those frightening men: a new interpretation of plato's battle of gods and giants

© 2012. Epoché, Volume 16, Issue 2 (Spring 2012). ISSN 1085-1968. 217–232

Those Frightening Men: A New Interpretation of Plato’s Battle of Gods and Giants

BRADLEY JAY STRAWSERUniversity of Connecticut

Abstract: In Plato’s Sophist (245e–247e) an argument against metaphysical material-

ism in the “battle of gods and giants” is presented which is oft the cause of consternation,

primarily because it appears the characters are unfair to the materialist position. At-

tempts to explain it usually resort to restructuring the argument while others rearrange

the Sophist entirely to rebuild the argument in a more satisfying form. I propose a dif-

ferent account of the argument that does not rely on a disservice to the materialist nor

restructuring Plato’s argument. I contend, instead, that the argument is enthymematic

in nature, allowing the definitions employed to flow out of the reasoning as originally

presented. Moreover, it suggests that Plato’s idealism was so deeply ingrained that

modern defenses of materialism were not even live options.

Introduction

On a first reading of Plato’s Sophist (245e–247e) it appears that the Eleatic Stranger’s argument against materialism in the “battle of gods and giants” is

far from satisfying, yet Theaetetus, representing the materialist position, quickly submits to the Stranger’s line of reasoning. Several attempts have been made in Sophist literature to explain this prima facie bad argument. Most resort to using the secondary definition of being offered by the Stranger, which only appears after the supposed refutation of materialism’s starting position has occurred. Some even go so far as to reinterpret the Sophist entirely in order to wholly rebuild Plato’s argument in reverse, leaving them with the difficult claim that Plato’s intention was for its restructuring all along. Although the various Sophist commentators each

218 Bradley Jay Strawser

rely to different degrees on the later capacity definition of being, those who try to salvage the Stranger’s argument agree upon at least this much: the order in which Plato presents the reasoning of this argument is backwards.1 Other commentators think the argument is a plain and simple injustice to the materialist position.2 Following either of these approaches to the passage raises questions over why Plato (intentionally, it must be assumed) would have had the dialogue play out in the suggested manner. Such questions are difficult to reconcile with the language of the dialogue itself, which presents itself as giving a straightforward argument.3

I propose a different way of accounting for the argument against the mate-rialists offered by the Stranger that does not rely, as the other accounts do, on a disservice to the materialist position nor upon inserting the definition of being as capacity only supplied after the argument’s conclusion. My interpretation of the Stranger’s argument gives us the agreeable result of the capacity definition actually flowing out of the explicit reasoning, instead of it being a backwards insertion required for validity as is traditionally assumed. My account also explains why Theaetetus found the argument compelling in the first instance. Finally, while any of the explanations proffered may, in fact, be the accurate interpretation of Plato’s intentions in the passage, my approach is a simpler explanation than the other portrayals, requiring less reworking of the original text, and thus would be the best account on (at least) Occamist grounds.

The Argument Against the GiantsAt 245e in the Sophist the Stranger and Theaetetus decide to move from their survey of the long history of the debate over the one and the many and instead look to those “people who discuss the issue in another way.”4 They wish to ap-proach the issue of the real not instead of, but in light of, a different angle which they see borne out of this earlier division. As Cornford suggests, by formulating the issue in this light they are laying the monist versus pluralist debate onto the larger tangible-reality versus unseen-reality debate which gets us to its “genuine significance.”5 Cornford writes, “At this point, then, the superficial way of contrast-ing the physicists with Parmenides according to the ‘precise’ number of real things they recognized, is merged in the really significant contrast between materialist and idealist.”6 So, in shifting to the larger metaphysical debate, we find here a crucial turn in the dialogue as Plato has his characters directly address the very nature of being.

The Stranger calls the perennial debate “a battle of gods and giants” between these two camps. Plato scholars disagree over just who and precisely what debate Plato is referencing. Some think he’s pointing to a debate across all of metaphysics between the broadest possible conceptions of materialism and idealism while others find Plato’s focus to be targeting specific groups within the academic

A New Interpretation of Plato’s Battle of Gods and Giants 219

context in which he was writing.7 Regardless of what Plato’s intended target was, I agree with Cornford that, at least generally, we can view the battle as such: “On the side of the Gods are all who at any time believe that unseen things are the true realities; on the side of the Giants all who at any time believe that the real is nothing but body which they can touch and handle.”8 From this point forward in the dialogue no specific schools are named by Plato. Determining exactly who the giants are and who the gods are can be left alone—so long as the positions are clear and that much seems to be agreed upon by the actors in the dialogue. Several have also made the point that the division between giants and gods here referred to is not necessarily confined only to philosophers, but is a division across all humanity, including the “common man” and his view of reality.9

