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'. — Wayfarer
All of my other words left like deer hit on the side of the road. — Paine
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. — Wayfarer
The technique is as follows. You paraphrase the text in tedious detail – or so it appears to the uninitiated reader. Occasionally you remark that a certain statement is not clear; you note that the text is silent about a certain matter; you wonder whether such and such can really be the case. With a series of scarcely perceptible nudges you gradually insinuate that the text is insinuating something quite different from what the words say. — Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
According to Strauss, these old books ‘owe their existence to the love of the mature philosopher for the puppies of his race, by whom he wants to be loved in turn’.5 And one can understand that today’s puppies need assistance if they are to respond with love to Strauss’s manner of commenting on these classic texts; for he deliberately makes the hard ones harder and the easier ones (e.g., Plato and Xenophon) the most difficult of all. — Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
I think Fooloso's approach discourages people from reading Plato, and that's unfortunate. — Leontiskos
Klein: There are indeed, I think, differences between us, although it is not quite clear to me in what they consist.
Strauss: The subject is the relations between Klein and me, i.e., our agreements and our differences. In my opinion we are closer to one another than to anyone else in our generation.
I find Fooloso4 interpretations invariably deflationary — Wayfarer
I think Fooloso's approach discourages people from reading Plato, and that's unfortunate.* — Leontiskos
... what do we expect and hope for in our pursuit of philosophy? — Fooloso4
How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?
We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge—and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves—how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” [Matthew 6:21]; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart—”bringing something home.”
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Paine
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. — Paine
This review was met with a storm of rebuttals from the leading Straussians of the day, plus a letter of support from Gregory Vlastos: NYRB 10 October 1985; 24 October 1985; 24 April 1986. The title ‘Sphinx without a secret’ derives from a short story by Oscar Wilde. — Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Volume 2
Moreover, we recall that Adeimantus had added a challenge to his brother’s. The whole of ancient literature, poetry and prose, he claims, “beginning with the heroes at the beginning (those who left speeches) up to the human beings at present” (366e), has justified justice only in terms of its good con-sequences. As we proposed in the previous chapter, the fact to which Adeimantus points is not true simply de facto but also de jure: it is precisely the relative goodness of a thing that can be defined and described with mere words. An argument for the intrinsic goodness of something must necessarily be more than a mere argument: it must be an argument that springs from the wholeness of a life. The wording of Adeimantus’s challenge is crucial, insofar as it associates discourse with relative goodness and insists on more immediate evidence for intrinsic goodness: “Now, don’t only show us by argument (τῷ λόγω) but show what each in itself does to the man who has it” (367b). We have here an allusion to the more intimate form of knowledge we have argued lies at the heart of the epistemology of the Republic and distinguishes it from Plato’s other dialogues. There is no better way to show the effect of something that inheres in the soul than to live out its effect; indeed, anything else can be feigned. It is in this sense that Plato points to philosophy as supplanting poetry as the foundation of social order: not in the first place because he takes philosophy to be a superior mode of discourse (an affirmation that will need to be significantly qualified, as we shall see in the coda), but because philosophy is in fact a life if it is philosophy at all, while poetry need never be more than word.
Or as Eva Brann puts it in The Music of the Republic: at the center of the Republic there is more than a logon, there is an ergon, a deed. Each of the main images Plato uses (the sun, the divided line, and the cave) are incomplete. Something must "come from outside" to relate to the whole. For instance, the Good can't lie on the divided line, since this would just make it one point among many. With the cave, it is Socrates who breaks into his own narrative, we are directed to the historical person of Socrates who demonstrates his knowledge of the good, not through speeches (which always deal with inadequate good) but through how he lives his life.
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 Thrasymachus’s 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 Thrasymachus’s strictures prevent him from proposing (376d). In other words, he does not yet reject the possibility of understanding a priori—for that would, indeed, depend on an insight it would be presumptuous to claim—but 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.
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.
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. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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. — Leontiskos
I would never want to impose such wooden assumptions on a subtle thinker like Plato. — 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. — Fooloso4
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. — Fooloso4
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.
— Fooloso4
Where have I done that? — Leontiskos
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.
[emphasis mine] — Leontiskos
The technique is as follows. You paraphrase the text in tedious detail – or so it appears to the uninitiated reader. Occasionally you remark that a certain statement is not clear; you note that the text is silent about a certain matter; you wonder whether such and such can really be the case. With a series of scarcely perceptible nudges you gradually insinuate that the text is insinuating something quite different from what the words say. — Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret
Or as Eva Brann puts it ...
I did not attend Mr. Strauss’s seminars regularly, but I saw him often at the Klein house for lunch and dinner. I can give you an overall impression. He was absolutely the most exquisitely courteous man imaginable, especially to me as “the daughter of the house.” He was very, very polite. I heard much conversation. I don’t know if I absorbed much of it, but I know that Jasha [Klein] was very happy to have him in Annapolis.
... one point of difference, and maybe the most important, was that Mr. Strauss thought that political philosophy was fundamental. I think that Jasha thought that ontology, or metaphysics, was fundamental, and that the revolution in science was more telling for modernity than the political revolution.
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. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The danger here is that they may come to believe that philosophy has failed them. Socrates is about to die because he practiced philosophy and nothing he has said has convinced them that he will be better off for having practiced it. It is because of Socrates that they came to love philosophy, but it may be that philosophy cannot do what they expect of it. They are in danger of misologic, hating what they once loved.
...
The danger of misologic leads to the question of who will keep Socratic philosophy alive? Put differently, philosophy needs genuine philosophers and not just scholars.
Socrates turns from the problem of sound arguments to the soundness of those who make and judge arguments.
And this is why Plato keeps prodding us to never settle down with what is in the text itself—the ideal orientation is towards the Good and True, not towards any specific teaching. — Count Timothy von Icarus
From D.C. Schindler's "Plato's Critique of Impure Reason. — Count Timothy von Icarus
A watershed in the modern history of interpretation seems to be Leo Strauss, with his discovery or argument that Locke wrote esoterically.
... because philosophy is in fact a life if it is philosophy at all, while poetry need never be more than word. — Count Timothy von Icarus
philosophical poetry. — Fooloso4
It seems to me like you are doing that throughout this comment You insinuate... — Paine
You insinuate Foolsoso4 resembles a gnostic sophist here... — Paine
But the claim has to do with, "assumptions regarding the truth of such things as Forms and Recollection." — Leontiskos
...and there need be no evidence of such assumptions in order for him to mount a defense against such an interpretation. — Leontiskos
The claim that Plato held no doctrines or positions ... — Leontiskos
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. — Leontiskos
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." — Leontiskos
I don't know what the question is but I'm sure Karl Marx has all the answers. Or so they say ....
Please refrain from the gratuitous ad hominem commentary.
Burnyeat's criticism of Strauss in many ways parallels your own criticism of Gerson. — Leontiskos
He seems to think he has solid metaphysical theories to enhance or rebut. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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