Sub Rosa

내가 한국어로 글을 쓰면 종결어미 "~다"가 너무 많다. 이건 무슨 스타카토도 아니고...
좀 스무스하게 글을 쓸 수는 없을까

필멸자로서의 자아는 결코 참된 앎에 다다르지 못한다. 참된 앎에 도달하면 필멸자의 자아는 절대 속에서 파괴된다. 소크라테스는 인간주체를 깨끗이 포기할 것을 요구한다. 미치지 않고서는 그 길을 따라갈 수 없다. 그렇다고 해서 포기하고 말빨만 세우면 본래적 의미에서 지식인sophistes이 되는 거지. 여기에서 문제를 재설정할 필요가 생긴다. 정말로 그것은 레테의 너머에, 세계를 초월한 곳에 존재하는가?

Plato's Cleitophon: On Socrates and the Modern Mind / Mark Kremer (ed.)

First of all, I agree there is no substantial evidence to doubt the authenticity of Cleitophon. But Kremer's discussion on Cleitophonin relationship with modern and postmodern mind is simply too far-fetching. One cannot "see from the relation between Cleitophon andSocrates that Plato anticipated the possibility of modernity and its decline into the postmodern hatred of reason or the affirmation of the will to power." (p. 3) Are we talking about Plato, or Nostradamus? Cleitophon as a dialogue deserves a close study, but it has to be done in the context of Platonic corpus and Ancient Greece, and to summon Plato to our time appears to be a misattribution error. Why do we have to bring postmodernism or Nietzsche to understand Plato’s dialogues? This is as unnecessary as to bring the Social Contract theorists to understand Crito. His discussion on the parallel between Cleitophon and Nietzsche may be meaningful, but the same can be done with the speech of Callicles aswell. I will return to this shortly.

Cleitophon is perplexing indeed, and Cleitophon's speech is a reasonable assessment of Socrates and his legacy. Socrates is not infallible; he stumbles on error and corrects himself, sometimes to a conclusion (tentative it may be) but often altogether fails. The Dramatic Socratesis not an accomplished paragon of wisdom and virtue, but our fellow mortal on the common road to attain the wisdom which we long for. His claim of ignorance may well be a rhetorical statement at times, but more often it is an acknowledgment of his being philosophos, still not a sophos. And Cleitophon thinks all that Socrates can do is to make one philosophos, but not a sophos. This is an objection worthy of serious treatment to Plato.

Neither Socrates nor Plato was THE towering presence in the Athenian intellectual milieu, and there were many disputants whom we now call the pre-Socratics and/or sophists. And Plato does not treat allsophists equally - he treats some more seriously than the other. On the bottom end, there is Hippias. Had Hippias read Greater Hippias, by all means he would have seen it as an insult. To Plato, Hippias is a joke not worthy of serious treatment. On the opposite end, Parmenides gets the highest recognition, and he helps young Socrates in Parmenides and his refutation in Sophist has almost a tragic tone. Plato struggles with Homeric legacy in Ion and Republic. Plato treats Heracleitus and Protagoras seriously, and their refutation in Theaetetus is dense and both Socrates and Protagoras remain unsettled in Protagoras. What was Plato’s stand on Thrasymachus and Cleitophon?

A parallel may be drawn with Gorgias of Leontini. Socrates "misses" the exhibition of Gorgias, and goes on to accuse Gorgias straightaway, and we don't see much defense from Gorgias himself, as if his exhibitions were not worth being reproduced by Plato's hand or the Gorgian rhetoric might have been too formidable. Protagoras shows the frustration of Socrates in face of the rhetorical elaboration of Protagoras, and no doubt Gorgias wouldn't have been any less - it's too much work to produce a dialogue with full-blown Gorgias. Plato writes a dialogue, and he needs a more probable interlocutor who shares the same belief with less rhetorical device blurring the focus of the dialogue, so we have Polus, Callicles, and Meno as a companion dialogue. Similarly, Phaedrus deals with Lysias the orator but through Phaedrus, possibly to prevent Lysias giving another overwhelming elaboration. A dialogue requires two speakers, and Dramatic Socrates as a character should be able to handle the interlocutor as well.

