3ODWR

V7ULORJ\UHYLHZ
5RQDOG03RODQVN\

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Number 3, July 1981,

pp. 377-380 (Review)
3XEOLVKHGE\-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2008.0325

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v019/19.3polansky.html

Access provided by MIT Libraries (28 Aug 2015 21:08 GMT)

Book Reviews
Jacob Klein. Plato's Trilogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Pp. vii + 2oo.
$16.oo.
Jacob Klein's third book provides commentaries on Plato's thre e dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman. It treats each o f these dialogues in a separate section o f the
book, but interprets each o f them in the light of the others. This accords with
statements Klein m a d e in his second book, "Unquestionably, these three dialogues
form a unity . . . . T h e links between these dialogues are not external or superficial."'
In fact, the general directions o f Klein's interpretations of these dialogues are clear
not only from his earlier work on the Meno but also even from his first book.'
Inasmuch as these two previous books are of'great----of o u t s t a n d i n g - - w o r t h , this
book, by r e m a i n i n g close to them, has much strength. Yet it must be said that this
work has some serious weaknesses and is less impressive than his earlier books.
Klein begins the introduction with the assertion, "Any meaningful interpretation
of any Platonic dialogue has to rest on the following premises," after which he
presents six premises (pp. 1-2). Even if this strikes us as overstatement, the premises
themselves can be extremely useful ones for interpreting the dialogues, but his discussion o f these is to be found in an earlier book. 3 Following the list of his interpretive premises, the introduction has several sections; among other things Klein gives
us brief indications o f his p u r p o s e in the book. We find on page 6: "The ultimate
goal o f the dialogues is to make us repeat and continue the questioning"; and on p.
5: "We shall watch the text carefully . . . . We shall participate in the discussions: T h e
paraphrase o f the text o f the dialogues will be interwoven with what occurs to us as
listeners." Such r e m a r k s lead us to expect a very careful, perhaps detailed, treatment
of the dialogues. Unfortunately, the entire book is obviously not large enough to give
detailed analysis, a n d we find that most o f it is occupied with paraphrase and hardly
any comment. Many seemingly important points in the dialogues are passed over
with no discussion. Occasionally there are some useful comments in the paraphrase,
but so rarely that Klein's book is more likely to provide help with the general inter-

' A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), p.

27.
9 "Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra," in Quellen und Studien zur
Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik, Abteilung B: Studien, vol. 3, fasc. t (Berlin,
1934), pp. 18-1o 5 (pt. l); fasc. 2 (1936), pp. 122-235 (pt. 2). English trans., Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), see esp. pp. 237-38, n. lot.
Commentao on Plato's Meno, pp. 3-3 I.
[377]

378

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

pretation o f the whole of a dialogue than with particular difficult passages. Plato's
Tri/0gy refers to little of the secondary literature on the three dialogues.
T h e commentaries start with the treatment o f the Sophist for reasons I will discuss
below. His commentary on the Sophist paraphrases the whole dialogue, as they all do,
but in addition it stresses that the frequent appearance of the word "both" provides
the key for interpretation. He counts thirty-four appearances of "both" (which is the
sum o f the two perfect numbers six and twenty-eight, and also the number of sections in Plato's Trilogy.t). T h e r e are three reasons for the repeated usage of "both,"
according to Klein; these three reflect his life-long conviction that Aristotle's comments u p o n Plato in Metaphysics I, 6 and 9, but especially XIII, 6-8, take us to the
heart o f Plato's thought (see p. 1).4 T h e first reason is that Plato conceives the form
Being to be the "eidetic Two." His deepest penetration into Being's structure, into its
manner o f association with other forms, is to view it as a sort of two. Opposites such
as Rest and Motion "both together" constitute Being (pp. 48, 54, 56, 60); we should
not count three things---Rest, Motion, and Being--as our speech and thought lead us
to do, but recognize that Being is both opposites combined, in the case of such
comprehensive forms. T h o u g h the forms are not simply countable in the way perceptible units and intelligible units are counted, the forms are assemblages in their
very structure and thus provide the principles of these countable units. Being must
be viewed as the assemblage of Rest and Motion or the Same and the Other, and, as
the "eidetic Two," be the principle of all other duality. With reference to the way in
which Being is no third thing besides the two embracing opposite forms, hut both of
them together, Klein says, "We can now understand why the conversations of the
'trilogy' (of dialogues) occur in two, not three, days and why the Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philosopher are dealt with in two, not three, dialogues" (p. 61; see pp.
4-5)T h e second reason given for the copious use of "both" is that "the Other, '~ which
is o f such crucial concern in the dialogue, also has a dyadic structure. But unlike
Being, which is the "eidetic Two" of both opposites together, the Other is the "indeterminate dyad," since the Other names the indeterminate multitude of things other
than other (p. 61). For example, what is other than the beautiful, or the not-beautiful, includes the infinite number of beings that are other than the beautiful. The
dyadic structure is the way in which the other is always other than an other, and the
indeterminateness derives from the infinitude o f things other than an other. The
Other is the principle of all multiplicity (p. 61) and thus is at the origin of the
Sophist's "many-headedness" (pp. 27, 36, 63).
Klein gives as the third reason for the frequency of "both" that the Same, along
with the Other, forms the second of the leading pair of principles of all things (p.
63). T h e Same, for Klein, is what appears in other dialogues as the One, the Limit,
the Good, or the Precise itself. It is what combines with the indeterminate dyad to
constitute all being. T h e Same seems to be "beyond Being" and to be the principle of
Being, that is, the eidetic Two, since Being must be both the Same and the Other
4 Cf. Greek Mathematical Thought, pp. 79-99, esp. p. 91 .

