"Aristotle and Other Platonists:" A Review of the work of Lloyd Gerson
Lloyd Gersons Aristotle and Other Platonists is a thought-provoking work that challenges long-held assumptions about the relationship between Aristotle and Plato. Gerson in my opinion makes a compelling case that Aristotle, far from being an anti-Platonist as traditionally portrayed, should be seen as a kind of Platonist himself. Gerson begins by addressing the historical context in which Aristotles works were written, emphasizing the fluid intellectual environment of ancient Greece. He argues that the sharp division often drawn between Plato and Aristotle is a modern construct rather than a reflection of their true philosophical positions. Gerson asserts that Aristotles philosophy can be better understood as a continuation and development of Platonic themes rather than a complete departure from them.
One of the key strengths of Gersons work is his detailed comparative analysis of the core doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. He examines their views on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, highlighting numerous points of convergence. For example, Gerson explores how Aristotles concept of the unmoved mover can be seen as an adaptation of Platos theory of the Forms, rather than a rejection of it. Similarly, he discusses how Aristotles ethical theory retains a teleological framework that is deeply rooted in Platonic thought. Therefore, I like to think that only a true Platonist can grasp the work of Aristotle and a true Aristotelian is interested in the "mysticism" of Platonism. The overall text in my eyes makes the argument that Plato and Aristotle are supposed to compliment each other rather than contradict. Gerson also tackles the interpretative challenges posed by Aristotles critiques of Plato, suggesting that these criticisms are often more nuanced than they appear. He posits that Aristotles objections are directed at specific aspects of Platos formulations rather than at the underlying principles. This approach allows Gerson to present a more integrated view of ancient philosophy, where the lines between different schools of thought are more blurred and interconnected. Gersons reinterpretation of the relationship between Aristotle and Plato invites readers to reconsider the foundations of Western philosophical tradition. His book is not only a valuable resource for scholars but also for anyone interested in the enduring dialogue between these two towering figures of ancient thought.
One of the key strengths of Gersons work is his detailed comparative analysis of the core doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. He examines their views on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, highlighting numerous points of convergence. For example, Gerson explores how Aristotles concept of the unmoved mover can be seen as an adaptation of Platos theory of the Forms, rather than a rejection of it. Similarly, he discusses how Aristotles ethical theory retains a teleological framework that is deeply rooted in Platonic thought. Therefore, I like to think that only a true Platonist can grasp the work of Aristotle and a true Aristotelian is interested in the "mysticism" of Platonism. The overall text in my eyes makes the argument that Plato and Aristotle are supposed to compliment each other rather than contradict. Gerson also tackles the interpretative challenges posed by Aristotles critiques of Plato, suggesting that these criticisms are often more nuanced than they appear. He posits that Aristotles objections are directed at specific aspects of Platos formulations rather than at the underlying principles. This approach allows Gerson to present a more integrated view of ancient philosophy, where the lines between different schools of thought are more blurred and interconnected. Gersons reinterpretation of the relationship between Aristotle and Plato invites readers to reconsider the foundations of Western philosophical tradition. His book is not only a valuable resource for scholars but also for anyone interested in the enduring dialogue between these two towering figures of ancient thought.
Comments (227)
I think that this is the key weaknesses of his work. In Plato's Seventh Letter he says:
"There is no treatise (suggramma) by me on these subjects, nor will there ever be." (341c)
In other words, according to Plato in the Seventh Letter there are no core doctrines or any doctrines at all in his writings that can rightly be attributed to him. I have included more from the letter below.
According to the Phaedo, if there is a "theory of forms" it is, as part of Socrates' second sailing, a hypothesis. (Phaedo 96a-100a) It is a turn away from the attempt to see the things themselves as they are themselves, which like looking directly at the sun can cause blindness, to take refuge in speech. The hypothesis of Forms is called "safe and ignorant" (Phaedo 105c) The inadequacy of Forms is the starting point of the Timaeus.
With regard to Plato and Aristotle their shared common ground is that they are both Socratic skeptics, inquirers who know that they do not know. Their writings are dialectical or dialogical. The dialogue between Plato and Aristotle is part of their practice of thinking and writing as both internal and external dialogue. It models the reader's or listener's active role as skeptical inquirers.
More from the Seventh Letter:
(341d-e)
(344c)
(344d-e)
That's a 21st century thesis in the sense that Plato and Aristotle died 2500 years ago and we can argue about their texts ad infinitum. The problem is that Aristotle was Plato's literal student. Aristotle knew Plato, Aristotle was taught by Plato, Aristotle and Plato inevitably argued with one another about things, and Aristotle continued to argue with Plato in his own writings. The claim that Plato held no doctrines or positions is almost certainly false (and the seventh letter certainly doesn't entail such a thing). The claim that in the 21st century we cannot discern any of Plato's doctrines or positions is arguable, but in my opinion also false. But crucially false is the claim that we cannot discern doctrinal differences between Plato and Aristotle from their writings, and especially from Aristotle's writings.
Some argue that the Seventh Letter was not written by Plato. As far as I know Gerson accepts its legitimacy. In the letter Plato says, as quoted:
Quoting Fooloso4
That is not a "21st century thesis", it is, if genuine, what he wrote. Even if you think it is a forgery it is not a 21st century forgery.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is only a problem if you claim that Aristotle rejected Plato. I don't think he did.
Quoting Leontiskos
The claim is that there is no written doctrines by Plato. No doubt he has his opinions on such matters, but Plato never spoke in his own name in the dialogues. Make of this what you will. If you want to discover Plato's doctrines in what one or more of his characters say in the dialogues then such claims must be weighed against what is said and by whom in other places both within that dialogue and in other dialogues.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not only can differences be found between Plato and Aristotle, differences can be found within the dialogues themselves and in the works of Aristotle themselves. Explanations abound as to why. Whether these differences are doctrinal is not the same thing.
Whoa. A relief! I always thought of "Plato" as diverging from, even betraying, Socrates skepticism.
Is there such clear evidence of this lingering-skepticism-notwithstanding-writings-to-the-contrary in Aristotle too?
Yes
My point is that it does not entail what you say it does.
Quoting Fooloso4
It seems you missed the point of my post.
If Plato held no knowable positions, then Aristotle could not have argued with Plato. But Aristotle did argue with Plato, and we have at least some of Aristotle's arguments for and against Plato. Therefore Plato held knowable positions (insofar as we accept Aristotle's depiction of Plato's thought).
To maintain your thesis would require upholding the idea that Aristotle was no more privy to Plato's thought than we are, which is false. Aristotle had access to Plato's person, not just his texts.
Gerson's central focus, as a scholar, has been upon Plotinus and his contemporaries (broadly speaking).
Interpretations of both Plato and Aristotle are the medium of discourse where different opinions were expressed in Plotinus' time. In that context, Plotinus should be read as claiming what those "underlying principles" are. He is telling us what Plato means and quoting selectively to support his view.
Both Aristotle and Plotinus are alike in trying to establish an internal consistency to their theoria that differs from the language of Plato. This quality gets described as "systems" or "schools" but I think the difference in kind is too profound to delineate clearly.
(Gerson's books are addressed mainly to an academic audience, as they must be in a contested field such as this. There are details of disputes over interpretations going back centuries, often taking up pages of footnotes. I wish there were an edition for the general reader, as I can sense the outlines of Gerson's arguments, but the way they're written makes them very difficult for the non-specialist.)
Edward Feser has a useful blog entry on Gerson. He summarises the key themes like this:
Quoting Join the Ur-Platonist Alliance!
That resonates with me, as it mirrors the kind of philosophical spirituality that I've always pursued. Making the case in detail with reference to Plato's dialogues and other texts is hard labour, though.
What does:
Quoting Fooloso4
mean if not that Plato did not give us written doctrines?
Quoting Leontiskos
Your post began by saying that the quote from the Seventh Letter was:
Quoting Leontiskos
How do you understand this if it does not mean what he said in the letter?
Quoting Leontiskos
Of course he could. He was responding to what was said in the dialogues. Surely he was aware of how what is in the dialogues differed from Plato's own positions as they known by and discussed with those whom he trusted and not by and with others. He was also aware of how Plato was being interpreted. As you go on to say:
Quoting Leontiskos
This does not mean that Aristotle disclosed what Plato kept from those he regarded as unsuited to hear them. If Plato did not make them public then it is almost certain that Aristotle would not disclose them.
Gerson accepts Plato's theory of Forms and argues against a break between Plato and Aristotle regarding Forms. But Plato himself gives us reason to doubt that he seriously held a theory of Forms. He did, however, apparently think it better that those not well suited to the truth believe in Forms rather than what the poets, sophists and theologians taught.
It should be understood that Socratic skepticism differs from other types of skepticism. It is the desire to know based on the knowledge of our ignorance. It is, as the root of the word indicates, the practice of doubt and inquiry.
With regard to evidence, we must follow the argument and action of the dialogues in Plato that lead to aporia and the dialectic of Aristotle. In both cases there is not a move from opinion to unqualified knowledge. I have discussed some of this in various threads that look closely at their writings.
Your arguments about this issue are best illustrated by the dialogue of Theaetetus.
Beyond the role of the mid-wife taking precedence over that of recollection, Socrates is heard defending Parmenides who also criticizes the Forms (in that named Platonic dialogue).
Aristotle takes issue with both thinkers. Plotinus does so in turn.
Ok, fair enough, but with the assurance that you will know? Or notwithstanding your inevitably inescapable ignorance?
I think he provides the grounds to argue that, but I'm not persuaded. The heuristic I prefer is that forms or ideas don't exist - not because they're unreal, but because they are beyond existence (which is precisely what 'transcendent' means). We are blessed with the intellectual facility, nous, which is capable of grasping these forms (or perceiving rational principles) and which is what differentiates us from non-rational animals.
But the fact that there is nowadays great controversy over the nature of number (real or invented? Mental or existent?) only illustrates Plato's point. Here we have all the advantages that modern science has provided us, yet this question can't be decided!
[quote=Fooloso4, quoting Plato 7th Letter]Any man, whether greater or lesser who has written about the highest and first principles concerning nature, according to my argument, he has neither heard nor learned anything sound about the things he has written.[/quote]
The Tao te Ching's warning comes to mind, 'he that speaks doesn't know'.
I found a crib of the section referred to:
My bolds
Who are you quoting?
Quoting Fooloso4
:100: :fire: This sums up my own freethinker-naturalist interpretation of 'Platonism' (which non-exhaustively includes 'Aristotleanism').
Quoting Wayfarer
I.e. fallacy of reification / misplaced concereteness (which Nietzsche astutely points out is an inversion, or confusion, of effects & causes). As you anti-naturalists et al construe, Wayf, 'Platonic-Aristotlean' essences (universals) aka "Forms" are only abstractions from concrete entities generalized over them as classes (sets kinds types etc) by 'the need' (i.e. cognitive bias? will to power? the absurd?) of the human intellect to (aesthetically) impose (moral) order on (epistemic) chaos by justifying this slight-of-mind (nous) retroactively at worst a sophistical subterfuge of implicit rationalization. To wit:
[quote=F.N.]I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar[/quote]
Likewise I interpret what Wittgenstein means by 'patent nonsense from (traditional) philosophy misusing ordinary language (i.e. grammar) in order to try to say (meta-grammatically) what can only be shown' or later, philosophers confusedly, or carelessly, 'playing some language game by the rules of another (à la making category mistakes)' "transcendent illusions" of meta-nonsense. :eyes:
Anyway, if as you say, sir, that "Forms transcend existence", then it is a contradiction in terms to assume or assert that entities which "transcend existence" (e.g. super-naturalia like "Platonic Forms") have any explanatory causal relation to existence (e.g. nature).
Read Spinoza. :victory: :wink:
I had the idea it is impossible to admire both Nietszche and Plato.
I admire Plato.
As for the 'fallacy of reification', that is precisely the misinterpretation of what the forms or ideas represent. To reify is to 'make a thing', but they're not things and they don't exist in time and space. But they are real as constituents of reason.
Quoting Eric D Perl Thinking Being, p31 ff
How is that a 'reification'? Reification, 'making a thing', is precisely what it isn't. That accusation is made by those who can't grasp the sense in which such ideas are transcendental.
Are you saying that Gerson's interpretation of Plato is through his reading of Plotinus? That seems right to me.
Quoting Paine
If we look at the dramatic chronology of the dialogues Plato places Parmenides criticism of the Forms at an early stage of Socrates own philosophical education. This raises doubts as to whether Socrates own criticism of Forms should be explained away as the result of Plato having changed his mind in a later stage of his development.
In his role as mid-wife he says he is able to help others bring their ideas to birth but is himself barren and without wisdom.
No assurance is given. In the Republic Socrates tells stories about transcendent knowledge but given his profession of ignorance these stories should not be mistaken for knowledge.
No, it is to treat an abstraction (e.g. "Form of Goodness") as if it is "a thing" in causal relation with other things which is why, misplaced concreteness (i.e. reifying an abstraction) is fallacious. It is Platonists who misuse/abuse language and thereby fetishize the definite article.
Quoting Wayfarer
Confusion of "transcendent" with "transcendental" which is it, Wayfarer? :roll: "by those who cannot grasp" this Platonic fallacy.
You're wrong again, sir. Like many, I admire both thinkers[ yet for different reasons. (not the least of which for poetically dramatizing the characters of 'Socrstes' & 'Zarathustra', respectively). And don't forget that admirable duo Wittgenstein & Spinoza who I also mentioned in support of my criticisms.
One thing that is verifiable is that Gerson's criticism of Aristotle is a repetition of Plotinus, almost verbatim:
Quoting Fooloso4
In view of that chronology, Plato seems to hold those cards close to his chest. Socrates is heard joining the criticism of Heraclitus but does not explain why he won't criticize Parmenides except to say he was wise.
In following Plotinus I think Gerson misrepresents both Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus' first principle, the arche of the Whole, is the Good or One. He tries to resolve the problem of the One and the Many in this principled way, but neither Plato or Aristotle do this. For them the problem stands as a limit of human understanding.
Quoting Paine
An interesting observation. Plato's Timaeus begins with a devastating criticism of the Republic. It is radically incomplete. It is a city created by intellect without necessity, that is, a city without chance and contingency. A city that could never be. The fixed intelligible world is unintelligible. Heraclitus rather than Parmenides seems to have the last word.
No, it began by saying that your interpretation of the letter was such.
Quoting Fooloso4
The letter does not say that Plato holds no positions, or that none of his positions are inferable from his texts, or that none of his positions are inferable from Aristotle's texts.
Quoting Fooloso4
I already addressed this in the parenthetical remark at the end of that paragraph.
Nor did I say that. Once again:
Quoting Fooloso4
If you are arguing that his core doctrines are unwritten that is a whole other discussion. Griffin's review of Gerson, however, addresses such things as the unmoved mover and the "theory of Forms", that is, what is written.
Quoting Leontiskos
Here is what you said:
Quoting Leontiskos
Are you claiming that Aristotle made public what Plato intended to keep private? Wouldn't that be a breach of trust? Do you think he rejects what Socrates says about the problem of writing in the Phaedrus:
(275d-e)
Aristotle too was aware that what is appropriate to say or not to say must take into consideration who one is speaking to. He had no control over who was reading his work or listening to his lectures. And so, like Plato, only made public what he thinks will benefit the reader or listener while not disclosing what only a few might be able to understand.
Are you claiming that Plato did not intend to make anything whatsoever public? That approach succeeds in nixing the OP, but it proves far too much.
No. Both Plato and Aristotle write in ways intended to mitigate the problem of writing. Both have a salutary public teaching.
Well the way you have been wielding Plato's seventh letter makes it seem like Plato can have no public teaching.
The distinction is between the public teaching and matters which are not made public. In the OP a theory of Forms is regarded as a "core doctrine" that represents Plato's own view. There is, however, a great deal in the dialogues that call the Forms into question. The idea found in the Republic of eternal, fixed, transcendent truths known only to the philosophers is a useful political fiction. This "core doctrine" is a myth, a noble lie.
Quoting Fooloso4
:fire:
I accept that there is a lot of nuances in how that gets expressed. When Aristotle refers to the 'Platonists', he may be that and something else at the same time.
It is tyrannical to have them all wearing the same neckerchief.
But is Gerson doing that? I see him as trying to identify the broad outlines of the implications of Platonism - not defined solely in terms of Platos dialogues, but by the many schools of thought that have identified as part of that ongoing tradition. Thats where he locates the five antis that he says are in common to all of them. So hes inclusive, not exclusive.
When I look under the hood of Gerson's writing, he adopts the perspective of Plotinus in an uncritical fashion. In that regard, he is too inclusive and sees everything through the goggles of Plotinus. That is what I have been trying to address in the Metaphysics thread.
Take, for example, Gerson's essay on the agent intellect. The following statement appears in the conclusion:
This view of being "disembodied" is thinkable within Plotinus' model of the soul. From what I understand Aristotle to say about "particular individuals", being disembodied means you are dead.
