Plato’s Letter VII:Metaphor, etc.*

Simon P. Oswitch

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*Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation.1

An appendix being a marginal text, an addition—a supplement—it would appear, under the auspices of analogy, that Plato’s Letter VII as well as the testimony that Prior2

derives from it, is a secondary and belated instance in relation to the primary Platonic canon. An appendix presupposes a distinct, primary body and it is the opposition of primary/secondary which allows for the marginality, for the margin, for the addition. Butwhat of this polarity? What of this opposition? How do they stand, how can they standand be recognized as distinct—as primary/secondary—when the primary presupposes thesecondary and the secondary presupposes the primary. For one to govern the other, the other must, in turn, govern the one; to claim autonomy for the primary member of thedualism is to simultaneously acknowledge its ruled and governed state, its subservience to the other'

And of course, I must address appendicized3 Letter VII, the discussion of which occurs in the appendix of Prior’s text. So let us begin again.

One statement at any rate I can make in regard to all who have written or who may write with a claim to knowledge of the subjects to which I devote myself—no matter how they pretend tohave acquired it, whether from my instruction or from others or by their own discovery, such writers can in my opinion have no realacquaintance with the subject. I certainly have composed no work in regard to it, nor shall I ever do so....4

Plato has never composed, Plato has never written about or claimed knowledge of certain subjects. How can it be that Plato has never written about the issues to whichhe has devoted himself? Should we take seriously the viewpoint of Letter II which emphatically stresses the same idea?

It is impossible for what is written not to be disclosed. That is the reason why I have never written anything about these things and

1 Aristotle, Poetics, 4, 1448b, trans. Ingram Bywater in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (Random House, 1941), p. 1457.2 This write-up was in response to the Letter VII discussion appendicized in William J. Prior’s Unity and Development in Plato's Metaphysics (Open Court Publishing Company, 1985). It was presented at a graduate seminar on Plato’s metaphysics in 1986.3 Plato’s letters, as well as the Eponomis and Greater Hippias, are included “for the convenience of the reader” in the appendix of the Huntington-Cairns edition of Plato; this placement was due to the longstanding controversies over their authenticity. See The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 1515 ff.4 Plato, Letter VII, 341c, trans. L.A. Post in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 1588-1589.

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why there is not and will not be any written work of Plato’s own. What are now called his are the work of a Socrates embellished and modernized.5

As we will learn, these questions are addressed, as well left unaddressed, by the further testimony of Letter VII.

Acquaintance with it must come rather after a long period of attendance on instruction in the subject itself and of close companionship, when, suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leapingspark it is generated in the soul and at once becomes self-sustaining.6

The evils of writing, the deceptiveness of the written word—its untrustworthiness, its infidelity to its author—is countered by the students “long period of attendance on instruction in the subject” as well as “close companionship” with the teacher of the subjects. From this close proximity, from this elimination of distance(s), knowledge is imparted, “like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark... generated in the soul... self-sustaining.”7

Now, we can begin to observe how the questions are answered, how Plato has not written. Knowledge is like something else knowledge—it is “like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark....” Knowledge is not the blaze and spark, rather, it is like a blaze and spark—we can only describe knowledge metaphorically, non-literally. But how wouldthis function? How can/does the non-metaphorical (knowledge) relate to the metaphorical (description of knowledge)? Is the relation itself metaphorical or non-metaphorical? Knowledge, being like something else, would appear bound to metaphor (metaphorically) for descriptive purposes. Metaphor becomes the necessary link between knowledge and description of that knowledge; for the non-scholar, the uninitiated, knowledge becomes metaphor—knowledge is only understandable metaphorically; thus, the distinction between the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical is etched out and crossed over.

However, for the learner, the matter is different—ultimately entirely different. For great periods of time, the pupil studies the subject matter with the teacher. Because the true object of the subject material cannot be “put into words” the student is forced to study what can be put into words—the metaphorical—for there is no other way to study the subject except via language—be that written and/or spoken. Ultimately, however, knowledge is “generated in the soul and at once becomes self-sustaining.” The metaphorical eventually culminates in the self-sustaining non-metaphorical: self-present knowledge ultimately stands above and beyond the metaphorical because it has been “generated in the soul” of the student.

5 Plato, Letter II, 314bc, trans. L.A. Post in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 1567.6 Letter VII, 341cd, Hamilton, op. cit., pp. 1588-1589.7 Ibid., 341d, p. 1589.

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And yet what are these things referred to as “soul” and “mind” if not metaphors themselves?8 Seeing that the word “soul” and “mind” represent or refer to non-present entities, the relationship between the word and the entity (the signifier and the signified) is (and can only be) metaphorical. The words re-present and point away from themselves to other words (definitions, descriptions, enumerations, characteristics) while still yet other words refer to them. Such is the nature of language, such is the nature of alllanguage. Languages are complex networks of signs (words) which can only refer to other signs (which, in turn, ad infinitum). There isn’t a concept which stands outside of this networking, as is always presupposed in writing/speaking. Writing/speaking are the network, writing/speaking are language.

