The question of what does and does not count as an official act is one that is not likely to be determined in the cases against Trump. The Court knows this. They are willfully and deliberately protecting him. Effectively allowing the clock run out in the Trump cases by not issuing a ruling until the clock on their term was running out.

...My difficulty with Fooloso4's Plato is fairly simple. I think Plato is a great philosopher and an unparalleled pedagogue, and Fooloso ends up making him an invisible philosopher and a shoddy pedagogue. — Leontiskos

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.

Fooloso has an a priori (political?) motivation to wrestle Plato away from the Christian tradition — 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.

... prevents one from building any substantial doctrine upon Plato's writing — Leontiskos

Well, if you want to build such a doctrine have at it.

The irony is that in order to dethrone a Christianized Plato, Fooloso has conjured up a dogmatism of his own, namely the dogma of Plato as a skeptical-know-nothing. — Leontiskos

Dethrone? It has honestly never occurred to me that a Christianized Plato sits on the throne. I do, however, reject theological interpretations.

... anyone who draws anything of substance from Plato has de facto misunderstood him; and if everyone has misunderstood Plato then surely Plato is a shoddy teacher or else a non-teacher. — 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.

I find this all rather silly, especially given the strange swirling motivations which are very far from an innocent attempt to understand Plato in himself. — Leontiskos

What is silly is your accusations about my motivations.

Obviously such an approach creates the ambience of a secret knowledge of gnostic Platonism, unknown to the uninitiated — Leontiskos

So which is it, know nothing or secret knowledge?

And to be clear, the focus on Christianity comes from Fooloso, not from me. — Leontiskos

Where has my discussion of Plato focused on Christianity?

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. — Leontiskos

Where does Plato speak in his own voice? Certainly not in the dialogues. Not even once. Why is that?

No, for Burnyeat Strauss' problem is a kind of dogmatism ... — Leontiskos

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.

...combined with showmanship or privileged insight ... — 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.

... and for me the critique would simply need to be adjusted for your unique form of dogmatism, namely one based on skepticism. — 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?

The contrarian showmanship is much the same. — 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.

Those of us who take philosophy seriously will think that this clash of reasoned views among the ancient philosophers is more relevant to our present interests than the anti-Utopian ‘teaching’ that Strauss has single-handedly invented. — Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret

The term 'utopia' was invented by Thomas More. It means no (οὐ) place (τόπος).

The SEP article "Plato on Utopia" includes the following:

The predominant view, until fairly recently, holds that the Republic is Plato’s statement of what the ideally best city is; the Laws, on the other hand, describes the city that would be best, given less optimistic assumptions about what human nature is capable of.

Is Burnyeat's criticism based on Strauss' reading of the Republic or the Laws? Where does he fit with regard to these changing views?

... readers of the Platonic dialogues, from Aristotle onward, have taken Socrates to be Plato’s spokesman — 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:

secrecy and sphinx-like nature

(BGE 28)

remains. This is by no means something invented by modern philosophers. The following quotes and more can be found here

For, as Plato liked and constantly affected the well-known method of his master Socrates, namely, that of dissimulating his knowledge or his opinions, it is not easy to discover clearly what he himself thought on various matters, any more than it is to discover what were the real opinions of Socrates.

(Augustine, City of God, 248)

[Plato] resorted to allegories and riddles. He intended thereby to put in writing his
knowledge and wisdom according to an approach that would let them be known
only to the deserving. (Alfarabi, Harmonization, 131 (sec. 12))

Plato has employed a variety of terms in order to make his system less intelligible to the
ignorant.

(Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 1:333 (3.63))

Glaucon and Adeimantus undertake to participate in the task of persuasion themselves, should the day of Utopia come.54 A significant event, this undertaking, for Glaucon and Adeimantus belong to the aristocratic elite. — Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret

From this it looks like Burnyeat took the Republic rather than the Laws to be Plato's utopia.

Any ‘gentlemen’ who read the Republic and identify with Glaucon or Adeimantus should find themselves fired with the ambition to help achieve justice on earth, and convinced that it can be done. — 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:

Then Polemarchus said, “Socrates, I assume you two are heading back to the city and leaving us.”

“Not a bad assumption,” said I.

“Well,” said he, “do you see how many of us there are?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then,” said he, “you should either grow stronger than all of these men, or stay here.”

