Blackwell Reference Online

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According to the principles of Plato's teleology as applied in his Timaeus, to understand the function of something you must start from the highest good that it helps bring about. Eyesight, for example, exists ultimately in order to enable us to study astronomy, a god-given route to philosophical understanding (Ti. 46e6–47c4). What, from this same point of view, is the function of language? The human mouth, we are told, has been created for two purposes, influx and efflux. The influx in question is one of mere necessities, namely food and drink, but the efflux, that of speech, is characterized as the “finest and best of all streams” (75e4–5). Why so? As the speaker Timaeus has explained earlier (47c4–7), both voice and hearing were created in us as principal means to philosophy, above all by the use of speech. He is undoubtedly referring to Plato's main philosophical method, dialectic, the systematic use of question and answer to eliminate falsehoods and arrive eventually at truths. Plato's worldview thus places an altogether pivotal importance on the gift of spoken language: as the basis of dialectic, it is a privileged means to philosophy, and thereby to the soul's salvation.Dialectic familiarly features in Plato's dialogues as an interpersonal activity, usually between a principal interrogator and a more or less compliant respondent. But Plato sometimes refers to internal, unvoiced ... log in or subscribe to read full text