THE VALUATIONAL CHARACTER OF
PLATO’S THEORY OF IDEAS
- Prescott Johnson
Presented at Indiana State University, December, 1967
* * * *
I shall preface this discussion of the valuational significance of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas by making two illusions, one from the ancient world and the other from the modern world.
In southern France, at Lascaux, there is a vast multi-chambered grotto, a cathedral of hunting magic, which has been termed “the Sistine chapel of the Paleolithic.” On its domed ceilings and rough walls are animal scenes that transform the grotto into the vision of a teeming hunting ground. For a hunting people whose existence depended upon the continuity of those animals in whose death they themselves lived, this stone age cathedral is, perhaps, a mythical symbolism of the endurance and continuity of those animal species‑-indeed, a magic which assured that durable continuity.
In Science and the Modern World, the chapter entitled “The Romantic Reaction,” Whitehead makes reference to the poet Wordsworth:
It is the brooding presence of the hills which haunts him. His theme is nature in solido, that is to say, he dwells on that mysterious presence of surrounding things, which imposes itself on any separate element that we set up as an individual for its own sake. He always grasps the whole of nature as involved in the tonality of the particular instance.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He was haunted by the enormous permanence of nature. For him, change is an incident which shoots across a background of endurance.[1]
Incidents which shoot across a background of endurance‑-this is the perennial human theme. It is the same theme, whether it be found in the symbolic of the Paleolithic, the poetry of the moderns, the myths of Greeks, or the generalizations of present-day science. And it is a theme, certainly, which found admirable expression in the philosophy of Plato. Let us, then, turn to the Dialogues, to see if we can bring to synoptic view the thread which pervades them.
Plato employs a symbol from which I wish to begin this discussion and to which I shall return. It is the symbol of the Divided LIne, in Republic vi. 509d-510c.
“You will surely apprehend the two types, the visible and the intelligible. . . . Represent them then, as it were, by a line divided into two unequal sections and cut each section again in the same ratio . . . you will have, as one of the sections the visible world, images. . . . As the second section assume that of which this is a likeness or image. . . . Consider then again the way in which we are to make the division of the intelligible section. . . . By the distinction that there is one section of it which the soul is compelled to investigate by treating as images the things imitated in the former division, and by means of assumptions from which it proceeds not up to a first principle but down to a conclusion, while there is another section in which it advances from its assumption to a beginning or principle that transcends assumptions,, and in which it makes no use of the images employed by the other section, relying on ideas only and progressing systematically through ideas.”[2]
The Divided Line represents four states of mind and their correlative objects: 1) ε_κασία, or conjecture, has for its objects the ε_κόvες, or sense data; 2) πίστις, or confidence, has for its objects physical objects; 3) διάvoια, or thinking, yields knowledge of what we shall provisionally call the διαvovτά; and 4) vόησις has for its object what we shall call the voητόv.[3]
Now, both ε_κασία, with its grasp of sense objects, and πίστις, with its grasp of physical objects, register the changing incidents of experience. And the objects which are confronted here have but little hold upon the mind. For the sense object which confronts ε_κασία is itself in constant change, equivocal in its character. The sense object, Plato says in Theatetus 155d-157d, results from the fusion of motions of physical object and sense organ. For this reason the sense datum is a dynamic, ever-changing process. Thus Plato remarks:
But since not even this remains fixed‑-that the thing in flux flows white, but changes, so that there is a flux of the very whiteness, and a change of colour, that it may not in that way be convicted of remaining fixed, is it possible to give any name to a colour, and yet to speak accurately?[4]
In fine, the sense object lacks the fixity of character necessary to qualify it as an object of knowledge. And the situation is not much better with respect to πίστις and its correlative physical object. For the physical object is itself equivocal in nature, as sustaining, or consisting in, contrary qualities and properties. Thus the mind, which Plato represents as standing behind sense organs and receiving their several reports,
“. . . must be at a loss as to what significance for it the sensation of hardness has, if the sense reports the same thing as also soft? And, similarly, as to what the sensation of light and heavy means by light and heavy, if it reports the heavy as light and the light as heavy?”[5]
Πίστις, then, as well as ε_κασία, cannot sustain the identities necessary to an intelligibly ordered experience.
