14 June 2005 This is intended to he a literal translation. My goal --unattained -- was the accuracy of William of Moerbeke's Latin translations of Aristotle. These versions are so faithful to Aristotle's text that they are authorities for the correction of the Greek manuscripts, and Aquinas Jo become a supreme interpreter of Aristotle without knowing , -. Q^ - - • — , ——— — - •——-».....— ^ Such a translation is intended to be useful to the serious student, the one who wishes and is able to arrive at his own understanding of the work. He must be emancipated from the tyranny of the translator, given the means of transcending the limitations of the translator's interpretation, enabled to discover the subtleties of the elusive original. The only way to provide the reader with this independence is by a slavish, even if sometimes cumbersome, literalness — insofar as possible always using the same English equivalent for the same: Greek word. Thus the little difficulties which add up to major discoveries become evident to, or at least are not hidden from, the careful student. The translator should conceive of himself as a medium between a master whose depths he has not plumbed and an jmdienee of potential students of r *~ that master who may be nlu^^J^i^a^-endow(•d_th^llJ^tlle__trallsiatDX. f^. His greatest vice is to believe he has adequately grasped the teaching of his author. It is least of all his function to render the work palatable to those who do not wish, or are unable, to expend the effort requisite to '.IniU nl ilillii nil li vis Noi '.lioiild lie li\ In make .in am n nl modi iiiui'Jil '.omul i i iiilcinpoi ,11 \ Sin li 11 translations bee •onie less useful ilion r. p.inl lo the |e\l. \l llie very least, one call '.ay thai .1 necessary supplement lo more felicitous icndi .IS liloie ,ill( a literal 11 .inslal mil lions \\lncli deviate widely from their original. llie dillcieiiee Iroin age to age in the notions of the translator's responsibility is m ilsell a chapter of intellectual history. Certainly the populai i/.il ion ol llic classics is one part of that chapter. But there seem to be two major causes for the current distaste for literal translations, one rooted in the historical science of our time, the other rooted in a specific, and I believe erroneous, view of the character of Platonic books. The modern historical consciousness has engendered a general scepticism about the truth of all "world views," except for that one- of which it is itself a product. There seems to be' an opinion that the' thought of llie past is immediately accessible te) us, that, although we may not accept it, we at least understand it. We' apply the tools of our science to the past without reflecting that those tools are also historically limited. We do not sufficiently realize that the only true historical objectivity is to understand the ancient authors as they understood themselves; and we are' loath to assume' that perhaps they may lie able to ciiliei/c our framework and our methods. We should, rather, try to sec our historical science in the perspective of their teachings rather than llic other way around. Most of all, we must accept, at least tentatively, the claim of the older thinkers that the truth is potentially attainable by the efforts ol unaided human reason at all times and in all places. If we begin by denying the fundamental contention of men like Plato and Aristotle, they are refuted for us from the outset, not by any immanent ciilicism but by our unreflecting acceptance of the' self-contradictory principle that all thought is related to a specific age and has no grasp of icalily beyond that age. On this basis, it is impossible te> take them seriously. One often suspects that this is what is lacking in many translations: they are not animated by the passion for the truth; they aie ically the results of elegant trilling. William of Moerbcke was motivated by the concern that he might miss the most important counsels about the most important things, counsels emanating from a man wiser than he. His knowledge of the world and his way of life, nay, his very happiness, depended on the success of his quest to get at Aristotle's ica! meaning. Today men do not generally believe so much is at stake in their '.Indies of classic thinkers, and there is an inclination to smile at naive M liola'.lie icverencc for antiquity. But that smile shoidd fade when it is i call/ed 111.11 11 us ',i 11'.i ul si i pc i loi il\ is merelv the pel se\ ei at ion nl the cDiilidcni i . •,( i \\ nlespie.id in the niiicleeiilli century, ihal science had readied .1 |>l.ile.in ovei looking broader and more comprehensible hoi i /.ons than those previonsly known, a confidence that our intellectual progress could suffer no reverse. This confidence has almost vanished; few scholars believe that our perspective is the authoritative one any longer; but much scholarship still clings to the habits which grew up in the shadow of that conviction. However, if that is not a justified conviction, if we are