The Stranger describes the giants as the group that

[d]rags everything down to earth from the heavenly region of the invisible, actually clutching rocks and trees with their hands. When they take hold of all these things they insist that only what offers tangible contact is, since they define being as the same as body. And if any of the others say that something without a body is, they absolutely despise him and won’t listen to him any more.10

And here the two characters’ bias against the giants is clearly shown. Theaetetus’s response to the Stranger’s description is that he has encountered many of these “frightening men.”11 For the purposes of this paper, I will keep my classification of the giants as simple as possible in an attempt to find the thread of the argu-ment given against them. Following the most direct reading, then, I’ll consider the frightening men to be materialists in the most basic sense: for something to be real it must have some tangible body.12

Moving on in the dialogue, next the two agree that to examine the frighten-ing men’s position they should cast it in the best possible light and not resort to straw man characterizations—particularly since they are already each so biased against the position. We’ll see more on this below, but it is critical for a clear un-derstanding of the argument to recognize that the actors explicitly make the point of being fair to their opponents. To this end, Theaetetus consents to represent the materialists in the exchange.

The argument begins with the Stranger asking if the materialists will agree that there is such a thing as a mortal animal and that a mortal animal is an “ensouled” body. In what is a surprising response to many modern readers, Theaetetus agrees to this on behalf of the materialists. So then the Stranger makes the claim more specific: the materialists “are placing soul among the beings.”13 Theaetetus has the materialist position agree again and further agree that a soul can be just or unjust or intelligent or unintelligent. Next, the Stranger argues that if a soul is just, it is so by the “possession and presence of justice” and that if something can be present or absent then certainly it exists. Theaetetus-as-materialist agrees to


this logic. Then, simply by reiterating what is established, or so it appears, the Stranger wraps up the case against a corporeal definition of being: since there are these invisible things (like Justice) that come to exist in souls (which are in-visible bodies), the definition of being as corporeality does not work.14 And here the modern reader should rightly be surprised at this result since no modern materialist would succumb so easily. Thus, the argument as stated is puzzling; something seems amiss in the reasoning.

If we break down the Stranger’s points and Theaetetus’s agreement, the argu-ment appears to run like this:

1. For something to exist, it must have a body. [246d]2. Souls exist (as invisible corporeal bodies). [247a]3. Souls can be just. [247a]4. Hence, souls can “possess” Justice. [247a]5. Since it is something that can be possessed, Justice exists. [247a]6. Therefore, either something can exist without a body or else Justice does

not exist. [247c]

Clearly, it looks as if the step from 5 to the conclusion in 6 is invalid or at least incomplete; thus we have some explaining to do if we are to understand what Plato is after in this passage.

Explanations of the ArgumentTheaetetus’s agreement that the soul is something real prompts John Berry to remark that “we expect a denial, for how in the light of his own criteria can a materialist allow that a soul which he obviously cannot see or touch is ‘some-thing real’—whatever ‘real’ means?”15 Berry eventually explains the surrogate materialist’s agreement to a soul having being as resting on a prior “pre-ontology” unspoken agreement between the Stranger and Theaetetus on a capacity definition for being that is given after the argument’s conclusion (at 247e). Berry is convinced that the characters are working with this capacity definition throughout the en-tire initial refutation of the materialists by the Stranger; hence the argument is ultimately circular, since the capacity definition is a hidden premise. Berry argues that through his deconstruction of the passage we discover this “unique Heideg-gerian hermeneutic circle.”16 Berry finds his deconstruction to be Heideggerian in nature because he thinks it uncovers the characters’ hidden “pre-ontological understanding of being” that they bring to their argument without being aware of it.17 “Though neither the Stranger nor Theaetetus can know it, their startling conclusion that being is nothing but power [capacity], which has confused so many commentators, turns out to be the implicit, presupposed understanding of being that has controlled their inquiry from the outset.”18 And so in explaining the Stranger’s refutation of the materialist corporeality definition of being Berry


claims that they are really using the later capacity definition; “this explicit ontol-ogy [the capacity definition of being],” is “taken for granted by them all along.”19

