PHILEBUS. 18

Perception, memory, recollection, and opinion (pp. 34, 38) indicates great progress in psychology; as does the distinction between understanding and imagination, described using the metaphor of the scribe and the painter (p. 39). A superficial notion may arise that Plato probably wrote shorter dialogues, such as the Philebus, the Sophist, and the Politicus, as studies or preparations for longer ones. This view may seem natural, but on further reflection, it is seen to be fallacious, because these three dialogues are found to advance upon the metaphysical conceptions of the Republic. It is easier to suppose that Plato composed shorter writings after longer ones than to suppose that he lost hold of the advanced points of view he had once attained.

It is easier to find traces of the Pythagoreans, Eleatics, Megarians, Cynics, and the ideas of Anaxagoras in the Philebus than to say how much should be ascribed to each. Had we fuller records of those ancient philosophers, we would likely find Plato in the midst of the fray, attempting to combine Eleatic and Pythagorean doctrines and seeking to find a truth beyond either being or number. He sets up his own concrete conception of the good against the abstract practical good of the Cynics or the abstract intellectual good of the Megarians. He posits his own idea of classification against the denial of plurality in unity, which is also attributed to them. He wars against the Eristics Eristics: philosophers who rely on contentious, fallacious arguments as being destructive of truth, just as he had formerly fought against the Sophists. He takes up a middle position between the Cynics and Cyrenaics in his doctrine of pleasure, and asserts with more consistency than Anaxagoras the existence of an intelligent mind and cause. Of the Heracliteans—whom he is said by Aristotle to have studied in his youth—he speaks in the Philebus, as in the Theaetetus and Cratylus, with irony and contempt. But we do not have the knowledge that would enable us to pursue this line of reflection further; nor can we expect to find perfect clarity or order in the first efforts of mankind to understand the workings of their own minds. The ideas they are attempting to analyze, they are also in the process of creating; the abstract universals whose relations they are seeking to adjust have already been excluded by them from the category of relation.

The Philebus, like the Cratylus, is assumed to be a continuation of a previous discussion. An argument regarding the comparative claims of pleasure and wisdom to rank as the chief good has already been initiated.