In Defence of Platonic Division

Abstract

1. Expositors of Plato have sometimes identified Plato’s later dialectic with diairesis, the method of division recommended and exemplified in well known parts of the Phaedrus, Sophist, Poltticus, and Phtlebus. In his Mind paper of 1939 (reprinted in R. E. Allen’s Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics), and again in the chapter on Dialectic in Plato’s Progress, Professor Ryle has made scathing remarks about this “method,” and has drawn a sharp contrast between it and genuine dialectic or philosophy: the construction of Linnaeus-type genus-species trees has nothing to do with the philosophical activity of hard reasoning which leads to truths about the powers and interrelations of topic-neutral concepts. While allowing that Plato may on occasion have attached some (improper) importance to division Ryle holds that the philosopher who wrote the central part of the Sophist and the Parmenides could not (then, or seriously, or for long) have supposed division to be a significant part or instrument of philosophy.