Plato 1: Participation In Duality

[koganbot]

I'm auditing a class in introductory philosophy at Metro State. So I might toss some of my notes in here, from time-to-time.

"Well, then, if one is added to one or if one is divided, you would avoid saying that the addition or the division is the cause of two? You would exclaim loudly that you know no other way by which anything can come into

Comments

[koganbot]

I've so far not read the book's modern intro (modern as of 1908, that is), since I want to grapple with it on my own, first.

The apparent vacuity is that "duality" seems to add nothing to the concept "two," much less seems able to "cause" two. And what is being asked for when we ask for a cause of two, anyway? Must two be something that's caused? Plato might just as well be arguing that "two" is caused by its participation in absolute "twoness," which doesn't seem to explain anything whatsoever.

A bit earlier he says "if anything is beautiful besides absolute beauty it is beautiful for no other reason than because it partakes of absolute beauty." This would seem to be the same sort of empty argument, beauty causing beauty being no better than duality causing two. But actually with beauty he's creating a distinction that I can at least make some sense of, beauty as we experience it needing to partake of an absolute beauty, and he's confronting a problem that I can recognize: "If anyone tells me that what makes a thing beautiful is

[koganbot]

The Boney Joan Rule

[koganbot]

So the idea that beauty partakes of some absolute beauty - as empty and unnecessary as the idea seems to me - is taking care of a problem that at least I can comprehend, even if I don't consider it a problem. (I'm fine with beauty as an attribute and judgment, and I'd think the concept would be dysfunctional if it weren't comparative. But that's not an argument for right now. But here's a question to keep in mind: beauty, unlike two, is something we frequently disagree about, and that's one of the reasons we search for reasons and justifications. Did the Greeks disagree about beauty to the extent that we do?)

But anyway for Plato, attributing something's beauty to its color or shape or some such is confusing. He doesn't say why, but a reason might be that color and shape that are similar to the color and shape of a beautiful object are perfectly capable of giving rise to ugliness or nonbeauty in another object, and also that beauty can apparently be caused by one thing (such as color) in one circumstance and another thing (such as

By Zeus

[koganbot]

That an essence can be a cause or source doesn't match up with how I'd use the term "essence" in everyday life (or anywhere, actually). For me, to identify an essence is to identify a crucial feature or ingredient and to distinguish it from less crucial features or ingredients. So, an essential use of the word "essence" is that it distinguishes the more important from the less important. But Plato here, in making absolute beauty the essence of beauty, is in effect distinguishing absolute beauty from any feature or ingredient - since when philosophizing he finds features and ingredients problematic, or at least that's what I'm surmising.

I'm wondering whether, when they weren't philosophizing, the Greeks, in using whatever word of theirs we're translating as "essence," gave the word this double duty, not only to be a crucial characteristic but a source or a cause. Seems to me that the second role destroys the first and would make the term unusable in everyday life. So a question I'd have for someone who knows ancient Greek is whether

Re: By Zeus

[koganbot]

Actually, I'm quite fascinated by the "were" in "ten were more than eight"; I'm assuming that it comes courtesy of Fowler, the translator, and I'm guessing that he's a Brit.

Re: By Zeus

[koganbot]

the he was, say, taller by a head than the other

THAT he was, say, taller by a head than the other

Because, cause, become

[koganbot]

Now, at first glance I'd think that Plato's puzzlement here is different from his puzzlement in relation to beauty, since one being added to one doesn't seem to run parallel to a thing's being beautiful owing to its color or shape. The color can fade, after all, and the shape twist or collapse, so Plato would want the concept "beauty" nonetheless to live on, free and separate from color and shape and this or that beautiful object. Whereas the one that adds itself to another one or that divides itself into two parts seems as strong and stalwart as the two that results from these operations, its nature unchanged by the calculations. Now, Plato might find it a problem that in one instance two seems to be a composite (of one and one) and in the other a derivative (one dividing itself into two parts), hence not existing on its own. But if this is what's bothering Plato - and it might be - I wonder what Plato makes of one plus one equaling two, or of two parts equaling one whole. It doesn't seem to me that these operations cause two to

The shape causes the orbit

[koganbot]

Again, I'm not certain that these are the questions he's posing, and maybe he isn't altogether sure of what question is being posed when one asks "What causes X?" But he does seem to be giving an answer that's far different from how I'd answer it, and that's because he's using - or at least veering towards, or introducing at various times - a notion of causation that's different from the "cause and effect" that I use

Re: The shape causes the orbit

[koganbot]

In any event, two being as it should be would be the cause of two.

No "should be," just "would be."