The Aristotelian Society 133rd session – 2011/2012 5 March 2012 | 16.15 – 18.00
Restless Forms and Changeless Causes Fiona Leigh
University College London
The Woburn Suite Senate House (South Block) University of London Malet Street London WC1E 7HU United Kingdom
** non-citable draft paper **
abstract It is widely held that Plato’s Forms rest or change or both in Plato’s Sophist. The received opinion is, however, quite false – or so I will argue. There is no direct support for it in the text and several passages tell against it. I will further argue that, contrary to the view of some scholars, Plato did not in our dialogue advocate a kind of change recognizable as ‘Cambridge change’, as applicable to his Forms. The reason that Forms neither change nor rest is that they are purely intelligible entities, not susceptible to changing or being at rest. Since Plato continues in the Sophist to treat Forms as causes, it follows that Forms are changeless causes. I ask what conception of cause might allow for this view, and reject the suggestion that Plato was some kind of proto-dispositionalist about causation. Instead I suggest that he understood causation to incorporate a notion of structuring, such that Forms can be seen to structure their participants and so cause them to possess the attributes they possess.
biography Fiona Leigh is a Lecturer in Philosophy at University College London, where she joined the Department in 2009, after earning her PhD (Monash). Fiona’s area of research specialty is Plato’s later metaphysics, especially Plato’s Sophist, and she has published papers in journals including Phronesis, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Aperion, and Journal of Philosophy of Education. She has edited the proceedings of the 6th Keeling Colloquium, a collection of papers on the voluntary, friendship and luck in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics (Brill, forthcoming 2012). Currently she is working on a monograph length reading of the Sophist, and is interested in the potentially positive role of art in Plato’s work. Fiona has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA (hons) in Philosophy and Social Theory from the University of Melbourne.
Restless Forms and Changeless Causes Fiona Leigh, Department of Philosophy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, fiona.leigh@ucl.ac.uk
It is widely held that Forms either rest or change or both in Plato’s Sophist.1 The received opinion is, however, quite false. There is no positive evidence for it in that dialogue, and there are in fact a number of passages that individually suggest otherwise, and collectively, I believe, show otherwise. In this paper I will argue that none of the five Forms or kinds that dominate the second half of the dialogue share in Change or Rest because, as Forms, they are objects of a purely intelligible nature, while only sensible objects, in space and time, are capable of change and rest. What is more, despite suggestions to the contrary in the secondary literature, the Stranger nowhere advocates a kind of change corresponding to what is nowadays referred to as ‘mere Cambridge change’, and nor is a conception of this sort of change demanded by any of the arguments or conclusions in the dialogue. At the same time, as I have recently argued elsewhere (2010, pp. 63‐85), Plato appears to continue in our dialogue to regard Forms as causes, as he did in the Phaedo and in the Timaeus. It follows that Plato considered at least some causally responsible entities, namely Forms, to be immune from all change and rest. This raises the question of whether Plato had a coherent conception of ‘causation’, such that something that is of its nature immutable can be identified as a cause. Although initially tempting, I will maintain that a ‘proto‐ dispositionalist’ view of causation cannot be attributed to Plato, and will suggest that causation incorporates, for him, a notion of ‘structuring’ that allows him to nominate unchanging Forms as causes. I. That Forms neither change nor rest in the Sophist One novel and striking feature of the Sophist is that Plato explicitly countenances the participation of Forms in one another. In particular, the five ‘greatest kinds’ (megistê genê), the Forms Change, Rest, Being, Sameness and Difference, enjoy various relations of participation amongst themselves. In such cases, where one Form shares in another, the participant Form has or possesses a property or characteristic as an attribute apparently by exactly the same mechanism responsible for the possession of attributes by sensible particulars in the middle‐ period dialogues, namely, participation. In the Sophist, each of the five specimen Forms possess a set of ‘logical’ properties, being the same as itself, being different from the others, and being (a) being, as a result of participation in the Forms Sameness, Difference, and Being respectively.2 But they do not possess 1 For example, Beere, 2009, pp. 9‐10, Thomas, 2008, passim, Silverman, 2002, p. 163, 174,
McCabe, 1999, p. 144, 260, Reeve, 1985, Vlastos, 1981, pp. 309‐10, p. 61, Owen, 1966, pp. 42‐3, Moravcsik, 1962, pp. 39‐41. To this list can be added Plotinus, Enneads VI.2.8, 24‐6. 2 All are said by the Stranger to share in Sameness at 256a7‐8, cf. 254e‐255a; 255a‐b; All are said to share in difference at 255e3‐6, cf. 256d11‐e2; 255a‐b. The claim that they all share in Being is slightly more controversial. At 256d11‐e4, the Stranger says of all the kinds (πάντα τὰ γένη) that they share in Being, and [so] are beings (ὃτι μετέχει τοῦ ὄντος, εἶναί τε καὶ ὄντα). Note that the Form, Being, must fall within the scope of this claim, since it immediately follows – and takes the same subject (namely, πάντα τὰ γένη) – as the claim that for all the kinds, the nature of the Different causes each of them to be different, and makes each being to not be (cf. 257a1‐6). Change and Rest are said to share in Being at 250b9‐11, and 251e10‐252a4 together