I shall label as “capacity definition accounts” (CDA) all such approaches which ultimately rely upon, to some extent or other, the later capacity definition of being to explain how we are to understand the line of reasoning used by the Stranger in his refutation of the materialist. These varied accounts all attempt to re-order the way in which Plato lays out the Stranger’s argument and to insert the later defini-tion into the original reasoning. For it is only after Theaetetus has the materialist camp agree that their corporeal definition of being has run into problems (after 6 from the argument outline above), that the Stranger then offers the capacity definition of being as an alternative definition that the giants could use instead of their now refuted body-based definition. As the Stranger says, “I’m saying that a thing really is if it has any capacity at all, either by nature to do something to something else or to have even the smallest thing done to it by even the most trivial thing… I’ll take it as a definition that those which are amount to nothing other than capacity.”20

Berry’s approach to incorporating the capacity definition back into the original argument via his restructuring of the entire passage is perhaps the most extreme CDA attempt at explaining the Stranger’s argument. Yet we see other readers use tactics in a similar vein in dealing with the troubling argument. In light of Berry’s comments, we shouldn’t be surprised to see that Martin Heidegger’s own commentary on the passage in question reveals a CDA line of thinking in his explanation of the argument. Heidegger writes, “If they [the Stranger and The-aetetus] attempt to understand the ontological interpretation of their opponents [the materialists] on the basis of the meaning they themselves give to Being, they will say that what the others maintain as being is nothing else than ‘becoming,’ a becoming that possesses the character of change of place in the broadest sense of movement.”21 Heidegger maintains from the outset that any interpretation of the argument must be examined through seeing the Stranger and Theaetetus as unable to overcome their initial bias; and that they will end up at a capacity defi-nition no matter what line is taken in the argument. But further, after Heidegger asks what relation the original materialists’ corporeality definition of being could have to “something else” in all cases, he responds for them, “It is something or other through the possibility of its presence in relation to something else that is. Being thus means here: to be capable of presence with something.”22 So Heidegger has taken the capacity definition given after the argument and inserted it into the materialist’s original corporeality definition (because he thinks it is latent in their “pre-ontology” understanding.) This recasting of the materialist original position in terms of the later capacity definition agrees with Berry in a hard-line CDA re-interpretation of the argument.


Cornford is another Plato scholar who similarly follows a CDA-style approach to the difficult argument. Cornford sees the reasoning as I’ve laid it out in 1 through 6 above and says that the materialists are “brought some of the way towards the full admission that not merely the justice residing in an individual soul, but Justice itself, is real.”23 But Cornford finds that the definition of being via capacity simply emerges from the argument; he does not clarify how the argument can be made valid without it. Thus, it seems that Cornford looks to the capacity definition of being as part of the argument against the tangible definition of being. In fact, Cornford may even go as far as Berry in asserting that the capacity definition was somehow originally in the discussion prior to its introduction after the argument’s conclusion. We see this when Cornford writes, “the materialist’s war-rant for believing in the reality of tangible body is simply that it has the power [capacity] of affecting his sense of touch.”24 But, of course, the materialist wasn’t using the capacity definition as part of his original position of corporeality—it is only offered as another definition the giants could employ after their original position was supposedly refuted. Cornford’s combination of the capacity defini-tion with the corporeal starting definition suggests his interpretation falls along CDA lines. This much is clear: Cornford doesn’t attempt to explain the fallacious move from 5 to 6 in the argument.

It is important to note that although both Berry and Cornford more or less rely on the later capacity definition for the argument’s resolution (as they see it) their positions on the argument’s cogency are quite separate. It is not clear whether Cornford would agree that the reliance on the capacity definition makes the reasoning circular, for he seems to think it is born out of the argument itself and not a hidden presupposition as Berry makes it out to be.

A. E. Taylor takes a primarily CDA approach to the Stranger’s argument against the materialists. Rather than seeing a refutation of the materialists’ first definition (corporeality) and then them move to the second definition (capacity), however, he finds that the actors are actually combining the definitions from the begin-ning. He writes that “even the corporealist needs two terms in which to express himself.”25 Taylor contends that the materialists are recognizing not only bodies in their ontology but also a kind which act upon them. He thinks the material-ist recognize this in the capacity definition that is only made explicit after the argument. But we also see Taylor discuss the argument in terms of Theaetetus not adequately defending the materialists. Thus, in some aspects Taylor employs a CDA approach while he also has some hints of following a different method to interpret the passage similar to that used by Stanley Rosen, as discussed below.

