Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being: An Analysis of Plato's "Philebus" (review)

132 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3o." 1 JANUARY 1992 rows of cars, Dr. Mansfeld reconstitutes a different argument, in which two rows of "relay teams"jump past each other. The analysis he offers does not translate easily into mathematical statement; it looks as though the argument is that runner 3 in rank A passes only one counterpart in rank B on a given kinematic leap, but in the same bound is passed by two B runners. (This treats motions by the A and B series, which are simultaneous, as successive.) The confusion is supposedly part of the humor, in its resistance to analysis. So at least I read this reconstruction, which assumes a strangely Kantian ("reduction to nothing of an expectation") notion of laughter. I can document my preferred view by choosing other details that match my hypothesis that Zeno was a good mathematician and a normal track fan. A. N. Whitehead, I find, fit his selection of historic particles together to show that Zeno tried for, but misunderstood and missed the theory of limits of Weierstrass. Thus, with these studies, as everywhere else, it is a needed caution that facts and theories are very different, and so are proof and partial confirmation. With these qualifications, I am generally enthusiastic about the uses we will find for Dr. Mansfeld's new precision in historical analysis, particularly since we have computers to help. At the same time, if we can find suitable cross-classifications, the elaborate documentation can be stored and retrieved at need by historiographers of the future. The book requires, but repays, careful attention. ROBERT S. BRUMBAUGH Yale University Cynthia Hampton. Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being: An Analysis of Plato's "Phi&bus." Albany : State University of New York Press, 199o. Pp. 144. Cloth, $44.5 ~. Paper, $14.95. What is the subject of Plato's Phi&bus? It is difficult to say because, to borrow the dialogue's own terminology, its content seems indeterminate. Both its first and last lines allude to this: the former indicates that the Phi&bus begins in the middle of an ongoing discussion (notice the particle d~ at 1lal), while the latter contains a verb in the future tense stating that the conversation will go on. Quite literally, then, this is a work whose limits are difficult to discern. A host of issues are treated within the Philebus. The life devoted to pleasure is contrasted with that devoted to knowledge; there is a discussion of the one and the many and the "divine method" that results from their interaction, a division of the universe into four kinds, an analysis of desire, an extensive classification of pleasure and knowledge into kinds, and more. The many transitions from one of these subjects to the next are notoriously difficult to explain. To make the commentator's life even worse, it is possible that the Philebus broaches the mathematical-ontological theory that Aristoxenus tells us was the subject of Plato's famous lecture, "On the Good," and which also seems to be addressed by several passages in Aristotle. In short, taking on the Phi&bus is an enormous task, and the commentator is forced to impose some sort of limit on the material at hand. nooR REVIEWS 133 In this surprisingly brief volume (containing 8o pages of actual commentary) Cynthia Hampton delimits the content of the Ph//ebus in the following way. First, she argues (principally against Gosling) that the thread unifying the dialogue is ontological . Hampton contends that the one and the many passage (14c-15 c) raises a series of questions, all of which ultimately concern the Forms (see her p. 16). These questions give her a framework with which to address the rest of the dialogue. Three examples: (l) Hampton argues that the "divine method" (16c-17 a) is "associated with the dialectic in that it has the Forms as its primary object" (25); (2) she argues that the Forms are the key to ranking the various pleasures. Since it is by virtue of the Forms that things in the sensible world can be said to be beautiful, pleasures (such as those experienced in "the formal aspects of geometry, music and art") whose objects are "higher" are more pure and true...