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these properties, as we might think, simply in virtue of being an item that figures in the ontology. Instead, Plato has the Stranger explicitly claim that it is as a result of participation in Difference, and not in virtue of their individual natures, that each of the five Forms is different from each of the others (256d11‐e2) – an explanation that holds by extension for possession by each of the five Forms of the other logical properties as well. In the passages expressly devoted to saying what these five Forms are like, and what the relations between them are,3 then, we find that all of them share in some of them, namely Being, Sameness and Difference. It is equally striking, however, that no Forms are said to share in the remaining two of the greatest kinds, the Form Change or the Form, Rest, while Change and Rest are explicitly said to share in other Forms: After asking at 251d‐ e whether being can be attributed to Change and Rest (just before they are explicitly referred to as Forms or kinds from 253b9ff.),4 and in general whether beings or things (onta) are unmixed (ameikta) and incapable of having a share of one another (metalambanein), or are able to share in common with one another (epikoinônein), the Stranger rejects the possibility that nothing communes (koinônein) with anything else since then Change and Rest will have no share in Being (metekhein ousia), and, contrary to the facts, they will not be. Nor are Change or Rest, unlike the other three ‘logical’ Forms, anywhere said to be a Form that ‘goes through’ all the others, as Being and Difference are said to go through all the kinds and each other (259a4‐6), and as all things are said to share in the Same and so be self‐identical (256a7‐b2). What is more, Change and Rest are declared not to have any share in one another on several occasions in the dialogue, most notably at 252d6‐8. There, Theaetetus says that ‘if they were to come to be in one another, Change itself would be absolutely at rest and Rest itself would be in turn changing’, before the Stranger adds at d9‐10 that he supposes it is ‘by the greatest necessity impossible, that Change rests and Rest changes’ – a statement reiterated in the counterfactual described at 255c10: ‘then Change would rest and Rest would change’ (cf. 256b6‐c2). In summary, then, while all Forms (or at least the five greatest Forms) share in the three logical Forms, none are said to participate in either Change or Rest, and sharing in one another is emphatically ruled out for the Forms Change and Rest. I submit that the fact that none of them share in Change or Rest represents a telling omission: if Plato thought at the time of writing the Sophist that any of the five Forms possessed the attributes of changing or being at rest,
with 250a11‐12; Difference is said to share in Being at 259a6‐7; the claim, at 258a7‐9, that Difference is one of the beings, its parts are no less beings, together with the further claim at 258a11‐b2, that each part is no less a being than Being itself, implies that Being shares in itself; the Stranger implies that all share in both Difference and Being at 259a5ff., when he says that ‘Being and Different go through all of them and each other’. For the view that in the Sophist Plato does not allow Being to share in Being, i.e. to self‐participate, see Silverman, 2002, pp. 162‐3. 3 The Stranger proposes at 254c1‐6 that he and Theaetetus restrict their investigation to a handful of kinds or Forms, and inquire into what sort they are and how they commune with one another (254c3‐6:…alla proelomenoi tôn megistôn legomenôn atta, prôton men poia hekasta estin, epeita koinônias allêlôn pôs ekhei dunameôs…). 4 As discussed in section 3 below, from 250aff., the Stranger treats Change, Rest and then Being as subjects of attributive statements, and in this sense treats the relevant properties as objects in their own right. From 253bff., the three are referred to as kinds or Forms, and from 254bff., they are described as (or as among) the ‘greatest’ kinds.
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as a result of participation in Change or Rest, surely these passages are the occasion for him to convey that thought. But he does not. Instead he has the Stranger say at 252d‐253a that although there is, in his view, participation, mixing, communion, or blending between Forms, these participation relations are not ubiquitous, since although they obtain between some Forms, they do not obtain between others (cf. 254b‐c; 259e). Now, one might object at this point that I am leaning rather heavily on the passage from 252d‐253a, and there the context makes it clear that the Stranger is concerned only with the Forms, Change and Rest, and the claim that they don’t mutually participate. And one might think that this is because they are opposites, not because, as I claim, no Forms share in Change and Rest. But in the Sophist Plato did not hold, as some general principle, that opposites cannot mutually participate. For, the Stranger makes much of the fact that, through the intermixing of Forms, the Form Being, is not being (257a4‐9), declaring that he and Theaetetus should agree that Being is not, since it is not (the indefinite number of) the other Forms, given that it has just been established that Being itself is different from the others (257a1‐2), that the nature of Different makes each of them different and not be (256d11‐e2). A little later on in the dialogue Not‐being is identified with Difference (258a‐b; 258d‐e, cf. 257b), and the Stranger clearly states, as we have seen, that Being and Difference go through all the other Forms and one another. So their status as opposites does not prevent these two Forms from mutually participating.5 The reason that the two‐ directional mutual participation relation is ruled out in the case of Change and Rest, I suggest, is that the uni‐directional relation of participating in either Change or Rest is ruled out for Forms generally. I will turn in a moment to the further, more substantive reason offered in the dialogue for the non‐ participation of any Forms in either Change or Rest. Before doing that, however, I want to examine one section of the dialogue that has been taken to provide evidence that Plato thought that Forms did indeed undergo a very particular sort of change, Cambridge change: the Stranger’s encounter with the friends of the Forms. II. The friends of the Forms and Cambridge change Contrary to my claim that Plato is self‐consciously suggesting that Forms neither change nor rest in the Sophist, it has been argued that the point of the Stranger’s debate with the friends of the Forms is that Forms undergo so‐called ‘Cambridge change’ (Thomas, 2008, p. 644, McCabe, 1999, p. 144, 260, and Reeve, 1985, p. 61).6 According to Peter Geach, all change is Cambridge change, since change is conceived as an alteration in the totality of statements that truly apply to the subject over time (1969, pp. 71‐2). This meta‐linguistic analysis yields a broad conception of change, since it is satisfied not only by cases in which the 5 As will be clear from the foregoing, it is my view that Being and the Different are opposites.
Those who, however, resist this idea, perhaps on the grounds that they are unconvinced that Not‐ Being is identified with Difference in the dialogue, will likely accept as plausible the supposition that Difference and Sameness are opposites. And as pointed out above, these Forms mutually participate in the Sophist. 6 The view that Forms are changed or affected in being known, though in other respects immutable, is argued for (in different ways) by Moravcsik 1962, Owen 1966, and Vlastos 1981, though they are not concerned with Cambridge change as such.