really at sea so far as the truth of things goes, then our most evident categories are questionable, and we do not even know whether we understand the simplest questions Plato poses. It then behooves us to rediscover the perspective of the ancient authors, for the sake both of accurate scholarship and of trying to find alternatives to the current mode of understanding things. ft is not usually understood how difficult it is to see the phenomena as they were seen by the older writers. It is one of the most awesome undertakings of the mind, for we have divided the world up differently, and willy-nilly we apply oiir terms, and hence the thoughts behind them, to the things discussed. It is always the most popular and questionable terms of our own age that seem most natural; it is virtually impossible to speak without using them. For example, H. D. P. Lee, in describing his view of a translator's responsibility, says, "The translator must go behind what Plato said and discover what he means, and if, for example, he says 'examining the beautiful and the good' must not hesitate to render this as 'discussing moral values' if that is in fact the way in which the same thought would be expressed today." (The Republic [London: Penguin, 1956], p. 48.) But if one hurries too quickly "behind" Plato's speech, one loses the sense of the surface. Lee shares with Cornford and many other translators the assurance that they have a sufficient understanding of Plato's meaning, and that that meaning is pretty much the kind of thing Englishmen or Americans already think. However, it might be more prudent to let the reader decide whether "the beautiful and the good" are simply equivalent to "moral values." If they are the same, he will soon enough find out. And if they are not, as may be the case, he will not be prevented from finding that out and thereby putting his own opinions to the test. In fact "values," in this sense, is a usage of German origin popularized by sociologists in the last seventy-five years. Implicit in this usage is the distinction between "facts and values" and the consequence that ends or goals are not based on facts but are mere individual subjective preferences or, at most, ideal creations of the' human spirit. \\ helhei the lian-.laloi nilends il in not. the word 'value-, confines up a SCMC-, ol llioii|vhl'. which ale alien to I'lato. Every school child knows I hat value-, aie ielali\e. and thus that the Plato who seems to derive them horn lael-,. m heal them as fads themselves, is unsophisticated. When the case is piejiidged lor him in this way, how could the student ever find out that there was once another way of looking at these (lungs I hat had some plausibility? The text becomes a mirror in which he sees only himself. Or, as Nietzsche put it, the scholars dig up what they themselves buried. Kven il Plato is wrong, the pre-history of our current wisdom is still of some importance so that the inadequacies of the traditional leaching, which necessitated its replacement, may become clear. Similarly, the word "moral" is inappropriate. It is questionable whether Plato had a "moral philosophy." There is a teaching about the virtues, some of which find their roots in the city, some in philosophy. Hul in I'lato there are no moral virtues, as we find them first described in Aristotle's Ethics. This is a subtle question, one that requires long study, but one that leads to the heart of the difference between Plato and Aristotle, and beyond to the whole dispute about the status of morality. Thus the translator hides another issue. And even if "the beaut ilul and (he good" do add up to what we mean by morality, it is well that the student should know that for Plato morality is composed ol two elements, one of which lends a certain splendor to it which is lacking in, say, Kantian morality. And it may also be the case that these two elements are not always wholly in harmony. The good or the just need uo( always be beautiful or noble, for example, punishment; and (he beautiful or noble need not always be good or just, for example, Achilles' wrath. There is further matter for reflection here: one might Icaru a great deal if one could follow such problems throughout I'lalo s works. It is only in this way that a student might reconstruct a plausible :md profound Platonic view of the world rather than find the dialogues a compendium of unconvincing platitudes. I''. M. Cornford, whose translation is now the one most widely used, ridicules literal translation and insists that it is often ". . . misleading, or tedious, or grotesque and silly, or pompous and verbose" (/'/(« f(r/mM(K [New York: Oxford University Press, 1956], p. v.). I ilouhl that i( is often misleading, although I admit that it may often luck the beauty of the original. The issue is whether a certain spurious eli.iun loi it is not Plato's charm—is worth the loss of awareness of I'liilo-. problems necessitated by Cornford's notions about translation. II i\ only because he did not see the extent of the loss that he