Plato's Psychology (2nd Edition) 9781487575168

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PLATO'S PSYCHOLOGY

Plato's Psychology, originally published in 1970 and reprinted in 1972, is still the definitive modern discussion of the nature and development of Plato's concept of psyche. In a lengthy and detailed new introduction T.M. Robinson surveys the scope and value of a number of contributions to Plato's theory of psyche, individual and cosmic, that have appeared since 1970. He then offers his own 'second thoughts' on various aspects of the subject, revisiting inter alia such questions as the dating of the Timaeus, and the implication thereof, and the understanding and implications of the myth of the Politicus. Finally, he widens the whole discussion of Plato's cosmic psychology to include an analysis and appreciation of the remarkably close relationship between much of Plato's thinking about the universe and its origins and a good deal of twentieth-century theorizing, from Einstein to Hawking. (Phoenix Supplementary Volumes) T.M. ROBINSON

is Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto.

PHOENIX Journal of the Classical Association of Canada Revue de la Societe canadienne des etudes classiques Supplementary Volume VIII, second edition Tome supplementaire VIII, deuxieme edition

PLATO'S PSYCHOLOGY T. M. ROBINSON Second Edition

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1995 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Original edition 1970 Second edition 1995 Reprinted in 2018 1S13N 0-8020-0635-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8020-7590-1 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Robinson, T. M. (Thomas More), 1936Plato's psychology (Phoenix.

Supplementary volume (Toronto, Ont.) ; 8) 2nd ed. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-0635-3 (bound) ISBN 978-0-8020-7590-1 (paper) I. Plato - Contributions in psychology. I. Title. II. Series. 128'.3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

ERNAE CONIUGI DILECTAE, CUI JAM DIU ET VITAM DEDICAVI

Quant' e bella giovinezza, che si fugge tuttavia! Chi vuol esser lieto, sia: di doman non c'e certezza. Lorenzo de Medici

Contents

FOREWORD UPON REFLECTION : INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION 1 The " Socratic" Dialogues

IX

Xlll

3

2 The Phaedo

21

3 The Republic

34

4 The Timaeus: 27A-47E

59

5 The Timaeus: 48A-end

93

6 The Phaedrus

I I I

7 Tripartition, Immortality, and the After-Life 119 8 The Politicus

132

9 The Philebus

140

IO

The 1..Aws and the Epinomis

145

II

Coda

158

ABBREVIATIONS

164

BIBLIOGRAPHY

166

INDEXES

177

Foreword

The following pages are an attempt to fill what seems to be an important gap io current literature on the philosophy of Plato. Since the war a large amount of work has been done on his Theory of Knowledge, and this has thrown light on a number of hitherto dark comers in the dialogues. That other "pillar of Platonism," however, the doctrine of psyche (soul, mind), has only received sporadic attention, and this is surprising, since a Theory of Mind and a Theory of Knowledge would appear to be very closely linked . In a century not a single comprehensive work on Plato's notion of psyche has appeared in English. In 1862 A.-Ed. Chaignet produced a work entitled De la Psychologie de Platon, but the work is so instinct with his own brand of (philosophical) idealism that the Plato of the dialogues is seldom given an impartial hearing. A better book, J. Simson's Der &grijf der Seele bei Plato11, appeared in 1889. This has the great merit of treating Plato's own words dispassionately, and references to the text of the dialogues are used to corroborate practically every general statement. The only trouble is that the book is too slight to be comprehensive. What it says, as far as it goes, is admirable, but it does not go far enough. Nearer our own times, H. Barth's Die Seele in der Philosophie Platons was published in 1921, and this can only be considered retrogressive. As in the case of Chaignet' s monograph, Barth's book is so riddled with his own philosophical prejudices (this time in the direction of Lebensphilosophie) as to be rendered almost valueless. The present study attempts to give as lucid and comprehensive an account as possible of all that Plato has to say on the nature of psyche, personal and cosmic, in each of the dialogues. This inevitably involves a good deal of interpretation, but I have tried, as much as possible, to let the texts speak for themselves. As far as the doctrine of"personal" psyche is concerned, the dialogues, I argue, suggest no particular "development" on Plato's part. On the contrary, he appears to use particular "models" of psyche (uniform, bipartite, tripartite, etc.) to suit particular contexts, and seems to be peculiarly