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alteration in statements express alteration in the subject itself (in its monadic or intrinsic properties over time), but also by cases where the statements express alteration in the subject’s relational properties (such as being the friend of so‐ and‐so, or being known by so‐and‐so). So while the proponent of what I shall term ‘ordinary’ change – by which I hope to capture the object‐language concept of change – restricts herself to alteration in the object itself, the proponent of Cambridge change counts this as merely one kind of case of Cambridge change. ‘Mere’ Cambridge change occurs where there is an alteration in the set of statements that truly applies to some object, but no alteration in the object itself – no ordinary change. So, e.g., when a person comes to know the Form F‐ness, the statement ‘the F is known by such and such’ becomes true when it was not true before, and the Form, the subject of the statement, has undergone mere Cambridge change. In the encounter with the friends of the Forms, the Stranger begins by reporting that the friends reject outright the definition of being that the hapless and confused giants accepted at the end of their confrontation with him: namely, that something will count as one of the beings if it has the power to act upon or be affected by something.7 The friends reject the definition because, they say, only things in the realm of becoming undergo action and passion; things in the realm of being do not (248c‐d). They further deny that knowing or being known is a case of either acting upon or being affected. They deny this because ‘if knowing is doing something (poiein ti), then it follows of necessity that what is known is affected.’ That which is known – and for the friends the paradigm objects of knowledge are Forms8 – is changed in being affected, he goes on to say, and this does not happen to what is at rest.9 According to the friends, the realm of being, in which they locate Forms, is a realm in which things are at rest. The realm of becoming, by contrast, is for them the realm of change. In the passage that follows, however, the friends are brought to see that being and the all (to on kai to pan) encompasses both the changeless and what is changed (249a‐d), and we hear no more of them for the rest of the dialogue. On the Cambridge change reading of this section of the Sophist, with the admission that being includes what changes, the friends are left able to now see what they failed to see earlier: the object of knowledge (some Form or other) is affected in being known in the sense that it undergoes mere Cambridge change, but it is not thereby not at rest. The friends had assumed that change just is ordinary change, which is inconsistent with the subject of change being completely at rest. Now, however, they have been supplied with the resources to see that an alteration in the statements that truly apply to a Form – in particular, statements concerning its being known by someone – is in fact consistent with it being at rest. In opposition to Moravcsik and Owen, Lesley Brown has argued against reading the conception of change in the debate with the friends in such a way 7 For a defence of the claim that a definition, not merely a mark, of being is given by the Stranger
at 247d‐e, see my 2010, 81‐2; cf. Owen, 1971, p. 109, n.13. For the contrary view, see Brown, 1998, p. 193. 8 The friends’ commitment to Forms, exemplars of being, as the intelligible object of reason has been stated earlier (246b; 248a). 9 248d10‐e4: ‘if knowing is doing something (poiein ti), then it follows of necessity that what is known is affected. On this account, when being is what is known by knowledge, on account of this sort of being known, it is to that extent changed by being affected, which, indeed, we say does not happen to what is at rest.’
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that a Form counts as changed when it becomes known, although she does not refer to this kind of change as (mere) Cambridge change (1998, passim). There are two planks to her argument. She first rejects the suggestion, advanced by both Moravcsik and Owen (albeit in different ways) that the conception of acting and being affected at work in the definition of being at 247d‐e – which Brown calls the ‘dunamis proposal’ – is broad enough to include in its scope cases in which the subject comes to have a predication truly applied to it without undergoing any other change (i.e. without undergoing what I have called ordinary change). The context establishes, Brown argues, that being able to serve as a subject or predicate in a true statement cannot be a sufficient condition of acting or being affected, given that the giants have earlier accepted the dunamis proposal. So Brown rejects Owen’s contention that the true statement, ‘Not‐being is pondered by Theaetetus’, represents a way in which, according to Plato, Not‐ being is affected by Theaetetus’ actions (1998, pp. 190‐2). For, surely the materialist giants would never have agreed to a proposal according to which something would count as one of the beings simply on the grounds that it could stand in certain relations, e.g. being pondered by someone. Second, Brown argues against the ‘radical’ reading of the debate with the friends supported by Moravcsik and Owen, which has it that Plato accepts that Forms change in being known, and so he now, in the Sophist, considers Forms to be immutable only in a qualified sense. The main problem for this view, Brown asserts, is that the crucial qualification is not mentioned ‘when the Stranger insists on the immutability of objects of nous’ during the debate with the friends (1998, p. 198). According to Brown, and contra the radical reading, the status of Forms as unqualifiedly immutable remains intact throughout the debate with the friends (1998, pp. 197‐ 9, 202‐3). The proponent of the Cambridge change reading could, however, point out that the first plank of Brown’s argument is not applicable to the Cambridge change account. For, on (at least one version of) the Cambridge change reading, the dunamis proposal articulated by the Stranger contains a notion of acting and being affected that, like Geach’s, incorporates ordinary change, and so is acceptable to the giants – even though the Stranger will turn out a little later (in the discussion with the friends) to be a supporter of the broader notion of mere Cambridge change.10 So Brown’s first plank does not rule out one Cambridge change reading: that the giants and the friends enter into debate with the Stranger assuming that all change is ordinary change, but, crucially, the Stranger does not. By the end of the gigantomachia, the friends are put in a position to appreciate that all change, including ordinary change, is Cambridge change, and that Forms undergo mere Cambridge change when known, which is compatible with them remaining at rest. Brown’s second plank similarly fails to rule out the Cambridge change reading (which reading, it must be stressed, is not explicitly in her sights). For, although the Stranger does claim that the object of nous must be in the same state in the same respects (249b12‐c1), and so in that sense immutable, he does not say there that it must be changeless. This leaves it open that he means by this statement simply that Forms must not be undergoing 10 To be sure, the dunamis proposal does not state that mere Cambridge change is a criterion for
counting as one of the beings. All the same, the proponent of the Cambridge change reading would be free to insist that that further point will be made in the debate with the friends, where the possibility is explicitly raised that knowledge of a Form is a case of change for that Form.