Thrasymachus is not any less significant character than Gorgias. Phaedrus compares Gorgias and Thrasymachus to Nestor and Odysseus in the dialogue named after himself (261c) and it is probably not unreasonable to think that Thrasymachus was just as important a sophist as Gorgias, at least in the mind of his contemporaries. Then Republic I would have been a mere ad hominem attack without substantial backup. And Plato cannot just dismiss Thrasymachus as he did with Hippias; the critique made in Cleitophon shakes the value of Socratic legacy as a basis of the Socratics ingeneral, including Plato himself. Considering the gap between Republic I and the rest, it would not be unreasonable to assume that Cleitophon was called upon to meet this criticism; in Republic I, Cleitophon is depicted not like the wild and intemperate Thrasymachus; he in fact tries to defend Thrasymachus with his own power of reasoning, as someone capable of reasoned discourse. It appears to me that the case against Socrates in Cleitophon is better understood in this context, to provide a more thorough refutation of Thrasymachus. Plato has to provide a reasonable dialogue, and the interlocutor has to be someone capable of discussion as well.

Then, is Cleitophona finished work or a fragment? If fragment, why did Plato leave it so? Cleitophon finishes his speech, and the dialogue ends abruptly. Kremer's allusion to Athenian legal procedure appears to be just confusing. Gorgias ends like this as well, but the conclusion is given by Socrates; it would have been as weird if it ended with speech of Callicles. Socrates begins the accusation of Gorgias, Gorgias and his friends defend him in series, but it ends with Socrates nonetheless. Taking for granted that Cleitophon begins with Socrates' accusation, it wouldn't have been impossible for Plato to finish the dialogue with Socrates' defense. Cleitophon overall leaves the impression of an unfinished work.

But then there is another unfinished work in speech form: Critias. It is more obvious that Critias ends in the middle of the speech, and we may ask why. From the opening of Timaeus we learn that Timaeus was to speak of the cosmogony, Critias about the antediluvian Athens of 10,000 BC. If it's not unreasonable to assume that Hermocrates was to take up the speeches and continue with post-diluvian world in chronological sequence, then the contents would overlap with Laws. And thereis a mysterious "fourth" not present in Timaeus, who might have been meant to continue with the legal institutions in practice as a logical sequence. If we take that this second "Banquet" was abandoned in favour of Laws, then it is possible that Cleitophon was stopped short in favour of the rest of the Republic. Then Cleitophon plays a key link between Republic Book I and II - Socrates will now show that he can indeed help others in pursuit and attainment of good life. Plato might have realised these topics need extensive examinations, which cannot be dealt in a single standalone dialogue. So we have two bulky ones - Republic and Laws - and two unfinished ones, Cleitophon and Critias.

So, where does this all lead to? Kremer’s point on the parallel between postmodern despair with reason and Cleitophon may be valid, but such a matter is dealt with Callicles in Gorgias and Cebes in Phaedo as well. With no doubt, Cleitophonis a work that demands attention of any Plato reader, but if we start attributing a prophetic power to Plato (although Socrates claims suchpowers here and there) then we’re allowed to make any arbitrary interpretation of Plato based on modern experience, and soon Plato would be a postmodernist.  Cleitophon, like any other Platonic dialogues, needs to be understood in context of Platonic corpus and the Ancient Greece, and if its statements are valid today, then it is perhaps because we are still the same mortals, frustrated with our inability to be wise and well.

Interpreting Plato's Dialogues / J. Angelo Corlett

The "Platonic Question" - how are we to interpret Plato's dialogues? Does he have a philosophical system which we can extract from his dialogues, or not? If yes, then how? Can we assume the main speaker to be Plato's spokesman? If not, should we reduce Plato's dialogues into mere drama? What are the limitations of either plans of attack, and are there any alternatives? Why did he write the dialogues in the first place? Questions that might be interesting to Plato scholars, but largely irrelevant to the general readers who want to benefit from reading Plato.