could be sn eu\ aliei wilh ihc original. He made a rather heavy joke at the ex-|ien\e ol an earlier translator: ()ne who opened (iiwell s version ;il 1.1 in Inn i and lighted on I lie stale mi-lit Ml Vl'lll! lli.il (lie lies! guardian lor a mans "virtue" is "philosophy tempi-led with miisie," might run away with ihe idea that m order to avoid irregular relations with women, he had heller play die violin in the intervals of studying metaphysics. There may he some truth in this; but only after reading widely in other parts of the hook would he discover that it was not quite what Plato meant by describing logos, combined with musike, as the only sure safeguard of arete (ibid., p. vi.). But no matter how widely one reads in Cornford's translation, one cannot clarify this sentence or connect it with the -general problems developed throughout the Republic; for the only possible sources of clarification or connection, the original terms, have disappeared and have been replaced by a sentence meaningless in itself and unillumined by the carefully prepared antecedents which were intended to give the thought special significance. Cornford's version reads as follows, ". . . his character is not thoroughly sound, for lack of the only safeguard that can preserve it throughout life, a thoughtful and cultivated mind." A literal rendering would be "'. . . [he is] not pure in his attachment to virtue, having been abandoned by the best guardian . . .' 'What's that?' Adeimantus said. 'Argument [or speech or reason] mixed with music. . . .'" There is no doubt that one can read the sentence as it appears in Cornford without being drawn up short, without being puzzled. But this is only because it says nothing. It uses commonplace terms which have no precise significance; it is the kind of sentence one finds in newspaper editorials. From having been shocking or incomprehensible, Plato becomes boring. There is no food for reflection here. Virtue has become character. But virtue has been a theme from the beginning of the Republic, and it has received a most subtle treatment. As a matter of fact, the whole issue of the book is whether one of the virtues, justice, is choiceworthy in itself or only for its accessory advantages. Socrates in this passage teaches that a man of the Spartan type—the kind of man most reputed for virtue—really does not love virtue for its own sake, but for other advantages following upon it. Secretly he believes money is tridy good. This is the same critique Aristotle makes of Sparta. The question raised here is whether .all vulgar virtue, all nonphilosophic practice of the virtues, is based upon expectation of some kind of further reward or not. None of this would appear from Cornford's version, no matter how hard the student of the text might think about it. He- even suppresses Adeimantus' question so that the entire atmosphere of perplexity disappears. Now, Adeimantus is an admirer of Sparta, and Socrates has been trying to toiled .nnl puilh thai admiialioii Ai Iciiiiaiilus' < jiie',1 I.HI indicates III1. dlllii ull\ in mull r,landing Soci.lies' criticism ol \\li.il lie .ninnies, 11 -,lnn\ •. I um I il lie lie 11.is learned. The dramatic aspect ol I he dialogue is not \\ illiuul Mi'jiilicaiiee. ( iiinliiiil r, undoubtedly right llial virtue no longer means what it used lo mi •.! ii am I ilia I it has lost ils currency. (I lowevcr, if one were I o .is'.cil llial courage, lor example, is a virtue, most contemporaries would have some divination of what one is talking about.) Bill is lliis semhlv ol llie word only an accident? It has been said that it is one of I lie great mysteries ol Western thought "how a word which used to mean the manliness of man has come to mean the chastity of woman." Tins change in significance is the product of a new understanding of the nature of man which began with Machiavelli. (If there were a translation ol Ihc I'rincc which always translated virtu by virtue, the sludcnl who compared it with the Republic would be in a position lo make (lie most exciting of discoveries.) "Freedom" took the place ol "virluc" as the most important term of political discourse, and virlue came to mean social virtue—that is, the disposition which would lead men to be obedient to civil authority and live in peace together rather than the natural perfection of the soul. The man who begins his studies should not be expected to know these things, but llie only tolerable result of learning is that he become aware of Ihem and be able to reflect on which of the alternatives most adequately describes llie human condition. As it now stands, he may well he robbed ol the greatest opportunity for enlightenment afforded l>v the classic literature. A study of the use- of the word "virtue" in llie l{fi>uhlic is by itself most revealing; and when, in addition, its sense is compared in Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, and Rousseau, llie true history of political thought comes to light, and a series ol allernalivcs is presented to the mind. These