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ordinary change. But this, we have seen, is compatible with the object of nous undergoing mere Cambridge change. Fortunately, we can supplement Brown’s argument by observing that only a few lines later, the Stranger concludes the gigantomachia with the claim that ‘being and the all’ includes what changes and what is changeless (akinêta, 249d3), where the changelessness referred to must characterize the objects of the knowing mind, Forms. If Plato were an advocate of mere Cambridge change in the case of Forms qua objects of knowledge, he surely would have qualified this statement. There are no grounds for thinking, then, that Plato was an advocate of mere Cambridge change in the case of Forms. Nonetheless we should concede to the proponent of the Cambridge change reading that Plato is concerned to isolate Cambridge change, or something very like it. For Plato takes great care to clearly present the idea at 248d‐e that the object of knowledge is affected by being known, and thereby changed. It is an idea, moreover, that the Stranger appears to take reasonably seriously (along with the converse idea, that the knowing mind is changed by that which it knows). Plato seems to be aware, in other words, that some people are or might be reasonably prepared to consider the relation of knower to known as itself a relation of change, whereby being known is a change for the Form: Plato, for one, has clearly considered it. Plato was aware of the idea we characterize as mere Cambridge change. Nonetheless, as Brown and others (including myself), have argued, from 248e onwards the Stranger is best understood as arguing that at least some entities that the friends include in being – knowing minds – undergo change, thereby falsifying the friends’ core thesis that being does not change, and cannot suffer action or passion (1998, pp. 201‐3, Leigh, 2010, pp. 76‐9). The upshot is that although Plato isolated the idea of mere Cambridge change (or something very like it), he nonetheless saw, pace Geach, that it was not in fact a case of genuine change, and so declined to endorse the claim that Forms, when known, suffer this special kind of change.11 Note that at the close of the debate with the friends the Stranger does not conclude that the Forms, qua objects of knowledge, are at rest. Instead the Stranger asserts that the universe includes what is changeless (akinêta, 249d3). All that follows from this, in accordance with Platonic metaphysics, is that the universe includes what does not participate in the Form, Change. On its own, this does not imply participation in the Form, Rest, and nor is there any suggestion of the Stranger’s assent to this entailment elsewhere in the dialogue.12 I want to suggest, then, that at the conclusion of the debate with the friends the reader has been presented with an astonishing metaphysical picture. At the start of the debate, the friends’ metaphysics was described as postulating a realm of being, populated by intelligible Forms, and a realm of becoming, containing the world experienced by the senses. It soon emerged that the realm of being was characterized as being at rest by the friends, and the realm of becoming was characterized as the realm of change. By the end of the debate, however, the friends have conceded that the realm of being incorporates something that
11 I am grateful to M.M. McCabe and Chris Hughes for suggesting I explore this line of thought. 12 To be sure, the friends, as represented by Theaetetus, seemed earlier to accept this entailment
(249b12‐c5). But by the time the Stranger is speaking from the point of view of the philosopher a few lines later (249c10), and refers to the friends of the forms in the third person (249c11‐d1) – that is, by the time the Stranger is speaking in his own voice – the conclusion he reaches speaks of what is changeless, not what is at rest.
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changes – the knowing mind, and so they no longer have a principled reason for denying that other changeable things should count as beings. And so the realm of being is expanded to incorporate everything, and this includes the changing and the changeless.13 We turn now to the deeper reason that led Plato to think, at the time of writing the Sophist, that Forms neither change nor rest. III. Why Forms neither change nor rest in the Sophist The principled reason that none of ‘greatest kinds’ participates in either Change or Rest from 254‐259, and that the Stranger nowhere endorses the claim that Forms change or rest in the encounter with the friends is given at 250a‐e. There the Stranger suggests that since Forms are objects accessible to the soul alone, they are a purely intelligible kind of entity (which we might describe as non‐ spatio‐temporal), and are therefore not susceptible to change or rest – or so I will argue. At 249d‐e, at the close of the discussion with the friends, the Stranger declares that their account of being faces a puzzle or aporia. The puzzle is this: does his and Theaetetus’ commitment to the changing and the changeless commit them to some version of ontological dualism, despite their earlier rejection of dualism (at 244‐245)? Although the argument of the passage at 250a‐e attempts to resolve this aporia by generating an anti‐dualist conclusion, it also ends with a second aporia (which I will set out shortly). As I read it, the Stranger’s argument has two goals, pursued consecutively. The first is to resolve the first aporia by clarifying that their account is not dualist. The second is to provide Theaetetus (and the reader) with the resources to resolve the second aporia, so that it is delivered at the end of the passage alongside the means for its solution. In brief, the anti‐dualist clarification runs as follows: The properties, changing and being at rest, are considered as entities in their own right, capable of serving as subjects in a proposition (from 253b onwards they will explicitly and repeatedly be referred to, together with Being, as Forms, eidê, or kinds, genê). These entities, Change and Rest, are both said to be. This common property, being, is neither one of the properties, changing or being at rest, but is rather a distinct, third property. The upshot of the reasoning appears to be that positing Change and Rest entails positing a third entity, Being, and so the account is not dualist after all. Without pausing to consider the merits of this argument, which lie beyond the scope of this paper, I want to move to the second stage of the argument, which overlaps with the conclusion of the first, anti‐dualist stage. The second stage runs as follows (250b7‐d4): STR: So you set Being before your soul (to on en têi psukhê titheis)14 as a third thing beside these, and that Rest and Change are encompassed by it, and by grasping and seeing them in relation to their communion with Being, you say that both of them are (einai)? TH: Whenever we say that Change and Rest are, we venture to divine Being as truly a third thing. 13 Cf. Brown, 1998, pp. 202‐3. 14 LSJ list as item 3 under entry II ‘Special phrases’ for τίθημι: ‘ἐν
ὄμμασι θέσθαι’ set before
one’s eyes, and give the reference Pi.N.8.43.
