0XVW3KLOHEXVDF5HIHUWR7UDQVFHQGHQW)RUPV"

5RJHU$6KLQHU

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 17, Number 1, January

1979, pp. 71-77 (Article)
3XEOLVKHGE\-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2008.0207

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v017/17.1shiner.html

Access provided by Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2 Sep 2015 13:24 GMT)

Notes and Discussions

MUST Philebus

5 9 A - C R E F E R TO T R A N S C E N D E N T F O R M S ?

T h e a p p e a r a n c e o f R o b e r t F a h r n k o p f ' s critique' o f an a r g u m e n t in m y m o n o g r a p h ' affords me the o p p o r t u n i t y o f re-presenting s o m e o f the relevant issues. I

a i m e d in K R P (as I said, p p . 34-35) to begin, rather t h a n to end, d e b a t e , ~ a n d I a m
h a p p y to c o n t i n u e the discussion.
F a h r n k o p f ' s general s t r a t e g y in pages 202-5 is as follows: P l a t o m u s t in P h i l e b u s
55c-62a be a d h e r i n g either to T r a n s c e n d e n t Realism (TR) or to I m m a n e n t Realism
(IR). Shiner wants to deny that P l a t o a d h e r e s to TR; so he c o m m i t s P l a t o to IR. But
if P l a t o is c o m m i t t e d to IR, v a r i o u s h o r r e n d o u s consequences follow. So P l a t o , after
all, m u s t be c o m m i t t e d to T R , a n d Shiner must be w r o n g . T h e crucial claim in this
a r g u m e n t is the first one; w i t h o u t it the a r g u m e n t collapses. H o w e v e r , to use this
claim as a premise in an a r g u m e n t a g a i n s t m y i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f this p a s s a g e is
q u e s t i o n - b e g g i n g . Let me m a k e first s o m e p r e l i m i n a r y r e m a r k s . '
A . T h e r e is a distinction between these two question: (I) W h a t p h i l o s o p h i c a l l y is
it possible to believe a b o u t c o n c e p t s a n d their relation to their instances? (2) W h a t
evidence is there that elsewhere P l a t o h i m s e l f distinguished between such possibilities? W i t h respect to (1), there is a d i s t i n c t i o n between ' c o n c e p t i o n ' , ' c o n c e p t ' p h i l o sophically uninterpreted, and 'concept' philosophically interpreteted. Conceptions
a r e p e r s o n a l , the possessions o f i n d i v i d u a l s o r g r o u p s o f i n d i v i d u a l s ( m y c o n c e p t i o n
o f a first-class u n d e r g r a d u a t e essay, C a r t e r ' s c o n c e p t i o n o f h u m a n r i g h t s ) . ' C o n cepts, on the other h a n d , are i m p e r s o n a l , s o m e t h i n g like, in C. I. Lewis's w o r d s ,
" t h e logical intension or c o n n o t a t i o n o f a t e r m . . , exemplified by d i c t i o n a r y definitions where these are s a t i s f a c t o r y . ' " E m p i r i c a l investigation c o u l d show us that
s o m e o n e ' s or some g r o u p ' s c o n c e p t i o n o f X was not w h a t we t h o u g h t it was. E m p i r ical investigation w o u l d n o t in the s a m e way settle w h e t h e r the c o n c e p t o f S was
what s o m e o n e t h o u g h t it to be; o n l y reflection on the " g r a m m a r " ( W i t t g e n s t e i n ' s
sense) o f the concept could d o that.
S u p p o s e now that a p h i l o s o p h e r replies to the above, " I do not see this distinction
' "Forms in the Philebus,'" this Journal, 15 (April, 1977):202-7.
2 Knowledge and Reality in Plato's Philebus (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974); hereafter cited as KRP.

