
to what is best and highest, to investigations respecting the one
and many, Being and nothing; this was not what was anticipated, and
men go quietly away, only wondering that Plato should seek knowledge
here. From the most profound dialectic investigation, Plato then again
proceeds to representations and images, to the description of dialogues
amongst intelligent men. Thus in the Phædo, for example, which
Mendelssohn has modernized and transformed into Wolffian metaphysics,
the beginning and end are elevating and beautiful, and the middle deals
with dialectic. Hence in making one’s way through Plato’s Dialogues
very many mental qualities are called into play, and in their study
we consequently ought to keep our minds open and free as regards the
very various points of interest. If we read with interest what is
speculative, we are apt to overlook what is most beautiful; if our
interest lies in the elevation and culture of the mind, we forget the
speculative element and find that it does not appeal to us. With some
it is like the young man in the Bible, who had fulfilled his various
duties, and who asked Christ what good thing he still had to do to
become His follower. But when the Lord commanded him to sell what he
had and give to the poor, the young man went away sorrowful; this was
not what he had anticipated. Just in the same way many mean well as
regards Philosophy; they study Fries, and heaven knows whom else. Their
hearts are full of the true, good and beautiful; they would know and
see what they ought to do, but their breasts swell with goodwill alone.
While Socrates remained at the good and universal, at implicitly
concrete thoughts, without having developed them or having revealed
them through development, Plato certainly goes on to the Idea as
determined. His defect, however, is that this determinateness and that
universality are still outside one another. We should certainly obtain
the determinate Idea by reducing the dialectic movement to its result,
and that forms an important element in knowledge. Yet when Plato speaks
of justice, beauty, goodness, truth, their origin is not revealed;
they are not shown as being results, but merely as hypotheses accepted
in their immediacy. Consciousness certainly has an innate conviction
that they form the highest end, but this their determination is not
discovered. Since Plato’s dogmatic expositions of Ideas are lost
(_supra_, p. 11), the dialectic of pure thought is only placed before
us by the Dialogues dealing with the subject, and these, just because
they deal with pure thought, are amongst the most difficult, viz.:
the Sophist, the Philebus, and, more especially, the Parmenides. We
here pass over the Dialogues which contain only negative dialectic and
Socratic dialogue, because they treat only of concrete ideas and not
of dialectic in its higher signification; they leave us unsatisfied,
because their ultimate end is only to confuse one’s opinions, or awaken
a sense of the necessity for knowledge. But those three express the
abstract speculative Idea in its pure Notion. The embracing of the
opposites in one, and the expression of this unity, is chiefly lacking
in the Parmenides, which has hence, like some other Dialogues, only
a negative result. But both in the Sophist and the Philebus Plato
expresses the unity also.
_a._ The fully worked-out and genuine dialectic is, however, contained
in the Parmenides—that most famous masterpiece of Platonic dialectic.
