Tbilisi State University Ivane Javakhishvili
International Conference
Plato’s Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Context
Souls and bodies in the Epinomis[1]
Dimka
Gicheva-Gocheva
Sofia
University “Saint Kliment Ohridsky”
dimka.gocheva@gmail.com; gichevagoc@phls.uni-sofia.bg
29
May 2018
(handout)
(handout)
Some
conjectures about the context: the problem of phronesis
In the very
first lines of the late Platonic dialogue the Epinomis there is one
word, mentioned twice. The word is phronesis
– once it is in the genitive, and once in the accusative case (973 a 1-5): ΚΛ.
Πρὸς μὲν τὸ τῆς ὁμολογίας ἥκομεν ἅπαντες
ὀρθῶς, ὦ ξένε, τρεῖς ὄντες, ἐγὼ καὶ σὺ καὶ Μέγιλλος ὅδε, τὸ τῆς φρονήσεως
ἐπισκεψόμενοι τίνι ποτὲ χρὴ λόγῳ διεξελθεῖν, ὃ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ἕξιν φαμέν, ὅταν
διανοηθῇ, κάλλιστ’ ἔχειν ποιεῖν πρὸς φρόνησιν ὅσην δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ σχεῖν.
The hidden
focus of the dialogue: not only wisdom and moderation, but also understanding: understanding, understood
not only and solely in the strict epistemological sense, but also and primarily
as the seed of the dianoetical virtue, which plays such an important role in
the ethical treatises of Aristotle.
1.
Debates about the authorship of the dialogue. Arguments
and counterarguments for attributing the dialogue to Plato and Philip[i];
conjecture about the possible authorship of Aristotle. Werner Jaeger and many
scholars have paid attention to the fact that all the members of the Academy
had written dialogues. They had been obliged to do so by their tutor and master[ii].
Aristotle had written poetry and his dialogues did not concede in respect of
the prosaic refinement to any of the belletristic masterpieces of Plato[iii].
On the other hand, we don’t know anything about other possible writings of
Philip; his highest erudition in the mathematical astronomy and the tables of
the correlation between the days in the calendar and the corresponding
celestial phenomena, known as parepegmatics[iv].
(Festugière, A.-J. La révélation d’Hermès
Trismégiste; van der Waerden, Лосев,
D. R. Dick
vs. Tarán
and Hans-Jochan Krämer, Brisson).
2.
The usual attribution of the dialogue to the hand of
Philip and moreover the dating of the dialogue
Epinomis in the decades after the death of Plato, fail to
explain the author’s motive
for composing it[v].
3.
The greatest rival of the Academy and personally of
Plato in the last two decades of his life was not anyone from the sophists.
They had been traveling intellectuals, the best of them were no longer on the
scene of life and if not all of them, at least some of them were good
philosophers. The greatest rival to Plato and the Academy was Isocrates and his
rhetorical school[vi].
The great competition between the two schools probably reached its extreme in
the year 355 BC, when Isocrates published his enormous auto-apology Antidosis,
in which he re-stated in a neat and systematic form his ideology about the
nature of the general education, the higher education as he saw it and the
respective disciplines in the curriculum:
what is to be studied or not, for how long and for what purpose. The credo of
his educational practices and teachings is confessed: the human nature is
incapable of real knowledge and cognition[vii].
[271] I
understand it quite simply. Since human nature cannot attain knowledge that
would enable us to know what we must say or do, after this I think that the
wise (sophoi ) are those who have the ability to
reach the best opinions (doxai ) most of
the time, and philosophers are those who spend time acquiring such an
intelligence as quickly as possible.
4. De
philosophia and Protrepticos[viii];
the Epinomis and the Academy in Plato’s last
years. Several places in the Epinomis
in which the phrase human nature is
explicitly mentioned and germane (e.g. in 977 c2 the understanding of
the humans is bounded with the ability to conceive of number).
5. Understanding, possible for everyone
6. Baby-maths will not suffice, as Burnyeat puts it,
or correspondingly, some baby-science[ix]. What
a mortal man must learn in order to be wise?[x]
(973b). Those who strive to live as nobly
as they can during their life and at the end to die a noble death have a good
hope of attaining after they die everything for which they have striven
(973 c).
