152152
Plato’s Different Device:
Reconciling the One and
the Many in the Philebus
Martha Kendal Woodruff
Socrates, as you said yourself, it is diffi cult to follow in these
matters. But if they are repeated again and again, perhaps
both questioner and respondent may end up in a satisfactory
state of agreement.
Philebus 24eSo says Protarchus toward the beginning of Plato’s Philebus. His state-
ment may appear to be merely a passing comment, but actually, when
understood broadly, it sheds light on the whole dialogue. Different kinds
of repetition prove to be crucial to the reconciliation of apparent oppo-
sites, which in turn proves to be one of the main philosophical achieve-
ments of the dialogue. The method of repetition and revision shows
the crucial role played by lovgo~: language, in its power continually to
restate and reclassify, helps to allow a reconciliation between Socrates
and the other speakers, and between the opposing categories—such
as constancy and change, intelligence and pleasure, determinacy and
indeterminacy—with which the interlocutors wrestle. One of the most
central of these polarities, “the one and the many,” manifests itself in
a special way through such revisions. As Socrates says at one point, the
convergence of the one and the many seems to be a permanent feature
of our statements (15d5– 7). But only a certain sort of language, one
that repeats, revises, and classifi es in the right way, can fi nd a balance
between the one and the many. To the extent that the Philebus achieves