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Long on Plato - VII 7TH LETTER P: Well, if you have read the section with care, you can’t really find anything approaching a “proof” that I am a mystic, a term of opprobrium in Objectivist’s circles. S: Then why do you think the word found a place in Long’s section title? P: I’m not sure. Although one can find allusions that take the place of an argument, and they hover, like planets, around his quotation from the 7th Letter. S: Where can we find his first allusion. P: On p. 11 he refers to the capacity of reason to recognize “in the conclusion some mark of trustworthiness that does not derive solely from the initial premises” as “mysterious.” S: And the next planet, so to speak? P: It can be found on p. 12 after the 7th Letter citation. But let me provide Long’s quotation: But with difficulty, after working carefully through each of these things--names and accounts and sights and perceptions--in relation to one another, examining them in friendly cross-examination, and asking and making response without ill will, wisdom and understanding about each thing WILL FLASH OUT upon the scene, straining the limits of human capacity. (344b) S: What does Long make of this? P: He says it is more like experiencing a divine epiphany than like completing a syllogism. I have emphasized the words by which Long is subtly leading the reader to see me as a mystic. S: But surely Long says more than this about your alleged mysticism. P: Not much more. On p. 16 he concludes, “Platonic rationality does not do much that looks like reasoning. To be sure, reasoning is needed in order to crank the engine of substantive rationality and prepare it for operation. But in the moment of operation reason qua substantive reason does not infer, does not deduce, done not reason; it merely sees.” (16) S: It merely sees?! Isn’t that like the so-called “aha” principle? P: I would agree, yet Long calls this “mystical intuitionism.” S: No way. P: Yes, way. S: No way. P: Yes, way. S: I call that pretty weak. P: So do I, dear sir. And he even tips his hand in an example he gives on p. 15. After trying to make me seem like a proponent of “mystical intuitionism,” he offers an example to make the process “seem a bit less mysterious.” This after he has done his best to make it seem more mysterious. S: You mean Figure 1 that contains the word “Plato” if one knows how to “see” it. P: Notice that Long admits that an illiterate person would not see the word “Plato” Whereas a literate one might, “if one works at it.” But Long’s very own contrast is between a “literate” and “non-literate” person and not between a mystic and a man of reason. S: He seems to get closer to the meaning of the 7th Letter and the passage from the Republic (518b-d) in his “mundane example” than in his “critical exegesis.” P: I would agree. S: Sum all this up for us, please. P: Let me make just three points. (1) Read the dialogues. (2) Read the dialogues. (3) Read the dialogues. I wrote them, not the commentaries or the histories. I’m not saying you shouldn’t consult a secondary source, but remember; it’s a secondary source. And when those sources are at their best, they should lead you back to the first source. Me and my beloved dialogues. Be a first hander! S: That should be easy advice for any Objectivist. But Long seems to have read the dialogues. All of his quotations are from you, not some secondary source. He even does his own translations. P: But he forgets that they are dialogues, not philosophical essays in the analytic tradition. He rips my context to shreds; he assumes he knows what characters speak for me and that they speak for me. It can’t get much worse. S: You sound just a bit arrogant. P: Christ, I’m PLATO! I even taught Aristotle. If I don’t have the right to be arrogant, who the hell does? S: Well put. And on behalf of SOLOHQ, I want to thank you, Plato.
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