Facets of Plato's Philosophy (review)

242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY prepare the reader for her own counter-thesis, one which also defends the arts through an appeal to religion: "The strongest motive to philosophy is probably the same as the strongest motive to art: the desire to become the Demiurge and reorganize chaos in accordance with one's own excellent plan" (p. 69). Thus, "art instinctively materializes God and the religious life" (p. 70). The dominance of this theme, which she believes Plato shared (p. 62), explains her selective emphasis on the relevant passages in the Republic, the Timaeus and the Laws. What emerges clearly from the discussion is Plato's advice on how art can be protected against the graveness of "necessity" and also his argued belief that the only real therapeia lies in the assimilation of art to philosophical eros. It is the latter to which Murdoch objects. But before restating her own thesis she had to keep in the foreground of the discussion Plato's cosmology, moral concerns, and above all his attachment to a religious ideal of life. However, since Plato did not have a "pure aesthetic viewpoint," the vision he came to allow the artist cannot be more than what the burning fire in the cave makes visible. Yet, and in agreement with Plato, she admits that "the artist's worst enemy is his eternal companion, his eikasia" (p. 79). Even so, she insists, it is neither his nemesis nor his chain. Armed with a deepened conception of religion and a consciousness of the pure aesthetic standpoint, the artist can subdue this inner enemy and prove himself the philosopher 's equal. One would have to read carefully this fine essay to see how different Murdoch's artistic piety is from Plato's. Thus it seems fair to conclude that Murdoch's version of imitatio dei could not have won Plato's assent. One suspects that Plato would counter her defense of artistic piety on two grounds: (a) at the level of the divine, the Forms reign supremely and epekeina tou demiourgou; (b) at the human level, no one can confidently tell the fire from the sun without mastering first the highest of the arts: dialectic. There is only one path, not two, that leads Out of the Cave. Inside the Cave eikasia wears more masks than we can ever hope to recognize, including the masks of piety. Plato, it would seem, feared the protean nature of eikasia more than all the lures of pleasure. Evidently, Miss Murdoch disagrees. JOHN P. ANTON Emory University W. H. Werkmeister, ed. Facets of Plato's Philosophy. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977. Pp. 102. Facets of Plato's Philosophy is the publication of papers given at a memorial symposium for the late Professor Robert Miller of Florida State University. The contributors at the symposium were five in number: Julius Moravcsik's "Recollecting the Theory of Forms" seeks to show in what sense the theory of Forms has explanatory power; the problem of accounting for the many distinct roles that Forms play is considered in view of Plato's conception of time; Charles Kahn's "Plato on the Unity of the Virutes" attempts to explain the aporetic conclusion of the Protagoras's treatment of the virtues in terms of the treatment received in the Laws, the Phaedo, and the Republic--Plato was working his way to the construction of a full-blown theory of the unity of the virtues; Robert Brumbaugh 's "Plato's Relation to the Arts and Crafts" suggests that not only did Plato take seriously the practice of technai and that the precise discussions could only be the product of Plato's first-hand knowledge of several technai, but moreover, that techne BOOK REVIEWS 243 served an important function in Plato's systematic philosophy concerning the ability to recognize the spatiotemporal relevance of the atemporal Forms; L. A. Kosman's "Platonic Love" examines the doctrine of Eros put forth by Socrates in the Symposium. The erotic nature of human being, described within the motif of the search for the beautiful, is the striving for our true nature, the nature which we truly are yet of which we somehow have been deprived. The Eros of human...