RoR: Forum

Lance,

"I believe Plato was genuinely looking for answers over much of his life but was largely unable to establish enough truth to satisfy himself."

Are you only referring to his dialogues, or to the stuff Aristotle said about him? In my book, AYN RAND, OBJECTIVISTS, AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, I have an appendix marked "A" in which I cite every occurrence of the name PLATO in the writings of Aristotle. Appendix B catalogues all the places where a Platonic dialogue is mentioned.

Fred

Post 21

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - 2:13pm

I think you will find it is the other way around. Socrates is the questioner, the eternal seeker after truth; Plato is the authoritarian possessor of it.

- Daniel

Daniel, both Socrates and Plato sought answers. Plato may have believed in the ideas of The Republic when he wrote it but it wouldn't surprise me if he laughed The Republic later. His essential method appears to be one of experimentation. Plato's experimentation set up Aristotle perfectly for identifying more grounded answers.

Certainly, Plato is all over the place and it can be argued well that he has an authoritarian streak in him. But he has the rare, unauthoritarian quality of trying on different ideas for size. If he considered himself an authoritarian possessor of truth he would have written a definitive treatise in his own name.

Post 22

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - 2:29pm

Lance,

"I believe Plato was genuinely looking for answers over much of his life but was largely unable to establish enough truth to satisfy himself."

Are you only referring to his dialogues, or to the stuff Aristotle said about him?

Hey Fred, I'm speculating about Plato's motivations and methods. My sense of Plato comes from his dialogues, what Aristotle says about Plato, and by comparing the way later philosophers approach similar questions.

Meno: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?

Plato gave that question a lot of thought but he doesn't offer/demonstrate answers with the kind of confidence and precision Aristotle does. Plato's dialogues usually leave me with more questions than answers. That can be a very good thing and that's why I call him a "question guy."

Post 23

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - 3:48pm

I had always been told that it was Socrates, via Plato, who said, somewhere, that , in effect "... all is belief, and knowledge is merely belief with certainty", that such was why he never accepted answers, but always questioned, in effect claiming that there really is no knowledge, only beliefs.....

Post 24

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - 4:40pm

Jason,

For all the money in the world, if you are reading the MENO, you have to get Jacob Klein's A COMMENTARY ON PLATO'S MENO. It is the book that changed my whole attitude to Plato. Klein taught the Great Books Program at St. John's in Annapolis from 1938 to 1978. Eva Brann (no, not that Eva Brann) once said that no one can teach you more about how to read Plato than Klein.
Good reading.
Fred

Post 25

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - 4:46pm

Lance,

"Meno: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?"

I love this opening question from Meno. Socrates gives four different answers within the dialogue, but by the time we get to Aristotle's NE we find him answering that the 11 moral virtues (Books III-V) are got through practice while the 5 intellectual virtues (Book VI) can be taught.
It just blows me away to think of these two giants working together for 20 years.

Fred

Post 26

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - 4:56pm

I'll get it. Thanks for the recommendation. I always like to read the work, read commentaries, then re-read the work. And perhaps come back years later and read it again. I also re-read Aristotle's Ethics recently. Do you have a recommenation on any thought-provoking commentaries?

Post 27

Wednesday, March 9, 2005 - 10:52am

Jason,

I recommend the Joe Sachs translation published by Focus (great house) Press published in 2002. It contains a nice long introduction of 25 pages and the principle of the translation (as with all of Sachs) is to bypass the Latin (words like "essence" "actuality" etc. to try to get right to Aristotle's Greek, as much as the English will permit. Also worth note is his translation of TO KALON as THE BEAUTIFUL which Aristotle says plainly and repeatedly is the end or purpose of moral virtue.

Enjoy,

Fred

Post 28

Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 8:48am

The question of whether Plato's dialogues present his own doctrines is a very old one (ancient Platonists themselves divided on this question, with Antiochus and the "Old Academy" saying yes, and Carneades and the "New Academy" saying no). (Plato's 7th letter has been interpreted as saying no too, but I don't think that's the right interpretation, and anyway that letter is -- indeed all Plato's letters are -- of dubious authenticity.) The debate continues today, and Fred Seddon and I are obviously on opposite sides of it. (Note that just as I interpret Plato's dialogues as presenting Plato's own views, so I'm assuming that Seddon's dialogues present his own views too...)

For present purposes I'll just express some puzzlement at the following comment that Seddon puts in Plato's mouth:

> Aristotle got it pretty much right. After
> all, he was my student and colleague for 20
> years. Read his stuff and see what he reports
> on me.

I agree that we should take Aristotle's testimony about Plato seriously, for just these reasons, but I think this fact supports my interpretive strategy better than Seddon's. After all, Aristotle in his treatises is constantly referring to doctrines from Plato's dialogues and calling them Plato's doctrines: Plato believes this, Plato teaches that, etc. (Aristotle tells us, for example, that Plato believed in Forms and Socrates didn't.) So Aristotle, Plato's student and colleague for 20 years, seems to have interpreted Plato's dialogues as setting forth Plato's positive doctrines. And surely Aristotle was in a better position to judge Plato's intentions than Carneades was.
(We also know from ancient testimony that Aristotle himself wrote dialogues, now sadly lost except for fragments; and in his treatises Aristotle will ocasionally refer the reader to them for fuller explanation of some point, implying that he sees his own dialogues the same way.)

Post 29

Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 6:55am

Roderick,

Nice post. Saw you at the APA and enjoyed your session. We are on different sides here and you might want to check out my book AYN RAND, OBJECTIVISTS AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY where I give some more details about where I'm at in this debate. I have a section in ch. 1 on the "Forms" debate etc. I have an appendix (A--I have 3 of them) in which I list every mention of Plato in the authentic works of Aristotle. In looking over that appendix I think there is an ambiguity that I can't resolve. For example, when Aristotle writes [PHY 209b11] that "Plato says in the TIMAEUS..." is he referring to Plato the philosopher or Plato the writer. Obviously Plato wrote every word in the dialogues, but he surely could not have endorse every word in the dialogues. Have your written on this and if so where, I would like to read more of what you have to say.

I hope you keep posting here. You are terrific.

Fred

PS There are several more installments coming and I hope you enjoy them, even if you disagree. And I think you should disagree, after all, it is your position that I am attacking in my little dialogue.

PPS My dialogue isn't a dialogue; at least not in Plato's sense; or in the sense I read them. It is an interview and the character named SEDDON represents my position whereas the PLATO represents a group of positions not original with me.

Post 30

Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - 12:00pm

Thanks! I look forward to reading your book. (I'm especially curious to see what you say about Kant!)

Post 31

Thursday, March 24, 2005 - 3:49am