The Virtue of Power

The “battle” between corporealists and idealists described in Plato’s Sophist 245e6249d5 is of significance for understanding the philosophical function of the dramatic exchange between the Eleatic guest and Theaetetus, the dialogue’s main interlocutors. Various features of this exchange indicate that the Eleatic guest introduces and discusses the dispute between corporealists and idealists in order to educate Theaetetus in ontological matters. By reading the discussion between Theaetetus and the Eleatic guest in the light of these features, one comes to see that the primary audience for the proposal advanced by the Eleatic guest in this passage, namely that being is power, is not any of the participants in the “battle,” as has been commonly assumed, but Theaetetus himself-a fact to bear in mind in any viable interpretation of the passage. Keywords: Plato’s Sophist; Platonic ontology; dialectic; education; being and power.

This paper offers a detailed interpretation of the passage in Plato’s Sophist running from 245e6-249d5.2 In this passage, a dispute about the nature of being is discussed, which the Eleatic guest-or stranger, as he is often called-claims resembles the mythical battle between the gods and giants. I shall refer to this philosophical dispute as the Gigantomachy and to the passage in which it is discussed as the Gigantomachy-passage. In discussing this dispute with his interlocutor Theaetetus, the guest suggests that dynamis, which I shall translate as power, could be regarded as a distinguishing mark, or a definition, of the things that are. The aim of the present paper is to address the question of how we are to regard the

dynamis-proposal by looking at its significance for the dialogue between the Eleatic guest and Theaetetus. The paper will thus sidestep the question how we are to regard the proposal in relation to Plato’s own understanding of being in order to focus on the role the proposal plays in what we may call the educative dimension of the guest’s dialogue with Theaetetus.3 Its thesis will be that it is Theaetetus, rather than the participants in the Gigantomachy-the philosophical “giants” and “gods”—who is the primary audience for the guest’s proposal.4 Accordingly, the guest’s teaching about being should not be regarded as a general ontological or metaphysical claim about being as such, but rather as a teaching addressed to Theaetetus, meant to show him how being and our understanding of being, how ousia and psychê aiming at understanding ousia, must be understood as interrelated.

To understand the educative element of the Gigantomachy-passage it is important to understand the specific way the dialectical exchange it contains unfolds, the specific way

the guest and Theaetetus pursue this part of their conversation. The best way to understand this aspect of the Gigantomachy-passage is to compare and contrast it with the way the dialogue between Theaetetus and the guest unfolds in the immediately preceding passage. The Gigantomachy-passage falls within the middle (often referred to as the ontological)

part of the Sophist, where the notions of being and non-being take center stage in the discussion. In the first section of this part, after having discussed why utter non-being (to mêdamôs on, 237b7-8) is, as Parmenides had claimed, impossible to know, and indeed even to utter, the guest and Theaetetus turn to discussing what a number of previous thinkers have said about being or the things that are, about to on or ta onta, in particular Parmenides’ view of being. This discussion unfolds by way of what Hegel might call an immanent criticism. By taking at their word these previous thinkers, who have all made claims about being, the guest shows Theaetetus that their teachings are self-contradictory. This criticism is developed dramatically, or “enacted,” via an imagined conversation with them during which the guest questions them and both he and Theaetetus answer on their behalf. The result of this conversation is that those who claim that the things that are, ta onta, are a plurality, are led to posit a single thing, namely being, to on, which is common to, or can be stated equally about, the things they claim truly are (243c10-244a3), whereas Parmenides, who claims that the one, to hen, alone is (244b9-10), is led to posit a plurality rather than a unity, in consequence of the fact that the one, according to Parmenides, is identical with being, to on (244b12-c2), which furthermore is claimed to be a whole, holon (244d14-15). Parmenides thus implicitly posits a plurality, first of all, of names-“one,” “being,” “whole”—and, if the names are to point something out, rather than be mere names of nothing, also a plurality of “things,” of beings. Whether this criticism reflects a fair interpretation of these thinkers is unimportant here; to be noted is that it is based on claims advanced by these thinkers, rather than on assumptions about being made by the guest or Theaetetus. The guest’s procedure reminds us of a Socratic elenchus carried out in discussion with imagined interlocutors rather than with real dialogue partners. In one sense the dialogue found in the passage 245e6-249d5 continues this kind of

imagined conversation with philosophers not actually present. But the conversation we find in it differs in at least two important ways from the previous conversation. First of all, the way the notion of being is discussed by the participants in the Gigantomachy is slightly different from the way it is discussed both by those who posit a plurality of beings and by Parmenides. Secondly, the way the participants are interrogated by the guest also differs from the way the pluralists and Parmenides were interrogated. Let us begin by looking at the participants in the Gigantomachy and their notions of being. The battle referred to by the guest as a kind of gigantomachia (the philosophical ver-

sion of the mythical battle between the gods and the giants) is a struggle about the nature of being, fought between two opposing parties. In contrast to the previously interrogated thinkers, the participants have what looks like a more refined position in regard to being. Rather than asking how many beings there are, they focus on the being or essence of the things there are, on their ousia, asking what it means to be a being.5 One party in the discussion thus claims that only what is subject to our embrace or touch (prosbolê kai epaphê, 246a11) is, and defines being as body (sôma). These are the corporealists. The other party claims that true being is identical with “certain thought-things [noêta] and incorporeal eidê”6 (246b7-8) with which we connect through reasoning or calculation (logismos, 248a11). The guest at one point refers to them as “friends of eidê” (248a4-5). So, rather than asking which beings there are, or how many there are, the corporealists

and the friends of eidê ask what characterizes these beings as beings, deciding this question on the basis of their understanding of the way beings are accessible to humans. According to the corporealists, beings are accessible through touch, whereas the friends claim they are accessible through reason. Who the participants are is a question we will turn to when we look at the way the

discussion with them proceeds. Before we do that, however, we need to say something about the specific way the guest and Theaetetus enter into discussion with them. In the previous discussion with the pluralists and with Parmenides, the guest and Theaetetus answered jointly on behalf of their imagined interlocutors. Now the guest assigns different roles to himself and to Theaetetus: while the guest is to carry out the questioning, Theaetetus is directed to interpret what the philosophical antagonists tell him when questioned by the guest (246e3, 248a5). We confront a more complex dialogical situation, in which the guest poses questions to interlocutors who are not actually present, and whose answers are not simply to be reported by Theaetetus, but rather to be interpreted or translated by him for the sake of his and the guest’s dialogue together.7 This complex situation, which in itself may seem a bit strange, becomes all the more so in consequence of the fact that one side in the struggle, the corporealists, are never allowed to enter the dialectical encounter.8 Before they can get a hearing, they are reformed into something else. When we now turn to the first half of the Gigantomachy-passage, where the notion that being is body is discussed, we shall have to consider who these reformed corporealists are and what their reform tells us about the ontological investigation carried out in the passage.