“Is there not another option?” said I. “Could we not persuade you that you should let us leave?”

“And would you be able to persuade us,” said he, “if we were not listening to you?”

“Not at all,” replied Glaucon.

(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.

I have read more Straussians than Strauss himself, — 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.

It is a critique of Strauss' convoluted and inaccessible interpretations of Plato — Leontiskos

Have you read Strauss or just relying on

Burnyeat's eyes — 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.

ROSEN: Well, firstly, the approach to the Platonic dialogues has changed over the course of history. For example, in Neo-Platonist times, interpreters of the dialogues took the dramatic form very seriously. And they read very complicated views into what would look to, say, the members of the contemporary analytical tradition like extremely trivial and secondary stylistic characteristics. Secondly, there was a tradition of taking seriously the dramatic form of the dialogue. It began in Germany in the 18th century with people like Schleiermacher. And that tradition extends through the 19th century, and you see it in scholars like Friedländer and in philosophical interpreters like Gadamer. And we now know, of course, that Heidegger in his lectures on the Sophist took the details of the dialogue very seriously. So, that has to be said in order for us to understand that the apparent heterodoxy or eccentricity of Leo Strauss’ approach to the Platonic dialogues is such a heterodoxy only with respect to the kind of positivist and analytical approach to Plato ... Final point, within the last ten years, even the analysts have began talking about the dramatic form of the dialogue as though they discovered this. More directly, the Strauss approach is characterized by a fine attention to the dramatic structure, the personae, all the details in the dialogues because they were plays, and also by very close analyses.

...

The purpose of the text is to stimulate the reader to think, and it does that by being an intricate construction with many implications, some of which are indeterminate in the sense that you can’t be sure of what Plato meant and what Socrates meant, but they are intended to make you, the interpreter, do your thinking for yourself ... I think that it would be better to emphasize that the dialogue has as its primary function the task of stimulating the reader to think for himself, not to find the teaching worked-out for him.

...

First of all, there is no unanimity in the tradition of reading Plato. I told you that what passed for orthodoxy is no longer orthodox. The same analysts who made fun of Leo Strauss and me and his other students, today are copying us, but with no acknowledgment. They are copying the Straussian methods, but not as well. Leo Strauss is a much more careful reader and a more imaginative reader, and I certainly am as well. You get these inferior, inferior versions of the same methods they criticized ten years ago. This thesis of a long, orthodox tradition, that’s nonsense. It doesn’t exist. Even if it did, it would show nothing.

https://college.holycross.edu/diotima/n1v2/rosen.htm

Agnosticism is being equated with atheism here. — Paine

Good point.

I would add that Socratic skepticism is being equated with other forms of skepticism

A bit more on the Seventh Letter:

Nevertheless, the thorough examination of all these problems, going up and down and over each one with great effort, imparts knowledge of a good thing unto a person of a good nature.

(343e)

There is a difference between knowledge of a good thing and knowledge of the good itself.

And when all of these things – names, definitions, appearances, and perceptions – have been painstakingly elaborated in relation to each other and examined through thoughtful argumentation by
people who ask questions and provide answers without malice, only then is it that the light of knowledge and understanding of each element shines forth unto a person who has applied himself as
much as humanly possible. (344b-c)

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.

Biden is a weak, tired, senile old man who doesn’t have the foggiest idea about what’s happening. But some of his cabinet and administrative appointments have been surprisingly good ... — Mikie

I think that the administration is of central importance. We have a good picture of what the Trump administration this time around will look like. It is outlined in the Heritage Foundation "Project 2025". It is a playbook to establish a Christian theocratic authoritarian regime. If enacted it will give the Trump administration powers that circumvent the balance of powers of the government. Its ultimate goal, however, goes far beyond Trump. Trump himself, however, may prove its undoing.

I shared them and bolded the most relevant parts earlier. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you mean this post?

For everything that exists there are three instruments by which the knowledge of it is necessarily imparted; fourth, there is the knowledge itself, and, as fifth, we must count the thing itself which is known and truly exists.

I do not read it as implying that he or anyone else has knowledge of:

the good itself, the beautiful itself, and the just itself.

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?

There is a reason "skeptical Plato" theorists, from what I have seen, almost always deny the authenticity of the letter. — 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.