* understanding phronesis is given in and
attainable as a potentiality in every human being (974b So, the dialogue offers
an understandable description: starting from the difficulties, endangering the
conception of the fetus in the womb, passing through the structure of the Whole
and the visible and invisible inhabitants in its realm, adding some new sketches
to the explanation of the moving of the celestial dynameis, etc., and
finishing with the trip to the Isles of the Blest after the physical death
(992b-c).
I hope that this is the goal of your laws,
that people will sing hymns to the gods and live purer lives, and then meet
with the end that is at once best and finest. (980b)
More
impressive in the Epinomis is not this undeniable connection with the Laws
and the aforementioned exaggerated failure to provide a legislature for
something important, although the conversation happens as if on the following day. More remarkable is the general
recapitulation of ontological and theological statements, which are fundamental
in the previous dialogues. There is a short, but important micro
dialogue-precision between Clinias and the Athenian guest (between 979d and 981
b) in which it is clarified that the
chief concern of the dialogue is not the finalization of the Laws, but the ambition to sketch a
decent account of the most important issues in theology and theogony, and man’s
proper conduct, in order for his life to be pious and wise. After having
asked for help in his prayer, the Athenian reveals:
Since people in the past have failed badly
in describing the generation of gods and living things, it appears that I must
begin by constructing an account based on my previous one, taking up again my
attack on impious accounts, and declaring that there are gods who care for all
things, great and small, who are inexorable in matters of justice. I suppose
you remember, Clinias, since you have received a written record. What we said
then was quite true. The most important point was that as a whole, soul is
older than any body. Do you recall? You surely must remember. For what is
superior, older and more godlike is obviously so in relation to what is
inferior, younger and less honorable, and what rules or leads is in every way
older than what is ruled or led. (980c-981 b)
The
structure of the “beautiful bodies” in the Timaeus and the Epinomis
In respect of
the material structure of the Whole, the Epinomis inherits, first, three
great ontological axioms from the previously mentioned works, mainly from the Timaeus.
1. The fundamental dichotomy
between the most divine entity, the soul of the cosmos, and the body of the
cosmos; 2.The perfect unity between the soul and the body, which every living
creature imitates, following the pattern of the beautiful symmetry between them
on the cosmic level. This conjunction is needed in order every living being to
be perfect, harmonious and healthy one. The soul and the body are initially
distinct, but from a certain moment onwards they are inseparable in the created
cosmos (36d-e). There are five elemental, stereometric bodies,
accordingly to the eikos logos (981b3).
The Epinomis is on the same conceptual track. The first entity,
the soul, according to the Athenian guest, is older and invisible, intelligent
and intelligible; it shares memory (here remains unspecified with whom or what,
but probably with the gods and the invisible daimones), and also it is
capable of calculating what is susceptible to odd and even.
*the five
physical elements: fire, water, air, earth and ether. All living creatures
reach perfection with one of these bodies ruling or dominating in their
material compositions. (981c6-8). The living creatures, whose lives are bounded
with the earth, are of course, the humans, the animals, possessing many legs,
the reptiles and self-understandable, the plants. They all are genera of living
creatures, in the composition of which all the material-corporeal ingredients
are used, but under the domination of the earth in the mixture. (981d6) Next in
the enumeration of the Athenian guest come the creatures, in whose composition
the fire dominates, but also they contain some portions of earth and air, and
some miniscule particles of the other (two) basic ingredients. The creatures
with this type of corporeal composition are part of the entity of becoming,
they are perceptible and visible. In conformity with the Timaeus, but also
stepping a little bit aside, the Athenian guest determines that these are the
celestial living beings in the divine genus of the stars. Let’s point out and
emphasize that this refers to the stars, to the stellar constellations, whereas
the movement of the planets requires and correspondingly receives another
explanation – both in the Timaeus, and in the Epinomis. These
divine and living celestial dwellers – the fixed stars and their constellations
possess the most beautiful kind of body and they are endowed with the most
blissful and best soul. (981e2-6). The celestial bodies have twofold
ontological nature, which imposes the dilemma: whether they are either
absolutely imperishable and immortal, or though not eternal in an absolute
sense, they have such an eternal duration (from the point of view of the
mortals) of their lives, that requires nothing more.