authors all self-consciously used the same term and in their disagreement were re-Iciring lo the same issues. The reader must be sensitized by the use of the term to a whole ethos in which "virtue" was still a political issue. (iornlord uses safeguard instead of guardian. This is unobjectionable in itself, but guardian is a word (hat has been laden with significance, by what has preceded in (he book. The rulers, in |>arlieiilar those who fight and thus hold the power in the city, have been called guardians since their introduction in Book II. In a sniM- the problem of the Republic was to educate a ruling class which I1. Midi .r, lo possess the characteristics of both the citi/en, who cares '"' l'i-. eoiiiilrv and has the spirit to fight for it, and the philosopher, who r. )',( ulli and cosmopolitan. This is a quasi-impossibility, and it is f (lie leadiiir, llieiue ill tin minims .mil complex (raining JHCSCI ihcd in llir succeediii)', li\c Looks. II (lie et lueal ion docs mil succeed, justice musl In- linidaiiK ulallv compromised vvilli (lie nalurc ol 11 HIM who liold power. In die coulexl under discussion here Socrates is discussing the regimes which have lo be founded on die fundamental compromise because of (lie Hawed character of the guardians'virtues. Regimes depend on men's virtues, not on institutions; if the highest virtues are not present in the rulers, an inferior regime must be instituted. There are no guardians above the guardians; the only guardian of the guardians is a proper education. It is this theme to which the reader's attention must be1 brought. And Socrates tells us something important about that education: it consists of reason but not reason alone. It must be mixed with a non-rational element which tempers the wildness and harshness of both the pro-philosophic and philosophic natures. Reason does not suffice in the formation of the good ruler. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the full bearing of this lesson, but it is of utmost significance. The term music is indeed a difficult one for the modern reader, but there has been a full discussion of it in several passages of the Republic, and any other word would surely be most misleading. And, in fact, the sense we give to music is not totally alien to the understanding Glaueon and Adeimantus had at the start. It is Socrates who transformed their view by concentrating on the speech and its truth while subordinating rhythm and harmony. It is Socrates who ra-tionali/.ed music. Is it not conceivable that the Republic is a book meant for people who are going to read widely in it, and that it would be unfair to cheat them for the sake of the subjective satisfaction of those who pick out sentences aimlessly? Is the- man who comes away from the text with the interpretation feared by Cornford a reader about whom Plato would care? And does the gain in immediate- intelligibility or beauty offset the loss in substance-? Only unawarcness of the problems can account for such a perverse skewing of the emphases. And this was a sentence chosen by Cornford to demonstrate the evident superiority of his procedure! There arc- a whole series of fundamental terms like virtue. Nature and city are but two of the most important which are most often mistranslated. 1 have tried to indicate a number of them in the notes when they first occur. They are translated as they have been by the great authors in the philosophic tradition. Above .ill, I have avoided using terms of recent origin for which it is difficult to find an exact Greek equivalent, inasmuch as they are likely to be the ones which most reflect specifically modern thought. It is, of course, impossible always Ill llansliilc cvciv (.icck wind UI tin same way. Hill llic c). Now, finally, il is baldly stated (hat the only truly just civil society must be founded on a lie. Socrates prefers to face up to llic issue with clarity. A good regime cannot be based on enlightenment; if there is no lie, a number of compromises—among them private property—must be made and hence merely conventional inequalities must be accepted. This is a radical statement about the relationship between truth and justice, one which leads to the paradox that wisdom can rule only in an element dominated by falsehood. It is hardly worth obscuring this issue for the sake of avoiding the crudest of misunderstandings. And perhaps the peculiarly modern phenomenon of propaganda might become clearer to the man who sees that it is somehow related to a certain myth of enlightenment which is itself brought into question by the Platonic analysis. Beyond the general problems affecting the translation of all Greek and Latin texts, the Platonic dialogues present a particular difficulty. It is not too hard to find acceptable versions of Aristotle's treatises. This is because they are not entirely unlike modern books. There is, on the other hand, frequently a lack of clarity about the purposes of the dialogue form. Plato is commonly understood to have had a teaching like that of Aristotle