Greek Thought and the Origins of the Scientific Spirit by Leon Robin

Author:Leon Robin [Robin, Leon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781136196782
Google: CE-UkjI12IcC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-07-04T16:12:04+00:00

V The Last Form of Plato’s Philosophy

1. His Oral Teaching, according to Aristotle. The last of Plato’s thought, to which we have seen him gradually travelling, is known to us not only from the last dialogues, but from the evidence of Aristotle, who entered the Academy about the time when they were written. This evidence is found chiefly in the first and the two last books of the Metaphysics. In addition, Aristotle, like other disciples of the school, wrote out the master’s lessons On the Good, which he calls his “unwritten teachings.” Lastly, he wrote a book On Ideas, which seems to have been a critical exposition of the doctrine. It is true that Aristotle’s indications are often very obscure, and sometimes they may refer to Xenocrates, who was Scholarch of the Academy when Aristotle was directing the Lyceum. Yet they are of great interest, even if we confine ourselves to those in which Plato is named or quite clearly meant.1 They give us information, imperfect though it may be, about doctrines which are hardly indicated in the last dialogues but help one to understand them, forming a necessary introduction to them. Even where the matter of the teaching is identical on both sides, they teach us that the vocabulary of teaching had its special terms.1 Lastly, the character of the last writings themselves becomes more precise when, in accordance with the conception of the written word set forth in the Phaedros, we regard them as recalling or commenting on the oral teaching done inside the school.

When Aristotle analyses the “Platonists” theory of Ideas, thinking chiefly, there is no doubt, of Xenoerates, he includes among the things of which there can be no Idea those which, involving “before” and “after,” form an ordered series. So arithmetical numbers and geometrical figures do not presuppose an Idea of Number or Figure in general. What they presuppose is a definite plurality of such Ideas, themselves arranged in a certain order of rank. Now, the numbers and figures of the mathematician are only abstract notions, each of which can be repeated in an infinite number of examples. They are, therefore, “intermediate,” as the Republic said (511 d). But they are intermediate (and this is expressly referred to Plato) between the sensible numbers and figures and the “Ideas” of Numbers and Figures. These Ideas, like all others, are true substances, each having its own nature and quality, unable to be divided into elements which could be transported hither and thither, and consequently “uncomposed.” The “Ideal Numbers” are therefore the forms or types of the Numbers; Three or the Triad is the form or type of all threes, Four or the Tetrad is that of all fours, and so on to the last Idea required to explain all possible numbers, Ten or the Decad, the perfect number of the Pythagoreans. The same may be said of the Ideal Figures, the Line, the Triangle, the Regular Tetrahedron, the individual patterns of all possible figures.

Every Idea results from

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