Sorry, I know I need to respond to your post in the Metaphysics thread, but Gerson is dividing philosophers into two camps. It is legitimate to ask questions about the rationale and rigor of that division, but certainly when Aristotle speaks about "Platonists" and Gerson speaks about "Platonists" they are speaking about two different things. For Aristotle Platonists are one camp among many; for Gerson they are one camp among two. I don't think equivocation is occurring given the way Gerson sets out his thesis.
It is no surprise that when seen through the interpretive lens of the Platonist Plotinus Plato and Aristotle are regarded by Gerson as Platonists. Central to Gerson's Platonism is the intelligible world. Perhaps the world is intelligible, but that does not mean it is intelligible to us. Gerson acknowledges this distinction. For example, in a
review of a book on Plato's Timaeus he says, with regard to Timaeus' likely stories:
The philosopher, like the poets and theologians, deals in likely stories. They too are myth makers. They do not bring truth and light to the cave, They too are puppet-makers, makers of images that by the light of the cave cast shadows on its walls.
I will leave it to others who are more familiar with Plotinus and other Platonists to say how closely the philosopher as myth-maker aligns with their teachings.
This is Gerson's thesis in a nutshell:
The list of negatives is drawn up by his reading of Plato. What comprises what is "firmly rejected in the
dialogues either explicitly or implicitly", is a matter of contention, especially the "implicit" part.
Relegating differences between thinkers as participants in the proposed larger container of agreement to a secondary concern removes any of the testimony of others to be possible challenges to the existence of said container.
The thesis was developed as a response to modern expressions of "anti-Platonism" and modern views of nature. As a philosophy of history, it is claiming that the conditions Plato emerged from are the same as those we live in. This battle between the two Titans seems to take place outside of History, in some kind of eternal now.
The thesis certainly does not help illuminate how Plotinus emerged in his time.
There are several matters in that review I would like to address that concern Plotinus but not Gerson. So I will put the comments in your Metaphysics thread when I can make a logos of them.
I think Gerson is on the right track, so I probably see it as less controversial than you do.
Quoting Paine
First I would say that Gerson's thesis does not preclude challenges to this thesis. You yourself tend to offer these challenges. Second, to apply a particular lens to philosophical taxonomy does not prevent us from applying other lenses. I don't see Gerson's lens as exclusive.
Quoting Paine
Yes, perhaps.
Quoting Paine
I don't know a lot about Plotinus, but I suspect you are correct.
That is an interesting question to ask. How about Heidegger versus Ur-Platonism?
They are both critical of the dominance of modern science. They both rely upon an intensive study of classical texts. They differ sharply on views of historical development. Can they share the same view of the world?
So then I think the question is: How do you call into question the aptness of a lens, short of denying it altogether? This is where I wonder if you are barking up the wrong tree, because the comprehensiveness of Gerson's lens makes it hard for those who agree with him to see a contrasting picture. So long as you are "short of denying it altogether," I don't think this is Gerson's fault. It might be the fault of the person who understands Gerson but does not really understand Heidegger. For that person Gerson wins by default, but also because he has managed to capture the person's interest and motivations in a way that Heidegger has not. Thus you have a legitimately difficult task in disrupting Gerson's thesis, but the way you are going about it with Plotinus and Aristotle seems reasonable to me.
That fairly points to the limits of my thought experiment.
My not-very-well-informed understanding is that Heidegger attempted a critique of classical metaphysics, saying that from Plato onwards, Parmenides was misrepresented or misunderstood. That this culminated in the decadent metaphysics of Western culture such that what is required was to go right back to the origin and really 'hear' what Parmenides had to say.
I certainly don't know if Gerson would agree at all with Heidegger's critique although he might have commented on it - he comments on very many philosophers in his books. I'm not aware. I've always been wary of Heidegger partially because of his reputation as being difficult and obscurantist, and also because of his association with Nazism, although there are certainly many things I have read about him that ring true to me.
Eric Perl's short little gem "Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition," makes a similar argument, but applies it more broadly to the entire classical tradition. Per Perl, major elements are contiguous between Parmenides and Plato, and on to Aristotle, and then into Plotinus and St. Aquinaswith the main thread being Parmenides' "it is the same thing that can be thought and can be.
Perl specifically argues against the "two worlds," view of Plato, which I agree is a pretty bad reading, and one which also only becomes a thing in the modern period. Interestingly, he points to Ockham and Scotus as the end of the classical metaphysical tradition and the birth of "subject/object" thinking and "problems of knowledge" rather than more modern figures like Locke or Kant. A particularly keen observation of his is how closely ideas in phenomenology, namely "giveness" and "intentionally" hew to the classical tradition, such that Husserl's project in some ways starts to look more like a recovery of lost concepts (Robert Sokolowski, who he cites, does a lot of work in the relationship between classical philosophy and phenomenology too).
On this view, Aristotle is a Platonist offering corrections and St. Aquinas isn't really straying too far from the Neoplatonism of his contemporaries. I do think this gets something important right. Far too often, we seem to read the modern rationalist vs empiricist debate back into Plato and Aristotle, which misses their deep connections. That or they just become skeptics, trapped in the modern box of subject/object, which is an even grosser misreading, particularly of Aristotle.
I've been singing the praises of this book, and the cogency of that argument. Like Perls, 'radical orthodoxy' also pins much of the issue on Scotus' 'univocity of being' (and I would add, on the loss of both the 'scala natura' and its 'degrees of being' and also the 'via negativa'.)
Yes, a great deal of effort is expended on trying to develop the idea and avoid the problems of collapsing into the silent unity of Parmenides or the universal inconstancy of Heraclitus.
[Quote]
The idea found in the Republic of eternal, fixed, transcendent truths known only to the philosophers is a useful political fiction. This "core doctrine" is a myth, a noble lie.[/quote]
I don't know how you explain Plato's later, considerable efforts to figure out how to deal with the forms, universals and predicates in the Sophist/Statesman if the Forms are [I]just[/I] a political myth (same with the troubleshooting in the Parmenides). The invocation of the Forms in the Phaedo also has a different usage. Plato uses myths often, but he doesn't bother returning to them over and over throughout his life to try to iron them out when they are just meant to be edifying alternatives for those who have failed to grasp the main thrust of his lesson.
Letter VII is specifically attempting to skewer Dionysius of Syracuse's pretenses to be a philosopher. One of the reasons to think it is authentic is that it jives very well with the Republic re the limitations of language and Plato's ecstatic view of knowledge. The letter is referring to the idea of intelligible forms in it's very explanation of the limits of language, so I'm finding it hard to see how one gets a reading out of this that would reduce the forms to "political myth" of some sort.
Intelligible form here seems absolutely necessary for understanding why Plato thinks there are such limits on the type of work Dionysius is pretending to in the first place. If the fifth thing is just a pragmatic creation of words, Plato would seem to be guilty of the worst sort of sophistry here.
If you go a little further on your previous quote, it is clear that Plato is talking about the inadequacy of treaties, not "unknowability."
Note, that this also denotes an ability to share this insight, just not in a direct way.
Aside from that, I also have no idea how there could be a reading of Aristotle where he is skeptical of edios.
Good question.The problem is that one who does not allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same" will destroy the power of dialectic entirely (Parmenides, 135b8c2). Something like the Forms underlies (hypo - under thesis - to place or set) thought and speech.
The myth is that the Forms are eternal beings that are known to the philosopher by the power of dialectic and thus the philosopher, knowing the just, the beautiful, and the good is uniquely qualified to rule. In the Republic Socrates says:
(511b)
If it is possible to use hypothesis to free oneself from hypothesis then evidently Socrates did not succeed. The story of the Forms remains just that, a story, not something he knows. Plato did not wish to extinguish the fire of the desire to know. There is a difference between the claim that it is not possible to know, which is not something he knows, and the recognition that one does not know, between human and divine wisdom.
Very true, just as, in an even more extreme way, many of the Wittgenstenians in these parts assume that if you disagree with them you must be following Russell.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There is probably a complementarity here between Gerson and Perl given the way Gerson will identify those later themes in earlier thinkers (e.g. materialism in the atomists).
But eidos isn't invoked as an expedient for justifying a political system. Quite the opposite, Socrates only looks at justice within the context of a city to help pull out the nature of justice vis-á-vis the individual, and the philosopher king is analogous to the rule of the rational part of the soul. The exposition begins as a response to Glaucon's challenge re the "good in itself," not as a means of advancing a political position.
Eidos is also key to the explanation in Letter VII of why metaphysics cannot be written about in the way that Dionysius of Syracuse is attempting. In context, Plato is clearly not making a blanket pronouncement against anything that might be considered a "doctrine." You can hardly come away from his corpus with the idea that he thinks, "well, being led by the pleasures of the flesh and ruled over instinct is all well and good. After all, we cannot know the Good, so we cannot really say that the rational part of the soul has greater authority." He is instead referring to the core of his metaphysics, which the following paragraphs reference directly in explaining why he cannot produce a dissertation on such things. Nonetheless, such things may indeed be shared "after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together," when "suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself."
Eidos shows up throughout the dialogues, in the Euthyphro, the Meno, Greater Hippias, Phaedo, etc. and relates to the core issue brought up by Parmenides re the Many and the One/the intelligibility of being. E.g., "Are not those who are just, just by justice? Therefore this, justice, is something [???? ?? ?????,
? ??????????]? Then those who are wise are wise by wisdom and all good things are good by the good And these are somethings [???? ?? ???? ???????]? For indeed it cant be that they are not Then are not all beautiful things beautiful by the beautiful? And this is something [???? ?? ???? ?????] (Gr. Hip. 287c1d2)." It is not something invoked as a political expedient.
Anyhow, to quote Gerald Press: We can surely say that if Plato did not intend for his readers to attribute to him belief in the truth of these and many other propositions [e.g., that pleasure is not the good or that forms are objects of knowledge] then he failed miserably The anti mouthpiece camp must hold that the history of Platonism rests upon a colossal mistake If Plato intended to promulgate ?????? or suspension of belief based upon balanced opposite assertions, he was a spectacular failure." We can add here that this view also entails that Aristotle, Plato's prize pupil who studied closely with the man for two decades, would then also have completely misunderstood him.
From what I have read so far, Plotinus uses myth to express aspects of his system, not as a "likeness" to help with what cannot be directly experienced. For example:
Quoting Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, Tractate 3, Section 12 12
The soul being able to see itself in reflection is understood within a universal structure. The architecture for this was taken up by Augustine and developed into his view of a person. In that way, Plotinus is an ancestor of modern psychology. One can detect an embryonic formation of Descartes in:
Quoting ibid. III. 9. 3
Knowledge of the Forms is the justification for the rule of the philosopher. The analogy with the soul is problematic absent knowledge in the soul. This is not to say that reason should not rule the soul but without knowledge we must rely on what seems best to us. Hence the emphasis on moderation developed through a musical education and upbringing.
What happens to Socrates as the hands of the city points to the importance of political philosophy. The city's animosity to philosophy means that the philosopher must receive a political education in the sense of learning how to live and philosophize within the city without invoking the wraith of the city. The philosopher must take on the role of benefactor. This includes telling stories about the good that are good for them.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It does, but the meaning of the term as it was commonly understood includes 'look', 'kind', and 'idea'. It is thus not some thing that exists on its own in some intelligible world but how something appears or seems to be for us. The myth of Forms attempts to resolve disagreement regarding opinions about things like justice, beauty, and the good by going beyond how they appear to us with claims about how they are in themselves as known to the philosophers. Such philosophers are not the philosophers of the Symposium who desire to be wise but are not. Philosophers who are in this regard not like Socrates.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Compare this to what he says in the Phaedo:
(100e)
He calls the hypothesis of Forms (100a) simple, naive, and perhaps foolish, and later "safe and ignorant". (105 b)
This is surprising given that this occurs in a discussion in which he is attempting to persuade his friends that death is something good for those who are good in part based on recollection of the Forms.
After introducing the Socratic Trinity, the Just, the Beautiful, and the Good. (65d) But he says nothing of them, and for very good reason:
(66e)
In the Apology he says:
(40c).
If the dead are nothing then there is no recollection of the Forms. If knowledge is not for the dead because the dead are nothing then knowledge is nowhere to be gained.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
He doesn't. Aporia is the result of our lack of knowledge. If one is to strive to know, however, coming face to face with one's lack of knowledge is a necessary step if one is to be disabused on the assumption that he already knows.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
To the contrary. I think he did understand him. He understood the difference and made use of the distinction between salutary public speech, which is to say political speech, and what those who were well suited discussed in private.
It would be interesting if you traced this,fleshed it out and developed it.
Quoting ibid. III. 9. 3
There is a kind of anthropomorphism at work here. Because we have intellect and use it in an effort to make the world intelligible, the world must not only be intelligible it must be the work of intelligence. That the whole is intelligible, however, remains an open question.
Okay, so from the "Aristotle's Metaphysics" thread:
Quoting Paine
From this I am led to believe that you agree with Gerson's larger project, but disagree regarding his specific means. So I am wondering 1) How you would go about opposing this Rorty-esque approach to philosophy, and 2) Whether you think Gerson's "Platonists" were opposing the same sort of thing in their own day?
That would require re-reading Augustine yet again. I will have to think about taking on such a project. My knees hurt in the morning. I will check out scholarship along those lines.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, that brings up an often-overlooked feature in Plotinus. The different kinds of life are seen as different distances from the One. The difference in De Anima, marked out between humans and other animals as what humans have but the others do not, is not expressed in Plotinus as creatures of a specific kind. They are different formations of soul sinking to various depths of descent into the negation of the intellect.
I am far from agreeing with Gerson's larger project but consider your questions worthy of response.
I will think about them.
Eric Perl's book, that @Count Timothy von Icarus mentioned, analyses this in detail in Chapter 2, Plato. He says the levels of being ought not to be reified as levels of externally-existing realities, but levels of understanding:
[quote=Perl, Thinking Being, Chap 2, Plato, Pp 38-39]If the levels of reality are levels of presentation and apprehension, then the many ascents in the dialogues, the images of going to the forms or true being, express not a passage from one world, one set of objects, to another, but rather, as Plato repeatedly indicates, the ascent of the soul, a psychic, cognitive ascent, from one mode of apprehension to another, and hence not from one reality to a different reality, but from appearance to reality. This, above all, is why Platos metaphysics is no mere theory, a postulation of abstract entities called forms, but is rather an account of the existential condition of human beings. As Socrates says, the prisoners in the cave, seeing shadows of puppets and taking them for reality, are like us (Rep. 515a5).
In the Phaedrus, Socrates likens the soul to a pair of winged horses and their charioteer, and describes its journey, following the Gods, to the place above the sky (Phdr. 247c3).
What occupies this place is colorless and shapeless and intangible, really real reality [????? ????? ????], visible [?????] to intellect alone, the souls steersman,about which is the kind of knowledge that is true.Now the thought of a God is nourished by intellect and undefiled knowledge, as is that of every soul which cares to take in what is appropriate; seeing [??????] at last that which is (?? ??) it rejoices, and beholding the true [???????? ??????] it is nourished and delights In its circuit [the soul] looks upon [??????] justice itself, it looks upon moderation, it looks upon knowledge, not that which pertains to becoming but the real [?????] knowledge concerning that which is really being [?? ? ????? ?? ?????]. And having beheld and feasted on the other things likewise that really are [?? ???? ?????], going back inside the sky, it comes home. (Phdr. 247c3e4)
The strongly visual imagery and the references to a place may incline us to read this as a voyage to another world. But Socrates has already warned us that he is telling not what the soul actually is but rather what it is like (246a5) and later expressly refers to this story as a mythic hymn (265c1). The place above the sky is not in fact a place, since what is there has no shape or color, is not bodily at all. Rather, the flight is a mythic representation of the psychic,cognitive attainment of an intellectual apprehension of the intelligible identities, themselves by themselves, that inform and are displayed by, or appear in, sensible things.[/quote]
So the reason that these are described in mythical terms, does not mean, as you seem insist, dismissing them as 'merely mythical' or aspirational:
Quoting Fooloso4
Could it be that this is because you yourself don't understand what is intended by the 'eidos' and you're then reading this absence into the texts? That Socrates is not telling us 'what the soul actually is' because it can't be told, it has to be discerned - and that will always be a first-person insight, not something that can be subject to re-telling.
Anyway a couple of books I have noticed about these subjects (and there really are multitudes of books) are:
Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist, Philip Cary
Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death, Richard Sorabji
Also worth noting in passing that Schopenhauer's appropriation of the eidos in his World as Will and Idea was one of the primary philosophical sources for Freud's theory of the unconscious. Books include works like "Freud and Philosophy" by Paul Ricur and "Schopenhauer and Freud" by David Cartwright. And then, of course, Jung's archetypes are not at all hard to integrate with Platonic forms. So really the 'levels of self/levels of being' is a perennial theme in philosophy East and West.