Fahrnkopf makes me out to be more dogmatic (p. 202). I do not conclude that there is no evidence
incompatible with revisionism in the Philebus; I aim to present a case for saying there is none. Any definitive answer to the question of the interpretation of 59aft. and other passages requires a satisfactory
account of the later ontology and epistemology generally. I did not provide such a comprehensive account
in KRPand certainly will not here. Moreover, 1 do not concede that there is no positive evidence for revisionism in the Philebus; I say that the evidence can be seen to be in the Philebus only in the light shed on
that dialogue by other later dialogues. That does not imply that such evidence is not there.
' These preliminary remarks summarize arguments made at greater length in chaps. I-5 ofKRP. Fahrnkopf does not refer to this material. 1 find it hard to believe that if he had taken it into account his text
would have remained unchanged.
See Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977),
pp. 134ff.
SMind and the World Order (New York: Scribners, 1929), p. 67.
[71]

72

HISTORY OF P H I L O S O P H Y

you are after; concepts are no more than conceptions." This remark shows the distinction I want to make between 'concept' philosophically uninterpreted and 'concept' philosophically interpreted. This philosopher is presupposing a nonphilosophical independent life for both 'conception' and 'concept' when he says that concepts
are no more than conceptions. He is taking a word, " c o n c e p t , " that has its own life
in everyday discourse and is giving a philosophical interpretation of that term. Some
other philosopher who says that concepts are unitary entities existing in their own
transcendent world is also taking a term that has a currency in ordinary language
and giving a philosophical interpretation of it - a rather different one from the reductionist above. In each case, the thought that there is a distinction between 'conception' and 'concept' is separable from the thought that such-and-such is the correct
philosophical account to be given of concepts. This is so, even in the special case
where the view is that the correct account reduces concepts to conceptions.
B. Beginning with the preanalytic realization of the distinction between a
conception, a concept, and its instances, one can further distinguish four stages of
philosophical theorizing about these distinctions:
a.
b.
c.
d.

Understanding of a concept C
Understanding that the nature of C is something that can and, for epistemological purposes, ought to be defined
Understanding that real definition is an account of the nature of an existing
thing
Understanding that real definition is an account of the nature of a Transcendent Reality, of which sensible particulars are incomplete, less than real
images

C. The Theory of Transcendent Forms (TTF) I take to be a highly specific interpretation of the distinction between a concept and its instances, one that contains the
following four essential elements:
i.
ii.
iii.

iv.

There are two separate worlds, the transcendent intelligible world of Being
and the natural sensible world of Becoming; only the former is real.
Knowledge is only of Being; of Becoming there is only belief.
Concepts constitute the furniture of the world of Being; they can be defined
by timelessly true real definitions, and knowledge is fundamentally knowledge of these definitions.
Concepts are in no way mind-dependent.

Given A-C, my view is that on a minimal interpretation the strongest position we

find in the Philebus is a combination of b and c. There is no direct independent
evidence for any of the following three claims:
There are two ontologically separate worlds of Reality/Being and Appearance/Becoming.
2. The former only is real; the latter is neither real nor unreal.
3. Knowledge is only of the former.
1.