It is in the third aspect of experience, διάvoια, the beginning of knowledge (τ_ γvωστόv) as contrasted with opinion (τ_ δoξαστόv), that Plato finds a back ground of endurance upon which to project the transient incidents of experience. This background of endurance is, for Plato, composed of the Ideas.
The Euthyphro is the first dialogue in which the terms _δέα and ε_δoς appear in their Platonic sense. The problem of Euthyphro is the definition of piety, or holiness. In the course of the discussion, Plato makes it plain that he is seeking for the connotation, rather than the denotation, of the term, that he is seeking the essential nature of holiness. Thus he asks in Euthyphro 5d: “Is not holiness [τ_ _σιov] always the same with itself in every action . . . ?” Again, in Euthyphro 6d-e:
Now call to mind that this is not what I asked you, to tell me one or two of the many holy acts, but to tell the essential aspect [α_τ_ τ_ ε_δoς], by which all holy acts are holy. . . . Tell me then what this aspect is, that I may keep my eye fixed upon it and employ it as a model [παραδείγματι] . . . .
In Phaedo there is reference to other value Ideas, as beauty, justice, and goodness. And here Plato’s interest in mathematics becomes evident, in his reference to the Ideas of mathematics. In fact, the Ideas of value and those of mathematics are, throughout the Dialogues, his favorite examples of Ideas. Just as in Euthyphro holy acts are such via the Idea of holiness, so in Phaedo Plato says:
“I think that if anything is beautiful besides absolute beauty ‘αυτ_ τ_ καλόv] it is beautiful for no other reason than because it partakes [μετέχει] of absolute beauty . . . that nothing else makes it beautiful but the presence or communion [παρoυσία, κoιvωvία] . . . of absolute beauty.”[6]
The very same circumstance holds with respect to mathematics:
“. . . and therefore you accept no other cause of the existence of two than participation in duality, and things which are to be two must participate in duality, and whatever is to be one must participate in unity . . . .”[7]
The language according to which Ideas are “present” in or “common” to particulars, and particulars “participate” or “share” in the Ideas, points up the immanence of the Ideas. Here ideas are universals which yield the defining characteristic, or characteristics, of the classes in which particulars are ordered. The Ideas are, to speak in Kantian fashion, the constitutive conditions of experience. And as the constitutive conditions of experience, the background of endurance upon which play the changing incidents of experience, the Ideas are endowed with perfect internal homogeneity, with purity and constancy of character. The Idea, Plato says, is “itself according to itself” [α_τ_ καθ_ α_τ_].[8] They are the intelligibles, through which, in turn, the experienceable world is rendered intelligible.
For this discussion, there is another aspect of Plato’s theory of Ideas which requires attention. In Protagoras 330c Plato asks, then answers, the question: “. . . pray tell me this‑-the thing you named just now, justice, it that itself just or unjust? I should reply, it is just . . . .” In this passage, justice is spoken of as a quality, but it is the same breath spoken of as an entity which possesses that quality. Justice is just. This passage, then, indicates that, for Plato, the Idea is more than a common universal, a characteristic of things; it is a substantive being, an α_τ_ τό.
Again, in Phaedo 75b Plato observes “‘. . . that all sensible objects strive after [_ρέγεται] absolute equality and fall short of it.'” The Idea, then, is a transcendent reality, towards which particulars tend but from which they fall away. The Idea is a transcendent paradigm which particulars approximately imitate.
This language of transcendence, which is without question espoused by Plato, creates a serious difficulty for the theory of Ideas. This difficulty is pointed up in Parmenides 130c-133a. Two objections are raised against the theory of participation, i.e., that the Idea is a transcendent substantive in which particulars come to partake (μεταλαμβάvειv). First, the particular cannot share in either the whole Idea or in a part of it. If, for example, the Idea were wholly present in particulars, then “‘. . . while it is one and the same, the whole of it would be in many separate individuals at one, and thus it would itself be separate from itself.'”[9] Second, if the particular shares in the Idea (as in Parmenides 1312-132b), or, again, imitates the Idea (as in Parmenides 132c-133a), then there must be a further Idea to account for the relation between the given Idea and the particular, and so ad infinitum. This is the famous “third-man” argument, mentioned by Aristotle, here expressed by Plato:
“Then it is impossible that anything be like the idea, or the idea like anything; for if they are alike, some further idea, in addition to the first, will always appear, and if that is like anything, still another, and a new idea will always be arising, if the idea is like that which partakes of it.”[10]
Plato nowhere explicitly answers these objections. Yet he did not give up speaking of Ideas as patterns in the nature of things. In Phaedo 103b, he had said: “‘. . . the abstract concept of an opposite can never become its own opposite, either in us or in the world about us.'” In the present passage in Parmenides, he restates his objective view of the Ideas by remarking, “‘. . . I think the most likely view is, that these ideas exist in nature as patterns . . . .'”[11] Finally, he wrote in Timaeus 51d:
This, then, is the view for which I, for my part, cast my vote. If Reason and True Opinion are two distinct Kinds, most certainly these self-subsisting Forms do exist, imperceptible by our senses, and objects of Reason only . . . .