If the letter is legitimate, why do you think Plato refrains from saying anything like: "I maintain that these things are unknowable, and I myself do not pretend to know them," etc.? Why does he instead talk about how the nature of knowledge vis-á-vis intelligible form is something that cannot be shared in writing rather just coming out and saying "I can't write about what I don't know about?" And then why would he imply that much conversation and a shared life can allow people to share this sort of knowledge if he himself has never experienced anything of the sort?
I find it hard to see how the skeptical Plato survives if Plato wrote the letter. At any rate, I think you are confusing "myths and images" as a vehicle for/aid to attaining knowledge with all knowledge being [I]of[/I] myths and images alone.
:up:
Perl's take is in line with Robert Wallace, D.C. Schindler, and a number of other people I like on Plato. It seems to me that people who tend to think of the forms as existing in a magical "spirit realm" are generally hostile to Plato. I am not sure if it is their bad take on Plato that makes them hostile, or if they have a bad take because they only look at the surface level images because they are hostile to his way of thinking. It is probably a mix of both. More skeptical versions of Plato on the other hand seem more born of literalism, and in some cases a lack of imagination.
The Cary approach seems to consider the dynamic I proposed.
Actually it's a consequence of what Maritain diagnoses as the cultural impact of empiricism, in an essay of that name. An example I've often given is from a Smithsonian Institute essay What is Math? which considers attitudes towards Platonic realism in mathematics from an empiricist point of view:
There is actually a sensible answer to that rhetorical question, which is that empiricism is indispensable for all practical purposes. But in effect it has displaced metaphysics, or is mistakenly taken to be a metaphysic when it is really an heuristic or a method. That's why the yardstick for what is real is often said to be what is 'out there somewhere' - in fact, even that essay says 'Some scholars feel very strongly that mathematical truths are out there, waiting to be discovered.' Notice the use of 'out there' as shorthand for 'what is real' - if it exists, it can only exist as phenomena, as something that can be discerned by sense or instruments of sense. That is where the mistake of the 'ethereal realm' or 'spirit realm' originates, as there is no conceptual space for different kinds or levels of being. As you say, it's a complete failure of the imagination, bred into us by centuries of empiricist conditioning.
Quoting Paine
Hence why I recommended it!
When Socrates claims that he knows nothing noble and good (Apology 21d) I take this to mean he has no knowledge of the Forms (eidos).
I appreciate the reference to someone I should probably check out.
I will leave arguments regarding the topic to a later date.
As noted above somewhere, Parmenides' prose-poem is said to be 'given by the Goddess', i.e. divinely inspired. Heraclitus said Human character does not have insights, divine has (quoted in Perl, p 18). While Socrates often professes ignorance, this is often part of his dialectical method, aimed at exposing the ignorance of others and guiding them towards a deeper understanding - in this case, by not 'putting on airs' or pretence at wisdom.
I think your frequently-repeated claim that Plato regards the forms as aspirational or mythological or something that nobody including himself has ever seen, really doesn't hold up, even if passages can always be found that seem to suggest it. I've noticed in the past you've suggested that various contributors have been influenced by Christian platonism; would it fair to suggest that your interpretation is influenced by an innate disposition towards naturalism?
On the one hand:
Quoting Fooloso4Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I am not claiming that all knowledge is of myths and images. I am saying that in the absence of knowledge he gives us myths and images.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I am not hostile to Plato. He is my favorite philosopher and I do not think the forms exist in a magical spirit realm.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think it is the other way around. Those who believe in transcendent knowledge of Forms read him literally. It is not lack of imagination. Imagination is essential but, as the divided line indicates, there is a difference between what we might image and what we know.
Right. He is not a God. His wisdom is human wisdom.Above the entryway to the temple of Apollo are inscribed the words "know thyself". One way in which this was understood is that man should know his place.
Quoting Wayfarer
Don't miss the irony. Rather than accept that what the Oracle says as true he sets out to refute it. In addition, he changes what the Oracle says from "no one is wiser than Socrates" to "... you declared that I was the wisest ."(21c)
Quoting Wayfarer
It would be fair to say that I do not know what Christian Platonists either claim to know or accept that Plato knows. I have in the past if these are things that you know and you admitted that you do not. I do not think I have an innate disposition toward naturalism. I am disposed, but not innately, to not attempting to understand Plato in terms of 'naturalism'. The term does not have a clear agreed upon meaning. As with some other philosophical terms when it is used one is saddled with claims that I may not accept.
Of course, the least wise thing one can claim is to be wise. But it's another thing to claim that the only form of wisdom is the knowledge that one does not have it, and which appears to be your claim.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, Lloyd Gerson's book Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy gives it in painstaking detail.
On second thoughts - I do try to defend a form of platonic realism, which is that numbers, logical principles, and many other constituents of rational thought, are real independently of any individual act of thought even if not materially existent. I also show that platonic realism is generally deprecated in current philosophy, for the reasons given. So - is this something I know? I might believe it to be true but then how is that claim to be adjudicated?
You overstate the case. There are different ways in which one might be said to be wise. Socrates acknowledges that the craftsman, doctor, and pilot are wise. He also says that he is wise regarding erotics.
Instead of the all too common "read this book" tell me what you mean by naturalism and then I can say to what extent I think this accurately describes or fails to describe my understanding of the dialogues.
I am not asking you to once again rehash your complaints against particular contemporary philosophers. In part what needs to be addressed is the relationship between your understanding of naturalism and thinking and culture.
Perl's use of myth echoes what I hear in Plotinus' language.
My problem with this reading of Plato is that the "Theory of the Forms" becomes fixed as a doctrine. I commented upon this last year in a reply to you concerning FM Cornford's interpretation of the Theaetetus. The biggest problem with this fixed meaning of form and anamnesis is that it becomes a kind of form itself that exists separately from those who speak of it.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to Cornford's position comes from the Sophist through the voice of the Stranger:
Quoting Sophist, 248A, translated by Horan
That puts a hefty dent into the reasoning of the Timaeus and runs over Plotinus' interpretation of that book with a tractor.
Note to add: I don't mean to say by the above that the existence of forms is being denied. It is just to show that there is more than a single way to consider their activity as depicted by Cornford.
Gerson starts with:
And then says:
In presenting this statement, there is more than a little sleight of hand in play with Gerson joining Rorty and Rosenberg together as fellow "anti-Platonists":
Rosenberg is the one who locates "naturalism" as the product of scientific activity:
This could be Wittgenstein saying: "We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched." Tractatus 6.52
But Rorty is not talking about that boundary when he condemns all of philosophy to be Platonism. He was a self-identified pragamatist. As such, he said things like:
Rorty said contradictory things that Nick Gall does a good job of drawing out the problems of such declarations.
In any case, the project described as being: "the distinction between the past and the future can substitute for all the old philosophical distinctions" is clearly not equivalent to what concerns Rosenberg. Rorty is radically historist. Rosenberg offers no opinion about that sort of thing in the provided quote. "Plato", as a set of ideas, does not concern either in the least.
Gerson's synthesis of these different views is his philosophy of history, his theory of how we got to where we are now:
That is a very sharp either/or. I don't know what that does not exclude from the pursuit of natural causes.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is where I think Gerson should not quit his day job before becoming a philosopher of history. He establishes himself in that role but not in a way that can be compared with other attempts. That is why I had to agree with your observation about the futility of comparing Ur-Platonism with Heidegger.
It is low hanging fruit to point at the difference between results of an active scientific practice with questions over whether it would anger the gods to ask too many questions.
But I don't want to make a specific claim in that regard. As expressed elsewhere, I wonder about how a history of philosophy relates to an account of what is, without qualification, as Aristotle might say.
I quite agree that the the 'fixing of doctrine' becomes a problem with many interpretations of Platonism - that is the source of dogma, I would have thought, which amounts to the formulaic representations of principles, as distinct from the living insight that they were supposed to convey. The ossification of insight into dogma has happened many times over history.
Thanks indeed for that quote from The Sophist, I can see how important that argument is in the overall scheme. Treating the form of a particular as 'a separate thing' is the crux of the problem. That is what the sections in Eric Perl address, in The Meaning of Separation, the Levels of Being, and the Ascent of the Soul.
We had a discussion about it a few months back and I'll refer to a very long post which summarises the relevant points from those chapters.
Quoting Paine
I don't agree at all, I think they're motivation is completely different. It is something which Rosenberg celebrates and Wittgenstein mourns. Alex Rosenberg is a militant atheist which Wittgenstein, despite his reticence, never was. Remember he used to carry around Tolstoy's edition of the Gospels during his war service. The 'mystical aphorisms' in section 6 of the Tractatus, about the transcendent nature of ethics, would never be found in anything Rosenberg writes.
Quoting Fooloso4
That is a very big question. I'll try and tackle it without turning it into a dissertation.
As I've said many times, I first came to philosophy through my autodidactic attempt to understand the meaning of spiritual enlightenment. That's what drew me to Buddhism, as they're explicit about it. But I also found references to enlightenment are in the Western cultural tradition (see SEP Divine Illumination). Examples appear prominently in Christian mysticism, but then, Aquinas has some connection with that, and he was also a conduit for the grand tradition of Greek philosophy which represents (in Plotinus) a school of the philosophia perennis*.
I will choose a passage from a Buddhist scholar to illustrate what I see as the problem of naturalism and culture that have arisen in the wake of the European Enlightenment (from a conference keynote speech, 1994.)
Quoting Bhikkhu Bodhi, A Buddhist Response to the Contemporary Dilemmas of Human Existence
Of course, many qualifications and caveats could be made, but I chose this passage because of it's straightforwardness.
However over many years, I've turned back towards the Christian Platonism which is actually our shared cultural background, and sought to understand enlightenment in those terms. I think Western culture has resources which Buddhism lacks, and besides, the 'crisis of the European sciences', as Husserl called it, was a European malady, and so the remedy needs to be sought in those terms.
And in any case, the times are well and truly a'changing. The kind of hardline materialism that this passage describes still exists, but science itself is dynamic and always changing, and the 'systems science' and new approaches in biology and physics are challenging that kind of dogmatic materialism. Nevertheless, naturalism is the assumed consensus of a secular age with a kind of unspoken convention about what kinds of ideas will or will not be admitted into consideration.
Quoting Wayfarer
*Re the Philosophia Perennis - I am wary of the so-called 'traditionalists', René Guenon, Frithjoff Schuon, et al - I think it's something of a cult movement, notwithstanding some convergent interests.
I had not considered it as difference in motivation, only as a statement about what "science" does or does not provide.
I will have to think about your description of "Christian Platonists." I have to admit it is difficult for me to approach this with pure objectivity.
I appreciate that you considered the quote from Sophist as germane to the discussion.
[quote=Ray Monk, Wittgenstein's Forgotten Lesson;https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/regulars/55561/wittgensteins-forgotten-lesson](Wittgenstein's) work is opposed, as he once put it, to "the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand." Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it "scientism," the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.[/quote]
Yes. He made that clear in Tractatus and that thought is consistent with the following works. But he did not oppose the practice of science, only the claim it replaced everything else.
My view also.
The claim that science could replace "everything else" is so patently absurd that I could never understand why anyone would believe it or bother to expend any energy opposing it.
I now regret mentioning Wittgenstein because his remarks do not change my observation that Gerson is defining "naturalism" by means of Rosenberg saying:
That precisely outlines what science cannot provide and certainly cannot be described as "Platonist." But the statement is not "anti-philosophical" because it recognizes we have questions beyond what science tries to answer
Gerson gets this to be considered "anti-Platonist" by yoking it together with Rorty's campaign against Plato as emblematic of all that is wrong with Western metaphysics. The argument is specious. The two do not share a view of nature they have both signed off on. They do lack qualities that Gerson's view of nature require.
By that method, I could combine any two thinkers I disagree with.
I re-read the Perl text and I still have the same response given there:
I have been reading chunks of Plotinus lately and can report that he speaks about such a ratio.
It looks like Gerson and Perl read Aristotle in a similar fashion.
Quoting Wayfarer
I asked what you mean by naturalism. In response you said:
Quoting Wayfarer
If by naturalism you mean the problems that have arise in the wake of European Enlightenment, then my answer is no, my interpretation is not influenced by the problems of European Enlightenment. But it is not so simple. Look again at the passage cited by @Paine from the Sophist. On one side are the "friends of the forms" and on the other those born of "earth-born ancestors" who "maintain emphatically that they are all physical" and "would insist that whatever they are unable to squeeze with their hands is nothing at all". (247c)
To the extent that the claims of the earth-born line up with naturalism it is already present in Plato long before the European Enlightenment. There are, however, things such as justice, wisdom, excellence and the souls in which they arise that are not tangible or visible (248b). Things that cannot be squeezed with the hands. So it would seem that the friends of the forms win the battle. But not so fast.
(248d-e)
As he asks the friends of the forms:
(248e-249a)
Rather than things being resolved by embracing the forms he says:
(249d)
Motion and rest are opposites, but each are and both of them is. (250a) Both of them are not at rest or moving, so, he asks, is being then some third thing?
Although being, rest, and motion are three, to count rest, motion, and being as three would be a mistake. Being is a higher order than rest and motion. It is not a third thing to be counted alongside them.
The Stranger identifies five Kinds. In addition to motion, rest, and being, there is sameness and difference (Sophist 254c)
Contrary to Parmenides, the Stranger says that it is not possible to give an account of being without introducing non-being. Non-being is understood as otherness or difference.
There can be no comprehensive account of being without a comprehensive account of non-being. But what is other is without limit and cannot be comprehended. On the one hand this means that there can never be a comprehensive account of the whole, but on the other, it encourages an openness to what might be; beyond our limits of comprehension.
Rather than the One Aristotle points to Plato's indeterminate dyad
I find being told to read something in lieu of a response is patronizing and consider it a withdrawal from discourse. I share your complaint.
My understanding is that human beings and other animals demonstrate purposiveness, but that science cannot show there to be any general or overarching purpose in nature. I don't see why a lack of overarching purpose and meaning should diminish the importance of general human and particular individual purpose and meaning.
The question as to how best to live, or to put it in Platonist terms the search for the Good, concerns us, or at least should concern us, all. I think it's not a question of what we specifically believe, but how we practice, when it comes to the "questions beyond what science tries to answer".
For example, in regard to the question of free will, I can be a full-blown determinist and still think it important for humans to be rationally self-governing.
I took it to be implied by your earlier declaration that 'modernity is our cave'.
Quoting Fooloso4
Of course. Materialism is as ancient as philosophy itself. The C?rv?ka of ancient India were materialists. Enlightenment materialism was represented by scholars such as Baron D'Holbach, who 'sees nothing but bodies in motion'. Like its opposite, it's a perennial theme in philosophy.
I'm sorry if it came across that way. It's more that, 'this is a deep and multi-faceted topic, which is extensively treated in this book.' As the thread is about the work of Lloyd Gerson, then I referred to another of his books, Platonism and Naturalism. And I did then proceed to provide a direct response.
Your approach is very reasonable. Would you say that Gerson's thesis is a tempest in a teapot regarding the limit of philosophy? Or is there something in his either/or that resonates with you?
It does come across that way sometimes.
Leaving all that to the side, the topic here is a particular thesis put forward by Gerson. How can that view be challenged by a different view? Are there other ways of viewing the question that differ from Gerson's suppositions?
What makes asking that question very difficult in the present situation is that Gerson is a highly respected participant in a difficult area of study. His decision to make his claim is different from the years of his life as a scholar. Or if they are not different, that is not a component of the theory.
It makes challenging the theory difficult because the problems of interpretation get mixed with theories of history. So, for example, when I question Gerson's reading of a text, that is not equivalent to challenging his view of history.
I think the fact that thoughtful people all seek to live well, meaning that we all in that sense pursue the good and aim to be rationally self-governing rather than being slaves to our impulses, received opinions, addictions and so on, and that we thus participate in the dialectical search for the truth of the general human condition and of our own conditions in particular exemplifies what is best in Platonism.
I am no scholar of Plato, but I have read with interest what you and @Fooloso4, as much closer readers of Plato than I am, are having to say about seeing Platonism as being less a matter of fixed doctrine than it is of searching for what is good and beautiful and true and flourishing engendering while acknowledging that there can be no definitive answers to those questions.
I haven't read enough Gerson to form a clear opinion, but what I have read in the passages quoted in these forums make him look somewhat like a thinker with a predetermined agenda.
Fair point. I think we can be in the situation of the prisoner who becomes unshackled but has not escaped the cave. We can be aware of the sources that shape our understanding of things and also be aware that there are earlier sources that differ from these. We can then address the problem of the extent to which we can lessen the influence of modernity on our understanding of those earlier sources.
Quoting Wayfarer
The criticism of Forms in Plato's dialogues address the problem of their not being in motion - the problem of understanding the world in motion by positing something that is not in motion. I think Plato regarded flux as the natural starting point, and to the extent the cosmos is intelligible it must be understood in light of flux rather than by eliminating it.
