[92] Diogen. Laert. ii. 106; Cicero, Academic. ii. 42; Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 8, 3-5.
[93] Plato, Philêbus, p. 64 A. ἐν ταύτῃ μαθεῖν πειρᾶσθαι, τί ποτε ἓν τε ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ τῷ παντὶ πέφυκεν ἀγαθόν, καὶ τίνα ἰδέαν αὐτὴν εἶναί ποτε μαντευτέον.
Schleiermacher observes about the Philêbus:— “Dieses also lag ihm (Plato) am Herzen, das Gute zu bestimmen nicht nur für das Leben des Menschen, sondern auch zumal für das ganze Gebiet des gewordenen Seins,” &c.
The partial affinity between the Kosmos and the human soul is set forth in the Timæus, pp. 37-43-44.
Inconvenience of his method, blending Ontology with Ethics.
Unfortunately, the result has not corresponded to his intentions. If we turn to the close of the dialogue, we find that the principal elements which he assigns as explanatory of Good, and the relation in which they stand to each other, stand as much in need of explanation as Good itself. If we follow the course of the dialogue, we are frequently embarrassed by the language, because he is seeking for phrases applicable at once to the Kosmos and to Man: or because he passes from one to the other, under the assumption of real analogy between them. The extreme generalities of Logic or Ontology, upon which Sokrates here dwells — the Determinant and Indeterminate, the Cause, &c. — do not conduct us to the attainment of Good as he himself defines it — That which is desired by, and will give full satisfaction to, all men, animals, and plants. The fault appears to me to lie in the very scheme of the dialogue. Attempts to discuss Ontology and Ethics in one and the same piece of reasoning, instead of elucidating both, only serve to darken both. Aristotle has already made a similar remark: and it is after reading the Philêbus that we feel most distinctly the value of his comments on Plato in the first book of the Nikomachean Ethics. Aristotle has discussed Ontology in the Metaphysica and in other treatises: but he proclaims explicitly the necessity of discussing Ethics upon their own principles: looking at what is good for man, and what is attainable by man.[94] We find in the Philêbus many just reflections upon pleasure and its varieties: but these might have been better and more clearly established, without any appeal to the cosmical dogmas. The parallelism between Man and the Kosmos is overstrained and inconclusive, like the parallelism in the Republic between the collective commonwealth and the individual citizen.
[94] See especially Ethic. Nikom. i. 4, 1096-1097. Aristotle reasons there directly against the Platonic ἰδέα ἀγαθοῦ, but his arguments have full application to the exposition in the Philêbus. He distinguishes pointedly the ethical from the physical point of view. In his discussion of friendship, after touching upon various comparisons of the physiological poets, and of Plato himself repeating them, he says:— τὰ μὲν οὖν φυσικὰ τῶν ἀπορημάτων παραφείσθω· οὐ γὰρ οἰκεῖα τῆς παρούσης σκέψεως· ὅσα δ’ ἐστὶν ἀνθρωπικά καὶ ἀνήκει εἰς τὰ ἤθη καὶ τὰ πάθη, ταῦτ’ ἐπισκεψώμεθα, Ethic. Nikom. viii. 1, 1155, b. 10.
The like contrast is brought out (though less clearly) in the Eudemian Ethics, viii. 1. 1235, a. 30.
He animadverts upon Plato on the same ground in the Ethica Magna, i. 1, 1182, a. 23-30. ὑπὲρ γὰρ τῶν ὄντων καὶ ἀληθείας λέγοντα, οὐκ ἔδει ὑπὲρ ἀρετῆς φράζειν· οὐδὲν γὰρ τούτῳ κἀκείνῳ κοινόν.
Comparison of Man to the Kosmos, which has reason, but no emotion, is unnecessary and confusing.