MARTHA KENDAL WOODRUFFthis case the discursive powers of repetition serve only to distance the
two sides further from each other, the ideal one from the actual many,
or else to erase the distinction altogether. This situation culminates in
the extraordinarily dense, diffi cult paradoxes enumerated at length by
Parmenides.
By contrast, in the Philebus Plato introduces a more fl exible method
to navigate the middle way between extremes. The dialogue begins with
some assumed polarities of its own, but through the concrete use of the
classifying scheme and the fourfold ontology, they become harmonized
with each other by the end. While one cannot simply collapse the dis-
tinctions between intelligence and pleasure, the determinant and the
indeterminate, the one and the many, the dialogue shows us that we
cannot leave them in stark opposition either. The dialogue still leaves
basic ontological and linguistic problems unresolved, ending as it does
on a note of indeterminacy. But it goes a long way toward reconciling
the one and the many, being and becoming.
As in the Parmenides and other Platonic dialogues, then, style in
the Philebus contributes to substance. Theoretical problems cannot be
separated from their concrete expression: the eventual reconciliation
of abstract polarities is inseparably bound up with the actual practice,
by the interlocutors, of repeating, differentiating, and classifying.^5 Only
through the right sort of repetition, which is not redundant, can the
speakers and the subjects agree.
The resulting language of reconciliation depends upon the ontol-
ogy of the mixture, which provides the basis for overcoming stark dual-
isms. As the best life in the end proves to be a well-harmonized mixture,
so too the success of the Philebus itself belongs to the mixed category,
in both language and thought. In the concluding discussion, Socrates
speaks of discovering “a road [oJdo;n] that leads to the Good” (61a),
which resides in proportionate mixtures. If the Good dwells in such a
mixture, and the dialogue is itself a kind of mixture, then the dialogue
demonstrates the path toward the Good while analyzing it. As Seth
Benardete claims: “The peculiarity of the Philebus thus seems to lie in
the reconstruction of the Good within itself. It works up the Good while
exhibiting the Good.”^6 As I hope to show, Plato’s dialectical-methodical
concerns prove to be connected to the search for the Good as the mixed
life. The dialogue “mixes” dialectics and ethics through the practice
of repeating, revising, and reconciling; in brief, the dialogue practices
what it preaches.
To anyone familiar with the dialogue or its commentators, such
praise may come as a surprise. This work in particular has long received
criticism for its diffi cult themes and messy form: George Grote set the