I think this is tricky because some regard dialectic as a method of establishing the truth rather than as a search for the truth. My impression is that Platonists regard the search as something that has reached a successful conclusion. Socratic philosophy, including both Plato and Aristotle, is about being wise in the face of ignorance, keeping our ignorance alive rather than eliminating it.
Quoting Janus
This is where I distinguish between Plato and Platonism. Plato is a Socratic, Platonists are not.
I am more familiar with Gerson as a commentator upon ancient writing than his thesis upon Ur-Platonism. He is also often cited by others doing the same work of interpreting texts.
Gerson has often objected to the term 'Neo- Platonism' because it prejudices the perspective of what differs between later scholars and the original expressions. I grant that he makes a good point about classification. But this is why I keep harping about Plotinus as the elephant in the room. In the essay I linked to above, no mention is made of using Plotinus cosmology to comment upon Aristotle's De Anima. He just uses it. In such cases, where will the differences be found from which to make comparisons?
Quoting Janus
As a question of the future, I don't know what accepting his either/or would look like. We are being asked to stop mixing the two modes. I wonder if he has talked about the replacement somewhere.
Is it a different sense of truth? It could be said that finding wisdom is finding truth, even though nothing in the propositional mode of truth might be possible to say about the wisdom that is found. Perhaps dialectic is a process of error elimination that enables the gaining of wisdom even if the wisdom gained is only to realize that one does not know what one thought one knew.
Quoting Fooloso4
Right, Socrates seems far from being an ideologue or purveyor of doctrines.
In this regard, my attempts to cleanly separate history and interpretation runs into a spot of bother.
The idea that ancient texts were saying something other than established interpretations was through a recognition of their development through time. Trying to reverse the flow is a new river mapped with conjecture and new methods of comparison.
:pray:
Quoting Paine
That's getting close to the point that I've been pressing all along. And the reason for my interest in Gerson: he's a dissenting voice in the modern academy. (Thomas Nagel is another.)
I was thinking the "established interpretations" include the series presented through centuries of accounts given upon these writings. Those views changed over time. It is only fairly recently, however, that talk about how different the past was from the present became a reason to question the meaning of a text.
On that basis, your view of what happened from then and now is more reliant upon recent scholarship than those who see no reason to question previous descriptions.
I've been upfront about my motivation and background, which is that I came to philosophy from a counter-cultural perspective, the quest for philosophical or spiritual illumination. My view is that some form of Platonism (specifically, realism about universals) is the real mainstream of Western philosophy, but that the tradition has been hijacked or subsumed by philosophical materialism. Hence my response when I saw the abstract of Gerson's Platonism and Naturalism (which I'm still only half-way finished):
Consequently, I'm with 'the friends of the forms', whereas I think the predominant voice in modern philosophy is that of the 'earth-born ancestors'. As a result, much of what is taught in philosophy departments is in conflict with classical philosophy per se. (Which is why I said that Gerson is a 'dissident voice' in respect of many of his academic peers.)
Here's Gerson presenting the core of the ideas in that book, for those interested.
I ask you to consider separating what you view as a field of modern philosophy from the terrain of interpreting ancient text as carried out by academic scholars.
In that realm, Gerson is not a dissident but a well-received figure who many support and many others do not. He is far from being a voice in the wilderness. The way he is represented in your quote as a hero of historical understanding has very little to do with why he has a seat at the table of his colleagues.
I'm not sure what you wrote in your post addresses my question. If you agree with Gerson that Rorty is too general and reductive, then what sort of corrective would you provide to Rorty?
Quoting Paine
Has Gerson said that Rorty and Rosenberg are fellow anti-Platonists, or has he merely said that they are right in identifying Platonism with philosophy? It seems to me that he has said the latter, and it does not follow that both are anti-Platonists (or that both are anti-Platonists in the same sense).
Quoting Paine
I agree that they are different, and I don't see that Gerson has claimed they are not. Still, I am curious what corrective you would offer to "this Rorty-esque approach to philosophy" ().
Quoting Paine
I think it will not exclude a pursuit of natural causes in line with Gerson's five points of Ur-Platonism.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Paine
So I take it you don't think Gerson's "Platonists" were opposing the same sort of naturalism in their own day?
What "naturalism" refers to is the loosest ball in this discussion. Gerson has said what he understands by that. I have been questioning the basis of that description as given in the thesis. I need more convincing before receiving the term as a known value in the discussion.
.
What do you think is at stake in that passage you cited from The Sophist? Anything?
I agree, but think there is another related connection between dialectic and wisdom. The art of making and evaluating opinion. In a word, the art of the enthymeme.
In the thread on Aristotle's Metaphysics I argued that Aristotle's arguments are dialectical. He says:
(982a)
then:
but rather stating what these causes and principles are he says in the next sentence:
Perhaps it will be clearer if we take the opinions which we hold about the wise man. (982a)
Why the shift from the causes and principles to opinions about the wise man? Can those who are not wise have wise opinions about the wise man?
Prior to this he said:
(981b)
If Aristotle is wise can he teach us to be wise, to know the causes and principles? Now we all learn that Aristotle said there are four causes. It would be unwise to think that knowing this makes us wise. He does not teach us the causes and principles are whose knowledge is wisdom. He can, however, teach us to think dialectically about opinions and their claims and premises.
It is is a large problem. I think the best we can do is be aware of our own prejudices and assumptions and try not to impose them on writings that are at once foreign and our own. We can only jump into the river from where we are, but can question the boundary marks that have been set.
[added]: If one is a Platonist then there is no boundary separating Plato from Platonism or even for some Platonism and us.
Do you think he is referring specifically to practical wisdom (phronesis) rather than some kind of metaphysical or transcendent wisdom. I'm not trying to imply anything about a correct answer to this question, as I'm not that much familiar with Aristotle's works.
Quoting Fooloso4
I wonder whether Aristotle's wise man is a generic or universal wise man or whether he rather refers to those who are wise in various contexts or fields.
It seems right to think that the important lesson from Aristotle would be to understand the dialectical mode of thinking rather than to hold any particular beliefs.
When Rorty says "the distinction between the past and the future can substitute for all the old philosophical distinctions", he is going to have to tell a story about it. One story he tells is:
Quoting Rorty, Solidarity or Objectivity?
The zero-sum game presented here seems pretty objective for someone who eschews absolutes and representations of the real. I recognize that there are different ways of looking at our shared experience. To link them as categorical antagonists, however, has history revealing a psychological truth. But revealing truth is one of the activities Rorty militates against. If the claim is a serious one, he has to abandon his aversion to verification. Sometimes, it seems like he demands admission to a club he denies exists.
If one frees the two perspectives from Rorty's fight to the death, they become more like Nagel's objection to "the view from nowhere", a narrative Wayfinder regards highly. Rorty shares the critical view of science in some places but has complained that Nagel is too mystical in others. So, 'materialist' by comparison but not on the basis of claiming what nature is. He resists saying what that is. As I review different examples of his work, it is confusing to sort out what he objects to from an alternative to such. It is not my cup of tea.
As an American I hear his anti-war view that ideas should not force one to fight. I don't know if he talks about Thoreau but that is the register I hear the objection. A democracy of no. But that is its own discussion, or if is not, that becomes a new thesis. I fear the infinite regress.
For the purposes of this discussion, I have learned enough to say that Rorty is not one of those who are 'materialist' according to the criteria in Ur-Platonism. Rorty's demand that humans are the measure makes that impossible. I take your point that Gerson is not joining Rorty and Rosenberg at the hip. That allows me to ask what they have to do with each other.
In that vein, I agree with:
quote="Leontiskos;911088"]I think it will not exclude a pursuit of natural causes in line with Gerson's five points of Ur-Platonism.[/quote]
They require the logic Rorty would expel. It is whatever else that is said that I cannot imagine.
Quoting Leontiskos
I do not. But I need to think about how to frame the question as its own thing. In my defense, it is not like Gerson explains the sameness. His enemies never change.
I think that with regard to phronesis knowledge of principles and causes is not sufficient. In so far as good judgment involves action it depends on good character. What is at issue here is not 'principles' in the sense of rules. In his translation of Metaphysics Joe Sachs says that 'arche is a "ruling beginning"'.
He translates it as 'source'.
In more contemporary terms Aristotle's inquiry into the arche or source of things is ontological rather than epistemological. If we consider that:
. (981a)
then either wisdom is unattainable for human beings or, as the Platonists would have it, it is attained through mystical or transcendent experience. Some might find or import mystical experience in Aristotle but I don't.
I think the best way to approach this is through Aristotle discussing the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake :
This argument that it is okay to pursue first causes extends to all who attempt it. When Aristotle makes arguments against others employing what Gerson calls Ur-Platonism principles, that doesn't make his interlocutors unqualified to speak upon it. They are all pursuing the nature of the world because it is their nature to do so.
The reference to Simonides invokes a struggle with tradition that is ever present in Plato's dialogues. An excellent essay on this topic is written by Christopher Utter.
To answer that, several features of the Sophist need to be taken into account. It begins with Socrates asking what kind of authority the Stranger will be speaking with:
Quoting Plato, Sophist, 216A, translated by Horan
The way Theodorus puts it, taking controversies seriously means putting up a fight. Throughout the dialogue, the Stranger draws comparisons between that method and others. The contrast between the violent and the gentle becomes the means of division in many cases. The method of division itself is a vehicle of being self-aware of its limits. There is a lightness of touch with starting the dialogue by comparing the sophist to an angler. That is combined with more strict limits to the method:
The method can be used strictly while permitting other observations. Maybe even to the extent of cracking jokes. But the Stranger brings up a challenge that directly concerns Socrates' opening statement regarding the giants who have spoken:
The Stranger no longer seems so gentle. He wants to interrogate the giants:
But the importance of the distinction between gentle and violent comes back into the fore in reference to the battle of the gods and giants:
Str: Well, some are dragging everything from heaven and the unseen down to earth, literally grabbing trees and rocks in their hands. Indeed, they lay hold of all such objects and strenuously maintain that, that alone is, which gives rise to some contact and touch. 246B They define body and being as the same, and if any of the others say that there is anything without a body, they are utterly contemptuous, and they want to hear no more.
Theae: Yes, you are describing fearsome men, and indeed, I myself have met many of them before.
The difference between what you might say in a fight is different from the problems that belong to an idea as that idea.
That is what I think is at stake in the passage I quoted.
The gentle way of looking at the difference between Being and Becoming leads to this statement:
The vivacity of this statement is like waking up from a dream. For those with a little Greek in their quiver, consider how close this is to the translation:
?? ???? ?? ????? ??? ???? ?? ???? ???????.
Thanks for that elaboration, but Id like to return to the interpretation of the passage you quoted previously.
I was rather thinking that what is at stake in that dialogue is the reality of the Ideas, and consequently what the implications would be if they are found not to be real. Denial is what naturalism, which you say is hard to define, is inclined towards, isnt it? The denial of the reality of the ideas? I had thought that in the passage, that the friends of the forms were defending the forms. The earth-born represent those who are unable to reconcile the distinction between being - what truly is - and becoming, the world of change, growth and decay, and so are calling ideas into question. (And indeed there are many perplexities involved as has been mentioned already, as the reality of change and decay seems undeniable. It is not as if admitting the reality of the ideas is a simple matter.)
Consider this passage in particular:
Quoting Sophist, 248A, translated by Horan
I cant help but be struck by the resemblance to a passage Ive often quoted in the past here in respect of Aquinas:
Can you see the resemblance in those two passages? The differentiation between sense perception and ideas grasped by reason? That in the platonic vision, the faculty of reason is able to grasp what is always the case? I know my attempt here might be a bit simplistic but Im trying to get a handle on the big underlying issue as I see it.
The Stranger is saying that the sharp separation between being and becoming emerged in the battle against those who are:
"dragging everything from heaven and the unseen down to earth, literally grabbing trees and rocks in their hands. Indeed, they lay hold of all such objects and strenuously maintain that, that alone is, which gives rise to some contact and touch."
The friends proceed by letting some of what the earth-born "maintain to be true" to be referred to "as a sort of becoming in motion, rather than being"
The relationship between the two camps changes over time:
Quoting ibid. 246c
The reformation takes place through getting the earth-born to accept having a soul:
We are back to the quote I started with where the Stranger criticizes the friends by showing a big problem with keeping being and becoming completely separated, culminating in:
The Stranger continues this criticism in ways that uncover other problems.
As an Eleatic ambassador of sorts, the Stranger accepts Parmenides must be modified but not rejected. He proposes something like that happen to the friends.
The Aquinas passage does connect with ideas about the soul in the Sophist but needs discussion of the remainder of the text.
Okay, these are good points and I agree.
Quoting Paine
I suppose I am trying to flush out exactly what it is you don't like about Gerson's thesis. I am focusing primarily on his five points of Ur-Platonism. Now someone could surely define nominalism and then divide all of philosophy into nominalist and non-nominalist philosophies. Or they could define nominalism and skepticism and then divide all of philosophy into the four logical categories. It seems that Gerson has defined anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. He calls the conjunction of those five positions pureblood Ur-Platonism (or anti-naturalism). If a philosophy contains only 4/5 then it would be a slightly watered down version of Ur-Platonism, etc. If it contains 0/5 then it is pureblood Naturalism. Ur-Platonism and Naturalism are therefore conceived as two poles sitting opposite one another.
What is objectionable about this? Is the objection that Ur-Platonism doesn't correctly map to Platonism, or to traditional philosophy? Is it that any theory which places Plotinus and Aristotle into the same group must be a false theory, because they are so different? Is it that because Rorty and Rosenberg have both similarities and differences, the theory must somehow fail?
Regarding Rorty:
Quoting Gerson, Platonism versus Naturalism
You say:
Quoting Paine
This leads me to believe that, for Gerson, Rorty is not a materialist but he is at least a relativist and a skeptic. He is a relativist on account of his demand that "humans are the measure," and he is a skeptic on account of his aversion to verification and revealing truth.
Regarding the relation between Rorty and Rosenberg, and Platonism and Naturalism, Gerson has this to say:
Quoting Gerson, Platonism versus Naturalism, p. 3
It seems like Gerson is not falling into the traps you suppose. He is not saying, for example, that Rorty and Rosenberg are entirely alike. Perhaps you are opposed to his "bolder thesis," and in particular the claim that, "I would like to show that what I am calling the elements of Platonismto which I shall turn in a momentare interconnected such that it is not possible to embrace one or another of these without embracing them all"?
Okay, I have always liked that passage.
Quoting Paine
I don't think Gerson would focus on the idea that Aristotle's interlocutors are unqualified to speak upon it, though he might eventually say that. I think he would focus on the idea that they are wrong. If Aristotle can here be said to be espousing a form of anti-skepticism, then the claim would be that Aristotle's opponents are wrong. Thus I would want to say that "this argument. . . extends to" all, not only those who attempt it. It extends, for example, especially to those who reject the legitimacy of pursuing first causes. The ones who were already pursuing first causes don't really have any need of the argument.
Quoting Paine
Okay thanks, it looks like an interesting paper. I will have a look.
It should be noted that Rorty made efforts to differentiate his idea from those charges. That demonstrates a general acceptance of the negativity of those qualities as generally understood. That separation may not really work but it is different from being a champion for those qualities. I object to Rorty's claim of what comprises philosophy because it fails as a Logos, not because it fails a litmus test from applying a set of definitions. A mid-wife tested if the creature would live and did not give any words of encouragement or hope for a future.
Quoting Leontiskos
My objection is more of a question; What is the benefit of all this taxonomy?
I don't see the value of "Platonists" as a recognizable kind except when it serves as a place holder in the context of specific comparisons. When Aristotle uses the term so prominently throughout his work, it does not change the fact he is deeply engaged with Plato's writing and developing those ideas into his own expression. For one example, compare the language of the latter part of the Sophist with De Anima.
There are many places where Aristotle explains what Plato meant without identifying himself as against it. We on the sidelines can ponder if such statements are the last word on the matter. A recent example of that is the discussion of Timaeus in the Metaphysics thread. That is a drop in the ocean of academic work devoted to drawing such distinctions between the two.
Many centuries later, Plotinus arrives in a land crisscrossed with the paths of self-identified Stoics, Academicians, Cynics, Peripatetics, etcetera. There is also an infusion of "Syncretic" thinkers who shop a la carte from others. In this rowdy crowd, Plotinus sought to create his own Ur- Platonism. The Gnostics are to be expelled from the empire and the citizens who remain will work within a shared view of what "Platonists" means when challenging each other's opinions. This imposition of order is how Augustine responded to Plotinus as what led him to turn away from Manicheism. The structure of Heaven was built with this architecture.
There are components of that order that reveal influences from sources before Plato and those he militated against. There is a deep pool of scholarship in that aspect of Plotinus that I have only treaded water in. My mind is tiny.