Rosen, and some other scholars, offer an alternative to the CDAs to explain the passage.26 Namely, rather than contort the passage to produce a good argu-ment by inserting the later capacity definition, let us simply allow that the actors are unfair to the materialists and have them accept propositions they would


not. I call accounts of this nature “straw man accounts” (SMA) for they do not make any effort to explain the argument’s cogency but agree with our prima facie inclinations: the argument is plainly fallacious and injustice is done to the materialist position. The difficulty with accepting this simplest of explanations, of course, is that the characters made explicit mention that they would not treat the materialists unfairly—in fact, they made it clear that they would present the materialists’ case as strongly as possible. Rosen notes this point well and uses the occasion to highlight the value of treating opposing philosophical theories fairly: “If we wish to understand a philosophical thesis, we ought to formulate it in the best or strongest possible way. We gain nothing from refuting a weak or inaccurate version of a doctrine we dislike.”27 And the Stranger and Theaetetus agreed to not give a weak or inaccurate version of the giants’ position; which is why it is so difficult to accept Rosen’s conclusion on the matter. Rosen contends that Theaetetus and the Stranger, in the immediately preceding passage, agree to treat the materialist position fairly, and then they go about treating it completely unfairly. Rosen offers us no explanation to why Plato would have the characters act in such an unbecoming manner. While this could be a brilliant use of irony by Plato and perhaps a teaching moment on the pitfalls of informal fallacies neatly snuck into the text, it seems out of place with the dialogue’s otherwise serious investigation into being.28

A New ExplanationEither SMAs or the various forms of the CDA would leave us with a rather low view of the argument delivered by the Stranger against the materialists. Berry calls the argument “extremely problematic,” “confused,” and he finds that the Stranger “concocts” a fake dilemma for the materialist.29 He sees “no hint of logical con-nection” in the argument against the materialist; hence, why Berry and so many others develop their complicated CDAs.30 In the height of his frustration over the argument’s problems Berry asks, “Why can he [Theaetetus] not explain wisdom or knowledge in terms of microscopic, that is, invisible bodies acting on the soul, itself a body?”31 It is precisely this last question of Berry’s that I believe gives us insight into a new way of understanding the line of reasoning employed in the argument. Or, as Rosen asks essentially the same question, “Why is it more shame-ful to deny the being or corporeality of justice than of the soul?”32 In response, I suggest that Theaetetus cannot explain Justice (or the like—any universal that can be “possessed” by a soul) in terms of invisible bodies in the same way he can explain a soul as an invisible body because he sees an inherent problem in the simultaneous multiple instantiations of a single body. So, although he intends it as a reprimand against Theaetetus, Rosen is actually dead-on with his com-ment, “Once we grant that justice is a ‘being,’ it becomes impossible to treat it as


a body, whereas the same is not true of the soul.”33 That is, if Theaetetus knew of or believed there was a good response that explained wisdom or knowledge as invisible bodies and that could answer a denial against either the existence of souls or the reality of Justice and Wisdom as corporeal bodies, then we can rightly assume that he would have offered it (because of his previous insistence to treat the materialists fairly). Hence, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that he does not know of a viable response to the problem he perceives with universals being corporeal.

My new approach to understanding the reasoning used by the Stranger’s refu-tation I call an “enthymematic account” (EA) because it explains the argument in terms of a premise that is not explicitly given but understood by the parties involved in the argument. An enthymeme is an argument in which one proposition is suppressed; it’s missing for one reason or another. In some cases, the missing proposition is not stated because it is obvious to the parties involved. I’ll contend that that is what we have occurring here; that the Stranger and Theaetetus take an enthymematic portion of the argument as obvious. Hence, the argument is not inherently circular or blatantly fallacious as the capacity definition and straw man accounts require. The enthymematic portion of the argument is actually a suppressed sub-argument against the possibility of a universal being present simultaneously in more than one place if it is, indeed, a corporeal body.

So, then, the manner in which the characters make the materialists “better” is by having them affirm the existence of universals (Justice, etc.) which they are forced to do out of their affirmation of the existence of the soul and its ability to take on (to “possess”) these universals. Then, with such materialist concessions already in place, the actors fall back to a simple claim on behalf of the materialists: a soul could be a body because it doesn’t need to be instantiated in more than one place at the same time. So far so good, think the materialists. But Justice (or any universal) could not be a body by this reasoning, precisely because it is instanti-ated in more than one place at the same time (namely, it can be “possessed” by several souls at once). In essence, the Stranger is trapping the materialists by their acknowledgment of a soul’s possession of Justice (or lack thereof) combined with their definition of being based upon corporeality. While this move may not be all that impressive, it does give the Stranger’s argument logical cogency, and it avoids having Theaetetus unfairly caving in as a surrogate materialist.