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STR: So Being is not the sum of Change and Rest together (sunamphoteron), but is a different thing from them. TH: So it seems. STR: Thus, Being, by its own nature neither rests nor moves. TH: I suppose so. STR: But in what way must one turn one’s mind if one wants to establish something clear about it for oneself? TH: What way indeed? STR: I think no way is easy. For if something does not change, how can it not be at rest? Or how will what in no way rests not in turn change? But Being has now been shown to us to be outside both of these. Is that possible? TH: It is the most impossible of all things. The second aporia that concludes the passage (it is explicitly called such at 250e1) is that Being is neither in motion nor at rest, which contradicts the principle that everything either moves or rests. One part of the solution to the puzzle lies in the thought that purely intelligible entities, like Forms, are not susceptible to either motion or rest. The claim that Being is a purely intelligible entity (along with Change and Rest), is established by the Stranger drawing Theaetetus’ attention to the fact that these entities are accessible to the mind alone, and as such are not physical and perceptible by the senses (or, as we might say, they are not in space and time). At 250a8, the Stranger emphasizes that Theaetetus is able to access the metaphysical state of affairs, in which Change and Rest share in Being, with his soul, and adds that he can grasp and see (evidently also with his soul) that both of them enjoy communion with Being.15 As Theaetetus will be well aware from the previous day’s conversation (Tht.185c‐186a), it is the soul that has access to properties, considered in themselves as things with natures (the presence of Socrates, who is observing in silence in the Sophist, would, one thinks, prompt Theaetetus to be as keenly aware of this as Socrates himself must surely be supposed to be). Now Theaetetus is invited to say, by ‘looking’ with his soul, how many the entities presently under discussion number, by comprehending and ‘seeing’ that Change and Rest commune with or participate in Being, and so are said to be.16 So saying what each of Being, Change and Rest is, and what their relations to one another might be, is a matter to be settled not by examining sensible objects with one’s senses, but by ‘gazing’ with one’s soul at intelligible objects. These objects are what they are, and can be conceived of and represented as such, independently from any sensible objects that possess as 15 250b8‐11: tr€ton
êra ti parå taËta tÚ ¯n §n tª cuxª tiye€w, …w Íp' §ke€nou tÆn te stãsin ka‹ tØn k€nhsin periexoµ°nhn, sullab∆n ka‹ épid∆n aÈt«n prÚw tØn t∞w oÈs€aw koinvn€an, oÏtvw e‰nai prose›paw éµfÒtera? Note that White does not translate §n tª cuxª at 250b8 (1993, p. 42); neither does Taylor (1961, p. 150) or Cornford (1935, p. 250). 16 A little later on the verb here for communing, ‘koinônein’, is used interchangeably with a small number of terms Plato uses to indicate that something shares or participates in a Form or kind (e.g., koinônia at 251e9, methexetou at 251e10 – although it has to be noted, with Ackrill (1971, p. 220) that, unlike koinônia and metalambanein, metekhein (and its cognates) seems to pretty uniformly indicate an asymmetrical relation (for example, 216b1, 235a6, 251e10, 255b1, b3, 256a1, a7, 260d3, d5, d7, d8)).
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attributes the properties they are named after.17 They are in this sense abstract, non‐physical, purely intelligible objects. And indeed, the Stranger insists that it does follow that of its nature, Being neither changes nor rests – note the use of ἄρα and φύσις at 250c6. Notice also that the Stranger’s language, when announcing the second aporia, further promotes the conception of Forms as purely intelligible entities: Speaking of the aporia, he asks at 250c9‐10 ‘to what place will a person turn his mind (po› dØ xrØ tØn diãnoian ¶ti tr°pein) if he wishes to gain some clarity in himself about this?’ Here, Plato’s choice of the particle po›, indicating place, as well as the use of the overtly spatial tr°pv in the context of thought (diãnoia), can be construed as an effort to encourage Theaetetus (and so the reader) to focus on the intelligible nature of the subject they are enquiring into: Being.18 This is reinforced just a little later on by the use of énafa€nv, a typically visual concept, and §ktÚw, a predominantly spatial one, at 250d2‐3 – all this can be thought of as of a piece with the visual imagery used to argue, a few lines earlier, that one ‘sees’ (épid∆n and sullab∆n) with one’s soul that Being is a third thing, alongside (parå, 250b8) Change and Rest. Throughout these passages, Theaetetus (along with the reader) is being invited to think of Being, Change and Rest as sitting beside one another in a space that can only be purely conceptual space.19 The other part of the solution to the second aporia concerns the principle that what rests does not change, and vice versa. At 250c‐d the principle is simply stated or assumed, not argued for, and so, I submit, Plato is directing us to question and ultimately reject it. One might object at this point that the principle was, however, argued for by the Stranger himself, in the debate with the friends that saw him conclude that everything, what changes and the changeless, is to be included in ‘being and the all’. In response I want to point out that the Stranger did not conclude that being and the cosmos incorporate what changes and what rests. As we saw above, there is a big difference according to Plato’s metaphysics: the Stranger’s conclusion can be understood in terms of Platonic metaphysics as made true if the realm of being incorporates what participates in Change and what does not so participate. This is consistent with rejecting the principle that whatever doesn’t change is at rest and vice versa, since what does not participate in Change need not participate in Rest. If this is right, then the question arises: Why, having proposed an account of being as incorporating the changing and the changeless, does Plato immediately have the Stranger pose puzzles about Change
17 On the use of the term ‘abstract’ in representing Plato’s Forms, I am here following Harte who
thinks it is reasonable to assume that for Plato Forms ‘are not spatio‐temporal individuals, but abstract objects…’ (2002, p. 70), though she does qualify this by noting that this is only so on this particular understanding of the ‘slippery term’ ‘abstract’ (72). Harte also describes structure as abstract ‘in the sense that it can be considered, and represented, independently of the particular components involved in its construction’ (160). So in using the term I am do not mean that Forms are abstract objects in the sense that the Form of F (or F‐ness) is something that can be conceived of as a result of abstraction from a collection of individual F things. 18 cf., Phdr, 227a1, Lys. 203a6. For a parallel occurrence of po› dØ in Plato to indicate a location towards which one can turn one’s mind, see Laws 630b8, where the Athenian asks where the conclusion of the argument lies. 19 I am grateful to Dirk Baltzly for suggesting that the language used in this passage may be especially significant for my reading of it.