X

FOREWORD

unbound by dogmatism in this regard till the end of his life. As for the notion of ''cosmic" psyche, it is suggested that there is some development here, though many obscurities still remain. The relative order of the dialogues is a problem every student of Plato must face, and I have followed generally accepted opinions except in the case of the Timaeus and the Phaedrus, which I tentatively place (in that order) soon after the Republic. To defend this would demand another book; suffice it for the moment to say that the move seems to me to make Plato's cosmic psychology and cosmo-theology follow a more comprehensible pattern of development than has been suggested hitherto. Though this is my own opinion on the matter, I hope that it has not so influenced my analysis of the "later" dialogues that the reader will be precluded from forming his own judgment on the basis of what Plato says on any particular occasion. For that, ultimately, is the aim of the book - to put the reader into a position where he can make up his own mind concerning particular problems on the basis of precise and, one hopes, unbiassed exposition of the relevant texts. In this sense I should like to see myself as performing that "under-labourer's" task of which Locke speaks in the Essay. The translation of the term psyche is always difficult. Is it "soul," or "mind," or "person"? Translators are in constant disagreement. After much thought I finally opted for the uniform translation "soul," on the grounds that this would be the least misleading. For the term "soul," to most people (including those who reject it as nonsense), suggests an "inner person" or "ghost in the machine" (to use Ryle's phrase) that is, in my opinion, very close to Plato's usual view on the matter. The translation "mind," though occasionally useful in those few contexts (like the Phaedo) in which psyche is seen as an almost totally intellective principle, is misleading in those many more contexts where intellect is seen as only one of a number of subdivisions of psyche. It would be less misleading, of course, if it could be assumed that every reader of this book adhered to a Rylean view of mind; but this is hardly likely to be the case. I have used standard translations throughout, reducing them to uniformity in one respect only- that of translating fuxiJ in every instance as "soul." Apart from the Timaeus and parts of the Republic, where I employ Cornford's translations, a few passages of the Phaedo, where I have used Hackforth' s translation, and a few passages of the Corgi as, where I have used the Jowett translation, all translations are drawn from The Collected Dialogues of Plato, edited by Hamilton and Cairns (Bollingen Series LXXI). Unless otherwise indicated, the Greek text that I have followed is that of

FOREWORD

XI

Burnet (Oxford University Press 1900-7). I must also thank the editors of the following journals for permission to use material which originally appeared in them: The A111ericat1 journal Philology (LXXXVIII (1967) 57-66), Phronesis (xn (1967) 147-51), and Apeiron ((1968) 12-18). To keep abreast of all Platonic scholarship (even within a specialized area) is a formidable, if not impossible, task. If I have come anywhere near success in this regard, it is largely the result of constant reference to the outstanding Bibliography of Platonic Scholarship published in Lustrum ( 1959-60) by Professor H. Cherniss. For works appearing in more recent years I have relied for my bibliographical information upon L'A1111ee philologique and the Bulletin signaletique. Even so, a number of items were (inevitably) overlooked, and I should like to draw attention to them now, since they came to my notice too late for me to use: D. J. Schulz Das Problem der Materie in Platons Timaios Bonn 1966; H.J. Easterling "Causation in the Timaeus and Laws x" Eranos LXV (1967) 25-38; M. Corvez "Le Dieu de Platon" Re,,11e philosophique de Louvain LXV (1967) 5-35;]. B. Skemp The Theory of Motion in Plato's Later Dialogues 2 Amsterdam 1967. No doubt there are more such items; but I have every confidence that, Platonic scholarship being the maze that it is, their authors will be understanding, and will attribute the omission to my ignorance of the existence of their contributions, rather than to any unwillingness on my part to consider them. Finally, it is my pleasant task to thank the many scholars who have offered advice on particular topics. In particular I should like to mention Dr. D. A. Rees, of Jesus College, Oxford, and Professors G. M. A. Grube and D. Gallop of the University of Toronto. Of course, this in no way commits them to the contents of the book; I myself take full responsibility for that. But their advice made me re-consider large tracts of the argument, and almost invariably, I think, for the better. If occasionally I stuck stubbornly to my original opinion, I cheerfully accept what blame and retribution may come my way. This book has been published with the help of grants from the Humanities Research Council, using funds provided by the Canada Council, and from the Publications Fund of the University of Toronto Press. I should like to thank Miss Prudence Tracy, of the same press, for her careful and goodhumoured supervision of the manuscript from its earliest stages through to publication.

~r

T.M.R.

Toronto,June 1969

Upon Reflection Introduction to the Second Edition

A second edition of Plato's Psychology offers a welcome opportunity to reflect on some of the work that has been published in the area since its first appearance 1 and also to re-examine some of its more controversial positions on various issues. In each instance I stress the word "some"; to cover in detail all of the literature or discuss in detail all of the discussable issues would necessitate another book, if not several. I have in practice confined myself to matters on which I have over the years significantly changed my mind, or where I have gone on to propound new ideas not canvassed in the original edition. This means that my discussion dwells largely on items in the last seven, rather than the first three, chapters of the book, and confines itself almost entirely to the question of cosmic, rather than individual, soul; though much has been written in recent years on, for example, Plato's theory of the tripartition of the human soul, little has, I think, been said on the matter that would dispose me to make more than minor changes in the account I first set out. The original work itself is reprinted untouched, in the hope that the basic drift of its argument, and the accumulation of detailed references to central texts in the dialogues, makes it still worthy of attention. A notable feature of the first edition was its stress on the importance of having some general understanding of the periods into which

1 More detailed bibliographic information can be found in Richard D. Mohr, The Platonic Cosmoloj?y (Leiden 1985) 189--91; Luc Brisson, Platon: Timee/Critias (Paris 1992) 79--