PLATO’S DIFFERENT DEVICEGeorg Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics: Phenomenological Interpretations Relating
to the Philebus, trans. Robert Wallace [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991],
10 – 11). He analyzes “the unity of dialogue and dialectic which only the Philebus,
out of all Plato’s literary works, presents in this way” (15). See also Gadamer’s
infl uential treatment of modern method in Truth and Method, trans. Joel Wein-
sheimer and Donald Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1994).
- Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics, 112– 13.
- For a contrasting approach to the question of refl exivity in this dialogue,
see Christopher Smith, “The (De)construction of Irrefutable Argument in Pla-
to’s Philebus,” in Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s
Dialogues and Beyond, ed. Gary Alan Scott (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2002), 199– 216. - I follow A. E. Taylor here in viewing the Parmenides as “a dialogue clearly
presupposed by the Philebus” (introduction to Philebus and Epinomis, trans. A. E.
Taylor [London: Nelson and Sons, 1956], 49). For a range of interpretations
of the Parmenides, see Robert S. Brumbaugh, Plato on the One: The Hypotheses in
the Parmenides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961); Constance Meinwald,
Plato’s Parmenides (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Mitchell Miller,
Plato’s Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1986); and Kenneth Sayre, Parmenides’ Lesson: Translation and Explication
of Plato’s Parmenides (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996). - The search to fi nd the right expression to do justice to the thought
manifests itself as one of the most pressing issues for Plato. In the Phaedo, for
instance, Socrates makes the point dramatically: “To express oneself badly is
not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some harm to the soul”
(115e). Signifi cantly, the same dialogue contains several mentions of pleasure
and pain: Socrates says they are “like two creatures with one head” (60b) and
that violent pleasure and pain weld body and soul together (83d), while his fol-
lowers feel a mixture of pleasure and pain upon seeing him for the last time
(59a) (translated by Grube, in Cooper, ed., Plato: Complete Works). - Seth Benardete, The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Commentary on Plato’s
Philebus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 240. - Georg Grote, Plato and the Other Companions to Socrates, vol. 2, trans. John
Murray (London: John Murray, 1865), 584. - Robert Gregg Bury, The Philebus of Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1897), ix. - I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, vol. 2 (New York: Hu-
manities, 1963), 252. - Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philoso-
phy, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 104. - W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 5 (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1978), 198, 238– 39. - Donald Davidson, “Gadamer and Plato’s Philebus,” in The Philosophy of
Hans-Georg Gadamer, ed. Lewis Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 423. One
can of course acknowledge both the strengths and the weaknesses of the dia-
logue, as Hackforth does: “Nobody would claim for the Philebus the architec-