Possibility

Use in the book

At 167b Socrates separates two questions: whether knowing what one knows and does not know is possible, and, if possible, whether it benefits. This order prevents the attractiveness of a power from serving as proof of its existence.

The analogies make the proposal seem impossible, but Socrates immediately cautions against insisting that it does not exist (168a). At 168e the text differentiates wholly impossible reflexive comparisons of magnitudes and quantities from capacities whose self-application is strongly doubted. Sight, hearing, self-motion and self-burning heat do not receive the same unqualified verdict as being greater than oneself.

Socrates asks for an adequate classification and admits he cannot supply it (169a–b2). At 169d possibility is then granted so that another line of testing can proceed. Neither that concession nor the later dream establishes actuality. Conversely, the final complaint that the argument did not permit the concession (175b) should not erase the earlier refusal to claim a completed impossibility proof.

The lexical distinction is therefore a guide to reading the structure: puzzling, implausible, impossible, possible by concession and actually demonstrated are five different statuses, although several can be described loosely as “problematic”.

Places to read

1. 167bPossibility distinguished from benefit
2. 168aExplicit refusal to insist upon nonexistence
3. 168e–169b2Impossibility and disbelief distinguished
4. 169dPossibility granted without resolution
5. 175bThe unearned concession recalled

Translation in this edition

“Would raise disbelief in some people” at 169a is deliberately weaker than “is impossible”. The edition’s emphatic “even if entirely possible” marks the strength of a supposition, not proof of possibility.

ἀδύνατος

Attested: ἀδύνατον / ἀδύνατα / ἀδύνατος (adynaton / adynata / adynatos). Impossible, or unable when predicated of a person; distinguishes an impossible self-relation from someone’s inability to explain it. References: 156e, 167c, 168e, 175c, 176a, 169c. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀδύνατος. See Possibility and impossibility.

ἀπιστέω

Attested: ἀπιστεῖται (apisteitai). Is doubted or distrusted; some cases seem impossible, whereas others provoke doubts, a weaker verdict. References: 168e. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀπιστέω. See Possibility and impossibility.

ἀπιστία

Attested: ἀπιστίαν (apistian). Disbelief or doubt; a response to the suggested reflexive powers, distinguished from demonstrated impossibility. References: 169a. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀπιστία. See Possibility and impossibility.

δυνατός

Attested: δυνατόν / δυνατὸν (dynaton / dynaton). Possible or capable; the inquiry separates whether knowledge of knowledge can exist from whether, even if possible, it would benefit its possessor. References: 167b, 169a, 169d, 172c. Lexical identification: lemma: δυνατός. See Possibility and impossibility.

διισχυριζώμεθα (diischyrizōmetha)

Assert confidently or insist; Socrates refuses yet to insist that the strange faculty is impossible. References: 168a. Lemma: διισχυρίζομαι. See Possibility and impossibility.

οἷός τε (hoios te)

Able or capable; this predicative idiom introduces the power to examine oneself and others. References: 167a. Lemma: οἷός τε. See Possibility and impossibility.

Use in the book

The neuter ἀδύνατον commonly introduces an infinitive: it is impossible for specified things to stand in a proposed relation. It excludes friendship between wrongdoer and injured party at 214c and between bad and good at 217c, before reappearing in the test of a supposed cause at 221c.

These impossibilities depend on what the interlocutors have accepted in the argument. They should not all be presented as independent conclusions endorsed by the dialogue as a whole. The word often records the constraint that drives the next experiment in definition.

Places to read

1. 217cἀδύνατον γὰρ ἔφαμεν κακὸν ἀγαθῷ φίλον εἶναι — For we said that bad cannot be a friend to good.
2. 213b
3. 214c
4. 219b
5. 221c

Use in the book

In the Hermetic creation narrative, the sovereign can provide future human beings with something from each god. The adjective concerns the agent’s ability to distribute contributions. The following speeches differentiate those contributions; they do not say that every participating god independently produces the whole human being.

Places to read

1. I.49.44.29The divine sovereign is able to provide the contributions to human life.
2. I.3.52Divine inability to err contrasts with human wrongdoing.

Translation in this edition

“Can” or “is able” suits this personal construction; “possible” suits an impersonal claim about what can occur.

What is impossible

Adunatos means unable or impossible according to the construction. At I.3.52 it is impossible for the divine to go astray, whereas human beings remain liable to error. The impossibility belongs to this account of divine order. It should not be expanded into an unrestricted theory of logical possibility without further argument.

Use in the book

The early condition of perfect writing is stated through a chain of conditional verbs: a perfectly ordered person and an equilibrium of developed passions would make such writing possible. Later, the power to imagine exceeds the possibility of seeing allowed by our nature. This preserves a difference between faculties rather than claiming that whatever is imagined can physically exist. The distinction matters especially when a notebook explores a supposition without committing itself to its actuality.

Places to read

1. I, p. 45, entry 2, ¶7Perfect writing is explored as a conditional possibility.
2. II, p. 790, entry 1, ¶2Imagination reaches what bodily vision cannot be enabled to see.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps “would” in the early supposition and distinguishes “power” from “possibility” in the later passage. The latter’s “could not” remains within Joubert’s stated relation between divine giving and our nature.