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and Rest? The answer, I suggest, is that Plato understands well that his readers, just like the friends, could easily but mistakenly assimilate changelessness and being at rest. The puzzles are designed inter alia to disabuse them of this error, by seeing that some objects are purely intelligible, and so neither change nor rest.20 IV. Platonic causation and dispositionalism Now I turn to the issue of Forms as causes. I have argued elsewhere that Plato continues in the Sophist to treat Forms as causes (Leigh 2010). That is, he continues to treat a Form as in certain cases the thing responsible, or culprit – and so as the cause, in the ancient sense of that conception21 – for its participants possessing the relevant property. At the same time, we have just seen, in the Sophist Forms do not undergo change (or rest). If this is right, then Plato conceives of causation in such a way that the cause itself need not undergo change, and in cases where a Form is nominated as a cause, as that which cannot undergo change. To most contemporary thinkers, of course, the notion of a cause that does not and cannot suffer any change or alteration is pretty queer. In contemporary thought, causes are for the most part identified with events,
is that this view deprives him of an argument often thought to be one of his most effective and well‐known for the distinctness of Forms from sensibles in his middle period dialogues. In his middle period, Plato observed that sensible particulars can be characterised by one sensible property or quality in respect of some part or aspect of themselves, and also characterised by the opposite sensible property or quality in respect of a different part or aspect of themselves. For roughly Heraclitean reasons, this fact rendered sensible properties unsuitable as candidates for being that which the definitions of certain aesthetic or moral properties defines. No beautiful girl, not even Helen of Troy, manifests an observable property the description or definition of which is capable of being the definition of the property, beauty itself. This is because, like every one of the other many beautiful things, she is identified as beautiful in virtue of this property, but this observable property is, in relation to other situations, or as compared to other observable properties, also at the same time ugly, or not‐beautiful (Rep. 479a‐b; Hipp. Maj. 289a‐b.). The ‘many beautifuls’, being sensible particulars, are vulnerable to the ‘compresence of opposites’, which Irwin has argued that Plato understood in his middle period to be a kind of change or alteration, A‐change (Irwin, 1977, pp. 4‐6). By contrast the Form, Beauty, is always beautiful and never not beautiful. The Form is not subject to A‐change, and it is the Form to which the definition of beauty refers (Symp. 211a‐b). The worry, then, is that on my reading of the Sophist Plato disables his own argument for the distinctness of Forms from the middle period in the following way. The definitive feature of Forms from the middle period that is generally taken to render them invulnerable to A‐change is that they are always the same, or, equivalently, at rest. On my reading, however, being at rest is not a feature that Forms possess at all. So one cannot appeal to Forms being at rest as evidence of their invulnerability to all forms of change, including A‐change. Hence, being always at rest cannot be what sets Forms apart from sensibles. So the problem with my reading is that it divests Plato of his best reason for denying A‐change to Forms, namely, that they rest. Plato, however, at the time of writing the Sophist, no longer requires an argument that turns on a notion of A‐change (or the compresence of opposites) in order to distinguish Forms from non‐Forms. On the interpretation I have presented, Forms are not distinguished by Plato by being at rest, in comparison to changing sensibles. Forms are distinguished from non‐Forms in the Sophist by being what is purely intelligible or abstract, and as such, as what neither changes nor rests, whereas non‐Forms are liable to both change and rest. The friends’ metaphysics is corrected in a radical way: Being is everything, but some beings, Forms, are beyond the realm of mutable things caught up in the business of change and rest. 21 For more on the ancient notion of causation and its forensic history up to and including the time of Plato, see Sedley (1998, pp. 115‐17) and Hankinson (1998, pp. 85‐6). 20 One consequence of the claim that Plato does not consider Forms to be at rest
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which, by undergoing change, bring about the effects they cause. Even where causes are identified differently, such as when they are conceived of as motionless or changeless states of affairs, causes are generally analysed in terms of physical forces, which can in turn be given a reductive explanation that appeals to the (physical) laws of nature, as well as, perhaps, to an account of material composition given by the science of the day. Imagine, for instance, the eternal state of affairs in which two playing cards lean against one another, in such a way as to hold one another up.22 It remains counterfactually true that if one were removed the other would fall flat, since both are constantly subject to the pull of the physical force we typically think of as gravity (expressed by the physical law that two body masses attract one another). Hence, the cards cause one another to stand up in the sense that each is (eternally) acted upon by gravity, so that the downwards pull exerted on one causes it to apply to the other a force equal and opposite to the downwards pull exerted on that other, and vice versa. Plato’s Forms, I have argued, are not subject to these or any other physical forces, since they are purely intelligible entities not in time and space. So the question for Plato is this: if Forms are not ever, even counterfactually, subject to change (or alteration or movement), in what sense are they able to act upon things?23 One answer to this question might be thought to be found in the idea that Plato’s Forms can be understood as powers.24 If Forms are powers, then perhaps they are relevantly similar to dispositions, which have been 22 This example was suggested to me by Paul Snowdon. It is reminiscent of Augustine’s imagined
eternal foot on a surface that becomes surrounded by sand, which would be said to cause the imprint it would leave if it were to, counterfactually, be lifted. (See Richard Sorabji, who finds the idea of changeless causation, comparable to Augustine’s example, to be suggested by Plato at Republic 509b, in his 1983, p. 311). 23 Faced with this or similar questions, some have argued that Plato did not really think of Forms as causes (see, for example, Fine 1987, 69‐112). Rather, we ought to understand his claim that Forms are aitiai or that through, or because of, or by which (dia plus the accusative; the causal dative) as expressing the thought that Forms serve a purely explanatory role, or are causally relevant factors. For, the definition that expresses the Form’s nature explains what it is to have a certain property, or be characterised a certain way. E.g., the definition of human as ‘rational animal’ is explanatory of Socrates being a man in the sense that he is a man because he is a rational animal. So the Form of Humanity explains him being a man, but it would be a mistake to think that it causes him to be a man, since ‘Socrates is a rational animal’ simply re‐describes the very same state of affairs denoted by ‘Socrates is a man’. And surely, unless the texts compel us, we ought to avoid saddling Plato with this mistaken claim. To defeat this suggestion, however, I think it is enough to point out that Plato thought that in nominating, for instance, the Form of Beauty as the aitia or aition of anything else being beautiful (Phaedo 100a‐c), one is nominating an entity that is separate from and ontologically independent from the explanandum, in this case a particular instance of something that possesses the characteristic, beauty. So Plato, at any rate, did not accept that grasping a Form, or discovering the nature of a property, was grasping or discovering something further about the explanadum, but instead about an object altogether distinct from it. Thus, it would be a mistake to think that Plato considered Forms to be aitiai because in his view Forms serve a (merely) explanatory role. 24 Nobody, to my knowledge, has made this claim in print, although I think it is a tempting, if ultimately mistaken, view. Beere suggests that Plato in the Sophist comes close to thinking of Forms as, centrally, things that have capacities or powers (2009, p. 10). Brown rejects the idea that Plato would have constructed a definition of being in terms of dispositions (1998, p. 193). Note that I do not argue (in 2010 passim) that Forms are powers. Instead I claim that being is defined for Plato in the Sophist as whatever has the power to act or be affected, and that Forms have power to act on their participants via participation.
