The Socratic Turn. Dustin Sebell
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thus replaces the account of his disappointment with natural science that we had expected would be renewed after his digression. And one is tempted to wonder, in view of this substitution, whether the two accounts are connected in some way. Assuming that the young Socrates’ disappointment with natural science was due to an increased awareness on his part that it was exposed to a deep-seated difficulty, the hope or hopes subsequently aroused in him by Anaxagoras’ teaching might have stemmed from his impression that that teaching in particular was especially well suited to overcome or resolve it.2 In that case, the account of what he hoped to learn from Anaxagoras would cast light on the substance of the difficulty responsible for his disappointment with natural science. Combined with the glimpse into the matter afforded by Socrates’ second statement, that account might suffice to reconstruct in all essentials the “sufficient proof” we are not permitted to hear first hand in its entirety.
The Problem of “Matter”
In his second statement, Socrates cites four examples of things he no longer (96e6–7, 97b1–6) supposes he knows, but which he supposed he knew before, when he was young. He thereby adds to his account of human growth four more illustrations of “what,” in his opinion and in the opinion of the other natural scientists, “[he] clearly knew before” or “what [he] supposed [he] knew before,” but later on, as a result of being blinded, unlearned (96c3–7). First, the young Socrates supposed that whenever some big human being should appear standing beside a small one, the former is bigger by virtue of a head—or rather, “by the head itself.”3 Second, he supposed that whenever a big horse should appear standing beside a small one, the former, too, is bigger by virtue of “the head itself.” Third, it seemed to him that ten is more than eight “through” two being added to the latter. Fourth, it seemed to him that two cubits is more than one cubit “through” exceeding the latter by half of itself. These examples are not as strange as they seem—in fact, as we will see, they are not strange at all.4
According to the first of his examples, it seemed to the young Socrates that a big human being is bigger than a small one by virtue of “the head itself.” This is an account of the way of being of a human being—or of a human being’s bigness, one of a human being’s characteristics—in terms of its materials or elements. For the human being is here conceived of as a compound, made out of parts, whose way of being (or bigness) in relation to another human being can be traced to what, or how many, materials or elements it consists of.5 And Socrates’ second example takes “the head itself” as a part, like his first, but with the difference that the head in question is that of a horse, not a human being, and what is made out of it is, similarly, the way of being (or bigness) that belongs to each of a pair of horses, not human beings. Taken together, Socrates’ first two examples encourage us to notice that the head of a horse and that of a human being, however different from one another they may be in some respects, are the same in others, insofar as both of them are still heads. He therefore suggests, not least by his otherwise inexplicable use of the phrase “the head itself,” that there is a distinction between what is always the same about a head insofar as it is a head, and thus what is shared by each and every head as a head (whether a horse’s or a human being’s), on one hand, and what about the head admits of change or modification, on the other. To begin to make sense of this distinction, and of the role it plays here, it is necessary to bear in mind that, as the context shows, it is meant to be applied not so much to heads per se as to heads conceived of as materials or elements. For one is led by this to wonder, next, whether this distinction, between what is and is not subject to change or modification, is not somehow applicable to materials or elements as such.
As we saw, what the natural scientists primarily seek to account for is each thing’s way of being, or its characteristics and powers. And these things, whose causes they then sought to grasp, are in motion or subject to change. Socrates has already singled out human beings and horses for their changeability (78d10). But if the things natural science is concerned to account for are changeable or perishable, must not their cause or causes be perishable as well, at least in part? To leave it at saying, as we have so far, that the material sought by the natural scientists is simply imperishable or unchangeable will not suffice; it is necessary to add that this material, too, admits of change or modification in some respects, even as it remains always the same in others.6 For otherwise, if it did not change, it would not be able to bring about the things, and the changes in the things, as they are already known to us. But does not the presence of change in that material itself also threaten to destabilize what, of all things, the natural scientists had regarded as altogether stable?
The young Socrates’ lack of awareness of this difficulty—of, in short, the need to ascribe change to what alone, as it seemed to him and the others engaged in natural science, needed to be wholly free from it—is suggested by his appeal to “the head itself” as the material or element of both a human being and a horse. For by having recourse in this way to “the head itself” (in contrast to the head of a human being and to that of a horse, as the case may be) the young Socrates appealed exclusively to what, about the head, is unchangeable. That is, he neglected to appeal in addition or instead to what about the head is subject to change or modification. But a human being could not come to be unless its materials or elements—let us say, in place of “the head itself,” the atoms—undergo some change or modification. Nor could a horse come to be out of those same atoms, unless they undergo a different change or modification. As his appeal to “the head itself” goes to show, however, the young Socrates combined the thought that the fundamental material is what causes all things, such as human beings and horses, with the inconsistent thought that it is itself altogether unchangeable or imperishable. Evidently, he neglected to distinguish clearly between what does and what does not admit of change or modification in the material that, he believed, gives rise to each of the things. And, by blurring this distinction, the young Socrates was led to combine efficacy and stability such that the appeal to matter could seemingly at least satisfy both needs at once.
A clear-sighted recognition of this distinction would, on the other hand, call into question the intelligibility that was, as it seemed to the young Socrates, integral to the fundamental matter. In so doing, it would constitute a challenge to one of the two central assumptions on which natural science depends: that “an Atlas” can be discovered or known. For that recognition would have forced the young Socrates to ask, next, what further cause gives rise to—and, in giving rise to, places limits on—the changes or motions to which that material is subject. The changes in that material cannot be limited or fixed as the changes in what is made out of it may be: by virtue of its materials or elements, that is. By definition, that material has none. But what, then, is the source of (its) motion or change? “Through what does this come about, and what is the cause?” (Aristotle Metaphysics 984a21).
With this question, the natural scientists’ search for “an Atlas” comes full circle.7 Carried by its own inner momentum, it has found itself face to face with the very same difficulty that at the outset led the young Socrates, in his account of human growth, to reduce flesh and bone—and, indeed, all things—to some “truly elemental, altogether simple material.” That “truly elemental, altogether simple material” has itself succumbed to the difficulty it was called upon, as a last resort, to dispose of. But to escape from it now is impossible (Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed II.19). With the source of (its) motion or change shrouded in such darkness as this, it cannot be known that, much less what, the fundamental material always is. And so is not the world—whose “cause,” to put it loosely, it is—as unreceptive to the human desire to know as it is reassuring to those who, in keeping with the alternative Hesiod represents, do not so much wish to know as to wonder and hope?
The natural scientists’ assumption or belief that they will “at some time” reach their objective (99c4)—their confidence, that is, in their enterprise as a whole—is sustainable only to the extent that they conceive it confusedly. Their ignorance of their objective lies at the bottom of the vacillation or wavering to which, as we have already seen, they are liable in regard to the nature of the material they seek.
The Primacy of Form
So far Socrates’ second statement has shown that in order to bring about the things, and the