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." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. He does not say these things.

What I said is:

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. — Fooloso4

And the statement you quoted and responded to:

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.

If Plato is a skeptic and doesn't think he really has any good idea what the Good is — 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.

...why is he writing things that are so suggestive and have been overwhelmingly understood as saying something quite the opposite? — 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.

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. — 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.



.

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.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

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?

The Seventh Letter might not have been written by Plato, but it was decidedly not written by a skeptic. — 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.

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. He does not call the forms foolish. What he says is:

“Consider then, he said, whether you share my opinion as to what follows, for I think that, if there is anything beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than that it shares in that Beautiful, and I say so with everything ... I simply, naively and perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or anyone else.”

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.

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is more to it than that. See what he says about his "second sailing" in the Phaedo:

After this, he said, when I had wearied of looking into beings, I thought that I must be careful to avoid the experience of those who watch an eclipse of the sun, for some of them ruin their eyes unless they watch its reflection in water or some such material ...

So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.

(99d-100a)

In the Republic:

“... in applying the going up and the seeing of what's above to the soul's journey up to the intelligible place, you'll not mistake my expectation, since you desire to hear it. A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good …”

(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.

acting like the very paradigm of the Sophists he criticizes so heavily. — 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.

He would be someone who pretends to know what he doesn't know — 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.

Couldn’t classical philosophy ascribe the unintelligibility of the world to the treachery of the senses? — Wayfarer

What is at issue here is something else. @Paine points to the problem in the passage he quotes from the Sophist in the thread on Gerson and Platonism. The question arises:

Come on, all you who say that hot and cold or any pairs like that are all things, what precisely are you attributing to both, when you say that both are and each is? What should we understand by this ‘is’ of yours? Is it a third factor in addition to the other two, and should we propose, on your behalf, that the all is no longer two but three?

(243d-e)

The underlying problem of what 'is' is that we cannot give a proper account of what is without giving a proper count. Most encompassing of "any pairs" are motion and rest.

So, what is, is not the two together, motion and rest, but something different from them.

(250c)

Are all things one - the Whole or All
or two - motion and rest
or three - being, motion, and rest
or five - being, motion, rest, same, and different

Well now, what precisely are the “same” and the “different” which we have just mentioned? Are they two additional kinds, apart from the first three, two kinds which must necessarily combine with the three, and should we investigate them as though there were five and not three?

(254e-255a)

Do you think he is referring specifically to practical wisdom (phronesis) rather than some kind of metaphysical or transcendent wisdom. — Janus

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:

... it is through experience that men acquire science and art ...

. (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.

Are we talking a "post-truth" type thing? — jorndoe

This concern was raised when Trump descended the golden escalator. He is a pathological liar. While it is true that all politicians lie, the extent of his lies is far beyond the norm. Backed by his red tie sycophants this became the new norm. He lies and they either support the lies, deny it said it, or claim that he meant something else. The distinction between true and false has not simply been blurred, it has been destroyed.

In this regard, my attempts to cleanly separate history and interpretation runs into a spot of bother. — Paine

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.

Right. That is, after all, what thinking for yourself is about.

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. — Janus

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:

Thus it is clear that Wisdom is knowledge of certain principles and causes.

(982a)

then:

Since we are investigating this kind of knowledge, we must consider what these causes and principles are whose knowledge is Wisdom.

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:

In general the sign of knowledge or ignorance is the ability to teach ...

(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.

I have read Self-Reliance and a few other things that I do not recall at the moment. He is not to my taste. I have heard enough of my own thoughts and those of others not:

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius.

If I come to experience "the divine spirit" then perhaps I will accept that there is such a thing. Until I receive "a divine wisdom" I will think for myself and not think such a thing true based on what Emerson or anyone else may claim, and will not "accept the place divine providence has found for ..." me. He says:

And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny ...

Why must I accept that? Is trusting myself really the same as trusting transcendent destiny? Thinking for myself I do not trust it. But my trust in myself is tempered by my awareness of my ignorance of such things.

It seems to me that all this is thinking for myself but believing what someone has said to think and believe.

Start with thinking for yourself. — frank

Thinking for yourself is not something that occurs in isolation. To the extent it does, we suffer from the isolation that comes from imagining we are original thinkers.