In the arena of Plotinus building from Plato and Aristotle or diverging from them, there is an asymmetry upon display. Plotinus does not acknowledge himself as anything more than an explainer of Plato's meaning. Aristotle accepts responsibility for both the convergence and the divergence. When we on the sidelines wish to see a difference between Plotinus's and Plato's text, a tendency to argue upon the basis of authority has to be wrestled with. That is what I dislike about Gerson, too. It is a quality I dislike quite independently with whether I agree or disagree with either writer in specific cases (which I have done).
I hope that touches on the mapping and inclusion questions. I am confused how the similarity or differences between Rorty and Rosenberg are components of a thesis that could be defended or challenged. I only can discern a motley beast.
Say, for the purposes of argument, I accepted Gerson's taxonomy. What does his classification have to do with changing future work as he exhorts us to do? He would correctly identify that Rorty is outside the boundary as Gerson has drawn it. Why attach the possibility for philosophy upon one who has just been expelled from it? The limitation is self-imposed. The "naturalists" whoever they may be, won't notice a change in the rules. For those devoted to reading the original texts, it presumes too much of what is still worth proving.
I do not want to paper over the differences between views in Plato's time. The Stranger's depiction in the Sophist of the battle between views of "what is" stands as testimony to such.
To treat the modern battle as simply a continuance of the first overlooks critical cultural differences. There are champions of the modern and there are detractors. How history is conceived plays a big part in their differences. Take Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, for example. They both refused to shake the pom-poms with team Hegel. But the differences between them obviously extend far beyond what Hegel wrote. All three reference Plato as points of departure. But it is of limited utility to compare them upon that basis alone. All three do think they are doing philosophy. Can the differences be delineated through compliance or divergence from a set of categories?
Dissatisfaction with the modern is expressed by some as the loss of a previously preserved virtue, others by a loss of a means of production, others by a loss of the means to experience life available to ancestors. That is not an exhaustive list of all possibilities, just some pieces that show how various are the attempts to connect those perspectives with our present and future lives.
With that said, where does accepting Gerson's criteria play a part? How does it figure in the struggle for future pedagogy in our lives comparable to the struggle in Plato's time?
Quoting Paine
Okay.
Quoting Paine
Isn't philosophy important? If philosophy is important, then on Gerson's thesis, Ur-Platonism is important.
For example your claim was highly Gersonian when you said, "That is a predominantly psychological observation. Where does the philosophy start? Or not?" (). If philosophy is important then it is important to understand what philosophy is, and it is particularly important to be able to ferret out false claims to philosophy. This all seems true to me.
Quoting Paine
I think this methodology is incredibly sound, and that we utilize it in all sorts of ways, namely elucidating what something is by reference to clear examples of what it is not. We elucidate justice by way of injustices; we elucidate truth by way of falsehood; we elucidate beauty by way of ugliness; we elucidate health by way of sickness. This isn't to say that we should stop there. Of course there should also be positive accounts of the essence of things like justice, truth, etc. Still, I don't really see the critique you are giving.
Further, even if we reject Gerson's account of philosophy I believe we will still need to engage in the same project he is engaged in, and that it is an important project. The alternative seems to be either committing ourselves to the view that philosophy isn't important or else to the view that there is no such thing as philosophy (and therefore nothing which is necessarily not philosophy).
Quoting Paine
The modern and post-modern landscape complicates things, but I don't think it invalidates Gerson's thesis. Gerson is drawing up the boundaries of the playing field of philosophy, and you keep pointing to philosophical bouts. Gerson has no problem with philosophical bouts. The question is whether they are within the boundaries.
I am wondering if a cultural anti-authoritarianism is impeding Gerson's thesis. This anti-authoritarianism says, "Who are you to say what counts as philosophy!?" I don't see this as a substantial critique. Again, the deeper matter for me is the alternative between either committing ourselves to the view that philosophy isn't important or else to the view that there is no such thing as philosophy. It's not hard to read Gerson's thesis as a proposal rather than an imposition, or as an invitation to think through a necessary problem rather than an overbearing authoritarianism.
Quoting Paine
Gerson sees all sorts of modern thinkers as Platonists, and I think that's right. I don't know that what is at stake is a confrontation between the pre-modern and the modern.
Quoting Paine
I think we struggle against sophistry in much the same way that Plato struggled against sophistry. For example, the disputes surrounding the DEI programs in the schools and colleges is one way that our pedagogical battles continue on, and Gerson's thesis would surely have a stake in those sorts of questions.
Just to return to this, you have not answered why Plato, in his letter, when he clearly has an opportunity to present himself as a skeptic, instead chooses to say something very different, and even implies that he has shared knowledge of the forms with others (although not through dissertations.)
The Seventh Letter might not have been written by Plato, but it was decidedly not written by a skeptic.
Your reference to the Phaedo also doesn't say what you say it does in context. He doesn't call the forms "foolish" at 100. Rather, Socrates is making an argument for the immortality of the soul based on the assumption that something like the theory of forms is true. That is, he is (perhaps foolishly, or seemingly so) not going to justify the forms here again, but will show what follows from his understanding of them.
Plato does have Socrates say something to the effect of: "no one should take this exact narrative too seriously and think these things are just as I have described them," but this would seem to be a reference to the images he is painting. Like he says in the letter, you can't put this stuff into words. This is why he uses many different images to try to get the ideas across. This is why Socrates repeatedly demures from speaking on these issues directly, because they cannot be spoken of. The warning then is to not mistake his image, appearance, for the reality he is directing our attention to. It isn't to say something like, "and I actually don't know if any of this has any real merit because knowledge of such things is impossible, so don't take me too seriously."
And it's worth noting that "opinion" is in some ways a very inadequate translation of doxa. Today we tend to think of opinion as subjective, as having no real grounding outside itself. But doxa refers to images or what things "seem to be like." What things "seem to be like," is an important parts of what they are. The divided line is all one line, rather than two discrete lines, for a reason. Appearances are part of reality. The line is a hierarchy. To know such appearances, to move up the line, to know something of the truth (in the way the English "knowledge" is colloquially used). Plato's use of doxa has none of the connotations of the English "opinion," where we might think that "to only have opinion" means to lack any knowledge and understanding of a thing.
Again, if Plato knew nothing of the Good, but is just spinning tales based on pragmatic usefulness (a pragmatic consideration based on... what? he doesn't know anything of the Good right?) then would be acting like the very paradigm of the Sophists he criticizes so heavily. He would be someone who pretends to know what he doesn't know and who uses words to try to manipulate people for his own pragmatic ends.
He leaves it to the reader to decide whether he is a skeptic by way of their engagement is skeptical practice. That is to say, by way of doubt and inquiry. The question of what he knows is left open. Where does he imply that he and others have knowledge of the forms?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, you may have decided it was not written by a skeptic, but there are others who do not share that opinion.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right. He does not call the forms foolish. What he says is:
Socrates does not attempt to describe the precise relationship of beautiful things to Beauty itself. One would think it important to do so if it is to be accepted as philosophically sound.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There is more to it than that. See what he says about his "second sailing" in the Phaedo:
(99d-100a)
In the Republic:
(517b-c)
A god knows if this account "happens to be true" but he does not claim to know this. He is not using images to convey something he knows. He is using images and the imagination as a way of thinking about how things he does not know and cannot see. This is very different from the image of philosopher whose soul is turned to see the Forms.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As he says in the Sophist, sometimes the philosopher appears as a sophist. (216d) What distinguishes the one kind from the other? Without getting too far into it, I think it is a matter of intent. The sophist aims to benefit himself, the philosopher to benefit others. it is for the benefit of others that they believe in the just, beautiful, and good. To this end the philosopher makes images of them.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But Socrates does not pretend to know what he does not know. In the passage from the Republic he does not say that the way things look to him are the way they are. He says that a god, not him, knows if it happens to be true.
I shared them and bolded the most relevant parts earlier. There is a reason "skeptical Plato" theorists, from what I have seen, almost always deny the authenticity of the letter. At the very least, the letter decidedly does not say "I write no doctrines because I have none," let alone "I wrote no doctrines because I know nothing."
It's not a question of Plato's Socrates, it's a question of Plato the author. If Plato is a skeptic and doesn't think he really has any good idea what the Good is, why is he writing things that are so suggestive and have been overwhelmingly understood as saying something quite the opposite? To pragmatically move the dial on policies he prefers? (but of courses, not ideas he [I]knows[/I] are good, since he is a skeptic). This would seem to put him right in with the Sophists, fighting over who gets to mount their shadow puppets over the fires of Athens.
Do you mean this post?
I do not read it as implying that he or anyone else has knowledge of:
The three instruments by which knowledge is imparted are the name, the definition, and the image. None of these instruments is adequate for imparting knowledge of the good itself, the beautiful itself, and the just itself. If we look at the statement regarding a light being kindled, it is the result of converse with the matter and a life lived together.The Perseus translation has this last as communion therewith. How does one live together with or be in communion with the good itself, the beautiful itself, and the just itself if these are not known?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That may be true in some cases, but I do not deny its authenticity. I brought up the letter in support of my claims.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree. He does not say these things.
What I said is:
Quoting Fooloso4
And the statement you quoted and responded to:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I did not say he did not have a good idea what the Good is. Having an idea is not having knowledge. He is a skeptic in part because he knows the difference between them.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Because, as I have said, he thinks it will be beneficial to those who are not philosophers. He thinks the images he casts on the cave wall are preferable to those of the poets, theologians, sophists, and politicians. The philosopher, however, because he desires the truth, is not satisfied with what others say.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Not with them. Against them. His shadows, his images of what 'is' in place of theirs. This is what the banning of the poets from the Republic is about.
.
I cannot see beyond the paywall on that article.
I don't get what Strauss has to do with the limit of what is knowable. What I have read of Strauss is mostly in the register of political philosophy. The mentions of the 'esoteric' are connected to that interest as his idea of the pedagogy of the elite. It is one way to interpret the Republic and Meno. There are plenty of other ways.
Why did not the theists in that thread appeal more to the reading of Cornford rather than involve Strauss who argued for the idea of natural rights? I question both of those authors for different reasons.
What is the connection between the skeptical approach of Socrates and some overriding theology? Agnosticism is being equated with atheism here. None of the references to Strauss in that old thread involved quoting what he actually said. It feels like whacking a piñata.
(343e)
There is a difference between knowledge of a good thing and knowledge of the good itself.
As much as humanly possible sets a limit that may fall short of knowledge of the thing itself. So then, if the pursuit of philosophy does not lead to knowledge of the good, the beautiful, and the just then why pursue it? Put somewhat differently, what do we expect and hope for in our pursuit of philosophy?
In a reversal of the turning of the soul toward the Forms, there is a turning of the soul to itself, toward self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is guided by knowledge of our ignorance. We do not know the Forms. We do not have a vision of the Forms. The question then is: which way do we turn? Do we turn away from the "human things" in pursuit of some imagined (and it must be imagined if it is not something we have seen or known) reality or toward it? It is one thing to aspire to something beyond ourselves, but quite another to mistake imagination for knowledge. Absent knowledge of the good we can still seek to know what is good for us.
Yes, I see it is paywalled now. I read it a number of years ago. It is a critique of Strauss' convoluted and inaccessible interpretations of Plato, and the confrontation between Timothy's commonsensical interpretation and Fooloso's convoluted interpretation reminded me of it. As I recall, the point of Burnyeat's "Sphinx without a Secret" was that highly convoluted interpretations of Plato are not only wrong, but they are also contrary to the philosophical spirit of Plato's dialogues. Additionally, in Burnyeat's eyes this is what led to Strauss' guru-esque status among his students.
Good point.
I would add that Socratic skepticism is being equated with other forms of skepticism
If the Burnyeat perspective is worth considering, argue it on your own behalf if it is not publicly available.
I have argued that Plotinus is claiming authority of a certain kind. I accept that I have to do more than claim such to be the case.
I assume the "underlying issue" for you is similar to what Chalmers labeled "the Hard Problem" of how humans are able to distinguish (differentiate) between obvious physical Reality (things) and obscure essential Ideality (essences). That's the job of the Rational Faculty of human intellect. But how it works in a physical neural context is a multi-millennial philosophical mystery that may be closer to becoming a mundane science fact.
For example : In brain-scoping studies, the aha! moment of insight is associated with synchrony of neuronal firing : i.e. when the brain is functioning as an inter-operative (holistic) system. Years ago, a neurologist had his own aha! moment : "what fires together, wires together". Presumably, forming concepts and memories. Some have concluded metaphorically that the brain is like an antenna, resonating with the universe. I don't take it literally, but the analogy may be insightful.
In a video linked to a Big Think article*1, several professionals of various disciplines --- Beau Lotto, neuroscientist ; Alva Noë, philosopher ; Donald Hoffman, cognitive psychologist ; among others --- discuss Consciousness and Perception of the world. They all seem to be agreeing with Kant, that we only know mind-made appearances via the senses, not the Ideal essences. And with Plato, that there is a valid philosophical distinction between Real and Ideal.
In our 21st century era, that is also the difference between the focus of Science (material reality ; instances) and of Philosophy (essential ideality ; universality). Yet some scientists, studying the brain and complex systems have reached similar conclusions, but tend to avoid fraught terms such as "ideal" & "forms" & "holism". "Hoffman argues that consciousness is more fundamental than the objects and patterns perceived by consciousness. We have conscious experiences because consciousness is posited as a fundamental aspect of reality" ___ Wiki. :smile:
*1. Is Reality Real?
https://bigthink.com/videos/objective-reality/
Have you read Strauss or just relying on
Quoting Leontiskos?
What you call my and Strauss' "convoluted interpretation" is perhaps based on assumptions about how to read Plato that Strauss and others have called into question.
From an interview with Stanley Rosen. I have highlighted one statement because I think it is at the heart of much of the disagreement here.
https://college.holycross.edu/diotima/n1v2/rosen.htm
Co-incidentally there might be a superficial resemblance. There's a theme in pre-modern philosophy, which is that reason, the capacity of intellect (nous) to perceive/grasp the forms (ideas, principles, essences) is what distinguishes rational man from dumb beasts. The 'eye of reason'. Hence the (specifically occidental) mythology of the rational soul, wherein reason itself has a salvific potential - although, for Aquinas, not unaided reason, as revelation is primary and all would be lost without it (he is after all a Christian saint). But the reason that passage appeals to me, and I've mentioned it many times, is because it lays out the outlines of Aquinas' version of Aristotle's 'matter/form' dualism very clearly. (You can find it here. Incidentally, also check out this dialogue with Google Gemini on the possible link between hylmoporphic dualism and computer design.)
There's an over-arching narrative that interests me, although I don't know if anyone else here agrees with it - it is that with the decline of scholastic realism and metaphysics proper, something of great importance was lost to Western culture, generally. It's a book-length argument, though, so I'm not going to continue trying to press it.
:up: Thanks, very good interview, illuminating.
No, for Burnyeat Strauss' problem is a kind of dogmatism combined with showmanship or privileged insight, and for me the critique would simply need to be adjusted for your unique form of dogmatism, namely one based on skepticism. The contrarian showmanship is much the same.
Here is an excerpt somewhat late into the article:
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
Quoting Fooloso4
I like Burnyeat. I have read more Straussians than Strauss himself, and at the beginning of his article Burnyeat explains that his critique is both a critique of Strauss and the Straussian pupils simultaneously, given the way that the pupils exaggerated the problems that Burnyeat sees in Strauss.
(I included portions in the quote that Paine might find interesting vis-a-vis Gerson.)
And to be clear, the focus on Christianity comes from Fooloso, not from me. He protests far too much, often when no one has said a word about Christian interpretations of Plato. For my part, I accept a healthy distinction between Plato and Christianity, and I am not a great promoter of a single perennial philosophy running throughout the West. I would prefer to let Plato speak, but in order for that to happen we must acknowledge that he has a voice and we must also clear our ears of biases that would pre-scribe his voice.
Yes. Aristotle's hylomorphism was a proposed explanation for the philosophical distinction between Body & Mind. But it could also serve as a metaphor for the modern analysis of material/physical Hardware and abstract/metaphysical Software. Presumably, only rational animals are able to make that differentiation between what we see and what we infer. In a computer, the hardware serves as the Hyle to embody and process the abstract data of digital logic : Morph. Together they become a "computer", and act as a "thinking machine".
But materialists will object that the Data (mind-stuff) is dependent on the Hardware (matter stuff) to provide the necessary substance for computation. Hence, no Brain, no Mind. But that's an Either-Or reductive way to look at the Mind/Body problem. I suspect that Aristotle and Aquinas would view the thinking-computing system Holistically as a Both-And feature of Nature. That's also the basis of my personal BothAnd philosophy.