The actors’ reasoning, I contend, goes something like the following. In different instances of Justice being “possessed” by two different souls at the same time, we can say of each particular instance of Justice at least a different relation: namely that instance x is instantiated in soul b and instance y in soul c. Thus, the two instances are not the same particular. This is a major problem for what we would traditionally call the nominalist approach because most would intuitively claim, the Platonists argue, that both souls “fully” have Justice, hence they both have it


equally and completely. The “Justices” are not different from one another for there is only one Justice; or, in other words, Justice is a universal and not a particular, for only non-corporeal immaterial entities not bound by spatiotemporal restrictions can be multiply instantiated simultaneously in “full” or plenary form.34

Of course, traditional nominalist responses (trying to follow the materialists’ corporeal definition) would claim that Justice is, indeed, an invisible body and multiple instantiations of it are merely different parts of it instantiated simultane-ously; a little bit of Justice here in this soul and a little bit of Justice there in that soul.35 My explanation for the Stranger’s argument rests on the possibility that the characters in the dialogue were either unaware of such a nominalist response or else, more likely, they thought it failed and was not even up for consideration if one were taking the idea of Justice seriously. That is, if someone were taking the ontological existence of Justice seriously, as Theaetetus was having the material-ists do, then they would understand that all of Justice is instantiated or it is not; mere parts of it cannot be instantiated (or so Theaetetus presumed because of his view of universals).36

Additionally, it is not that traditional nominalists thought necessarily that general terms had to correspond to mass nouns. For example, the materialist conception of the soul that Plato would be assuming for the actors in the dialogue would be that soul is a kind of “stuff ”—a mass noun—such that each soul was a certain portion of a totality of soul-stuff (similar to how the mass noun “water” would function).37 In this way, the materialist could allow for individual souls to be instances, but still material things (as we noted above). Critically, however, the materialists as represented by Theaetetus do not allow for the universal which the soul possesses to function in the same manner; that is, Justice cannot function as a mere portion of a totality of justice-stuff (like water could). This is because Justice is a feature of the souls, and since the soul is already a kind of stuff, the only way for Justice to be another mass term “on top of ” the soul mass term would be for Justice be a sub-kind of soul (similar to the way we sub-classify water into “hard” and “soft” types). And, again, the EA argues that the actors would either find such a move too unintuitive against their conception of Justice to take seri-ously, or else they would not foresee the move in the first place.

In short, the Stranger and Theaetetus are buying into a traditional Platonic notion of universals as the main or only plausible player in a coherent explanation of how universals function (i.e. how they could be “possessed” by souls). Thus, once the materialists admit to the soul, then admit to the soul acquiring various universals (such as Justice), they are sunk and the position can be dispatched; or so the actors think. For, under a basic Platonic conception of universals, they are capable of multiple, plenary simultaneous instantiation; something a corporeal body, by definition, cannot do. Once the materialists have admitted there is such a thing as Justice they are at least committed to an entity and neither the instances


nor the universal would plausibly be a material stuff. Hence, the justice in people and Justice itself would have to be immaterial. Justice is unlike a soul primarily in not being as easily accommodated by the materialist as a mass noun.

Thus, by inserting this enthymematic sub-argument (6* through 9*), I sug-gest something like the following for the outline of the argument given by the Stranger to Theaetetus:

1. For something to exist, it must have a body. [246d]2. Souls exist (as invisible corporeal bodies). [247a]3. Souls can be just. [247a]4. Hence, souls can possess Justice. [247a]5. Since it is something that can be possessed, Justice exists. [247a]6. 6.* Multiple souls can posses Justice simultaneously. [Enthymematic]7. 7.* Hence, Justice is in multiple places at one time. [Enthymematic]8. 8.* If Justice is corporeal, it cannot be in multiple places at one time.