Some of his dialogues, say, Timaeus almost reads like a treatise on the natural philosophy. It looks like that we can take Timaeus as Plato's spokesman, but then the Dramatic Socrates recapitulates the contents of the Republic at the beginning. True, there are internal evidences suggesting an internal time gap between two dialogues, and even if Dramatic Socrates in Republic was really "Socratic", Timaeus suggests that this Socrates took the contents of the Republic as his own doctrine. So far, it looks like we can take these as doctrinal dialogues, but then next comes Critias. Is this merely an allegory? Another Platonic mythcraft? Is this myth any better than one given by Protagoras in the dialogue bearing his name? And we're to realise that this trilogy is a series of speeches of different characters, similar to that of Symposium. And well, even the setting is similar, it’s a banquet. If we take the outrageous story of Timaeus and Critias seriously, there is no reason not to take anyone else's story in the Symposium the same way. Does Timaeus then really expose Plato's view on the natural philosophy?

Similar arguments can be held on Sophist and Statesman. Why is there a sudden appearance of this unnamed Eleatic? Can this ”Visitor" be a moniker which Plato assumes? Why Eleatic? Unlike the Dramatic Socrates in Theaetetus, the Visitor is quite dry and dogmatic, who seems to follow a clear plan of attack on the questions at hand, as if he has the answer already - indeed, he asks whether he should deliver the answer in speech or questions. But even the Visitor is not infallible; he faces a seemingly unexpected obstacle during the session, where he ultimately commits "parricide" of refuting Parmenides. Is this another implicit demonstration of the superiority of dialectic over speech or a treatise? Or is it just a rhetorical device to make Parmenides refutation more dramatic? If we take this as a rhetorical device, then why shouldn't we take the entire Socratic method as a dramatic device to expose a Plato's own philosophy? But as it is evident, most Socratic dialogues fail to arrive at a positive conclusion. Maybe Plato is a noisy polemic who can refute everything without a positive doctrine - Socratic method becomes an instrument of Reign of Terror. Does it make sense?

Does Plato have ulterior motives? Does he want to steer us to arrive at some kind of conclusion in guise of objective pursuit, Socratic dialectic? There's no doubt Protagoras deals with Protagoras, but Theaetetus contains another more serious attack on Protagorean Homomensura thesis, along with a critique of Heracleitus. Parmenides bears the namesake of Parmenides, but isn't it Sophist where more serious Parmenides refutation take place? Dramatic Socrates attacks rhetoric in Gorgias, but Gorgias is strangely silent in this dialogue, whilst a better critique is in fact given in Phaedrus. Cratylus looks like a neutral inquiry into language, but at the same time it renders Prodicus, another fellow sophist who has some respect from Socrates, irrelevant. Can we take these ones with ulterior refutational motives to be expressing genuine thoughts of Plato? It's noticeable that these dialogues render some (however tentative they may be)positive conclusions. It's tempting to take these arguments as Plato’s own, but at the same time the purpose of the dialogue is to show the development of the arguments, not to present the doctrine as an end result. However definite their conclusions at times may appear to be(esp. as in Sophist), the dialogue itself remains open-ended.

But, do we need to know what Plato thinks in order to understand his dialogues? The attempt to extract the mind of Plato is equally impossible as to penetrate into his mind directly. In fact, we can never penetrate into the mind of our contemporaries with expositional styles either, not to mention some ancient Greek who didn't even write treatises. It seems to me that our reading would be more fruitful -although not necessarily accurate - if we just keep Plato behind the scene, as he wanted to be. Even the name "Plato" occurs only twice in the entire corpus of dialogues.

Platon, Theaitetos

구조:

• 도입 142-145
  
• 서설 145-151
  
  • 예제에 따른 정의의 문제 145-147
    
  • 수학적 정의 147-148
    
  • 산파술 148-151
    
• 감각으로서의 지식 151-187
  
  • 정의 151
    
  • 프로타고라스와 헤라클레이토스 151-152
    
  • 헤라클레이토스 반론 152-160
    
  • 프로타고라스 반론 160-172
    
  • 여담: 철학자의 자세 172-177
    
  • 결론 177-187
    
• 참된 의견으로서의 지식 187-201
  
• 근거를 지닌 참된 의견으로서의 지식 201-210
  
  • 소크라테스의 꿈 201-206
    
  • "로고스" 206-210
    
• 결론 210

《테아이테토스》는 단일 대화편 중에는 가장 긴 편에 속하며, "지식의 본질"이라는 주제의 특성상 대화편 중에서도 난해한 편에 속한다. (그럼에도 불구하고 결론을 내리는 데 실패해서 읽는 사람을 허무하게 만든다.) 지식은 감각aisthesis을 통해 형성되지 않는다. 의견doxa은 아무리 참된 것이라 해도 의견일 뿐, 지식episteme이 되지 않는다. 감각이나 의견이 지식과 동일시되면 어떤 문제가 생길까?