NOTES A N D DISCUSSIONS

73

In the Philebus Plato is a dualist, if you like, insofar as he still distinguishes between
concepts and instances as two kinds of thing; but to be a dualist in this minimal sense
is not necessarily to hold a " T w o W o r l d s " theory of reality of the kind represented
by the TTF. To be a dualist in this minimal sense not only does not require acceptance of the TTF; it does not require acceptance of any given particular philosophical view at all at the level of d above. Nor does it even require the view that
one can only believe b or c if one has made a selection from the competing views at
level d.
The last sentence should make clear the light into which I wish to put Fahrnkopf's
central claim (p. 204) that Plato m u s t - g i v e n the references to Being, Becoming, and
so on, in Philebus 59aft. and to Justice, Divine Circle, and Divine Sphere in 6 2 a - b e
either an Immanent Realist or a Transcendent Realist. There is no such " m u s t "
about it. The claim is wrong on two counts. First, as a plain matter o f philosophical
fact, it does not follow from a philosopher's distinguishing between concepts and
instances as two kinds of thing that he must hold to either TR or IR. Nor does it
follow that he must hold to some deep interpretive theory of concepts. Furthermore,
not merely does it therefore follow a f o r t i o r i that the same is true of Plato; the
stronger claim can be defended that there is indeed evidence in the Platonic corpus as
a whole of Plato's sensitivity to the extent to which one can make greater or lesser
ontological commitments and signify these by essentially similar vocabulary. 7
Fahrnkopf takes to be decisive the reference at 62a-b to the Divine Circle and
Divine Sphere, and to Justice itself. He thinks these must be references to transcendent Forms of the middle-dialogues type: " W e have a straightforward example of a
Form o r - - a s Shiner prefers to s a y - - a concept" (p. 205). This remark needs disambiguation. If ' F o r m ' or 'concept' are taken to imply in their ontological commitment nothing more than the minimal dualism I have just mentioned, then we indeed
do have in Justice, the Divine Circle, and the Divine Sphere straightforward examples of a Form or a concept. But on that view the passage will not support Fahrnk o p r s criticism. We will have no evidence that Justice, and so on, are ' F o r m s ' or
'concepts' in the strong sense he needs. The meaning of the passage would be well
captured by an "ontologically defused" translation such as that offered by Gosling:
"Let us then posit a man with an intellectual grasp of what justice is, powers of
reasoning to match his understanding, and, further, in the same condition as regards
his thoughts on all such truths. ''s On the other hand, if the claim is that we have here
a straightforward example of a middle-dialogues transcendent Form, that claim begs
the interpretive question being raised about the amount of ontological commitment
the Greek carries.
The question is not, pace Fahrnkopf (p. 205), Does 62a-b refer to immanent
Forms or to transcendent Forms? The question is, Can we conclude from the
appearance alone of the locutions a6Tflq 6t~0ttoo6v'qq and ~ 0 r L o u K~t~ oq)Qfpct~
ct6x~q ~ q 0crag that there is a reference here to transcendent Forms, given that, as
' In chap. 3 of KRP 1 argued that the evidence of the early "Socratic" dialogues would place Plato at
no further than c. For a recent, thorough discussion of this topic, see J. M. Rist, "Plato's Early Theoryof
Forms," Phoenix 29 (1975): 336-57.
i Plato, Philebus, trans., with notes and commentary, J. C. B. Gosling (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975), p. 65.

74

HISTORY OF P H I L O S O P H Y

both Fahrnkopf and I agree, there is no question of attributing to Plato an explicit

belief in Aristotelian immanent Forms? To that question, the answer defended in
KRP and repeated here is no. As I see it, one who wishes to secure an affirmative
answer, as Fahrnkopf wishes to, must supply more evidence than merely a verbal
similarity between this passage and passages in the middle dialogues, and more evidence than, on my reading, is supplied by this passage. That shows unequivocally
only that Plato still wishes to draw a distinction between concepts and their
instances, to speak of these as two different kinds of thing, and even to regard knowledge of the former as in some way superior. The point of the philosophical distinctions l made above was to argue that the thoughts expressed in the previous sentence
do not amount to a TTF. One might be inclined to ask how Plato could possibly
believe all that about Forms and not regard them as transcendent in the middledialogues fashion. One who regarded that question as purely rhetorical would show
himself unable to take the steps Plato himself took prior to the lahilebus (see chap. 4
of KRP) of distinguishing what the desire to retain certain distinctions does and does
not commit one to in terms of full-scale ontology.
Contrary to the impression given by Fahrnkopf's analysis, there is in the Greek of
62a2-b4 no word even remotely translatable as " s o r t . " I have gone along with the
form of words " t w o sorts of thing" for convenience' sake. But it is just that, a form
of words. Even we philosophers use words such as " s o r t , " " k i n d , " " t h i n g , " all the
time because they are convenient. Simply to use them does not imply any philosophical theory. Only when a philosophei" uses such terms in a self-consciously
technical way will we be on safe ground in attributing a positive theory to him. That
kind of self-conscious ontology is strikingly absent from the last part of the Philebus;
that is the point. Such does go on in the middle dialogues, and Plato does develop a
vocabulary to signify his doctrine. However, it is perfectly possible to read the
Philebus on its own as containing nothing more than occasional survivals of the
vocabulary. Plato does not ever state directly in Philebus 59aft. just what specific
ontological commitment we are to infer from the terms he uses. Against a certain
interpretive background (which cannot, of course, be defended here) of criticisms in
the "'critical" dialogues of the T T F (see chap. 4 of KRP) it is therefore an open
question what ontological commitment Plato had in mind, if indeed he had any in
mind at all. The openness of the question is all I need for my position, which is,
recall, that a revisionist interpretation /s possible.To combat that, a " u n i t a r i a n "
such as Fahrnkopf has to show that the words used must unequivocally be given a
transcendentalist interpretation. Neither the verbal echoes nor the limited doctrinal
parallels secure that conclusion, for there is no explicit mention of the three crucial
elements of the T T F I listed above.
As Fahrnkopf rightly notes (pp. 205ff.), I do attempt in KRP to strengthen the
case for the possibility of a revisionist interpretation of the Philebus beyond the
considerations so far outlined. I argue that the epistemological doctrine in 55-62 is
significantly different from that of the TTF, and that in the T T F epistemology and
ontology were entwined in such a way as to make it impossible for someone to give
up the epistemological part while retaining the ontological part. Fahrnkopf is not
impressed by this maneuver. His article contains, if I understand him aright, two
main complaints about my argument:

NOTES A N D DISCUSSIONS
I.
II.

75

The doctrine of epistemoiogical exclusiveness (different cognitive objects,

so different states of mind) is not a necessary part of TR.
The change from contrasting knowledge and belief to contrasting superior
and inferior kinds of knowledge is insignificant; and besides, some of the
uses of ~5o~ti in this passage are consistent with the TTF.

Fahrnkopf's claim with respect to I is unclear: " I see nothing which compels us to
tie the ontological claim of transcendent realism to this particular epistemological
view [sc. the doctrine of epistemological exclusiveness]" (p. 206). This is ambiguous,
and crucially ambiguous, between (1) " I see no reason per se why one (anyone) who
holds to one set of theses should be compelled thereby to hold to a n o t h e r " and (2) " I
see no reason why Plato, given that he held to one set of theses, should be compelled
to hold to a n o t h e r . " Claim (I) is not really to the point, although perfectly true;
there is no such fiberhaupt compulsion. It is what Plato is likely to have thought that
counts. But (2) is still ambiguous. Does it mean (2') that there is no evidence in the
texts that Plato did hold to a certain epeistemological view, or (2") that, although the
evidence is there that Plato at a certain time did hold both a certain epistemological
view and a certain ontological view, there is no evidence in the texts that Plato saw
them to be so connected that to hold the latter commits one to holding the former?
Fahrnkopf does not attempt to dispute the aptness of my characterization of the T T F
in the manner implied by (2'); so we must take his point to be (2"). But then the claim
is weak. It is a commonplace of Greek philosophy that knowledge is of reality and
only of reality. The central part of the Republic, symbolized by the allegories of the
Line and the Cave, is full of the view that there is an essential symmetry between
ontological status and cognitive faculty. 9 I do not see how sense could be made of
those passages if it were considered coincidental rather than necessary that at the
time the pilgrim was conditioned to the sunlight, real objects are what he would be
able to contemplate; at the time he was chained in the Cave, shadows cast by models
would meet his eye; and so forth. Thus Fahrnkopf's complaint I seems to me plainly
false.
I do not find complaint II any m o r e cogent. The latter part is certainly correct,
and there are other parallels too. One must certainly not overstate the case, and I
tried not to do that in KRP. I do believe that Plato was able to detach acceptance o f
these parallels from the epistemological and ontological extremes of the TTF.
Nowhere in K R P do I contend, as F a h r n k o p f has me contend (p. 206), that Plato's
view has undergone " r a d i c a l " change (though the advertising blurb on the b o o k ' s
jacket contains that phrase!). I explicitly disavow such talk on page 35. I reserve the
term "radical revision" for a doctrine that I argue is not found in the later dialogues
(pp. 46-48). I refer to the claimed change in Plato's position as " i m p o r t a n t " (p. 36)
and, by implication, as "significant" (p. 60). These epithets I continue to think are
justified. When in his Ethics G. E. Moore added to his position in Principia Ethica
the claim that goodness was a supervenient quality, this might have seemed a small
' Although Resp. 515d uses the expression ~tSkkov bvxa, these much vaunted "degrees of reality" do
not imply that there is full reality lower in the scale. Analogously, one may call a scaleof grades from A to
F "a scale of excellence" without implying that F work is excellent work.