[Enthymematic] 9. 9.* Therefore, Justice does not have a body. [Enthymematic and 247b]10. Therefore, either something can exist without a body or else Justice does

not exist. [247c]

Note well that even though 6*, 7*, 8*, and 9*, are not explicitly stated in the text and occur enthymematically between the characters, we can see hints in their words that point to this thought process occurring. For example, we see premise 6* and 7* reflected in the Stranger’s words “this soul is just and that soul is unjust.”38 We see the conception of a form being instantiated with the line that justice and intelligence “come to be present” in a soul.39 We see 8* occur (and ultimately 9*) when there seems to be no problem with the invisible body of a soul existing, yet Theaetetus stumbles with the corporeality of things like justice and intelligence: “They do say that the soul seems to them to have a kind of a body. But as far as intelligence and the other things you’ve asked about are concerned, they’re ashamed and don’t dare either to agree that they are not beings or to insist that everything is a body.”40 The materialists don’t want to deny that Justice and the like exist, but, recognizing that multiple, simultaneous “possession” is going to be impossible for a body, they have now tripped into not wanting to “dare to agree” that everything is a body. In short, the materialists are quick to admit to the exis-tence of justice and the like without recognizing the implications and difficulties of the multiple, plenary instantiation of such things (namely in souls), to which they are already committed.41

If we allow that the Stranger and Theaetetus thought that there was no way around the difficulty of a body being in more than one place at the same time, then it is not hard to imagine them following this line of reasoning about the necessity of universals’ immaterialism, even if they don’t explicitly make their


case.42 After something like the argument I outline above occurs, it makes sense that the character would then move to a different definition of being (the capacity definition) which the materialist could accept yet that would not trap them in the same difficulties that their previous simple “body” definition of being gave them. Hence the beauty of the enthymematic account: we see the introduction of the capacity definition given in 247e as a new direction the materialists could take now that their previous definition has been refuted. Thus, under the enthymematic account the capacity definition of being flows logically as a response to the initial argument’s conclusion—not as a required premise for it. On a straightforward reading of the passage this certainly seems to be a more natural (and more charitable) interpretation.

So, contra CDAs, it is not that the Stranger and Theaetetus are inserting the posterior capacity definition into the argument to make it work; nor, contra SMAs, are the two mistreating the materialists. Rather, they are trying to give the cor-poreality definition a fair shake. It is simply that the two have a prior held belief that if a universal is “possessed,” it cannot be “possessed” in more than one place at one time if it is corporeal. And, if we grant them that belief, I contend that an argument to this effect functions enthymematically under the surface in their reasoning. If such a line of thinking could be occurring for the characters, then we have a new means to explain why they find the refutation to be sound without contorting the order of the dialogue (as Berry and the other CDA scholars do) and without doing violence to the text in suggesting that the characters contradict their own resolutions to fairness immediately after making them (as Rosen and other SMA scholars claim).

This enthymematic account of the argument directly answers Berry’s question posed to Plato quoted above.43 Berry thinks Theaetetus is simply caving in too easily and could straightforwardly construct a defense as he suggests (e.g. that wisdom or justice have invisible bodies like the soul). But Berry thinks Theaetetus does not do this precisely because he is already presuming the capacity defini-tion; hence Berry’s CDA. While this is a possible explanation for Theaetetus’s actions, a more likely one is simply that Theaetetus does not think there is any way he can explain wisdom or justice (or redness for that matter) in terms of a “microscopic, invisible body” with or without capacity to act or be acted upon. Theaetetus does not think there is any explanation of Wisdom or Justice along those lines that can hold water because he is utterly convinced that the multiple, simultaneous possession problems for universals are insurmountable obstacles for a materialist view. It is in this way that the Stranger and Theaetetus have made the materialists “better than they are”; by having them recognize their inability to overcome what the Stranger and Theaetetus saw as devastating arguments against universals as corporeal bodies.


Granted, if this EA explanation is correct, then Theaetetus leaves this entire step out of his explicit reasoning (6* through 9*); the sub-argument is unspoken or suppressed. But enthymematic reasoning seems to be a much simpler account than the contorted circular approach of reliance on the later capacity definition as the missing element in the argument. Furthermore, this enthymematic definition is more plausible in light of the clues given by Theaetetus in the dialogue itself when the new capacity definition is offered: “They [the materialists] accept that, since they don’t have anything better to say now.”44 The response and continu-ing conversation does not appear to be one in which the capacity definition was previously assumed; nor, contra Berry’s claims, does it appear to be intentionally set up for the circuitous deconstruction explanation. Why would Plato design it in such a way rather than simply present the capacity definition as part of the original argument? Why would Plato set up an intentionally circular argument? Berry offers no response.