For me, BothAnd is the traditional principle of Holism & Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Human reason can differentiate Yin from Yang, and Mind from Body, but the system only works as a team. Separately, the Mind-Software-Idea is vacuous, and the Brain-Hardware-Matter is inert. But working together they produce the systematic "magic" that makes a Person or Computer more than a collection of isolated Bits & Bolts : a system for receiving, processing & sending Symbolized Meaning that is significant only to rational minds in functional brains. Our analytical minds are able to parse the monistic world into dualistic complementary components. :nerd:
YIN / YANG : HARDWARE / SOFTWARE
This is funny because as I see it, the resentment of Strauss is based largely on his calling the dogmatic assumptions of the academic establishment into question.
Quoting Leontiskos
From what I have read his classes attracted a large following of both students and faculty. It seems to me that there is more than a little jealousy at work here.
Quoting Leontiskos
When Socrates claimed not to know anything "noble and good" (Apology 21d) do you think he was lying? Or do you think Plato knew what Socrates did not? When the dialogues lead to aporia do you think there is a way through that Plato was keeping from us?
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, this confirms by point above. When someone calls into question interpretations of Plato that do not remain in deeply worn ruts it is regarded as being contrarian. As if the truth has been established.
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
The term 'utopia' was invented by Thomas More. It means no (??) place (?????).
The SEP article "Plato on Utopia" includes the following:
Is Burnyeat's criticism based on Strauss' reading of the Republic or the Laws? Where does he fit with regard to these changing views?
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
First, Strauss is not alone in challenging the mouthpiece theory. Second, what is the role of Plato's Strangers? Third, even if we accept the assumption that he is Plato's mouthpiece, the problem of what Nietzsche calls his:
(BGE 28)
remains. This is by no means something invented by modern philosophers. The following quotes and more can be found here
(Augustine, City of God, 248)
(Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 1:333 (3.63))
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
From this it looks like Burnyeat took the Republic rather than the Laws to be Plato's utopia.
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
This is not just hopelessly naive it is dangerous. The relation between persuasion and force is a recurring theme in the Republic, beginning with Socrates being "persuaded" not to leave the city:
(327c)
If Burnyeat were writing today he might not be so sanguine. There is a big difference between helping to achieve justice on earth and expecting to achieve utopia. Further, if the Republic is a model of utopia it is a city that few of us would want to live in. The breeding program is not what most of us would consider desirable.
Quoting Leontiskos
We have discussed this before. I do not think that a teacher should be held responsible for everything any of his students say. Some who have learned from him do not regard themselves as "Straussians". Given his emphasis on independent thought they might consider this a failure to understand him. Not all who are considered Straussians are in agreement with each other or with him on various topics.
I too think Plato is a great philosopher. As to invisibility why does he not speak in his own name? Why does the Phaedo make a point of Plato's absence? With regard to pedagogue: Socrates denies that education is putting knowledge into the soul. (Republic 518b-c) One who knows must come to see for themselves, not have his head filled with theories and claims. Plato's pedagogical power lies in his teaching us to think, not to have truths revealed to us.
Quoting Leontiskos
If the "Christian tradition" lays claim to ownership of Plato then I think that is wrong, but I doubt that there is a single Christian interpretation. My argument is against claims of transcendent knowledge, which is not limited to Christianity. Given your Christian affiliation, however, it would seem that it is your own beliefs and assumptions as they relate to Plato that is at issue for you.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, if you want to build such a doctrine have at it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Dethrone? It has honestly never occurred to me that a Christianized Plato sits on the throne. I do, however, reject theological interpretations.
Quoting Leontiskos
I draw a great deal of substance from Plato. The difference is that I do not find it in the same places that you do. I have not claimed that "everyone' has misunderstood him. I do, however, think that you have misunderstood him, but I don't blame Plato for that. It is likely that in some ways I also misunderstand him. The problem is, instead of discussing specific things you think I've gotten wrong, you make sweeping accusations.
Quoting Leontiskos
What is silly is your accusations about my motivations.
Quoting Leontiskos
So which is it, know nothing or secret knowledge?
Quoting Leontiskos
Where has my discussion of Plato focused on Christianity?
Quoting Leontiskos
Where does Plato speak in his own voice? Certainly not in the dialogues. Not even once. Why is that?
Burnyeat would have benefited from paying more attention to Jacob Klein, an important influence upon Strauss. The oracular status given to Strauss by Burnyeat looks different after reading some Klein. Consider the following from Strauss' lecture course on the Meno. The discussion concerns how Socrates says different things to different people and the Thrasymachus' charge of Socrates not speaking clearly:
I don't share Schleiermacher's confidence that his vision of the future will come about. But I do think he is teaching us a little of how to read Plato.
The question raised here about systems takes precedence over secrets. If this reflects how Plato teaches, the emphasis is upon the progress of the learner as a learner, not a proposition of what is true in a proposition. That is why I said previously that Cornford is more of a champion for a System than Strauss was. It is worth noting that Gerson is more of a System guy than even Cornford:
I don't know if it's true, but it seems consistent with a lot of what is being said here, what with 'modernity being our cave'. For me, I'm giving up on discussing Plato on this forum, it is far too convoluted and contentious for philosophical edification. But I will continue to read elsewhere.
I suggest that these squabbles are no replacement for reading Plato and seeing where it goes. There is no scorecard at the end.
Edit to add: You have gone to considerable trouble to read Buddhist text to participate in those discussions. Why the distance you impose upon yourself regarding Plato?
You seem to advance a view but take no responsibility for claiming it. How does likening a criticism of Strauss relate to a particular quote by a specific member of the discussion group?
Is that a charge of guilt by association? I don't like Strauss for many reasons. But you are using a set of arguments you refer to but don't defend. You simply leave the field of battle.
All of my other words left like deer hit on the side of the road.
I withdraw from the field.
Look, I didn't intend it that way. I will try and elaborate. I've been a particpant in many discussions about interpretation of Plato's texts on this forum, one in particular being Phaedo, a few years ago, and I've learned from them. That became quite vituperative in places - there was a participant, Apollodorus, who doesn't seem to be around any more. Overall I didn't much care for his verbal aggression, but I also didn't think his criticisms entirely mistaken, either. I find @Fooloso4 interpretations invariably deflationary - they seem, as @Leontiskos says, to equate Socrates' 'wise ignorance', to ignorance, tout courte. We've discussed, for example, the allegory of the Cave, which I had rather thought contained at least a hint of something like 'spiritual illumination'. But no, apparently, it's also an edifying myth, and Plato is, along with all of us, a prisoner, for whom there is no liberation. Or something like that.
I'm still interested in Plato, but I have inclinations towards 'the spiritual Plato' (not that 'spiritual' is a very satisfactory word, but what are the alternatives in our impoverished modern lexicon?) But why I respond to Gerson, is that he seems to confirm my belief that modern philosophy, overall, is antagonistic to, or incompatible with, the Platonic tradition, construed broadly.
I think Fooloso's approach discourages people from reading Plato, and that's unfortunate.* The "showmanship" I spoke of is a kind of contrarian polemicism, where one uses an infinite stock of ammo to gainsay any interpretation which draws substance and sustenance from Plato's works.
@Paine seems to me a sound and admirable philosopher. When he speaks I learn and when he speaks about Plato I end up learning about Plato and being edified. When I speak to Fooloso, on the other hand, after one or two posts I quickly begin to wonder what he even takes himself to be doing (and then in turn what I take myself to be doing in engaging him). Again:
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
More generally, this kind of inflation and deflation in order to warp a text (or a post) and wring out of it whatever one wishes is an advanced form of sophistry that is in many ways beyond me to refute. But when I see someone raising questions about the Emperor's clothes I am certainly willing to assent and applaud. Paine's challenge is just and I can make my attempt, but there are certain forms of sophistry that are beyond me to refute. I think it is significant in itself that many of us see these interpretations as warped and questionable, even if we cannot match the time or the ammo needed to engage point for point.
When I say that Plato (or Socrates) is a pedagogue part of what I mean is that his words echo truths in multiple registers, as do his dialogues. There is food for the novice and the advanced pupil alike. This is different from gnosticism, which involves dissimulation and falsity for the sake of some higher and secret/concealed truth. It is very easy for a deft hand to warp the pedagogy and diffusity of Plato into a form of dissimulation or skepticism, in much the same way that a conspiracy theorist can cast doubt on everyday realities and replace them with some grand secret. I do not deny for a minute that there are secrets and cues and nuance in Plato, but I fully reject the "replacement" mentality a la gnosticism. Let the novice have his bread. It too is wholesome, and need not be gainsaid.
* This is part of Burnyeat's complaint:
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
I tend to agree with this. Fooloso4 has a very hardened way of looking at Plato. It appears like an opinion of Plato as useless. But to make that argument, there is a tendency to portray Plato as misleading. There's a very big difference between these two. Useless is simply non-productive, having no effect, and that is basically to say that there is no substance there at all. To say that Plato is misleading, is to acknowledge philosophical substance, and claim that it is wrong, pointing us in the wrong direction. Fooloso4 tends to argue both about Plato, without distinguishing one from the other, and without revealing what is truly believed.
The point of my post was to counter the charge against Strauss that he was an oracular figure who mystified what was there for all to see. Strauss established his point of view in the context of Schleiermacher and Klein. He taught his classes with the spirit of that lineage clearly on display. Burnyeat either knew of that or he did not. In either case, awareness of that lineage rebuts Burnyeat's argument.
Now, there are writers who oppose that lineage for a variety of reasons. Their opposition does not make them all saying the same thing. To make such an equation was the core of Apollodorus' method of argument.
He was a venomous fountain of ad hominem attacks and contempt. Everybody had to be speaking from a particular camp or school. His opponents were always tools in the hands of their masters. It deeply saddens me that such a spirit has returned to visit condemnation amongst us.
You may have read A Giving of Accounts. They were classmates at university and close friends. Apparently, they were asked about their agreements and differences. What they said would not surprise anyone who has read them both, but may surprise those who have only read about them.
So why is Strauss so controversial and Klein is not? I think the main reason is that Klein is not a political philosopher. While Strauss taught at a major university, Klein preferred the relative anonymity of a small liberal arts college.
Since this thread has become about me I will say a few things about my understanding of Plato. Something central to my understanding is something I learned from Klein - "the myth of anamnesis or recollection." A myth Klein points out that Socrates tells from hearsay. The significance of this should not be missed. It is something he has heard, a story, not something he knows from the experience of recollection. He shows how and why the story is problematic. This, if I remember correctly, was the first step in my re-evaluation of Plato. Prior to this I took Plato to be a mystic who gave us a glimpse of a higher truth knows only to a few through a transcendent mystical experience. An experience I hoped would one day be mine. I came to question how much of what I took to be the truth was based on hearsay.
From Stanley Rosen's "The Limits of Analysis" I came to see the Forms as images. Part of Plato's philosophical poetry. Our understanding of the world is of a world that is in some ways a world of our own making. What Plato calls the "ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry" is not a battle between truth and fiction, but between competing images of man and the world. Our place in the world is not one that is given to us, it is one that we make.
Perhaps that is because you see the part as the whole. Socratic ignorance is not a terminus. It leads to the question of where do we go from here. How do we live and think and believe in the face of our ignorance of what is noble and good? Human wisdom is not simply knowing that we are ignorant, one does not have to be wise to know that. If by deflationary you mean I reject ready made answers that can be found in books and given to us, then yes my interpretations are deflationary. What is not deflationary are the important questions and problems that should not be ignored or silenced by stories that place the answers beyond our reach in some eternal elsewhere.
I have started several threads on Plato . Both within those threads and via PM I have been told that they have led to an interest in Plato that had not existed before then because these readers reject theories and doctrines of Forms and recollection. This relates to something I asked in a previous post:
Quoting Fooloso4
There is no single universal or correct answer. What you look for may not be what someone else is interested in. To assume otherwise is dogmatic.
In Melville's Moby Dick Ishmael asks:
Nietzsche says:
Like angry bees protecting the hive, those who would question Plato's honey head are repeatedly attacked in order to protect their sweet treasure. Without this treasure they think there is nothing left of value. They are there to find something to take home and call their own. It does not seem to occur to them that Plato's maieutics is about what one has to give not what one takes.
Quite right, and I think there are also false dichotomies at play, such as the idea that either Plato espoused concrete doctrines, or else he held to no positions whatsoever. Such false dichotomies push and pull the conversations and interpretations in unnatural ways. I would never want to impose such wooden assumptions on a subtle thinker like Plato. And if the false dichotomies are only being used as a rhetorical tool, then I would say that the rhetoric and agendas need to be tamped down.
Fair enough, and perhaps you are right that Burnyeat was not sufficiently aware of this lineage.
Quoting Paine
That's unfortunate. I wasn't around at the time. Fooloso has continually reminded me of Burnyeat's article, but I could not remember the name of the article and so simply searched, "Burnyeat sphinx" on the forum, and found Apollodorus' post (which was in fact a response to Fooloso). I am thinking of Burnyeat more than Apollodorus, but I wanted to reference that exchange as an antecedent of the point I was making. I don't find it coincidental that after Timothy pointed up the incongruence of Fooloso's approach, others started coming out of the woodwork, testifying to the same impression.
Burnyeat's article is 15 pages long and I don't want to fall into a detailed dispute of the article, especially given the fact that it is not publicly available. I think the discussion regarding Gerson's thesis would be more fruitful, but there is plenty of overlap between the two, and it is interesting that Burnyeat's criticism of Strauss in many ways parallels your own criticism of Gerson.
For what it's worth, the editors included a postscript to Burnyeat's article:
From D.C. Schindler's "Plato's Critique of Impure Reason."
It's also worth noting that the imagery in the Protagoras seems designed to recall Book XI of the Odyssey. Decending into the realm of relativists who make arguments purely for relative advantage and relative goods Plato frames as "Socrates' descent into Hell."
Continuing...
[Quote]
We receive more light on the exchange when we see it not simply as an interaction between two different moral characters but more fundamentally two different ways of knowing, different understandings of understanding, different views of what is most real. Socrates reticence, and Thrasymachuss incapacity for it, are functions, we suggest, of two different ways of relating to ideas. Socrates professes no knowledge, and yet he remains throughout the dialogue a sort of anchor around which the discussion is ordered. Thrasymachus professes knowledge, and yet never seems to stick to a basic stance.
How are we to make sense of this paradox?
We are not yet in a position to deal with this question adequately, but we can make a certain straightforward observation. While Socrates denies definitive possession of knowledge, here he suggests he has a certain idea, which Thrasymachuss strictures prevent him from proposing (376d). In other words, he does not yet reject the possibility of understanding a priorifor that would, indeed, depend on an insight it would be presumptuous to claimbut suggests that the activity of proposing and considering an idea does not depend on him alone. Instead, it requires the willing participation of others. For Socrates, an idea is essentially something that must be inquired into. For Thrasymachus, by contrast, an idea is not something one explores, reflects on, penetrates, or tests, it is something one simply asserts and, if necessary, defends by further assertions.
[/Quote]
Schindler will later argue that Socrates' reticence is a lure, both to get the reader to engage and, reflecting this in the text, to pull Glaucon in with him. But reticence and openness is also a sign of a certain sort of relationship with the Good:
[Quote]
Plato suggests that the communication of knowledge requires, so to speak, a community in goodness between teacher and student. This entails a willingness to be tested through questioning, a willingness to respond, and in general, good will and lack of envy.56 It is interesting to note that all of these characteristics point to the affirmation of a good beyond oneself, by which one is measured and to which one is responsible. If it is the case, as we have been suggesting, that an indispensable aspect of knowledge is the mode of relating to reality by which the soul subordinates itself to goodness, then it follows that substantial thinking and genuine communication cannot take place outside of the spirit created by a basic disposition toward goodness. The good, then, is the single condition of possibility of communication, insofar as it gives being to what is talked about and imposes certain demands, intrinsic to that being, on those who wish to know and thus to speak properly. In this respect, to teach in the fullest sense means to impart not just ideas but a relation to the good, and one can do so, and foster such a relation, only if one is in love with the good, as it were.57 To communicate truth requires a love of beauty and goodness. Be good, then, and teach naturally. [/Quote]
But another key thing here is that all of the characters Socrates speaks to seem to embody one of his "types of men" (e.g. timocratic, oligarchic, tyrannical, etc.). By the end of the dialogue each moves up one spot on the hierarchy. Thus the imparting of knowledge of that cannot be spoken of in mere words, but which must be lived, is imaged in a story where the fruits of knowledge show up in the deeds of those involved.
Michael Sugrue gives the same interpretation. I assume your quotes are coming from something written by D. C. Schindler?
Yes, I went back and included the source.
I think you're absolutely right about the significance of the myths existing as such, and the import of the warnings against accepting them dogmatically. I suppose we disagree about their exact function though.
I sometimes wonder what Plato would have thought about analytic philosophy with its extreme focus of formalism and decidability. In some ways, Plato seems like the progenitor of the preference for the a priori, and in others his ecstatic view of reason seems completely at odds with it.
As you say, Plato's goal in motivating questioning is definetly there, but I also think this is instructive in more than one way. It points to how reason goes beyond itself, its lack of limits (which in turn points to its ability to radically undermine itself).