This is exactly what Wittgenstein is referring to in the remark:

I ought to be no more than a mirror, in which my reader can see his own thinking with all its deformities so that, helped in this way, he can put it right.

(CV 18)

Many get this backwards. They recognize their own thinking in what he says, and believe he is in agreement with them.

If I am not quite sure how I should start a book, this is because I am still unclear about something, For I should like to start with the original data of philosophy, written and spoken sentences, with books as it were.
And here we come on the difficulty of "all is in flux". Perhaps that is the very point at which to start.

(CV 8)

Thinking for myself, I agree with Wittgenstein. When as a freshman in college I took a course is something called "philosophy", something I knew nothing about. I arrogantly assumed that I, from the vantage point of the advances in knowledge since these dusty old books were written, had nothing to learn from them and much that I could teach them. Having had the good fortune of being introduced to primary works of philosophy and, more importantly, how to read them, I came to see just how wrong I was.

Over the years I have heard many people claim to be original thinkers. None of them are.

Then all the philosopher does is broaden your horizons. — frank

We find in Plato's dialogues some who are angry and resent Socrates. They blame him for pulling the rug out from under them, for destabilizing what they assumed were the firm foundations on which they stand. They feel like they have been stung by a torpedo fish and are numb and disoriented.

This is philosophy, not theology. Feel free to engage the ideas in play rather than becoming caught up in interpretation of the text. — frank

As I understand it, interpretation is about the ideas in play. It differs from theology, or at least to some forms of theology, in that it does not assume the truth of those ideas. The ideas remain in play. It is about becoming clear as to what those idea are. It is all too common, for both "professionals" and amateurs alike, to make claims about what those ideas are for the author in question and then arguing for or against those claims. It is one thing to take an idea and run with it, it is quite another to attempt to understand the author. I do not think there is anything wrong with the former. Ideas can take on a life of their own, but I believe that some thinkers can teach us things and if we are to learn from them then we would do well to attend to what they say and take care to understand them. In a thread on a particular work by a particular author what that author says and means remains in question.

the dialectical search for the truth — Janus

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.

... 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. — Janus

This is where I distinguish between Plato and Platonism. Plato is a Socratic, Platonists are not.

I took it to be implied by your earlier declaration that 'modernity is our cave'. — Wayfarer

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.

... who 'sees nothing but bodies in motion'. — 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 sometimes find Fooloso4's comments unhelpful because they offer a criticism - often quite minor - without an apparent alternative or solution. — Banno

Perhaps there is no solution. For a thinker like Wittgenstein that may be the point!

But there is also the more general point I've made about the exegesis of a text such as On Certainty, that as it is a work in progress, there is no reason to expect it to be coherent and consistent. — Banno

And where does that leave the reader?

I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.

(CV 17)

If I am thinking about a topic just for myself and not with a view to writing a book, I jump about all round it; that is the only way of thinking that comes naturally to me. Forcing my thoughts into an ordered sequence is a torment for me. Is it even worth attempting now?

I squander an unspeakable amount of effort making an arrangement of my thoughts which may have no value at all.

(CV 28)

The act of thinking, both for the writer and the interpretive reader, takes place without sight of the finish line. There may, in fact, be no finish line.

It is not just a stylistic peculiarity that Wittgenstein wrote aphorisms.

It is within the space and tension of interpretive uncertainty that we engage the text, whether it is a completed whole or not.

You asked:

... would it fair to suggest that your interpretation is influenced by an innate disposition towards naturalism? — Wayfarer

I asked what you mean by naturalism. In response you said:

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 — 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.

“... if knowing is indeed some action, it follows that whatever is known must, for its part, be affected. Indeed, based on this account, since being is known by the act of knowing, insofar as it is known, it is changed to that extent because it is affected, which we insist does not happen to the quiescent.”

(248d-e)

As he asks the friends of the forms:

Are we actually going to be persuaded so easily that change, life, soul and thought are absent from what altogether is, that it neither lives nor thinks, but abides unchanging, solemn and pure, devoid of intelligence?

(248e-249a)

Rather than things being resolved by embracing the forms he says:

I think that we are just about to appreciate the perplexity involved in this inquiry.

(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?

Now the most important kinds are those we have just mentioned: being itself, rest and motion.

