Plato and Platonists
I am posting my reply to Shulamite and Neoteronous because it is too long to put in the comment section and because my points are also important for my current thoughts about philosophy generally.
First I am not putting Plato down. To say that Wittgenstein had tools that where unavailable to Plato is an incontrovertible truth. This has no bearing on Plato's place as a "great" philosopher. Consider other academic disciplines. Gibbon is still a great historian even though his actual history has been superseded by recent scholarship: a more indepth study of sources and archeology etc.. The development in philosophy over the last 24 centuries is not superficial or formal (in the non-logical sense). Then again I never said it was getting better. After all most, if not all the great philosophers of the 20th century have looked back to earlier philosophies (by that I exclude the contenetial school not from prejudice but from lack of familiarity). The best example of this is modern epistemology; which still wrestles with Humean skepticism (I think has finally been answered by Puttnam). Because philosophy is not an exact science like physics the wisdom of the ages plays an extremely important roll for it, and that is the truth that I base my Aristotelianism on.
I think Neoteronous and me are on the same page on this point. If not please explain to me how not.
As for the Shulamite's form/matter argument that is a bigger story. I will grant him something I don't believe before I give my argument. I will grant him this,
... what is Plato's account of philosophy, of that thing which he was doing? He views it as an attempt to assimilate oneself to the life of God, to prepare oneself for death. Said another way, philosophy is a meditation on, and an assimilation of eternal things, according to that part that is eternal within us. To say that Plato means something else by philosophy is to fundamentally misunderstand what he is doing, and confuse the per se with the per accidens.
The reason I don't agree with this is that I think it gives us an impoverished sense of Plato. Plato did seek the Good in his philosophy but that is not all he sought. The Cratylus, Sophist and the other late dialogues prove that Plato was very concerned with other things as well. Indeed that is the wonderful thing that the Plato's opus shows us. He started with ethical and theological concerns and ended up in linguistic analysis (just like modern philosophy). All the same I said I would grant this point.
So suppose that Plato is primarily a philosopher of religion (in the modern sense); not overly concerned with all the things that those annoying analytics like to do (linguistics, meaning, logic). If this is true can we still compare him with Wittgenstein the supreme analytic, the philosopher who believed that philosophy was only linguistic analysis? I say yes.
Now I can see how my point in the original post was unclear. I did not mean to say that Wittgenstein will be shown better than Plato, but only that we would start to see deficiencies in Plato, lacunas in his thought, blind spots. This cannot be turned around on Wittgenstein and say that because Wittgenstein didn't do traditional metaphysics he had a blind spot. Because Wittgenstein didn't have a blind spot; he just rejected traditional metaphysics. There is a huge difference between ignorance of (Plato) and rejection of (Wittgenstein).
Now my last point. Going back to Plato the philosopher of religion and Wittgenstein the philosopher of language there is no equivocation in the 'philosopher' at this point. The Platonist can argue against Wittgensteinians and say they are wrong in ignoring the Good. The Wittgensteinian probably won't care, but that won't take away from any valid argument that the Platonist made. Likewise the Platonist better cover his arguments in modern logic lest he fall into fallacy. Because this dialogue between platonism and analytics can still exist, and indeed does (and further consider John Haldane calling himself an 'analytic-thomist) I think that the burden of proof lies with you. I see no equivocation; I see quite the opposite.
First I am not putting Plato down. To say that Wittgenstein had tools that where unavailable to Plato is an incontrovertible truth. This has no bearing on Plato's place as a "great" philosopher. Consider other academic disciplines. Gibbon is still a great historian even though his actual history has been superseded by recent scholarship: a more indepth study of sources and archeology etc.. The development in philosophy over the last 24 centuries is not superficial or formal (in the non-logical sense). Then again I never said it was getting better. After all most, if not all the great philosophers of the 20th century have looked back to earlier philosophies (by that I exclude the contenetial school not from prejudice but from lack of familiarity). The best example of this is modern epistemology; which still wrestles with Humean skepticism (I think has finally been answered by Puttnam). Because philosophy is not an exact science like physics the wisdom of the ages plays an extremely important roll for it, and that is the truth that I base my Aristotelianism on.
