The Figure of Nature by Sallis John;

Author:Sallis, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2016-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

(E) PARERGA

The first word of the Theaetetus is echoed throughout. Yet there is something paradoxical about these echoes, a certain opposition between what they echo and their very occurrence. For the first word of the dialogue, ἄρτι, bespeaks confinement to the just-now, to the present moment, whereas to echo this first moment, to repeat in the echoes that which is said—namely, the moment—in the first moment, is precisely to escape confinement to this moment and to what is said in it. Its repetition extends it beyond the just-now, while, in echoing it, the repetition recalls it, brings memory into play across the expanse stretching back to—and from—the first moment.

The just-now is correlative to the singular perceptions. In the present moment one has momentary perceptions; perceptions come to be present in the present. If there were no further means, no extension beyond the moment and the momentary, one would be confined to the just-now, borne along in the flow from one moment to another without any opening beyond the moment. In declaring that knowledge requires a thinking capable of drawing the perceptions together toward a common look apart from their flow, Socrates is marking a way in which the just-now is exceeded, a way opening beyond the present moment. Another way in which the moment can be exceeded is by means of memory, by which the just-now is opened up to a long-ago (πάλαι), and the long-ago is rescued through its repetition in the just-now. In the second discourse the operation of memory will be brought under consideration; in this consideration its relation to the thinking of the common look will figure significantly. Still a third way of escaping confinement to the just-now is offered by λόγος, which, as such, posits determinations that exceed the singular perceptions of the moment. This way beyond the just-now will be thematically treated in the third discourse, though it will turn out to have been broached long before it becomes thematic. This way, too, will prove to be intrinsically related to that provided by the thinking of the common looks. It is through these references back to the primary result of the first discourse that the subsequent two prove to supplement it and thus can appropriately be termed parerga.

At the end of the first discourse, Socrates has declared that any further advance with the question of knowledge will require considering “that name, whatever the soul has, whenever it alone by itself deals with beings” (187a). The name by which this power of the soul was initially designated is διάνοια (thinking). But now, launching the second discourse, Theaetetus proposes another name: δοξάζειν. The word can mean to opine, to have, hold, or form an opinion. This sense of the word clearly plays a role at certain points in the second discourse, perhaps most notably in the scene in which Socrates speaks of the skill with which public speakers and lawyers can make others opine what they want them to opine, and indeed can do so within the time allotted by the water clock (201a–b).

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