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supposed in current work in contemporary metaphysics to possess causal efficacy, and yet which need not undergo change or alteration. Consider, for instance, a city‐state of warmongering tendencies. This aggressive disposition may be realised or manifested in its declaration of war on its neighbours without the disposition itself undergoing any change or alteration.25 Could Plato’s Forms be relevantly similar to dispositions conceived as causes? Certainly they cannot be construed as equivalent or reducible to dispositions in the contemporary sense. On the contemporary account, the dispositional property (for example, to wage war) of the particular thing (the city‐state) is the cause of the effect, which is some action, event, or state of affairs (the event of its engaging in hostilities). On Plato’s account, by contrast, the Form is the cause of the effect, which effect is the possession of a property – sometimes a dispositional property – by some participant in that form.26 On the Platonic view, then, possession of a property – sometimes a dispositional one, sometimes not – is to be identified as an effect of the causal power of a Form. So where the property is a dispositional one, the dispositional property is not identified as the cause in the causal relation, but rather as the effect. Forms are not understood on the Platonic model as dispositions in this contemporary sense, although they are causally responsible for at least some of the dispositions of their participants (as well as of at least some of their other, non‐dispositional properties). Plato’s view of Forms as causes, then, ought not be understood as offering a dispositional or ‘proto‐dispositional’ account, where these terms are seen as embedded in the context of the current debate in metaphysics. Nonetheless, there is, I believe, one conceptual feature of contemporary dispositionalist analyses of causation that could prove useful for understanding Forms as changeless causes in Plato – the idea that the realisation or manifestation of some property tracks a causal relation. What, then, is manifested or realised, when a Form acts on a participant as a cause? The answer, I suggest, is some particular structure. A particular complex structure belongs to each Form as its nature, and specifies what it is to have the property in question. This structure is what is manifested or realised in those individual cases where something participates in the Form. So the structure that belongs to the Form, Justice, as its nature, and specifies what it is to have the property, being just is a certain harmonious relation between the parts (of soul or city), each performing its own function (ergon, Rep. IV, 443d‐e, 433a‐e, 434d). The structure specifies what it is to have the attribute, being just. As what belongs to the Form, Justice, as its nature, it is a purely intelligible thing, something one can grasp with the intellect alone (and so is in this sense abstract). Insofar as the
25 In some cases, of course, the particular instance of the disposition will undergo change in that
it ceases to exist. Consider, for example, a vase with a fragile disposition, which shatters with the vibration from nearby footfall. The vase suffers an alteration in state, from being intact to being broken, and the particular token of the disposition, being fragile, identified by some dispositionalists as the cause of its shattering, ceases to exist when the vase ceases to exist (as a vase). 26 That is, in some cases, the property a Platonic Form causes the particular thing to posses is a dispositional property. Justice, or wisdom, for instance, could be understood as a dispositional state of the soul in Plato, viz., a disposition to act from an unconflicted set of desires and motivations, in accordance with reason (Rep. IV, 442d‐443e, 441d‐e, cf. Sph. 247a‐b). See also Beere, who understands the examples of justice and wisdom at 247a‐b as examples of capacities or powers (2009, pp. 6‐7).
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property or structure belongs to Justice as its nature, we can say that the Form, Justice, encodes the property or structure of being just. The structure is realised or manifested in the Form’s participants in so far as the participant conforms to this structure. If it conforms to the structure, then the structure belongs to each participant, as the underlying structure of the relevant property it possesses as an attribute. To continue with the above example, if Alcibiades becomes just, his soul conforms to the intelligible structure expressed as the particular kind of harmonious relation that belongs to the Form, Justice, as its nature. If his soul conforms in this way, its parts will enjoy a certain harmony, and according to Plato he will be unconflicted in respect of his desires and goals. The structure, a certain harmony, comes to characterise his soul, so that the property, being just, has become one of his attributes. This structure has been realised or made manifest in the case of Alcibiades: he is now just. Justice causes – is what is responsible for – Alcibiades being just insofar as Justice encodes a structure that has been made manifest in his soul, and by being structured in this way, justice belongs to him as an attribute. If the Form, Justice did not encode this structure, if, that is, the intelligible structure did not exist, justice would not belong to Alcibiades as an attribute. The Form can be conceived of as having the power to act on its participants, in the sense that it constitutes the structure that is capable of being made manifest or realised in its participants.27 In the Republic, Socrates asks rhetorically whether justice is ‘something other than this power, the one that produces men and cities of the sort we’ve described [viz., as exhibiting a harmony between each of the three parts doing its own work in accordance with reason]’ (443b). Considered apart from its various realisations, the Form or intelligible structure is, via the participation relation, what is responsible for and so explains various states of affairs, in which it is made manifest. There will be many, no doubt, who find the idea of structure as imbued with causal power to be wholly unconvincing. My aim, however, has been to explore whether or not Plato’s Forms, which I have argued he understood at the time of the Sophist to be purely intelligible abstract objects, can be at least coherently thought of as causes, and at best plausibly thought of as causes. I hope to have sketched one way of understanding Plato’s Forms – as structures – that could allow him to coherently claim that Forms are causes, insofar as they structure their participants and make them what they are. Those that doubt the plausibility of the idea may harbour a suspicion that postulating Forms as explanatory causes serves only to re‐describe, although perhaps more informatively, the very thing we sought to understand, for which we desired an explanation. Some, that is, may feel that Plato is pointing to the effect, and mistakenly labelling it ‘cause’. But that would be, perhaps, to misunderstand Plato. For, Plato did not fail to observe that for a generalisable account of why things in the world are as they are, whatever is identified a cause, although at times contemporaneous with whatever is identified as its effect, cannot be identical with it. Forms are, by Plato’s lights, ontologically independent and separate from their participants: what he is identifying as cause is, he takes it, distinct from what he is identifying as the effect of that cause. It is a further, and 27 For an argument that Plato explicitly attributes to Forms the power to act on their participants
in the Sophist, at 248‐9, see Leigh (2010, pp. 72‐6).