The
perfectly moving celestial bodies are phronimoi. The constant and
unchangeable order in their movement testifies that they are understanding. Again,
this is in tune with what is said by Timaeus
in the dialogue, named after him. There is one more stable bridge,
connecting the Epinomis with the core values and the fundamentals of the
ontology and the theology of the emblematic dialogues. The celestial bodies
possess reason (nous) and the absolute necessity in this cosmic order is
guarded by the three Moirai (982 b-c), as the myth of Er narrates in the final
book of the Republic.
* striking
differences between the dialogues in the aspect of the five bodies; the ether;
**important
question. If this is the stereometrical figure of the All, or of the Whole, and
as the mathematicians since Euclid has proved, even though it perfectly
exhausts any given sphere, better than any other regular polyhedron, how this
perfectly congruent dodecahedron correlates with the perfect sphere of the body
of the cosmos, so much praised in many instances for its smoothness and
evenness, for the conditions, which it creates for the incessant, regular and
constant movement of the celestial sphere and the boundless running of
time?
These
questions most probably had been rigorously debated in the Academy, not only
because Aristotle might have written some of the chapters of the De caelo
still being a member of the school in the life-time of his tutor, but the Epinomis
does not pose them at all. There is no stereometry and nothing about the
structure of the five bodies is specified.
Conclusion:
the invisible inhabitants of the bodies
The Epinomis
holds a position at an equal distance from the spatial concept of the ether
both in the Timaeus and in the De caelo and pretty much
anticipates the Aristotelian idea of the symphyton pneuma.
Instead of
mathematical details, the author of the Epinomis aimed at the
understanding-phronesis and the believe of the readers: there are
spiritual-and-material invisible creatures everywhere in all these spheres of
the cosmos.
The ether
is used in the first place and as a primary source for their creation.
We may
suppose that soul fashions living things out of it which (like the other kinds
of living things) are for the most part characterized by that substance, but
which also possess smaller amounts of the other kinds in order to bond them
together. After ether, soul fashions a different kind of living things out of
air, and a third out of water… it is plausible that soul filled the entire
heaven with living things, employing each according to its character, since all
share in life.(984c)
***prototype of divine servants – the good ones, are
depicted here, in the Epinomis.
The daimones,
made of ether and air, are wholly imperceptible and invisible. (984e) The
demigods, made of water, are “sometimes seen, sometimes hidden and
invisible, provoking wonder through its dim appearance” (985c).
And the
divine deeds of all these living, intelligent and sensitive assistants of the
gods, shaped by the cosmic soul in all realms of the five beautiful bodies,
really do happen, because:
They have a
wonderful intelligence, being of kinds that learn quickly and have good
memories, and we should say that they know all our thoughts and both love those
of us who are noble and good and hate those who are extremely evil, since
already with these kinds we are discussing beings that experience pain.
(985a)
***
Text,
interpretations and translations:
Text:
Leonardo Tarán’s edition of the Greek text in:
Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the Pseudo-Platonic
Epinomis. (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society; v. 107).
Philadelphia, 1975.
Translations:
The one
quoted all over in the paper: the English translation by
Richard D. McKirahan, Jr, In: Plato. Complete Works. Edited, with
introduction and notes by John M. Cooper. Hackett Publishing Company,
Indianapolis/ Cambridge.
Novotný, Franciscus. Platonis Epinomis Commentariis
Illustrata. Pragae 1960. In aedibus Academiae Scientiarum Bohemoslovenicae.
German
translation: EPINOMIS. Anhang zu den "Gesetzen" . Nach der Übersetzung
von Franz Susemih. On the internet: http://www.opera-platonis.de/Epinomis.html
The
Russian translation by A. N. Egunov: Диалоги Платона.