Theae: Very much so.

Str: And we also say that two of them do not mix with one another.

Theae: They do not.

Str: And yet, being can mix with both, for presumably both are.

Theae: Of course.

Str: So there are these three.

Theae: Of course.

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

Of all the people I've engaged with over the years in this forum you're one of the few that remind me of a troll. — Sam26

If you do not wish to discuss and defend your opinions, which is standard philosophic practice, then just don't respond. The insult is uncalled for. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that I challenge you and point out your mistakes rather than the way I engage, although you might see them as one and the same. There are many here who do not share your opinion. Quite the opposite. The fact of the matter is that your views have changed considerably over the years. I doubt that would have happened without criticism.

In any case, given your problem with the way I engage with you I no longer will.

The difference between what some of you are doing in this thread and what I'm doing is that I'm trying to go beyond OC to where it might lead. — Sam26

The title of the thread is "An Analysis of On Certainty". If you are trying to go beyond OC then you are no longer doing an analysis. In order to go beyond something you need to be clear what the ideas and claims are that you are going beyond. Where it might lead cannot be properly established if it is not clear where it is before going beyond it. Otherwise it may simply be a misunderstanding or something different than the text.

You say in that initial post:

From here I will examine On Certainty, sometimes line-by-line, other times a section at a time. — Sam26

Have you moved beyond that task because you believe you have completed it to your satisfaction or have you moved away from it, having gotten from it what you need? Or do you just wish to avoid argument and the need to defend your own interpretation?

Well, Lloyd Gerson's book Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy gives it in painstaking detail. — Wayfarer

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.

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. — Wayfarer

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.

Socrates often distinguishes between the wisdom of the gods and human wisdom and his claim to ignorance can be understood as humility in the face of divine truths.. — Wayfarer

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.

but note at 23 d he says 'Therefore I am still even now going about and searching and investigating at the god's behest — 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)

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? — 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.

why do you think Plato refrains from saying anything like: "I maintain that these things are unknowable — Count Timothy von Icarus

On the one hand:

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.

But on the other:
— Fooloso4

In the Apology he says:

... to be dead is one of two things: either the dead person is nothing and has no perception of anything, or [death] happens to be, as it is said, a change and a relocation or the soul from this place here to another place
(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. — Fooloso4

It should also be noted that the story of transcendent knowledge in the Republic and the story of knowledge when dead are not the same. Which of these stories is true and how do you know that? I am with Socrates and know that I do not know. As I read him Plato is not giving us answers.

At any rate, I think you are confusing "myths and images" as a vehicle for/aid to attaining knowledge with all knowledge being of myths and images alone. — 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.

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. — 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.

More skeptical versions of Plato on the other hand seem more born of literalism, and in some cases a lack of imagination. — 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.

The story of the Forms remains just that, a story, not something he knows.
— 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? — Wayfarer

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).

Plotinus is an ancestor of modern psychology. — Paine

It would be interesting if you traced this,fleshed it out and developed it.

When we exercise intellection upon ourselves, we are, obviously, observing an intellective nature, for otherwise we would not be able to have that intellection. — 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.

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

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.

Eidos shows up throughout the dialogues ... — 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.

Then those who are wise are wise by wisdom and all good things are good by the good … And these are somethings ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Compare this to what he says in the Phaedo:

I simply, naively and perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or anyone else.”

(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:

“… if we can know nothing purely in the body's company, then one of two things must be true: either knowledge is nowhere to be gained, or else it is for the dead.”

(66e)

In the Apology he says:

... to be dead is one of two things: either the dead person is nothing and has no perception of anything, or [death] happens to be, as it is said, a change and a relocation or the soul from this place here to another place

(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.

If Plato intended to promulgate ἀπορία ... — 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.

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. — 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.

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 just a political myth (same with the troubleshooting in the Parmenides). — Count Timothy von Icarus

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, 135b8–c2). 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:

"Well, then, go on to understand that by the other segment of the intelligible I mean that which argument itself grasps with the power of dialectic, making the hypotheses not beginnings but really hypotheses—that is, steppingstones and springboards—in order to reach what is free from hypothesis at the beginning of the whole. When it has grasped this, argument now depends on that which depends on this beginning and in such fashion goes back down again to an end; making no use of anything sensed in any way, but using forms themselves, going through forms to forms, it ends in forms too."