Parmenides and Zeno are there represented as meeting Socrates in
Athens; but the most important part of it is the dialectic which is
put in the mouths of Parmenides and Zeno. At the very beginning the
nature of this dialectic is given in detail as follows: Plato makes
Parmenides praise Socrates thus: “I notice that in conversing with
Aristoteles,” (one of those present; it might quite well have been
the philosopher, but that he was born sixteen years after Socrates’
death) “you were trying to define in what the nature of the beautiful,
just and good, and all such ideas lay. This your endeavour is noble
and divine. But train and exercise yourself even more in what the
multitude call idle chatter, and look on as useless, as long as you
are young, for otherwise the truth will escape you.—In what, Socrates
asks, does this exercise consist?—I was much pleased because you said
before that we must not be content with contemplating the sensuous
and its illusions, but must consider that which thought alone can
grasp, and that which alone exists.” I have before[31] remarked that
men at all times have believed that the truth could be found through
reflection only, for in reflection thought is found, and that which
we have before us in the guise of ordinary conception and of belief
is transformed into thought. Socrates now replies to Parmenides: “I
believed that I should in that way best discern the like and unlike,
and the other general determinations in things.” Parmenides replies,
“Certainly. But if you begin from a point of view such as that, you
must not only consider what follows from such an hypothesis, but also
what follows from the opposite of that hypothesis. For example, in the
case of the hypothesis ‘the many is,’ you have to consider what will
be the consequences of the relation of the many to itself and to the
one, and likewise what the consequences of the relation of the one to
itself and to the many.” The marvellous fact that meets us in thought
when we take determinations such as these by themselves, is that each
one is turned round into the opposite of itself. “But again we must
consider, if the many is not, as to what will be the result as regards
the one and the many, both to themselves and to one another. The same
consideration must be employed in respect of identity and non-identity,
rest and motion, origination and passing away, and likewise in regard
to Being and non-being. We must ask what is each of these in relation
to itself, and what is their relation in event of the one or the other
being accepted? In exercising yourself fully in this, you will learn to
know real truth.”[32] Plato thus lays great stress on the dialectical
point of view, which is not the point of view of the merely external,
but is a living point of view whose content is formed of pure thoughts
only, whose movement consists in their making themselves the other of
themselves, and thus showing that only their unity is what is truly
justified.
Plato makes Socrates say, as regards the meaning of the unity of the
one and many, “If anyone proved to me that I am one and many, it would
not surprise me. For since he shows me that I am a many, and points
out in me the right and left side, an upper and lower half, a front
and back, I partake of the manifold; and again I partake of unity
because I am one of us seven. The case is the same with stone, wood,
&c. But if anyone, after determining the simple ideas of similarity
and dissimilarity, multiplicity, and unity, rest and movement, and so
on, were to show that these in their abstract form admit of admixture
and separation, I should be very much surprised.”[33] The dialectic
of Plato is, however, not to be regarded as complete in every regard.
Though his main endeavour is to show that in every determination the
opposite is contained, it can still not be said that this is strictly
carried out in all his dialectic movements, for there are often
external considerations which exercise an influence in his dialectic.
For example, Parmenides says: “Are either of the two parts of the one
which is—I mean the One and Being—ever wanting to one another? Is the
One ever set free from _being_ a part (τοῦ εἶναι μόριον) and Being set
free from the _one_ part (τοῦ ἑνὸς μόριου)? Once more, each part thus
possesses both the one and Being, and the smallest part still always
consists of these two parts.”[34] In other words: “The one is; from
this it follows that the one is not synonymous with ‘is,’ and thus the
one and ‘is’ are distinguished. There hence is in the proposition ‘the
one is’ a distinction; the many is therefore contained in it, and thus
even with the one I express the many.” This dialectic is certainly
correct, but it is not quite pure, because it begins from this union of
two determinations.
The result of the whole investigation in the Parmenides is summarized
at the close by saying “that whether the one is or is not, it, as
also the many (τἆλλα), in relation to themselves and in relation
to one another—all of them both are and are not, appear and do not
appear.”[35] This result may seem strange. We are far from accepting,
in our ordinary conception of things, quite abstract determinations
such as the one, Being, non-being, appearance, rest, movement, &c.,
as Ideas; but these universals are taken by Plato as Ideas, and this
Dialogue thus really contains the pure Platonic doctrine of Ideas. He
shows of the one that when it is as well as when it is not, whether
like itself or not like itself, both in movement and rest, origination
and decay, it both is and is not; or the unity as well as all these
pure Ideas, both are and are not, the one is one as much as it is many.
In the proposition “the one is,” it is also implied that “the one is
not one but many;” and, conversely, “the many is” also indicates that
“the many is not many, but one.” They show themselves dialectically
and are really the identity with their ‘other’; and this is the truth.
An example is given in Becoming: in Becoming Being and non-being
are in inseparable unity, and yet they are also present there as
distinguished; for Becoming only exists because the one passes into the
other.