Послезаконие.
http://psylib.org.ua/books/plato01/31posle.htm
The
French translation and the commentary of Édouard des Places. In: Platon.
Oeuvres completes. Tome XII. Les Lois. Livres XI-XII. Epinomis.
Paris, 1956, Les belles lettres.
First
draft of the Bulgarian translation by Nikolai Gochev. Preprint publication:
http://theepinomisofplato.blogspot.com/
***
Interpretations:
Brisson, Luc. Platon. Timée. Critias. Traduction
inédite, introduction et notes par Luc Brisson. Flammarion, Paris, 1992.
Brisson, Luc and Walter Meyerstein. Inventing
the Universe. Plato’s Timaeus, The Big Bang, and the Problem of Scientific
Knowledge. State University of New York Press, 1995.
Brisson, Luc. Plato’s Natural
Philosophy and Metaphysics. In : Gill, Mary Louis and Pierre Pellegrin
(editors). A Companion to Ancient Philosophy. Blackwell Publishing.
2006. p. 212-231.
Brisson, Luc. Le programme
d’études des membres du Collège de veille dans l’Epinomis. In :
Epinomide. Studi sull’Opera e la sua ricezione. A cura di Francesca Alesse
e Franco Ferrari con la collaborazione di Maria Cristina Dalfino. Bibliopolis,
2012.
Brisson, Luc. Epinomis :
authenticity and authorship. In : Pseudoplatonica. Akten des Kongresses
zu den Pseudoplatonica vom 6-9 Juli 2003, Bamberg. Hrsg. von Klaus Döring,
Michael Erler, Stefan Schorn. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2005.
Burnyeat, Myles. Plato on Why
Mathematics is Good for the Soul. In : Proceedings of the British
Academy, 103, 1-81.
Burnyeat, Myles. Eikos mythos.
In : Rhizai. Vol. II, No2, 2005,
p. 143-165.
Burnyeat, Myles. The
Theaetetus of Plato. With a translation of the dialogue by M.J. Levett.
Hackett Publishing Company. Indianapolis Cambridge, 1990.
Cherniss,
Harold. Die Ältere Akademie. Ein
historishes Rätsel und seine Lösung. Heidelberg, 1966, Carl Winter
Universitätsverlag. Übersetzt von Josef Derbolav from the original in English The Riddle of the Early Academy.
University of California Press, 1945.
Gill, Mary Louis and Pierre
Pellegrin (editors). A Companion to Ancient Philosophy. Blackwell
Publishing. 2006.
Dick,
D.R. Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle. Ithaca, New York. 1970.
Düring,
Ingemar. Aristotle’s Protrepticus. An Attempt at Reconstruction. Göteborg, 1961. Acta Universitatis
Gothoburgensis.
Düring,
Ingemar. Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition. Göteborg,
1957.
Düring,
Ingemar. Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens.
Heidelberg, 1966.
Festugière,
A.-J. La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste.
T. 1-4, Paris, 1950-1954.
Jaeger, Werner. Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer
Geschichte seiner Entwicklung. Berlin, Weidmansche Buchhandlung, 1923.
English translation: Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of his Development.
Oxford. 1934.
Krämer, Hans Joachim. Grundbegriffe akademischer Dialektik in den
biologischen Schriften von Aristoteles und Theophrast. In: Rheinisches
Museum, 1968, 293-333.
Krämer,
H.-J.
Philippos von Opus und die “Epinomis”. Geschichte
der Griechischen Philiosophie, vol. 3, S. 103-120.
Kraut, Richard. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. 16th
printing, 2005.
Platonis Dialogi secundum
Thrasylli Tetralogias Dispositi. Ex recognitione Caroli Friderici Hermanni,
vol. I-VI. Lipsiae. In aedibus B.G. Teubneri. MCMXV-MCMVII. Reprinted
photographically by D. Papadimas, Athens, 1977.
Rabinowitz, W. G. Aristotle’s Protrepticus and the
Sources of its Reconstruction. Göteborg, Berkeley and Cambridge, 1957.
Rose, V. Aristotelis Fragmenta. Leipzig, 1886.
Teubner.