However, Western metaphysical assumptions about language (and correspondingly, meaning) attempt to work in the opposite directions. Western thought has always beenstructured in terms of polarities or dichotomies; such oppositions as good vs. evil, subject vs. object, presence vs. absence, being vs. nothingness, soul vs. body identify vs. difference, mind vs. matter, man vs. woman, life vs. death, speech vs. writing, and, of course, truth vs. error, are among the most common. These oppositions are not viewed as being independent or equal, but rather the secondary term is considered the negative, undesirable, and even corrupt version of the primary; that is, absence is the lack of presence, evil is a fall away from good, error is a distortion of truth. The term given the metaphysical privilege of first-ordered ranking, hierarchically governs the secondary term, thus privileging identity, immediacy, and spatial/temporal presentness over deferral, difference, and distance.9

Obviously, the Platonic dualism, the Platonic metaphors in 341c of Letter VIIother instances, epitomizes this aforementioned metaphysical viewpoint.

And now back to Plato (as if we ever really left him). Plato, the non-writer, writes:

For everything that exists there are three classes of objects through which knowledge about it must come; the knowledge is itself a fourth, and we must put as a fifth entity the actual object of knowledge which is the true reality. We have then, first, a name, second, a description, third an image, and fourth, a knowledge of the object.10

In this instance it would appear that language is absolutely essential if one wishes to arrive at true knowledge of an object: “(f)or if in the case of any of those a man does not somehow or other get hold of the first four he will never gain a complete understandingof the fifth”11

8 “Soul,” translated from “psukhē” (“breathe” in Greek), is itself metonymic because this particular quality is used to represent all of ‘life’ (physical, mental).9 This discussion was mostly drawn from Barbara Johnson’s introduction to Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination (Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, University of Chicago Press, 1981) p. viii.10 Letter VII, 342b, Hamilton, op. cit., p. 1589.11 Ibid., 342e, p. 1590.

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This epistemological model presupposes and assumes that names and descriptions—that language—is/are able to lead us to knowledge: “(f)urthermore, these four (names, descriptions, bodily forms, concepts ) do as much to illustrate the particular of any objectas they do to illustrate its essential reality...”12

However, we then learn that the four components of the epistemological model illustrate the particular, as well as the essential, “because of the inadequacy of language.”13 How can this be? How can the inadequate illustrate the particular, let alone the essential? How will the inadequate—that which is necessary to proffer understanding (342e)—perform its crucial task? It doesn’t appear that we receive an answer to this discrepancy; what Plato does is reiterate 341c: “(h)ence no intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.”14

What we have again is a hierarchical opposition between the real and the unreal, between the metaphorical (the four part linguistic model) and the non-metaphorical (that contemplated via reason). As Plato says, in reference to the example of the circle:“(e)very circle that is drawn or turned on a lathe in actual operations abounds in the opposite of the fifth entity, for it everywhere touches the straight, while the real circle, I maintain, contains in itself neither much nor little of the opposite character.”15 And now, in a manner similar to 341c, a further and more specific attack upon the nature of language: “(n)ames, I maintain, are in no case stable. Nothing prevents the things that arenow called round from being called straight and the straight round, and those who have transposed the names and use them in the opposite way will find them no less stable thanthey are now.”16 But then, in 344b (again reiterating 341c), we discover the need for“constant practice” in determining “what is false and true of existence in general.” The metaphorical (“names, descriptions, visual and other sense perceptions”) are”scrutinized... by the use of question and answer...” and result in a “… flash of understanding... the mind... is flooded with light.”17

At this point, where we have learned that metaphor is crucially important, but simultaneously unstable and not at all trustworthy, Plato gives us a kind of answer to this disparity:

For this reason no serious man will ever think of writing about serious realities for the general public so as to make them a prey to envy and perplexity. In a word, it is an inevitable conclusion from this that when anyone sees anywhere the written work of anyone, whether that of a lawgiver in his laws or whatever it may be in some other form, the subject treated cannot have been his most

12 Ibid., 342e, p. 1590.13 Ibid., 342e-343a, p. 1590.14 Ibid., 343a, p. 1590.15 Ibid., 343b, p. 1590.16 Ibid., 343b, p. 1590.17 Ibid., 344b, p. 1591.

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serious concern—that is, if he himself is a serious man. His most serious interests have their abode somewhere in the noblest region of the field of his activity. If, however, he really was seriously concerned with these matters and put them in writing, ‘then surelynot the gods, but mortals have utterly blasted his wits.’18

And yet this answer isn’t an answer at all; the entire Platonic canon (in whatever context privileged) is written, is composed of writing and still yet engenders more writing. What is “Plato” but a name, a word—ultimately a metaphor—always a metaphor. Does not the aforementioned concession to metaphor (re)affirm this? “‘Then surely not the gods, but mortals have utterly blasted his wits’?”19

18 Ibid., 344cd, p. 1590.19 Ibid., 344cd, p. 1590. Plato inverts a quotation that appears twice in Homer’s Iliad (7.360 and 12.234) where Paris and Hektor reply, respectively, to Antenor and Poulydamas, that the gods have “blasted their wits” due to the former’s insistence on returning Helen “to the sons of Atreus” and the latter not wanting to fight the “Danaans” (Greeks) by ship.

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Bibliography

Aristotle, Poetics. Translated by Ingram Bywater in The Basic Works of Aristotle. Edited by Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941.

Johnson, Barbara. Introduction to Dissemination, by Jacques Derrida, vii-xxxiii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Homer, The Iliad. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.

Plato, Letter VII. Translated by L.A. Post in The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Bollingen Series LXXI. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Prior, William J. Unity and Development in Plato's Metaphysics. La Salle: OpenCourt Publishing Company, 1985.