Believing, then, in the transcendence of the Ideas, but confronted with the difficulties involved in participation and imitation, Plato concludes in Parmenides 133a: “‘. . . we must seek some other method of participation.'”
Plato scholars have proposed various solutions to the objections to the theory of Ideas discussed in Parmendides. For example, Cornford says that Plato accepts the cogency of the first objection, that participation cannot be material, but that he makes it clear in connection with the second objection that he means by participation, not the relation of likeness, but the relation of original to copy. The particular is to the Idea as the copy is to the original, and this does not, Cornford says, involve the infinite regression of Ideas.[12] Ross expresses the view that, notwithstanding the difficulties adduced by Parmenides against the theory of Ideas, Plato did not consider the difficulties to be fatal to his theory. In regard to Plato’s statement about seeking “some other method of participation,” Ross remarks:
The true answer to both criticisms is to insist that the relation of particulars to the universal is a unique relation, and that both “resembling” and “sharing” are inadequate metaphors for it.[13]
Finally, Natorp, who adopts a conceptualist interpretation of the Ideas, argues that the objections are an occasion for Plato, in the role of Parmenides, to expose the difficulties in the transcendental theory which he, Plato, never advocated, but which the young members of the Academy‑-notably Aristotle‑-were beginning seriously to ascribe to Plato. Thus the “young Socrates,” representing the youthful members of the Academy, is at a loss when confronted with these objections. Plato is thus “scoring off” his own pupils who persist in misunderstanding him.[14]
Such explanations as these do not, for one reason or another, go very far in bringing order in Plato’s theory of Ideas. However, Stewart, in his book, Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas, makes a suggestion worth pursuing. Professor Stewart says that, as a scientist interested in the description and classification of particulars, Plato gives a strictly conceptualist account of the Ideas. The Ideas are the universals which represent the characteristic of particulars. But, Stewart continues, Plato also viewed the Ideas aesthetically, and for this reason regarded them as substantives. And so close to the surface is the aesthetic side of Plato that, when discussing the formal significance of the Ideas, he persisted in regarding them simultaneously as substantives intransitively present in aesthetic vision.[15]
An example will serve to make this point clear. In Diotima’s Discourse, Symposium 211a-b, it is said:
“‘. . . suddenly he will have revealed to him, as he draws to the close of his dealings in love, a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature . . . existing ever in singularity of form independent by itself, while all the multitude of beautiful things partake of it . . . .”
The Idea of beauty appears here, not as a common aspect or quality of things, i.e., a universal, but as an individual thing. The “beautiful itself,” Diotima says, is not presented “‘. . . as a particular description or piece of knowledge . . . .'”[16] As an instrument for description, the Idea is, strictly speaking, always a formal concept. But the Idea can never be presented to the aesthetic consciousness as a general concept. In the aesthetic attitude it is always beheld as a lovely Presence, as, therefore, a substantive‑-yet ideal‑-Individual. It is so present, at one time conflated with the beautiful things and an at another time distinguished from them. And in this manner, for the aesthetic consciousness, the Idea of beauty is a transcendent Individual present in the particular individuals of sense. Enraptured as he is by the aesthetic vision, Plato tends, Professor Stewart says, to characterize the Ideas aesthetically, as substantives, even in those contexts in which they function as, and are regarded as, general concepts. Stewart also suggests that the Ideas, as concepts, cannot be held fast when confronted with the sensible data which they must control. Thus Plato reinforces the concept “. . . from the standing-ground of the παράδειγμα, an Individual . . .”[17]‑-an Individual whose integrity is maintained and whose power over the data of sense is sustained.
