Notes and Comments on Phaedo -- 34

16 September 2023

Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 34

Continuing with my series on Phaedo, I am using the Harold North Fowler translation published by the Loeb Classical Library:

“Echecrates:  ‘By Zeus, Phaedo, they were right.  It seems to me that he made those matters astonishingly clear, to anyone with even a little sense.’

“Phaedo:  ‘Certainly, Echecrates, and all who were there thought so, too.’

“Echecrates:  ‘And so do we who were not there, and are hearing about it now.  But what was said after that?’

“Phaedo:  ‘As I remember it, after all this had been submitted, and they had agreed that each of the abstract qualities exists and that other things which participate in these get there names from them, then Socrates asked: “Now if you assent to this, do you not, when you say that Simmias is greater than Socrates and smaller than Phaedo, say that there is in Simmias greatness and smallness?’

“’Yes.’

“’But,’ said Socrates, ‘you agree that the statement that Simmias is greater than Socrates is not true as stated in those words.  For Simmias is not greater than Socrates by reason of being Simmias, but by reason of the greatness he happens to have; nor is he greater than Socrates because Socrates is Socrates, but because Socrates has smallness relatively to his greatness.’

“’True.’

“’And again, he is not smaller than Phaedo because Phaedo is Phaedo, but because Phaedo has greatness relatively to Simmias’s smallness.’

“’That is true.’

“’Then Simmias is called small and great, when he is between the two, surpassing the smallness of the one by exceeding him in height, and granting to the other the greatness that exceeds his own smallness.’  And he laughed and said, ‘I seem to be speaking like a legal document, but it really is very much as I say.’

“Simmias agreed.

“’I am speaking so because I want you to agree with me.  I think it is evident not only that greatness itself will never be great and also small, but that the greatness in us will never admit the small or allow itself to be exceeded.  One of two things must take place: either it flees or withdraws when its opposite, smallness, advances toward it, or it has already ceased to exist by the time smallness comes near it.  But it will not receive and admit smallness, thereby becoming other than it was.  So I have received and admitted smallness and am still the same small person I was; but the greatness in me, being great, has not suffered itself to become small.  In the same way the smallness in us will never become or be great, nor will any other opposite which is still what it was, ever become or be also its own opposite.  It either goes away or loses its existence in the change.’

“’That,’ said Cebes, ‘seems to be quite evident.’

(Fowler, Ibid, pages 349-353, 102A-103A) 

1.  Echecrates and Phaedo step forward in their own voices again.  They are both in awe of the analysis of Socrates; and it is impressive. 

2.  Socrates repeats the paradox about greatness and smallness adhering, or being found, in the same person, depending on what that person is being compared to.  Socrates concludes that greatness will never admit the small, or allow itself to be exceeded.  If this is the case than either it (greatness) flees or withdraws when it opposite, smallness, advances toward it, or it has already ceased to exist by the time smallness comes near it; presumably the cessation of greatness opens up the possibility for smallness to advance.

3.  In some ways this is a repeat of the discussion earlier in the dialogue about heat and cold, and other opposites, and how they mutually generate each other and make way for each other.  But in this instance the opposites, greatness and smallness, are not depicted in terms of mutual generation, rather they are depicted as mutually exclusive of each other.  This point will be brought up shortly, but for now I would suggest that Socrates is speaking to a different purpose and that is how change manifests in the material world.  What I am intuiting is that greatness and smallness ‘yield’ to each other in the material world because they are a unity in the noetic.  What I am getting at is that greatness does not become darkness, and smallness does not become light.  Greatness and smallness, as a pair, are the vehicle whereby change manifests in this realm of differentiation.  And darkness and light are another pair that are unified in the noetic, but differentiated in the material hypostasis.  This is a signal that darkness and light are unified in the noetic dimension and that is why they are a related pair in the material domain.

4.  This connection between opposites is symbolized in the well-known yin/yang mandala where a circle is divided between white and black, with the white having a black dot in it, and the black having a white dot in it.  The circle that contains both fields represents the noetic unity of the pair.  The dots in their respective fields represents the tendency for light to become dark, and for dark to become light because they are noetically unified. 

5.  This is why change is not chaotic; instead certain patterns of change are embedded in process from their unity in the noetic.  This makes scientific investigation of the laws of change possible; it is the noetic origin of opposites, and their noetic unity, that is the basis for the possibility of science.