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not inconsiderable, task to determine whether in taking matters thus he was right. For present purposes the point is that Plato did not misunderstand the roles of, and relations between, cause and effect – even if many, as I suspect, disagree with Plato’s view about what entities occupy these roles. V. Conclusion Of the five greatest kinds in the Sophist, only Change and Rest are conspicuously not mentioned as Forms in which other Forms participate, while all clearly are said to share in Being, Sameness and Difference (254‐259). Moreover, Change and Rest are declared several times by the Stranger not to share in one another. The reason for this, I have argued, is that in this dialogue Plato clearly understood his Forms to be purely intelligible, and not physical, perceptible entities (249e‐250e). To suppose such things to be vulnerable to relations of change and capable of being in states of rest would be, he saw for the first time in the history of Western philosophy, to make a category mistake. I’ve also argued that Plato was, perhaps surprisingly, alive to the conception of change nowadays known as mere Cambridge change. He nonetheless rejected this purported kind of change as genuine change, consistent with the view that only physical, perceptible things (things in time and space) and not purely intelligible things, are subject to change and rest. Intelligible and changeless Forms are, however, treated as causes in the Sophist: A Form is that which is responsible for its participants bearing the relevant property as an attribute. Forms are causes for Plato, I suggested, insofar as each encodes an intelligible structure, which structure is then realised or made manifest in the state of affairs in which the participant possesses the relevant property as an attribute. Since a Form is purely intelligible, and in this sense abstract, it is not possible for it to undergo change. Indeed, it had better not be capable of change, if it is to constitute the single cause, by encoding the single structure, to which its many participants conform, and so are made what they are.28 References Akrill, J., 1971: ‘Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251‐59’. In G. Vlastos (ed.), Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, New York: Doubleday, pp. 21‐22. Beere, Jonathan, 2009: Doing and Being: An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, Lesley, 1998: ‘Innovation and Continuity: The Battle of Gods and Giants’. In J. Gentzler, (ed.), Method in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon, pp. 181‐ 207 Cornford, Francis, 1935: Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, London: Routledge. 28 Prior to its presentation at a meeting of the Aristotelian Society, earlier versions of this paper
were presented to the Departments of Philosophy at King’s College London, University College London, and the University of Melbourne, and to the ancient philosophy working group at Yale University: I am grateful to audiences on each occasion for helpful and challenging questions and comments. For comments, criticisms and suggestions on earlier drafts I am especially grateful to Verity Harte, M.M. McCabe, Peter Adamson, Allan Silverman, and Dirk Baltzly. Finally I am grateful to the British Academy and the British Council for generously funding the research that made this paper possible.
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Fine, Gail, 1987: ‘Forms as Causes: Plato and Aristotle’. In A. Graeser (ed.), Mathematics and Metaphysics in Aristotle, Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt, pp. 69‐112 Geach, Peter T., 1969: God and the Soul, London: Routledge. Hankinson, R.J., 1998: Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press Harte, Verity, 2002: Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure (Oxford: Clarendon Press Irwin, Terrence, 1977: ‘Plato’s Heracliteanism’. The Philosophical Quarterly 27, pp. 1‐13 Leigh, Fiona, 2010: ‘Being and Power in Plato’s Sophist’. Apeiron 43(1), pp. 63‐85. McCabe, Mary Margaret, 1999: Plato’s Individuals, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moravcsik, J., 1962: ‘Being and Meaning in the Sophist’. Acta Philosophica Fennica 14, pp. 23‐78 Owen, G.E.L., 1966: ‘Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present’. Monist 50, pp. 317‐40. Reprinted in M. Nussbaum (ed.) 1986: Logic, Science and Dialectic, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 27‐44 (citations from the later publication). Owen, G.E.L., 1971: ‘Plato on Not‐Being’. In G. Vlastos (ed.), Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology New York: Doubleday, 2pp. 23‐67. Reprinted in M. Nussbaum (ed.) 1986: Logic, Science and Dialectic, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 104‐37 (citations from the later publication). Reeve, C.D.C., 1985: ‘Motion, Rest, and Dialectic in the Sophist’. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 67, pp. 47‐64 Sedley, David, 1998: ‘Platonic Causes’. Phronesis 43, pp. 114‐32 Silverman, Allan, 2002: The Dialectic of Essence, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sorabji, Richard, 1983: Time, Creation and the Continuum, London: Duckworth. Thomas, Christine, 2008: ‘Speaking of Something: Plato’s Sophist and Plato’s Beard’. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 38(4) , pp. 631‐68 Taylor, A.E., 1961: The Theaetetus and the Sophist, R. Klibansky and G.E.M. Anscombe (eds.), London: Nelson. Vlastos, G., 1981: ‘An Ambiguity in Plato’s Sophist’. Appendix I in Vlastos (ed.) Platonic Studies, 2nd edn., Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 309‐10.
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