IMO, the lessons one learns in Plato do point towards a type of skepticism. This would include skepticism vis-á-vis those sorts of systems that elevate a sort of doctrinal formalism (what can be said). But my take would be that the bigger lesson is not so much that we should be skeptical of such things, but that they aren't truly valuable. That is, even if we could erase our concerns and overcome our skepticism vis-á-vis such presentations of truth, we shouldn't want to, because the truth we'd be sure of would be an impoverished form. And this is why Plato keeps prodding us to never settle down with what is in the text itselfthe ideal orientation is towards the Good and True, not towards any specific teaching (edit: ...that can be formalized. That's the point of all the images and "myths." But I would disagree that they are offered up pragmatically or hypothetically).
If you see a false dichotomy it is of your own making. I have not claimed he held no position whatsoever.
You have avoided addressing the problem of why he never spoke in his own name. I suggest that he does not clearly state what it is because he does not put whatever his position is above the issue being deliberated. To take his position as authoritative would forestall further deliberation. As if having identified his position the matter is closed. As I read him, philosophy is open-ended inquiry. The sense of wonder is kept alive and is not to be replaced by position statements. Whatever the position is and whoever's position it is, it is to be examined, not held above question.
Quoting Leontiskos
And yet you impose your own assumptions regarding the truth of such things as Forms and Recollection. Contrary to his identification of Forms as hypothetical and Recollection as problematic, you accuse me of sophistic interpretation when I pay attention to and point out what is actually said.
My approach is to pay careful attention to both the arguments and actions in the dialogues. You dismiss this as convoluted and sophistic. Rather than hold out these purported theories and doctrines against the text itself, you hold to them in place of the text. As if the details of the text itself are superfluous and can be ignored.
Where have I done that?
Quoting Fooloso4
Where have I done that?
You seem to be capable of spinning anything to make it say whatever you like, and I'm sure this includes my own posts. It should not surprise when a witch hunter finds a witch.
It seems to me like you are doing that throughout this comment You insinuate Foolsoso4 resembles a gnostic sophist here:
Quoting Leontiskos
And there is your approval of:
Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
My thread on the Phaedo is based on her translation, which I deliberately choose over others
Brann was a student of Klein. [url=https://anastaplo.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/glimpses-of-leo-strauss-jacob-klein-and-st-johns-college/]Here are a few things she said about Strauss;
This stands in stark contrast to the allegations of Burnyeat and others.
She continues:
They accepted their differences. It did not stand in the way of their friendship. In addition to what they had in common regarding how to read Plato they shared a good character. They were the same type of men.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think that to the extent they can be reconciled it can be found in his treatment of misologic in the Phaedo. Analysis is important but can only take us so far. From my thread on it:
In other words, the development of good character. The pursuit of the good is good because through its pursuit we can become good. The pursuit of transcendence can be transformative.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, I agree.
Thank you. It spares me the tedious task of reminding him of what he has said.
I would not have done it if I had not been included in the comment. This is briefest way to express my discomfort with the comparison.
I forgot that I wanted to comment. Schindler, says:
The point I wanted to address is:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree with the distinction between philosophy as a way of life and a poetry of just words, but poetry can also be a way of seeing and understanding. In other words:
Quoting Fooloso4
A wide net catches all kinds of fish.
But the claim has to do with, "assumptions regarding the truth of such things as Forms and Recollection." I do not make any assumptions at all about Forms and Recollection in that quote you provide, and Fooloso's whole paragraph is centered around Forms and Recollection. What is he talking about?
This is actually a good example of what I am talking about. Fooloso is protecting against "assumptions regarding the truth of such things as Forms and Recollection," and there need be no evidence of such assumptions in order for him to mount a defense against such an interpretation. This is an example of "protesting too much," albeit not in a strictly Christian register. If I am to judge from his posts on the forum since I have arrived, he reads Plato primarily against a foil of his own construction; hence the "contrarian polemicism."
Quoting Paine
I do think that.
The skeptical Plato at least has some things to recommend it. However, I find it very hard to even see the bare bones of Fooloso4's reading of Aristotle where he, in what are essentially lecture notes, is trying to engage in dialectical and lead us to aporia ("the attentive reader is not led to conclusions but to questions and problems without answers"). I think the thread trying to read the Metaphysics this way sort of speaks for itself, it ends up saying nothing of what it straightforwardly says when taken this way. I've never come across a "skeptical Aristotle," in my reading, and I think there is a good reason for that. The Posterior Analytics in particular, with its ideal of sciences flowing neatly from self-evident axioms in logical demonstrations is sort of the opposite. I don't think a skeptical Aristotle is any more plausible than a skeptical Kant who brings up the antinomes just to get us questioning and then purposes the transcedental deduction as a hypothetical for moral edification.
The thesis that Aristotle was a Platonist (e.g. Perl) rings true with me. The thesis that Aristotle was a skeptical Platonist seems particularly far-fetched, the author of the Posterior Analytics was not a "zetetic skeptic."
Yet, in any case, one thing Plato would almost certainly agree with is that his opinion doesn't ultimately matter that much. There is always the possibility that what Plato intended was still wrong, be it "Platonism" or something more skeptically oriented.
That's a fine interpretation that adds an additional dimension. The interlude also seems to mean what it straightforwardly says, which is "if you find out an argument you thought was good is bad, don't distrust reason and argument as a whole," which is sort of the opposite of zetetic skepticism.
It is odd how much you talk about me and how little you talk to me.
The thread is on Gerson and Platonism. The OP claims that there are core doctrines of Plato. If this is true do you think those doctrines include or exclude the truth of such things as Forms and Recollection?
You say:
Quoting Leontiskos
The evidence is there right from beginning with the OP. And from the beginning you misrepresent what I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
but you argued against your own misrepresentation. Yet even after I pointed out that I said in my first post "no written doctrines" you go on to argue that:
Quoting Leontiskos
You accuse me of sophistry without citing examples, while your own is clearly on display.
Quoting Leontiskos
If that is the case then I am in very good company. You reject Strauss without having read him based on what Burnyeat said. But Strauss is not alone. Klein has been cited. If not cited here, John Sallis has been cited in other threads. He can be included as well. He has been influential in my interpretation of Timaeus. And then there is a growing number of Strauss' students who hold faculty positions throughout the U.S.
Some years ago I started a thread on the Euthyphro. I began with a straightforward summary. The first response was by the guy you raised from the dead:
I ignored this but someone else responded to him:
Several others spoke up in my defense. There is a whole history here that you seem to be unaware of. My interpretation goes against that of some others, but I have been working on my interpretation and revising it when it seems necessary since long before I was aware of this forum.
Since we are all talking about other people at the moment, I want to talk about ways past discussions intersect with this one for me. I first became aware of Gerson because Apollodorus and Wayfarer appealed to him for support of their theological views of Plato. I then found out that this appeal to Gerson has been going on for years before my start.
My education included reading Plotinus. There were many arguments about where he differed from the Platonic beginnings, but no disagreement emerged concerning whether Plotinus was using the myths of the past as parts of his system of "realities". The language of approximation and stories, so vivid in the Timaeus, is now the way things are. There are limits to the realm of the "discursive." One had best get with the program.
The next book we read was City of God. That certainly tempers my understanding of Plotinus, for better and worse, depending upon different points of view.
Having been introduced to Ur-Platonism on this forum, I started reading Gerson's scholarly papers. That is when I started objecting to his interpretations of texts, for example, here and here as well as the example given upthread. As it concerns this thread, the clear preference for Plotinus shown in those commentaries is not represented as such in the Ur-Platonist stuff. This gives a bit of three card monte flavor to the scene. Is there a bait and switch play between the two enterprises?
I am glad to have had to discuss Schleiermacher's resistance to Systems because I am willing to acknowledge that is the lineage I come from. The most important element is the individual participating in the dialogue being witnessed. That theme is also echoed in the Dialogues in many ways that are not shy and retiring. So, I freely admit to an aversion to Gerson's efforts to assemble a system to fight modern foes on the basis of that point of view.
To sum up, I have two lines of resistance to Gerson that are separate in origin and form. Because of that condition, I want to address:
Quoting Leontiskos
Burnyeat was claiming he was on to Strauss' magic trick. That is a valid way to characterize persuasion and I don't fault Burnyeat for trying it. He took his chance with it. I don't know what Gerson's trick is. But he proposes to close what I think should not be.
That is a fairly standard reading but not one held by everyone. David Bolotin in his "An Approach to Aristotle's Metaphysics" does not see it that way. Neither does Christopher Bruell in "Aristotle as Teacher". As expected both authors have their supporters and detractors.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think that is exactly what zetetic skepticism says. It does not mistrust or abandon reason. As the term indicates, the way of inquiry continues. It does not abandon inquiry to misologic.
I am mindful of that post.
In a twist of fate, the argument there is supported by Leo Strauss in his Natural Right and History.
I have problems with that book as an account of other thinkers. But I appreciate the effort made to make politics a part of the dialectic rather than all the other things that could be and has been said of it.
[the above was edited]
Thanks for that post, it helps me understand your approach. As I've explained, my background was syncretistic - I studied comparative religion and various strands of perennialism. Platonism has a place in that pantheon, specifically the Christianised Platonism of the mystics - Dean Inge and Evelyn Underhill. That is where I learned about Plotinus, although I never went into him in depth. But I would not describe my approach as 'theological', for the same reason that comparative religion is a very different discipline to 'divinity'. I used to think of the comparative religion department as the 'Department of Mysticism and Heresy'. (I might also add, I learned of both Leo Strauss and Lloyd Gerson from this forum or its predecessor.)
Getting back to Gerson:
[quote=Review of From Plato to Platonism;https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/from-plato-to-platonism/]If Platos philosophy is a version of Platonism, what Platonism is it a version of? And where can we find it? Since Platonism is not limited to Platos views as found in his dialogues, nor to other philosophers presentation of them (primarily Aristotles), nor to later philosophers contribution to what is found in Platos works, "Platonism", as a term, must be flexible enough to signify the above three aspects severally and collectively. To distinguish this all-inclusive meaning of Platonism from each of the individual renditions above, Gerson hypothetically construes the term Ur-Platonism as a matrix-like collection of all possible meanings of Platonism. In his words, Ur-Platonism is the general philosophical position that arises from the conjunction of the negations of the philosophical positions explicitly rejected in the dialogues (p. 9). These positions are anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism.[/quote]
The predominant strains of naturalism are generally materialistic, mechanist, nominalist, relativist and skeptical. They are always well-represented on TPF.
Another thing that Gerson said in his lecture on Platonism versus Naturalism struck me as profound and important:
So what? Well, the "objects" of the intellect are immaterial, and as we're able to perceive them, we too possess an immaterial aspect - what used to be called the soul. We're not simply mechanisms or organisms. Of course, all Socrates' arguments for the reality of the soul in Phaedo can be and are called into question by his interlocutors but they ring true to me.
---
* I suspect that what is translated as 'thinking' in the above excerpt is not what we generally understand as 'thinking' as an internal monologue or stream of ideas.
During our years of discourse, I have been trying to narrow definitions rather than explain differences in the most general terms. I accept your objection to the term "theological", as I used it, as a description of what the debates are about.
I ask you to consider that some of those who you have seen as fellow travelers need to be seen in a different light. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend in the world of thinking. Is that not also the quality so elegantly expressed in Daoist literature?
X wants to say it is all about Y. The separations needed for that become another problem. Is that an observation or a claim to a truth? In that set of arguments, the problem of logic is also a problem of boundaries.
I understand your interests. You have repeated your thesis many times.
The theory of recollection is a very small aspect of Plato's writing. And, where it is displayed in the Meno, it is a matter of interpretation as to whether Plato is supporting this idea, or is simply describing it. The theories of recollection, and participation, are the two principal supports of Pythagorean idealism. Socrates questions Pythagorean idealism endlessly, in the manner of skepticism. Plato exposes the weaknesses of Pythagorean idealism as the theories of participation, and recollection.
To be "Platonist", in the sense of supporting Plato as a very formative philosopher, it is is not necessary to follow Pythagorean idealism, or Neoplatonism. Aristotle rejected Pythagorean idealism, and is often claimed to have effectively refuted that form of idealism, to proceed with another form of idealism which he learned from Plato.
I appreciate the story about the pony. I am more of a donkey.
I support taking breaks.
I have been thinking about Burnyeat's view of utopia and wanted to make some comments outside of his project of undermining Strauss.
I agree with Burnyeat that the Republic is aiming to change our life for the better. Seeing that goal as executing a realized plan that comes into being runs afoul with other ways of reading how the 'city in words' works in the Dialogues. Plato delights in having a metaphor or a bit of discourse appear in a parallel role within a particular dialogue or connecting them with others. The allegory of the cave has the philosopher return to it. Whatever good is done there does not stop it from being a cave.
The later discussions of regimes in the Republic do not include the "city in words" as one of the options. They deal with the return to the cave.
That is where the battle between giants is happening as discussed in the Sophist:
Quoting ibid. 246c
The last sentence stands in sharp contrast with the concern to make good people in the Republic. But the job of the "friends" is directly involved with the effort. It seems Plato does not want politics to be too easy to think about.
I relate this to the Gerson thesis by noting that this tension between ways of life does not appear in Plotinus. At least to the best of my knowledge. I welcome correction.
Where does Burnyeat's (or anybody else's) desire for a change in society have a place in Plotinus?
Add that to my other objections to putting Plotinus on team Plato.
Good point. What might the reformed cave look like? Would the philosophers do the very thing that Socrates was found guilty of?
Quoting ibid. 246c
The foundations of the city and the most fundamental beliefs of the people are destroyed by the truth, for the truth is that what they believe, what they trust, what they take to be the truth itself are only images of images. Twice removed from the truth. This is why Socrates takes the old charges brought by Aristophanes more seriously than the current charges against him. He is guilty as charged.
If the philosopher is to take an interest in the people as well as the truth he cannot simply replace the images on the cave wall with the truth. He must replace the images with images of the truth. The cave remains a cave.
If the prisoner's shackles are removed and they are forcibly dragged out of the cave (515e) and not permitted to immediately crawl back in, the city and life as they know it is destroyed. We should not be too quick to assume that most would regard this as a blessing. The cave offers safety and security. It is their home. Unlike the philosopher the people may not be more interested in the truth.
Your first question is very tough to answer. In the context of the Sophist, The Stranger seems to suggest that the 'reformation" will keep changing the terrain of the struggle as time goes by. But I don't see him proposing it will end. He displays confidence that the grounds will change. It is clear who he is rooting for.
On the other hand, the Stranger seems to insist upon the same separation that his Eleatic teachers did. The dangers of using forms requires a kind of hygiene:
The "images of truth", as they relate to the cave allegory, receive a challenge outside of the allegory but not for the sake of cancelling it. In the spirit of refutation, most would have wiped the blood off their blade and re-sheathed it. Plato is saying Parmenides is doing something else.
That does not make your second question any easier but there are at least more clues in the text available to bring out contrasting themes. In my recent drive-by reading of the Sophist, I noticed two elements that previously shot over my head. One of them is the separation of class in society:
This difference gets re-affirmed at other places in the dialogue. Sometimes as an unexplained reference, sometimes as a joke, sometimes as a direct confrontation:
The second element that stood out for me is the way the gentle relates to the violent, both in discourse and the possibility of 'reformation' as a process of change in the world of becoming. Note how Theodorus presents the Stranger as a minor player by saying: "Socrates, no; he is more moderate than those who take controversies seriously." The Socrates who confronts anyone who challenges him is set in contrast to this player who does not accept such terms. But the contrast between the gentle and the violent is a part of so many of the Dialogues that Theodorus must be heard as expressing a particular prejudice.
I am inclined to lean toward Klein's view of change over Strauss'. But I think Strauss is correct putting the beginning of political philosophy at the Meno rather than the Republic. Can virtue be taught? If one can ask that, the quality is manifest in some fashion. We have to start with the insistence upon it being evident.
Socrates gets Meno to accept that condition to some degree without necessarily getting him to understand much else and thus makes Socrates more 'gentle' than often represented. But Socrates also seems hell-bent upon antagonizing Antyus, representing a portion of those who did kill him.
I would simply wonder if Gerson is doing two different things simultaneously.
Quoting Paine
In a similar way, I wonder if Plato could be doing two different things at once. Plato is obviously crucially interested in individual participation, but he seems to also be interested in repelling sophistry. The dialogues themselves don't seem to present all players as being situated within the same boundaries on the field of philosophy. While granting that Gerson's anti-sophistryin his case anti-naturalismis a great deal more clumsy, I would still affirm a similarity between the two.
For Plato I don't see the two things as wholly separate. Anyone who loves something will also fight to protect it, and the philosophy that Plato lovesincluding the individual participationrequires certain nurturing conditions in order to thrive. It is a temptation for any thinker to blur the line between what is legitimate and what is their own doctrine, and obviously Gerson blurs this more than Plato, but I would recognize the same broad dynamic operating in Plato and I would again affirm this dynamic as laudable.