and to have enclosed it in a sweet coating designed to perform certain didactic or artistic functions but which must be stripped away to get to the philosophic core. We then have Plato the poet and Plato the philosopher, two beings rolled into one and coexisting in an uneasy harmony. This is the fatal error which leads to the distinction between form and substance. The student of philosophy then takes one part of the dialogue as his special domain and the student of literature another as his; the translator follows suit, using great license in the bulk of the book and reverting to a care appropriate to Aristotle when philosophy appears to enter. Cornford, as in all other things, expresses the current tendency in a radical form. He cuts out many of the exchanges of the interlocutors and suppresses entire arguments which do not seem to him to contribute to the movement of the dialogue. Although he claims his wish is to fulfill Plato's intentions in a modern context, he finally confesses that "the convention of question and answer becomes formal and frequently tedious. Plato himself came near to abandoning it in his latest work, the Laws . . ." (ibid., p. vii). Cornford thus improves on Plato, correcting him in what he believes to be the proper direction. He thinks the dialogue form is only a convention, and, when it fatigues him, he abandons it. It is at precisely this point thai one should begin to ask whether we understand what a dialogue really is. It is neither poetry nor phllosophs . il I-. something, ol bolli bnl il is il.srll and mil a nine i inn lillialion ill Ihr Iwo The liii I Ilial somrl imrs il dors mil mrel ihe slaii •laid1, nl Ihe di,mi.ilii ail reveals ihe same thing as llir lad that somd imrs ihe aigiimenl.s are mil up lo Ihe standards of philosophical ngoi: I'lalos inlenlion is different from that of ihe pod or the plulosopliri as wr understand llirm. To rail llir dialogue a convention Is to hide llir problem. I'erhaps this very tedium of which (,'ornlord complains is (he Icsl which I'lato gives to Ihe potential philosopher lo see whether he is capable of overcoming the charm of external form; lor a harsh concentration on often ugly detail is requisite to die philosophic enterprise. It is the concentration on beauty to the detri menl ol Irulli which constitutes the core of his critique of poetry, just as Ihe indilfereiicc to forms, and hence to man, constitutes the core of his criticism of prc-Socratic philosophy. The dialogue is the synthesis of Ihese Iwo poles and is an organic unity. Every argument must be interpreted dramatically, for every argument is incomplete in itself and only the context can supply the missing links. And every dramatic detail must be interpreted philosophically, because these details contain the images ol Ihe problems which complete the arguments. Separately Ihese two aspects are meaningless; together they are an invitation to the philosophic (|iirs'l. < ,'ornlord cites the Laivs as proof that Plato gradually mended his ways; I bus he has a certain Platonic justification for his changes in the text, liul Ihe difference in form between the Republic and the Laws is mil a rrsull of Halo's old age having taught him the defects of his mannered drama, as Cornford would have it, or its having caused him to lose his dramatic Hair, as others assert. Rather the difference reflects Ihr differences in the participants in the dialogues and thereby the dif-lereiice of intention of the Iwo works. This is just one example of what is typical of every part of the Platonic works. By way of the drama one comes lo (he profoundest issues. In the Republic Socrates discusses the ideal regime, a regime which can never be actualized, with two young men of some theoretical gifts whom he tries to convert from the life of political ambition to one in which philosophy plays a role. He must prisiiadr them; every step of the argument is directed to their par-lirnlai opinions and characters. Their reasoned assent is crucial to the whole process. The points at which they object to Socrates' reasoning air always most important, and so are the points when they assent when they should not. Each of the exchanges reveals something, even when the responses seem most uninteresting. In the Laws the Athenian Sliaiigri engages iii the narrower task of prescribing a code of laws for ti pnv.ihlr but interior regime. His interlocutors are old men who have no lliroirlir.il gill1, m oprnnrss. llir Sliangri talks lo llirm mil loi llir rnd nl ,m\ rum rt MIIII bill only brraiisr our ol llirm has llir puliliral power llir Sliangri larks. The purpose of his rhetoric is to make his two companions receptive to this unusual code. The Stranger must have the consent of the other two to operate his reforms of existing orders. Their particular prejudices must be overcome, but not by true persuasion of the truth; the new teaching must be made to appear to be in accord with their ancestrally hallowed opinions. Important concessions must be made to those opinions, since they are