Ross Gilmore (University of Kansas)
In this paper, I offer a new reading of the so-called Final Ranking which concludes Plato’s Philebus. Specifically, I argue that the principle which organizes the five-tiered ranking is dependence.
I begin by examining two traditional readings of the Final Ranking. The preconditionality reading (Delcomminette 2006, Lang 2010), by which each rank serves as a precondition for subsequent ranks, correctly identifies the asymmetrical nature of the final ranking. Yet it fails to incorporate the normative or hierarchical aspect of the ranking, by which higher ranks are better. The causality reading (Barney 2016, Harte 2019), by contrast, emphasizes too strongly the role of intellect as cause in the construction of an actual well-lived life. It has an awkward time accounting for reason’s role at the lowly third rank, below measure (Rank 1) and proportion (Rank 2). Efforts to address this issue posit a second kind of cause, which raises the issue of what then unifies these two halves of the final ranking.
I begin my own exegesis with a reading of the contest for the second best life, wherein I clarify the precise question which governs the inquiry for the rest of the dialogue. Specifically, Socrates ultimately claims he will argue that reason is more similar to that which is responsible for the goodness of the well-mixed life. This reading draws attention to the fact that we are interested in (1) what it means for a life to be well-mixed, (2) what the thing is (being neither reason nor pleasure) which is the cause of the goodness of the well-mixed life, and (3) how we would evaluate reason and pleasure in terms of their similarity to this third thing. In this sense, relative responsibility for the goodness of the well-mixed life gets cashed out in terms of similarity to that third thing (ultimately, measure).
Next, I examine the thematic discussions of pleasure and knowledge. Ultimately, I argue that the quality of various pleasures and knowledges is derived from the quality of their objects. Just as the best knowledge is knowledge of the best knowables, the best pleasure is similarly described in relation to its objects. In this way, the quality of the experience is dependent on the quality of the object on which it depends. Thus reason is more similar to the forms because more immediately dependent on them.
Lastly, I show how this reading of similarity as dependence elegantly makes sense of the Final Ranking. I run through the steps of the ranking before contrasting my view with the two traditional readings. First, my reading captures the normativity Socrates ascribes to the ranking, since on my view qualities are derivative of their objects. There is thus no risk of considering objects of a higher rank valuable only to the degree that it enables objects of a lower rank. Secondly, this reading captures how reason is both dependent on the forms of the first two ranks, while also the object of the dependence of ranks four and five.