Ross, W. D. Aristotelis Fragmenta Selecta,
Oxford, 1955. Clarendon.
Untersteiner, Mario. Aristotele. Della filosofia. Roma, 1963.
Van der Waerden. Title in Dutch; translated in
English as Science Awakening* in
German Die Erwachende Wissenschaft*;
in Russian Пробуждающаяся наука.
Гоготишвили,
Л. А. Платонизм в Зазеркалье ХХ века, или Вниз по лестнице, ведущей вверх.
Приложение в: Лосев, А. Ф. Очерки античного
символизма и мифологии. М., изд. „Мысль“, 1993, с. 922-942.
Лосев,
А. Ф. Замечание о „Законах“ и „Послезаконии“. В: Очерки античного символизма и мифологии. М., изд. „Мысль“, 1993, с.
597-599.
Николова,
Мария. Бележки
относно Платоновите многостени. Послеслов в: Аристотел. За небето. За
възникването и загиването. С., СОНМ, 2006. Превод на За небето и встъпителна студия Димка Гочева. Превод на За възникването и загиването Димитър
Илиев.
[1]The
English translation all over the text: Richard D. McKirahan, Jr, In: Plato.
Complete Works. Edited, with introduction and notes by John M. Cooper.
Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/ Cambridge The paper
has been edited by Associated Prof. Svetla Slaveva-Griffin from the Florida
State University.
[i]
In
the debates concerning
the authorship my sympathies are on the side of É. Des Places in his commentary
to the French translation in the edition of “Les belles letters” series from
1956, p. 97-105. The stylometric analysis also gives strength to this thesis:
see the chapter of Leonard Brandwood ‘Stylometry and chronology’ in The
Cambridge Companion to Plato. Ed. by Richard Kraut. 1995, 16th
printing, 2005. p. 90-120. Elegant irony for those, who doubt the authorship of Plato, in the
chapter, dedicated to Plato’s astronomy in D.R. Dick’s Early Greek Astronomy
to Aristotle, op.cit. in the bibliography. A third solution of the
problem : Brisson, Luc. Epinomis : authenticity and authorship.
In : Pseudoplatonica. Akten des Kongresses zu den Pseudoplatonica vom
6-9 Juli 2003, Bamberg. Hrsg. von Klaus Döring, Michael Erler, Stefan
Schorn. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2005.
[iii] Cicero
had mentioned this in the lost dialogue of his Hortensius. See Jaeger, op.cit., loc.cit.
[v]
Hans-Jochan
Krämer.
Philippos von Opus und die “Epinomis”. Geschichte
der Griechischen Philiosophie, vol. 3, S. 103-120.
[vi]
Myles
Burnyeat qualifies Isocrates as the arch-rival in Plato on Why Mathematics is Good for the Soul, op.cit., p. 3 and
the following. For opposite commentaries see Mauro Tulli and Maddalena
Vallozza.
[vii] Isocrates. The
quotation in Greek, which follows, is from the TLG edition. The translation in
English is the one by Yun Lee Too in The Oratory of Classical Greece.
Series editor Michael Gagarin. Isocrates. Translated by David C. Mirhady
and Yun Lee Too. University of Texas Press, Austin, 2000. I am indebted also to
the comments and the introductions to the different speeches in the Bulgarian
translation, made by Violetta Gerdjikova and Nikolai Sharankov in the edition Изократ.
Речи. 2008, Колекция Архетип.
Фондация за българска литература. But the ironic comments in
respect of Isocrates are entirely my responsibility.
[viii] Editions of the
fragments of the early writings by Aristotle: in the books by Rabinowitz, Ross,
Rose, Düring аnd
Untersteiner in
the bibliography.
[ix] Burnyeat, Myles. Plato on Why
Mathematics is Good for the Soul. In : Proceedings of the British
Academy, v. 103, ed. Timothy Smiley, p. 4.
[x] All the quotations
from the Epinomis in the paper are from the translation of Richard
McKirahan, Jr.
[xi] The place is the
same, the dramatis personae are the
same, and the conversation continues as if on the following day(s).
