Philosophy in Dialogue : Plato's Many Devices

MARTHA KENDAL WOODRUFF

ment of his dialogues? Or did Plato show Aristotle a new method toward
a measured plurality? To what extent is Aristotle still fundamentally Pla-
tonic in his orientation to ethics? While a full discussion of such ques-
tions goes beyond the scope of this paper, let us stress that Aristotle does
acknowledge his debt to his mentor and build upon his work. In the
Nicomachean Ethics, for instance, Aristotle says that with the turn away
from a single, transcendent Good to a plurality of human goods, “the
argument has by a different course reached the same point” (1097a24).
Then Aristotle’s real target would not be Plato per se (at least not the
Plato of the Philebus), but rather certain misinterpretations of the good
as transcendent and “otherworldly,” misinterpretations which Plato him-
self has anticipated. Perhaps this explains why Aristotle hesitates before
launching his critique and does not name Plato directly, but rather the
“Platonists” or “friends of the forms.”^51
In its emphasis on practice, the Philebus anticipates the Aristote-
lian “golden mean” in the motif of the harmonious mixture of two ele-
ments. As Robert Dostal notes:

This notion of the “mix” in the Philebus also serves... as the basis for

defending Plato against Aristotle’s critique concerning the unity of the

good in the Nicomachean Ethics. The mix requires measure. From this

it is a short step to Aristotle’s virtuous mean. (294)^52

The new category of mixture demands a language of re-vision and a
method of reconciliation. As I have tried to show, it is not only Socrates
who adopts a “different device” in the Philebus but equally Plato, in criti-
cizing dichotomies and moving toward a more complex unity, a more
plural oneness, a more attainable pathway toward fi nding our way
home. In this sense we can say the fi nal agreement—hard won through
repetitions—on the mixed life does to a large extent successfully recon-
cile the one and the many in both thought and speech.^53

Notes

The epigraph for this chapter is taken from Plato, Philebus, trans. Dorothea
Frede, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1997), 398 – 456.

1. As Gadamer writes: “The interpretive method that is appropriate to the
   philosopher Plato is not that of clinging fast to his defi nitions of concepts and
   developing his ‘doctrine’ into a uniform system... instead, it is to retrace,
   as a questioner, the course of questioning that the dialogue presents and to
   describe the direction in which Plato, without following it, only points” (Hans-