Moreover, the enthymematic approach does not insist, as CDAs do, that the true starting position of the argument is directly contrary to what the characters claim it to be. Thus, the enthymematic approach believes the characters’ assertion that the materialist starting claim, which is what the Stranger sets out to refute, is that “When they take hold of all these things they insist that only what offers tangible contact is, since they define being as the same as body.”45 So, again contra Berry, the Stranger and Theaetetus are not sneaking in a different starting definition of being for the materialists from the very start. And, again, this allows for a more charitable reading of the characters’ discussion, particularly Theaetetus giving the appearance of having thought the argument concluded before the capacity definition is even provided.

Rosen’s claim that the actors simply mistreat the materialist position, while still another possibility and one much simpler than the CDA (and the EA), has serious problems reconciling the explicit promises of Theaetetus and the Stranger to treat the materialist’s position fairly. An enthymematic approach wherein a suppressed sub-argument against a corporeal entity’s ability to be multiply-possessed seems a more likely account, and it gives more credit to the straight reading of the text as Plato presents it.

Clearly, there is some missing link in the first reading of the argument given by the Stranger, but that missing link may be found ultimately in us and our modern sensibilities rather than in the philosophers in the story. Namely, as it is we that have bought into the more sophisticated defenses of materialism in the contemporary era (or at least been exposed to them to a much larger degree), we find that answers to identity and multiple instantiation problems come natu-rally to mind from the materialist camp. And so we miss what would be to the characters an obvious step in their argument. Theaetetus and the Stranger (and, presumably Plato) not only have not been indoctrinated in such modern defenses


of materialism but they find the multiple instantiation problems insurmountable for a corporeal view of universals. If this is the case then the Stranger’s failure to spell out each premise of his argument, while not preferable, is understandable. Thus, this enthymematic account gives us a simpler explanation for the appar-ently illogical reasoning employed by the Stranger than the deconstructionist and circular presumption approaches, while still doing justice to a straight reading of the text. Moreover, if the enthymematic account is correct, then we have further insight into how central universals and their instantiation are for any proper reading of Plato’s metaphysics.46

Notes

1. Those commentators who use the later capacity definition of being include Berry as the most outspoken proponent of the deconstructionist view, but the reliance on inserting the capacity definition is also seen (to varying degrees) in Cornford, Taylor, and Heidegger, as discussed below.

2. Most notably, Rosen and Bluck both take this approach, as discussed below.

3. Note that for the purposes of this paper I’ll remain neutral as to the true authorship of the Sophist. Since it is one of the later dialogues there may be some debate as to whether it is truly Plato’s work. Thus, when I refer to “Plato’s intentions” and the like as the author of the dialogue, I do not intend to come down on one side of this debate or the other. Instead, I assume Platonic authorship and see what follows from that assumption.

4. 245e.

5. Francis MacDonald Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge: The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato Translated with a Running Commentary (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1935), 229.

6. Ibid.

7. See A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Sophist and the Statesman (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1971), 42–48, for an in-depth treatment of the various debates over precisely who Plato was attacking in this passage in the dialogue. See also Richard S. Bluck, Plato’s Sophist (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), 89–92, for further discus-sion of who Plato might have been referencing.

8. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, 230.

9. Bluck, for example, writes, “it is not impossible that Plato is thinking primarily of ‘average men’ and that it is he himself who turns the battle into a ‘philosophic’ one” (Bluck, Plato’s Sophist, 90).

10. 246b.

11. 246b; other translations use “terrible men” and “formidable men.”

12. As we’ll see below, a tangible body does not necessarily mean that the body must be visible. Cornford follows this line of thinking in his classification of the giants. See Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, 232.


13. 247a.

14. Note the important distinction between justice and Justice. The difference in capi-talization implies a view of Justice as a universal. My argument for the characters’ intentions regarding justice as a universal will be made clear in my account of the argument below.

15. John M. Berry, “A Deconstruction of Plato’s Battle of Gods,” Southwest Philosophy Review 3 (1986): 30. The emphasis is Berry’s.

16. Ibid., 28.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., 29.

20. 247e. The emphasis is in the text. The Stranger is speaking. This is a good point to note my choice in translation (although familiarity with all the major English transla-tions is particularly helpful for the Sophist since different English commentators on the dialogue use a variety of translations). White’s translation (in Cooper), chooses the word “capacity” over “power” (which was chosen by many English translators previously). I find the use of “capacity” makes the proposed definition stronger, for it better allows for the negative (or passive) side of being than “power” does. Looking at the Greek, it seems there is room for interpretation on this word choice; but in this paper I will not argue in favor of either choice. If one claims that “power” is preferable over “capacity” I still think the argument I present throughout this paper follows and this alternative approach to understanding the Battle of Gods and Giants still holds.