테아이테토스의 첫 정의는 "지식은 감각이다"이고, 소크라테스는 이를 프로타고라스의 "인간은 만물의 척도panton chrematon metron anthropon"와 논리적으로 같은 것으로 간주한다. (실제로 그러한지는 의문의 여지로 남는다)

헤라클레이토스와 같이 "만물이 유전한다panta rhei"라고 한다면 대상을 감각하는 그 순간에도 대상은 변화해 버린다. 그것을 감각하는 자신 역시 변화한다. 이러한 세계 속에서는 감각을 통해 얻은 지식은 그 찰나의 순간을 넘어서면 지식으로서 성립하지 않는다. 이러한 형이상학적 기반 위에 놓인 인식론은 회의주의 혹은 상대주의로 이어진다. 프로타고라스의 "인간 척도"가 여기에서 등장한다. 각 인간에게 그러한 것이 곧 그 인간에게 진리라는 상대주의적 태도는 상대주의 자체를 제외한 모든 것을 상대적으로 만든다. 역설적으로 "상대주의"의 절대성을 주장해야 하는 자기모순에 빠진다. 이에 따르면 누구도 "틀릴" 수 없으며, 소크라테스가 "프로타고라스는 틀렸다"라고 해도 프로타고라스는 그것을 "소크라테스에게 있어서는 진실"이라고 인정해야 하는 곤란한 상황에 처한다.

이를 더 발전시켜 단지 "감각"이 아니라 "의견"으로 나아간다 해도 의견이 아무리 그럴 듯 하다 하여 지식이 요구하는 확실성을 보장하지는 못한다. 참된 의견이 존재하려면 그 역인 그릇된 의견이 존재할 수 있어야 하는데, 참된 의견을 지식으로 간주하면 그릇된 의견이 어떻게 생성될 수 있는가의 문제가 소크라테스와 테아이테토스를 괴롭히는데, 이 부분은 앞부분과 달리 짧은 분량 안에 많은 내용이 압축적으로 되어 있어 독자도 함께 괴롭다. 테아이테토스의 마지막 시도는 의견과 합리적 근거logos가 같이 와야 지식이 된다는 것이나, 이 logos의 개념도 쉽게 파악되지 않는다. 대화는 끝나고, 소크라테스는 불경죄로 기소되어 재판소로 향한다. 드라마 내부적으로 《에우튀프론》과 연결된다.

내 짐작일 뿐이지만 플라톤은 이미 결론을 준비하고 있었던 게 아닐까 싶다. 이후에 등장하는 "이데아"가 그것이다. (172-177 사이의 일부 구절은 이데아를 암시하고 있다고 해석될 수 있기도 하거니와) 플라톤 자신이 결론을 못 내려서 미완으로 남겼다면 그 외의 대안들을 이렇게 체계적으로 제거하지도 못했을 것이다. 《테아이테토스》를 비롯해 이데아론을 보다 본격적으로 제시하기 시작하는《향연》, 《파이돈》, 《파르메니데스》는 드라마 내부 형식상 몇 겹의 '플라톤 아닌 다른 사람'이 소크라테스의 대화 내용을 전한 것으로 되어 있다. 이건 내가 보기엔 플라톤 자신의 이론을 소크라테스의 이름으로 발표하는 행위에 대한 오리발로 보인다. (후에 그냥 대놓고 소크라테스를 쓰는 걸로 봐서 별 항의는 없었던 모양이다.)

《테아이테토스》는 많은 점에서 《티마이오스》 와 대비된다. 티마이오스는 확실히 알 수는 없더라도 가장 그럴 듯하고 앞뒤가 맞는 설을 받아들여야 한다고 주장하며 조물주demiurgos의 세계 창조에서 시작하는 이야기mythos를 펼친다. 그 외의 대화편에서 이렇게 작정하고 이야기를 통해 자기 논리를 정당화하는 자는 《프로타고라스》 편의 주인공, 프로타고라스 뿐이다.