Professor Stewart’s intriguing thesis, according to which the immanental and transcendental theories are combined, is a step in the right direction, but only a step. He is correct, to be sure, when he points out that the Ideas are Individuals for the aesthetic attitude and that their substantive character is superimposed upon them as concepts. Stated in the widest generality, the ideas are for the valuational consciousness, not formal concepts, but substantive Individuals. Thus the value Ideas of the Phaedo‑-the beautiful, the good, the just, and the holy‑-are spoken of as substantive Individuals.[18] And the logical-mathematical Idea of equality is there mentioned as that to which sensible things “‘. . . are aiming to be like . . . but fall short.'”[19] Sensible things aspire to “equality itself.” In this vein of thought, the Idea of equality is an ideal excellence, a value Idea. Thus it, along with the other value Ideas, is a substantive being.
It appears, then, that for Plato the value determination of the Idea as an Individual complements the view of the Idea as a universal, so as to reinforce the Idea as a conceptual instrument of discourse. Just here, however, is raised a question which Professor Stewart may not consider adequately. The question concerns the status of the Idea which is beheld by the valuational consciousness as an Individual, and, further, the ability of that Idea to sustain its integrity and effectiveness over the Idea as concept.
Now, while the Ideas, e.g., beauty itself, are real Presences for the person who beholds them, they may nevertheless be “real” only in this respect. They may be but creations of contemplation. The Platonic Ideas, then, may exist only in the realm of the imaginative, along with the images of the poet or the figurations of paleolithic artistry.
In this regard, there are passages in the Dialogues which indicate that, in some respect at least, Plato conceives the Ideas as having but a phenomenal status. In Republic v. 476e, he says:
“Does he who knows know something or nothing? . . . “I will reply,” he said, “that he knows something.” “Is it something that is or is not?” “That is. How could that which is not be known?”
When Plato here asserts that knowledge requires a “something” (τί) and a something “that is” (_v), he is probably not speaking redundantly by identifying “something” with “that is.” On the contrary, it is safe to assume that he has two considerations in mind. The cognitive object, he in effect argues, is “something,” not in an existential or ontological sense, but in a phenomenological sense as an intentional object of consciousness. And it is something “that is,” again, not in an existential or ontological sense, but in a strictly logical sense of being a self-identity. This same consideration is brought out in Parmenides 132c, where Plato says of thought that it is “‘Of something that is.’ ‘A thought of some single element that thought thinks of . . . .'” These passages, then, indicate that Plato regards the Ideas, at some point, as logical identities, or individuals, possessing but phenomenological status within the intentionality of the cognitive consciousness.
There is evidence, however, that in his final view Plato does not suspend the Ideas, as Individuals, merely in the consciousness of the beholder. On the contrary, he anchors them in reality, so as to sustain their independent being and, when they function as concepts, their control over the sensible world. Put somewhat differently, Plato’s ideas are not merely conceptual constructs or objects of contemplation. They are indeed these, but they are more. They are transcendent realities.
Plato’s vision provides for the objective absoluteness of the Ideas, although that vision may very well preclude his giving a rational account of what is envisaged. That vision occurs, along with other places, in connection with the discussion of the Line. In this discussion, we recall, διάvoια grasps as its objects the διαvoητά. The διαvoητά are here described as hypotheses (_πoθέσεις). Being hypotheses, the διαvoητά are conditional as dependent upon something else. The διαvoητά are, accordingly, provisional, problematic, with respect to their reality. Further, in Republic 505a, Plato identifies the several Ideas with the hypotheses, in the statement: “‘For you have often heard that the greatest thing to learn is the idea of good by reference to which just things and all the rest become useful and beneficial.'” The several Ideas, all of which are essentially value ideas, are thus conditioned as dependent upon the Idea of the Good. They are hypotheses requiring support from the outside. Either as universals or Individuals, they are in themselves provisional and problematic. They are not yet firmly anchored in reality; their only reality thus far is that of their presence to contemplation.