I think Neoteronous and me are on the same page on this point. If not please explain to me how not.
As for the Shulamite's form/matter argument that is a bigger story. I will grant him something I don't believe before I give my argument. I will grant him this,
... what is Plato's account of philosophy, of that thing which he was doing? He views it as an attempt to assimilate oneself to the life of God, to prepare oneself for death. Said another way, philosophy is a meditation on, and an assimilation of eternal things, according to that part that is eternal within us. To say that Plato means something else by philosophy is to fundamentally misunderstand what he is doing, and confuse the per se with the per accidens.
The reason I don't agree with this is that I think it gives us an impoverished sense of Plato. Plato did seek the Good in his philosophy but that is not all he sought. The Cratylus, Sophist and the other late dialogues prove that Plato was very concerned with other things as well. Indeed that is the wonderful thing that the Plato's opus shows us. He started with ethical and theological concerns and ended up in linguistic analysis (just like modern philosophy). All the same I said I would grant this point.
So suppose that Plato is primarily a philosopher of religion (in the modern sense); not overly concerned with all the things that those annoying analytics like to do (linguistics, meaning, logic). If this is true can we still compare him with Wittgenstein the supreme analytic, the philosopher who believed that philosophy was only linguistic analysis? I say yes.
Now I can see how my point in the original post was unclear. I did not mean to say that Wittgenstein will be shown better than Plato, but only that we would start to see deficiencies in Plato, lacunas in his thought, blind spots. This cannot be turned around on Wittgenstein and say that because Wittgenstein didn't do traditional metaphysics he had a blind spot. Because Wittgenstein didn't have a blind spot; he just rejected traditional metaphysics. There is a huge difference between ignorance of (Plato) and rejection of (Wittgenstein).
Now my last point. Going back to Plato the philosopher of religion and Wittgenstein the philosopher of language there is no equivocation in the 'philosopher' at this point. The Platonist can argue against Wittgensteinians and say they are wrong in ignoring the Good. The Wittgensteinian probably won't care, but that won't take away from any valid argument that the Platonist made. Likewise the Platonist better cover his arguments in modern logic lest he fall into fallacy. Because this dialogue between platonism and analytics can still exist, and indeed does (and further consider John Haldane calling himself an 'analytic-thomist) I think that the burden of proof lies with you. I see no equivocation; I see quite the opposite.
3 Comments:
The modern philosopher, such as Wittgenstein, can indeed have a blind spot. He may reject ancient metaphysics because he doesn't understand it, but only thinks he does. (Not saying that this always happens, but that it can very easily happen, which is what matters.)
On the flip side, an ancient philosopher, were he to magically reappear, may see all recent developments as simple child's-play and unimportant. One of my medieval professors, not a Thomist but a Scotist, said things more or less along these lines. (I didn't totally agree with him but I saw his point.) To his mind, (and he is rather well acquainted with modern, even analytic, philosophy as far as I can tell,) most of modern philosophy was just a poor rehasing of things already accomplished in the middle ages, but without the same perception or justification. He explained how Russell's logic had been invented in the 14th or 15th century but forgotten due to rennaissance persecution. What Russell thought was new was 500+ years old. This is well documented, apparently, and wasn't noticed by scholars until decades after Russell's time.
Just to aviod confusion: my point was that both modern and ancient philosophers may equally well have blind spots, and no a priori argument should be made about their truth-value or relevance.
I know about the logicians of the middle ages already knowing much of what we now call "modern" logic. Yet keep in mind that that does not mean that Frege and Russell where any less the smart cookies because they didn't know about logic in the 14 century.
On the other hand, say someone rejects traditional metaphysics through ignorance, than he would fall under the group of philosophers who are missing something in their system, and my point about non-equivocation still stands.
We can talk about whether or not Wittgenstein himslef rejected metaphysics through ingorance or because he found arguments for it unconvincing. Yet since I am no Wittgenstein scholar, and I am pretty sure you guys are not either, prudence suggests that we don't talk about it. I would guess that we could consult Anne Anscombe and Peter Geach on this, but that would require extra research that I don't want to do when I have four papers and a master thesis coming up.
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