21. Martin Heidegger, Plato’s Sophist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 322.

22. Ibid., 326. My emphasis.

23. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, 238.

24. Ibid.

25. Taylor, Plato: The Sophist and the Statesman, 49.

26. Other scholars such as Richard Bluck, for example, agree with Rosen’s approach to the argument. Bluck writes, “In the [Stranger’s] opinion, it seems, and probably in Plato’s, out-and-out materialists would never make any concessions to those who believed in bodiless things, and it would be most unlikely that a true reformation of such materialists could ever be achieved. The reform is only imagined for the sake of the argument.” Bluck, Plato’s Sophist, 92.

27. Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), 214.

28. Rosen does not suggest Plato is having the characters act-out the very thing they say they will not do here, but I have considered this possibility. (Many thanks to Donald Joy for helpful discussions on this point.) Plato has been known to use irony in his dialogues and his characters’ behaviors to demonstrate an important philosophical point. But, again, such a move would seem strongly out of place here because this argument (the battle of the gods and giants) appears, in many ways, to be the central investigation of the sophist. Why sidetrack the entire enterprise with a lecture on informal fallacies? It doesn’t seem plausible.


29. Berry, “A Deconstruction of Plato’s Battle of Gods,” 28, 30.

30. Ibid., 31.

31. Ibid.

32. Rosen, Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image, 216.

33. Ibid.

34. An important note here concerns the reasons why the Stranger used Justice as the universal to trap the materialist on rather than, say, Triangularity or some other ab-stract entity. Obviously the Stranger needed first and foremost to move on a universal that can be instantiated or “possessed” by a soul in order for the argument to succeed as they were running it against the materialist (based on the first admittance of souls into the ontology). But it appears the Stranger could have made the same point on the impossibility of plenary multiple simultaneous instantiation by a corporeal entity with something like Triangularity. The reason Justice is preferred over other potential choices might then simply be a rhetorical preference: Justice seems intuitively to “exist” in some real way that Triangularity does not, perhaps, or, at least, the actors in the dialogue may think so.

35. Either that or, of course, they would not concede Justice as an ontologically robust entity in the first place.

36. Note well: this does not mean that Justice could not be instantiated or possessed in various degrees. It means simply that Justice itself could not be subdivided according to Theaetetus’s view.

37. See the Phaedo dialogue where Plato discusses this point further.

38. 247a.

39. 247b.

40. 247b.

41. Note well: I am not arguing specifically for the success or failure of the enthymematic sub-argument, nor am I arguing against nominalist accounts of universals and so forth. All my position requires is that it is possible that this line of reasoning is at work in the mind of Theaetetus and the Stranger as they work through the argument against the giants. Whether or not their thinking on the matter is correct is, of course, another question. But if it is at least possible that their line of reasoning follows what I’ve outlined here, then we have another account of the Stranger’s argument heretofore unoffered in Sophist analysis.

42. An anonymous reviewer raised the possibility that if premises 4 and 5 were to be interpreted so as to take Justice as something that can be simply present in a soul (as opposed to something possessed by the soul as I have it), then it could result in a different (although still valid) enthymematic argument against the materialists’ initial definition of being. In general, I find it quite plausible that alternative interpreta-tions using the EA approach are possible—that is to say, enthymematic interpretive accounts need not be exclusive. However, in any given dialogue there may be clues available so as to prefer one enthymematic reading over another. In this case, I find that the Sophist actors’ later employment of the capacity definition of being drives us away from this kind of “presence” understanding of Justice and makes a “possession” understanding of Justice as I present it more likely. This is because any enthymematic


argument derived from a presence account of Justice will then require the capacity definition in order to ultimately make the argument valid. If that’s the case, then there is no advantage in using an EA over a CDA in the first place. Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for a helpful discussion of this point.

43. Berry was quoted above asking, “Why can he [Theaetetus] not explain wisdom or knowledge in terms of microscopic, that is, invisible bodies acting on the soul, itself a body?,” 31.

44. 248a.

45. 246b.

46. Many thanks and appreciation is owed to Samuel C. Wheeler III, Becky Vartabedian, and Mark Lowe for extensive help, comments, and advice on this paper. Thanks are also due to Donald Joy, Jeff Wisdom, and Abbilynn Strawser for helpful conversa-tions and editorial assistance regarding this paper. Finally, I am also indebted to two anonymous reviewers for several helpful comments.

those frightening men: a new interpretation of plato's battle of gods and giants

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