inalterable. The discussions indicate such difficulties and are preliminary to the essential act of lawgiving. Laws by their nature have the character of monologue rather than dialogue, and they are not supposed to discuss or be discussed; thus the presentation of the laws tends to be interrupted less. The strength and weakness of law lies in the fact that it is the polar opposite of philosophic discussion. The intention of a dialogue is the cause of its form, and that intention comes to light only to those who reflect on its form. ______ I The Platonic dialogues do not present a doctrine; they prepare the / way for philosophi/.ing. They are intended to perform the function of a j I living teacher who makes his students think, who knows which ones / / should be led further and which ones should be kept away from the / I- mysteries, and who makes them exercise the same faculties and virtues j in studying his words as they would have to use in studying nature independently. One must philosophize to understand them. There is a Platonic teaching, but it is no more to be found in any of the speeches than is the thought of Shakespeare to be found in the utterances of any particular character. That thought is in none of the parts but is somehow in the whole, and the process of arriving at it is more subtle than that involved in reading a treatise. One must look at the microcosm of the drama just as one would look at the macrocosm of the world which it icpresents. Every detail of lhat world is an effect of the underlying causes which can be grasped only by the mind but which can be unearthed only by using all the senses as well. Those causes are truly known only when they are come lo by way of the fullest consciousness of the world which they cause. Otherwise one does not know what to look for nor ean one know the full power of the causes. A teaching which gives only the principles remains abstract and is mere dogma, for the student himself does not know what the principles explain nor does he know enough of the world to be sure that their explanations are anything more (ban partial. It is this rich consciousness of the phenomena on which the dialogues insist, and they themselves provide a training in it. The human world is characterized by the distinction between speech and deed, and we all recognize that in order to understand a man or what he says both aspects must be taken into account. Just as no action of a man can be interpreted without hearing what he says about it himself, no speech can be accepted on its face value without comparing it to the actions of its author. The understanding of the man and his speeches is a result of a combination of the two perspectives. Thrasymachus' blush is as important as any of his theoretical arguments. A student who has on his own pieced together the nature of the rhetorician on the basis of his representation in the Republic has grasped his nature with a sureness grounded on a perception of the universal seen through the particular. This is his own insight, and he knows it more authentically and surely than someone who has been given a definition. This joins the concreteness of I'esprit de finesse to the science of fesprit de geometrie; it avoids the pitfalls of particularistic sensitivity, on the one hand, and abstractness on the other. Poet and scientist becomeone, for the talents of both are necessary to the attainment of the only end—the truth. The Platonic dialogues are a representation of the world; they are a cosmos in themselves. To interpret them, they must be approached as one would approach the world, bringing with one all one's powers. The only difference between the dialogues and the world is that the dialogues are so constructed that each part is integrally connected with every other part; there are no meaningless accidents. Plato reproduced the essential world as he saw it. Every word has its place and its meaning, and when one cannot with assurance explain any detail, he can know that his understanding is incomplete. When something seems boring or has to be explained away as a convention, it means that the Interpreter has given up and has taken his place among the ranks of those Plato intended to exclude from the center of his thought. It is always that which strikes us as commonplace or absurd which indicates that we are not open to one of the mysteries, for such sentiments are the protective mechanisms which prevent our framework from being shaken. The dialogues are constructed with an almost unbelievable care and subtlety. The drama is everywhere, even in what seem to be the most stock responses or the most purely theoretical disquisitions. In the discussion of the divided line, for example, the particular illustrations chosen fit the nature of Socrates' interlocutor; in order to see the whole problem, the reader must ponder not only the distinction of the kinds of knowing and being but Its particular effect on Glaucon and what Socrates might have said to another man/One is never allowed to sit and *o£'