Quoting Paine
But is a proposal to close already an error on your view? I think that both Plato and Gerson seek to bring about a recognition of what is beyond the pale and what is not vis-a-vis philosophy, and I think the only legitimate objections to either of them will be objections to where they draw a line, and not that they draw a line.
If Gerson is absorbing all of Platonism into his understanding of Plotinus, he does not need the Ur-Platonism for his own purposes. The 'via negativa' is for persuading others that the only philosophy is his understanding of Plato and that anything that differs from it is not philosophy. That excludes a lot of philosophy.
I know that you don't find any of my objections to be persuasive. I don't find your counter arguments for Gerson's position to be compelling or benefit me in the comparison of different views. It is no help in distinguishing the difference between Klein and Burnyeat. That is more important to me than rooting out miscreants from my City. I gave Gerson a college try over several years. I am done.
Let us agree to disagree. Have the last word if you wish.
Again, maybe he has two (or more) purposes: explicating Plotinus and defending philosophy.
Quoting Paine
Gerson is very clear that his thesis is not supposed to do such a thing. You seem to be faulting Gerson for failing to do something he says he is not trying to do.
Quoting Paine
You seem to fall into a strawman on this point again and again, and your caricature here is more evidence of that. If you are unwilling to consider the value of defending philosophy then of course you will not be able to truly assess Gerson's project. And as I said, Plato himself was not above defending philosophy.
Quoting Paine
I will just reiterate the central unanswered questions I have already asked you. Have another word if you wish:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
I apologize for the dismissive manner I dealt with this upthread. What I am trying to underline in the discussion is the particular way Plotinus offers a solution to your thesis:
There are other ways of reading Plato.
No problems at all.
I think I understand what that passage is saying - again it has parallels in Eastern philosophy, for instance in the contrast between the 'upright man' represented by Confucius and civic virtue, and the 'true man of the Way' represented by the taoist sage who 'returns to the source' and often appears as a vagabond or vagrant. It is a passage about the essential and total 'otherness' of the One, beyond all conditioned distinctions and human notions of virtue. It is a recognisable principle in various forms of the perennial philosophy.
But that is quite different to the point I was trying to make, which is the immaterial nature of reason. This is a thread that I picked up first from reading Edward Feser, but then also other neo-thomists that I then read (even if only in snippets and excerpts, as there is a lot of literature.) This is the principle that only the rational human intellect (nous) is able to grasp universals (kinds, types or species) which are the basis of rational thought. And that the rejection of transcendentals is one of the underlying factors behind the ascendancy of materialism.
Feser lays it out thus:
[quote=Edward Feser;https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/08/think-mcfly-think.html#more]As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image etc...); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.).
That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. [/quote]
You can see the precedent for this general train of thought in e.g. The Argument from Equals in Phaedo. But it is central to the whole Platonist tradition.
Why is it significant? Because it goes to the point of the immaterial nature of mind (thought, reason) and that it can't be reduced to sensation or imagination. I'm not wishing to argue for Cartesian dualism, but then again, neither does Aristotelian philosophy (as described in another of Feser's blog posts). But I think this is the vital point at issue in the 'debate between Platonism and naturalism' that Gerson is describing.
What "matter" means in the different texts is not an agreed upon point of departure but what seems to require the most argument.
In any case, the outlines of the general idea, and how matter came to be accorded primacy in Western culture, is what is of interest to me.
Given the importance to how matter plays an important role in the present thinking, can you accept that Plotinus was talking about something else?
To return to Gerson and the passage I quoted above: what do you think he means by the remark you could not think if materialism was true? Do you see how he appeals to Aristotles De Anima in support of that argument? Do you think its a valid point?
I understand the passage as demonstrating the vast difference between Plato and Plotinus when they speak of the philosopher's return to the cave. The role of politics, central to the argument of the Republic, has been superseded by the process of becoming a "different kind of being". Would you not accept there is a difference between the philosopher who rules a city and the Daoist sage who laughs at rulers? Plotinus is silent on that score.
As for the "materiality' of the soul, I have been arguing for years that Plotinus' understanding is very different from Aristotle's. I point to some of those in my recent comment on De Anima.
There are also differences between Aristotle and Plato.
Here is a discussion of what "matter" means that introduces Sallis's reading of the Timaeus.
Because of these different views, I don't see the value of the broad generalities offered by Gerson, Perl, Fraser, and the like.
Edit to add: Please take the last word, if you wish. I think we are at an impasse.
What are we to make of this? What is the life of the gods? Can we leave behind our human life and choose the life of the gods?
I wish that there was an equivalent to Horan's translations of Plato's Dialogues available to present what Plotinus wrote. Then it would be easier to link to a source with a beginning quote and let the reader see for themselves what has been said. The source I pointed to before is weird and makes pretty plainly spoken Greek sound strange. Those words are the same that other authors use to say different things.
This OP is an orphan, abandoned by its author. I made my pitch that Plotinus is the man behind the curtain in this particular wizard of oz. I sense I have worn out my welcome.
I will try to answer your question in another place and time.
We have our friend @Wayfarer to thank for bringing it to our attention.
Quoting Paine
Speaking for myself, you are always welcome. Just leave your shoes at the door.
However, the Gerson paper you linked to 'The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle' (and thank you for it) says right at the beginning 'This (i.e. 'agent') intellect is, in Aristotle's view, all the things he repeatedly says it is, including immortal.' (However, I will continue with that paper.)
Quoting Paine
Here is that passage again:
Doesn't this plainly disparage the notion of 'civic virtue' and 'living the life of the good man' in favour of 'leaving that behind' and 'choosing another' - the 'life of the Gods' - and that we are to strive to be 'like them' and not simply 'good citizens'? The meaning seems very clear to me, without any external references. As mentioned, there are direct parallels to other schools of renunciate spirituality that characterised the ancient world, Eastern and Western.
And are there 'vast differences' between Plotinus and Plato? I readily grant at every juncture that your knowledge of the texts greatly exceeds my own, but I had thought it well-established that Plotinus saw himself as no more than a faithful exegete of Plato.
Quoting Paine
I agree that we're talking past one another. That's why I've tried to explain my perspective on the topic. I'm not reading it as a classicist, comparing and contrasting various interpretations of ancient philosophy in which you're plainly better versed than am I (and I am learning a lot from it!) But I see Perl, Gerson, and Feser, as being concerned with retrieving what was and remains vital about classical philosophy as a living truth, not as museum pieces to be compared and contrasted. Many here among us will simply take it for granted that we're physical beings, no different in essence to other species, although considerably more dangerous due to our numbers and technology. But what if the truth were that we are 'immortal souls housed in corporeal bodies'?
[quote=Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, Pp2-3;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_Have_Consequences]Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.[/quote]
Quoting Paine
Not at all. The fact that we keep coming back to contesting Gerson's interpretations indicates that this thread has stayed on-topic.
But the good man may not be able to live the life of the gods, nor might he want to.
What does that life look like? This:
Quoting Wayfarer?
Surely there is more to the life of a god.
Yes there are vast differences between Plotinus and Plato. Plotinus goes far beyond Plato in his theory of Forms, to propose a hierarchical order, emanation. and even assigning a position to "matter".
We discussed the various examples of what I'm referring to in an earlier thread on esoteric philosophies. I seem to recall I gave the examples of Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism, to which you replied something like 'you have to be prepared to believe in such things'.
There are numerous references to 'the gods' and 'the divine' scattered through the ancient texts. What does that signify to you? Remnants of archaic beliefs now superseded?
I think one of the characteristics of Eastern philosophical religions, like Advaita and Tibetan Buddhism, is that for various historical reasons they seem to have been able to maintain a closer relationship with their ancient roots. Which is why for instance a Swami of the Vedanta Order still appears in monastic robes (in his many youtube videos!) Likewise for many Tibetan Rinpoches.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nevertheless, didn't he himself insist that he was simply explicating what was implicit in Plato?
I do not recall the discussion but think it evident that if
then he must have to be prepared to believe such things. Would he choose such a life if he did not believe it? But this does not get at what I am asking.
What is the model that this is a likeness of? If for us this life is one of renunciate spirituality, is it that for the gods as well? Do the gods too have desires that they must overcome? Can we become a being of a different kind?
They're foundational questions in this context. 'The gods' are, of course, those of the Greek pantheon, but from comparative religion, we learn that have much in common with the other Indo-European cultures, so there are parallels with the Indian pantheon. But in this case, they represent 'the divine' - a word is from the Indo-european root 'deva'. Notice that Parmenides' prose-poem is said to have been 'given' to him by the Goddess. The knowledge of which he speaks is rooted in revealed truth, not dialectical reasoning, although he then deploys reasoning in support of it. (I think in modern terminology, it would be described as 'trans-rational'.) But I notice references to the divine ('the devas') in many of the excepts being discussed in the thread in ancient philosophy. It is part of the assumed background of their world, and I personally think it's mistaken to regard it as a simple figment or archaic superstition, even if that is the consensus of today's disenchanted world.
Renunciate spirituality seeks to sever ties with or go beyond the sensory domain, 'the world' - the world of mundane attachments, pains and pleasures, so as to seek what Alan Watts' described as 'the supreme identity' in his book of that name. It means realising an identity with the One (or Brahman or the Godhead). Plotinus was said by Porphyry to have twice entered a state of supreme ecstasy corresponding to that awareness. It is said that his last words were 'to restore the divine (or: the god) in us (or: in you) back to the divine in the All'.
As to whether this is a realisable aim - the IEP entry on Pierre Hadot says
But I think this can be acknowledged, without thereby vitiating the mystical element in Plotinus' (and indeed Plato's) spirituality, which is a vital interpretive key in my view. Interpreted through that perspective, the meaning of the passage we're discussing sprang out at me, without any need to reference the political element of The Republic.
Something with which I'm in agreement. I wonder if he had any professional contact with Mircea Eliade, who was a peer at the University of Chicago during his tenure, and from whom a lot of what I've learned about comparative religion was drawn.
As this does not involve the Gerson thesis, I feel it is okay for me to push back upon this reading. The same article says:
No reader of Natural Right and History would think that is what just got said.
Well, I'm not among them. I'm too old to go into either Heidegger or Strauss in any depth, I only mentioned it to @Fooloso4 because it is through his posts that I've become familiar with Strauss at all, and I think the section I linked to about Strauss' view of the relationship of philosophy and revelation is germane.
FWIW, I think 'revelation' is equated with 'revealed religion', thence 'religious dogma' and automatically discounted on those grounds. Whereas I think there's a religious dimension to Greek philosophy, which is neglected on that basis.
Not all discussion of religion involves the same things. And if you want to argue for some element of that, I support your effort.
But I object to this sort of tagging the donkey where simply reading what the person says makes the claim meaningless.
Quoting Paine
I have been arguing that the passage you referred to from the Enneads at that point is specifically about the distinction between 'civic virtue' and those seeking to attain 'likeness to the gods'. That passage addresses that distinction quite clearly. Hence my digression into the role of 'the divine' and revelation in the metaphysics of Greek philosophy in answer to Fooloso4's question.
Whereas, the thesis you were responding to, was Gerson's paraphrase of an argument in De Anima, to wit: And that is a reference to the knowledge of forms, as represented Aristotle's hylomorphic (matter-form) philosophy: that the intellect (nous) is what grasps or perceives the forms of things, which is that by which we know what particulars truly are. I take this principle as basic to the epistemology of hylomorphism.
Furthermore, the principle of the 'union between the knower and the form of the known' becomes a dominant theme in ancient and medieval philosophy. There are many references to this in online digests of Aquinas' philosophy (e.g. here and here.)
Now, so far, what I've said above, I would regard as general knowledge, and not requiring specialist knowledge of the Greek texts.
So far so good?
Plotinus is not talking about the relationship between knower and known but the experience of being a soul descended into a body which is not its natural home:
This is beyond saying that there is more than civic (political) virtue. It stands at cross purposes to the Philosopher returning to the cave to care for his fellow citizens.
It replaces the uncertainty expressed in the Phaedo with a map and a theodicy.
Strauss does make distinctions between Greek thought and 'revealed' religion that I know you would disagree with.
Strauss acknowledges that Heidegger brought the differences between our time and that of Classical Greek thought to our attention. But he opposes Heidegger in essential ways. One thing the guy saying stuff got right is:
Strauss strongly opposed that kind of historicity in Natural Right and History through his attack upon Nietzsche as the master of the practice.
I will leave it there. I need to get back to reading Plotinus.
Are they? I would think that Plotinus would agree with Socrates' criticism of the gods in Euthyphro.
Quoting Wayfarer
In the tradition of the Greek poets, the gods are credited as the author of the poet's works.
Quoting Wayfarer
In the Sophist Theodorus says with regard to the Stranger:
(216b-c)
In the Phaedo Socrates calls Homer divine. In the Iliad Homer call salt divine (9.214)
Indeed he is not, which is why it was not relevant to the question I raised, which was about that relationship.
Quoting Fooloso4
When Plotinus says:
which 'gods' are they? What does 'the life of the gods' refer to?
Why would he consider philosophers, in particular, 'divine'?
Quoting Fooloso4
So if everything is divine, then the word means nothing. Is that the drift of the argument? That 'the divine' has no referent?
Some things are not everything. In that short list three things are referred to as divine.
The behavior of the gods in the Greek pantheon seems to be problematic as a model.
I get that you connect your view of the 'theological' with a renunciation of the 'material' It is the trick of your pony, as you admitted upthread. You would find Plotinus good company in this regard. I suggest you read him. I am weary of being the only one in this conversation that actually quotes him. I will wait until another thread emerges before doing it again. I have worn out my welcome here and now I am wearing out my goodbye. I will take my last word here in the hope it will clarify future discussion during other OPs:
Your years long effort to see a 'theology' in Plato that others would take away from him is a fight over an undefended territory. Plato writes of his contemporaries and predecessors in a fashion where he argues for and against particular views of the divine in particular contexts and leaves it to the student to find their own way. Quite the contrast with Plotinus coming back from a visit with the One and taking questions on how others can do it.
Therefore, to find a rebuttal of Plotinus' view of political virtues, we need to find a contrast to a vision of a soul re-gaining its virtue as it separates from its body. I am reminded of an observation I made last year
Till next time in another place.
Im interested in a specific philosophical question, which is the subject of the quote from Lloyd Gerson. The thread is about Lloyd Gersons interpretation of Aristotle, as was the passage Ive been discussing. Its a philosophical question about the role of universals in the forming of judgement and the sense in which that undercuts materialist theory of mind. I cant see how that can be construed as theology.
I hope Paine will not mind me jumping in. When you say:
Quoting Join the Ur-Platonist Alliance!
What is at the top of this top down hierarchy? Is the intelligible dependent on an intelligible being? What is the divine which constitutes an irreducible explanatory category? Earlier in the thread you said:
Quoting Wayfarer
What does it mean to conceive of the divine in personal terms?
As you (and @Paine) will well know, in Plato, the source or upmost level of the hierarchy of being was 'the idea of the Good'. The Idea of the Good, primarily discussed in the Republic, is the highest and most important of the Forms, the ultimate principle that gives meaning and intelligibility to all other Forms and to the material world. The Good is the source of all reality and knowledge, for which the Sun is an analogy in the Allegory of the Cave. Plotinus, building on and reinterpreting Plato, posits "the One" (ta hen) as the ultimate principle, which is even beyond the Idea of the Good. The One is the absolute, transcendent source of all reality, beyond existence and discursive ideation, the ineffable and indescribable foundation from which everything emanates. In Plotinus' system, the One generates the Divine Mind (Nous), which contains the Forms, and from the Nous emanates the World Soul, which in turn gives rise to the material world.
Quoting Fooloso4
As you will also know, many elements of Platonism were absorbed into Christian theology by the early Greek-speaking theologians such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, and (Pseudo)Dionysius. It was also transformed so as to be compatible with Biblical revelation - no easy synthesis, and often with tension between them ('what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?') In any case, this is where elements of Plotinus philosophy of the One became identified with, or subsumed by, the God of Biblical revelation. Not that Plotinus would ever countenance that.
According to Dean Inge, the principle distinction between Plotinus and Christian mysticism is between Plotinus' 'henosis' (absorption into the One) and the Christian 'theosis' in which the soul is said to attain immortality whilst also maintaining an identity. (Even now, there are debates between Christians as to whether and in what sense God is personal - the distinction between 'theistic personalism and 'classical theism'.)
As far as 'the Gods' were concerned, in later neoplatonism they become identified as the Henads, intermediaries between the One and the human realm. Plotinus did not use that terminology, and like Plato tended to speak of 'the gods' as being symbolic of forces and powers. But scattered throughout the Platonic dialogues are references to paying obeisances or respect to the Gods. That doesn't make Plato "a believer" - perish the thought! - but I think it's reasonable to say that references to the Gods are a kind of shorthand for the divine, however conceived.