76

H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

change; there was so much to which others objected that he did not alter. But it was
a crucially important change. It constituted a concession by a nonnaturalist of the
truth of a core tenet of naturalism. Likewise, for Plato to retreat from the transcendence of the Forms and the total exclusivity of knowledge, even if it were ever so
slight a retreat, is for him to concede that the philosophical problems of this world
must be solved from its own resources and not from resources imported from the
next. That, whatever else remained the same, deserves to be called an important shift
of perspective.
With respect to the change in contrast that Fahrnkopf outlines in complaint II, he
wishes to highlight the fact that it is still a contrast. That is so, but, for me, what is
important is that it is now a contrast within knowledge, and not between knowledge
and something else. Again, it might seem that the difference is trivial, but I do not
think it is. Plato in this part of the Philebus is still making a contrast that is important to him and, moreover, is still making it in ways that relate to the nature of the
subject matter of the discipline in question. Gosling's characterization seems to me
felicitous, and 1 quote it in full:
The claim that one has a full grasp of the truth on something needs various conditions to be
satisfied for its substantiation. The something must be such that some universal descriptions
hold of it (where "is in a process of change" is incomplete or for some other reason does not
count), there must be no areas of obscurity, there must be no margin of error, and there are
possibly some other conditions. It looks as though Plato treats these as related in that, say,
only if there is no margin of error are we dealing with subjects that allow of universal truths,
and so only if that condition is satisfied is there hope of satisfying the condition of removing all
obscurities. ' 0
Notably missing from Gosling's list, which is the type of view I take Plato to hold, is
any mention of the need for the " s o m e t h i n g " to be real, to be separate, to be "by
itself," and so forth. I believe this omission to be the significant fact, and to be
associated with the contrasts now being within knowledge. The use of terms such as
6vxa and ytyv6~tevt~ are now little more than labels for sets of conditions such as
those described by Gosling, redolent though these terms are with echoes of an earlier
theory.
Let me sum up m y argument. The aim of my monograph was to offer an account
of the remarks on knowledge and reality in the Philebus that would not allow the
Philebus to stand as a knock-down argument against a so-called revisionist view of
later Plato. To do that, 1 had to argue that 59aft., among other passages, did not
unequivocally imply a belief in the TTF. I tried to do that by showing, first of all,
that the philosophical possibilities here were more varied than a simple argument
such as Fahrnkopf's implies. Then I tried to assemble evidence for a sensibility on
Plato's part to this range of possibilities, and I proceeded to discuss the Philebus in
that light. Fahrnkopf, by contrast, presents a Plato who must always be using the
same terms to imply the same doctrine. Of course, if we were to take passages such
as 59aft. on their own, Fahrnkopf's Plato is quite possibly the person they represent.
But, I argue, so is my Plato such a person. That the references to Justice, Divine
'~ P h i l e b u s , p. 223.

NOTES A N D DISCUSSIONS

77

Circle, and so on, are possibly references to transcendent Forms does not imply that
they must be such references. Yet the latter, stronger claim is what Fahrnkopf has to
establish. He does not establish this by any aprioristic argument based on the
assumption that Justice, and so on, must be either transcendent Forms or immanent
Forms. The sterility of any such assumption for interpreting the Philebus is one
thing my monograph sought to demonstrate, and the arguments for that deployed in
the chapters of the book prior to the one Fahrnkopf discusses are not mentioned,
and therefore not countered, by him at all. The truth of a revisionist interpretation of
later Plato is not the issue, either in my monograph or here. The issue is whether
there is in 59aft. any irrefutable evidence for the falsity of such a view. My claim is
that the text is sufficiently noncommittal as to the type of ontology presupposed, so
that it is consistent with the attribution to Plato of a belief in something less than the
full TTF. If it is so consistent, then I have all I need. The arguments Fahrnkopf
presents do not cut deep enough to undermine this consistency.
ROGER A. SHINER

University of Alberta