But the story does not end here. Plato speaks, in the Line, of a state of mind called vόησις. Νόθσις moves from the provisional hypotheses to “‘a beginning or principle that transcends assumption,'”[20] to the first principle itself in order to find confirmation there . . . .'”[21] This first principle which requires no assumption Plato calls “_ρχ_v άvυπόθετov,” the unhypothesized beginning. This term, άvυπόθετov, is used three times in the Greek language, and exclusively by Plato in the Republic. It expresses Plato’s insight to the effect that the beholding of the anhypotheton, the truly unconditioned, shows forth to the beholder the reality of the anhypotheton as independent of the conditions of contemplative experience. Stated epistemologically, since the anhypotheton is a cognitive object whose minimal, formal significance is that of the unconditioned absolute independent of the constitutive conditions of thought, it is thus disclosed as self-existent. It is a contradiction to think the anhypotheton and to deny its existence. For this reason there is in the life of thought a witness to the self-existent.[22]
Just as Plato identifies the hypotheses in διάvoια with the several Ideas, so he identifies the anhypotheton in vόησις with the Idea of the Good. In both the simile of the Sun and the analogy of the Cave, the Idea of the Good has the position which the Line assigns to the anhypotheton.[23] Thus the Idea of the Good, identified with the self-existent anyhpotheton, is, for Plato, objectively real. And, further, since the several Ideas, hypothetical in themselves, depend upon and reveal the Good, they then share in the reality of the Good. Upon them is conferred the power of being, lifting them up beyond merely conceptual or phenomenal status. Plato sums up his vision:
“In like manner, then, you are to say that the objects of knowledge [the Ideas] not only receive from the presence of the good their being known, but there very existence and essence is derived to them from it, although the good itself is not essence but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power.”[24]
One concluding remark remains. It concerns the aspect which noesis views the Idea of the Good and its dependent Ideas. In the Line passage, Plato seems to suggest that noesis moves discursively, step by step, through the hypotheses up to the anhypotheton and then, in like manner, back down to the various hypotheses. The same faculty is assigned to dialectic, in Republic vi. 511b. Plato here envisages the realm of Ideas as pervaded by systematic interconnections. Yet he nowhere else in his writings even suggests that thought can discursively trace out the interconnections in the realm of Ideas. Where the relations among Ideas are dealt with in his later writings, as in the Parmenides[25] and the Sophist,[26] Plato picks out a few relations among certain select Ideas as illustrative of an ideal which thought can never discursively fulfill.
Plato’s vision, then, transcends the powers of rational discourse. But there is yet this to be said. While no deduction is possible with respect to the Idea of the Good and its dependent Ideas, there is nonetheless a respect in which the Ideas show forth the Good. The equal itself, the just itself, the beautiful itself, and the holy itself are real Presences to the valuing consciousness and, as substantive Individuals, are the aims of endeavor. They are thus the conditions of experience‑-scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious experience. They are the values for which man, in the articulations of his experience, strives. They are not empty forms, but are substantives possessing what Nicolai Hartmann calls “aprioristic matter,”[27] and they appeal to feeling so as to lure man in his quest for meaning and value. In fine, the Ideas are beheld and appreciated as value laden, as aspects of excellence. In themselves, to be sure, they are tentative, precarious, fragile. Yet as value laden they bear, although but obliquely, the weight of the Good. The power of reality and value streams to and through them. They are thus elevated to a position enabling them to lend significance and destiny to life and thought. Although hidden in mystery, “‘the last thing to be seen and hardly seen,'”[28] the Good yet shines through them, so that they, and therefore the Good itself, become the background of endurance upon which the incidents of experience find their fruition.
[1]Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925), pp. 121-25.
[2]All quotations from the text are from The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
[9]Parmenides 131b.
[12]Francis Macdonald Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (New York: The Humanities Press, 1951), p. 93-5.
[13]Sir David Ross, Plato’s Theory of Ideas (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 89.
[14]Paul Natorp, Platons Ideenlehre (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1903), pp. 219-23.
[15]J. A. Stewart, Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1909), pp. 166-76.
[22]See the author’s article, “The Ontological Argument in Plato,” The Personalist, XLIV (January, 1963) pp. 24-34.
[23]Cf. Republic vi. 510b and 511b with vi. 502c-509c, vii. 514a-521b, vii. 532a.
[27]Nicolai Hartmann, Ethics, trans. Stanton Coit (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1932), I, 169.