BOOK REVIEWS

379

together (p. 63). 5 Obviously, Klein follows Aristotle in attributing to Plato a tendency
of thought that is very neo-Platonic. On his view, Plato treats the forms as being
arithmological assemblages of the contraries the One (the Limit) and the Other (the
Unlimited), with Being as the first offspring of the One that is beyond it. This view
perhaps needs more defense than Klein has ever given it, and especially regarding its
requirement that Plato accept an Absolute One, with no manyness about it at all,
since the dialogues often conclude that absolute simplicity obstructs all intelligibility. 6
Besides the emphasis upon what the common usage of "both" in the Sophist
suggests about Being and Not Being, and consequently about the philosopher and
the sophist, perhaps most useful in the commentary on this dialogue is Klein's pointing out that o f the seven divisions and collections made in order to locate the sophist,
only the sixth division, the one that locates him as a purifier of souls, that is, as the
philosopher, manages to have the final collection conform perfectly to the prior
division (p. ~6). Also useful is his discussion of the puzzling passage 253d5-e2 (p. 5~).
A serious error in Klein's summary is found on page 64 where he says that "speech
~:omes about by intertwining the looks (i.e. the e/de) with one another." This mistaken
interpretation of ~59 e has often been made, 7 but the Stranger really says that the
foundation o f the possibility for speech is the intertwining of the forms with each
other; yet speech itself is the intertwining of names (onomata) and verbs (rhemata), not
of forms (a6~d).
T h e explanation Klein gives for treating the Sophist before the Theaetetus is that
the errors Theaetetus commits in trying to say what knowledge is have to do with the
principles o f all things, the "same" and the "other," which are dealt with in the Sophist
(P. 5). Klein still holds strongly to his claim in his second b o o k - - " T h e question raised
in the Theaetetus, 'what is knowledge?' is dealt with thematically not in the Theaetetus
but in the Sophist"S--when he contends, "The theme of the dialogue (Theaetetus) is not
knowledge but the possibility of error, which is grounded in the 'similarity' of the
'Same' and the 'Other' insofar as they are ruling beginnings (archai)" (p. 145 ), He
thinks that the three key attempts o f Theaetetus to say what knowledge is--(a) sensation (aisthesis), (b) true opinion, (c) true opinion with an account--reveal three errors,
respectively: (a) the self-contradiction o f identifying the "same" with the "other," (b) the
m/stake of thinking that the "other" is the "same," (c) the tautology of thinking that the
"same" is the "other" (see pp. t 19, 134, 145 ). But even if errors may be distinguishable into self-contradictions, mistakes, and tautologies, as Klein argues, and because
the Same and the Other are deceptively similar, still his reading o f the Theaetetus
seems extremely questionable. He simply ignores what the dialogue says and 'implies
about knowledge. T h e r e is small exaggeration in claiming that his interpretation of
the Theaetetus finds nothing besides the display of these three types of errors. T h e

Cf. Ibid. p. 98.

6 See Theaetetus 2o5c-e, Parmenides 141e-142a , and Sophist 248e-249 a.
7 For example: Francis M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Liberal Arts
Press, 1957), p. 3oo.
s Commentaryon Plato's Meno, pp. 27-28.

380

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

little he really has to say about the Thaetetus was said already in his second book. At
the root of Klein's eccentric interpretation of the Theaetetus is his erroneous contention that knowledge is dealt with thematically in the Sophist.
In Klein's treatment of the Statesman he makes much of the faultiness that crops
up constantly in the divisions aimed at revealing the statesman (see pages 147, 16o,
161, t63, 17t, 172, t74, 191, esp. t61 and t72 ). He thinks this accords with the
subject matter, the statesman, since statesmen seem to be so seriously faulty in their
activities and most burdensome to men on account of it. Presumably the faults of the
practicing statesman would be eliminated by a truly knowledgeable statesman, that is,
a statesman who had the dialectical knowledge of the philosopher. It is Klein's major
point in his discussion that the true king must have such knowledge, but he hardly
argues for this conclusion. Whatever argument is to be found is on pages 176-77
(for confirmation o f this see p. 2oo); here he merely suggests that because the
Stranger and y o u n g Socrates are becoming more dialectical about all matters,
through their search for the statesman, the statesman must have dialectical knowledge about all things. This is no argument at all, unless it is shown that by becoming
more dialectical the Stranger and the young Socrates become statesmen or closer to
being statesmen. However, Klein never shows this.
An interesting point that Klein makes in his discussion of the Statesman is that the
means the Stranger uses in the investigation, the method of division and the illustration by models, can be linked directly to the outstanding model of the whole dialogue, that o f weaving. The collections at the end o f every division are like the taut,
vertical warp, and the models, such as that of the age of Cronos, are like the looser,
horizontal woof. When these are woven together there is the fabric of the dialogue
(see pp. 165-66 ).
As has been indicated, this book can be useful; but it has serious flaws. Jacob
Klein's earlier books, especially his first, are more highly recommended.
RONALD M. POLANSKY
Duquesne University
Anthony Kenny. The Aristotelian Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Pp xi
+ 250. $22.5 o.
In The Aristotelian Ethics Anthony Kenny uses the tools of philosopher, classicist, and
statistician to solve the mystery of the true home of the books c o m m o n to the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics. Were they lecture notes originally written by Aristotle or
his redactor for the one, but then revised and joined onto the later edition for
completeness' sake; or were they written expressly for the later work but then added
onto the earlier; or were .they independent of both and later tagged onto each?
Kenny opts for the second alternative, never seriously considering the first, and
argues for the original completeness of the Eudemian and its chronological and philosophical seniority.
9 Ibid., pp. 27-3 I, 158-66.