(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.

This just keeps getting more difficult. — Paine

Yes. I think our inability to make sense of the dialogue reflects our inability to make sense of the world. No doubt Platonists would not agree. [Edit: To them] The idea that the world is not intelligible seems not just wrong but disconcertingly so.

There is a difference between using one's hand to touch or move something, and being aware that it is one's hand one is using to touch or move something. — Banno

I do not think that one can use their hand to touch or move something without being aware that it is one's hand that one is using. If not one's hand then what?

Just as a dog may be expecting his master to come, but not to come next Wednesday. — Banno

One is not just like the other. How is being aware of one's hand just like a dog expecting his master but not expecting him to come next Wednesday?

Much of our world is constructed within and by language, and the associated mental content. — Banno

It is true that much of our world, but not the world of a dog, is constructed within and by language, but it does not follow that a baby's awareness of its hands is.

Using one's hand is not physical so much as animal. — Banno

An animal is a physical thing. It is not a question of one or the other. I first wrote biological, but that too could be misconstrued.

For Wittgenstein aesthetics and ethics are shown in performance, so that expressions of ethical or aesthetic preference are all but irrelevant — Banno

I was referring his statement regarding silence. The collection Culture and Value show that he did talk about these things.

The suggestion that ethics and aesthetics are matters to be resolved by linguistic analysis badly misrepresents W.'s view. — Banno

Right. The question was:

Is there anything he says in the Investigations that refutes the insight in the Tractatus that ethics and aesthetics are not matters to be resolved by linguistic analysis? — Fooloso4

The answer is that there is not.

As I said:

It is, rather, not to speak of such things as if they are the same as the propositions of natural science. — Fooloso4

But is the "unmade and the un-generated being offered as an alternative in this context? I read it as: Stuff is getting made and nobody can explain why. — Paine

You are right with regard to the lack of an explanation.

Copying from the Chora thread:

In addition to Forms and sensible things, Timaeus introduces a “third kind” (triton genos, 48e), the chora (χώρα).

The three kinds are:

… that which comes to be, that in which it comes to be, and that from which what comes to be sprouts as something copied. And what’s more, it’s fitting to liken the receiver to a mother , the ‘from which’ to a father, and the nature between these to an offspring (50d).

Like intelligible things, the chora always is. But unlike intelligible things, it is changeable. (52a) Unlike sensible things it does not perish. Befitting its indeterminacy, the chora does not yield to simple definition.

It is said to be the seat of all that has birth. (52b)

He calls it:

… a receptacle for all becoming, a sort of wet nurse.

The chora does not take the shape of anything it receives but is:

… both moved and thoroughly configured by whatever things come into it; and because of these, it appears different at different times ... (50c)

And because she is filled with powers neither similar nor equally balanced, but rather as she sways irregularly in every direction, she herself is shaken by those kinds and, being moved, are always swept along this way and that and are dispersed - just like the particles shaken and winnowed out by sieves and other instruments used for purifying grain … ( 52e)

The chora is not itself active, but due to what is active within it, it moves and thus contributes to the movement of what is in it. Like a sieve, it is not active but by being acted on it acts on what is in it.

I am reluctant to accept the second paragraph. — Paine

Plato probably creates Timaeus, so the divine craftsman would be Plato's creation. Perhaps a creation engendered by wonder. Aristotle says philosophy begins with wonder. If the question of origins cannot be answered definitively, then philosophy is a kind of poetry.

But I won't insist. Perhaps this is just my non-philosophical poetic image of philosophy.

The difference between what is generated by nature and produced artificially ... — Paine

The role of a divine craftsman plays off this difference. Is what is made by the craftsman by nature or is nature made by the craftsman or is there something eternal, unmade and ungenerated at the source?

The divine craftsman is said to be "poet and father" (28c) Is he a product, something made by a poet? My suspicion is that Timaeus, is the father and poet of this likely story of things made and unmade.

Sallis is economical and direct. This is part of what makes him difficult to read. His work on Plato is one aspect of the larger scope of his work on reason and imagination.

John Sallis — Paine

A careful reader who needs to be read carefully. Not for the casual reader but highly recommended. His "Chorology" was helpful in my attempt to understand the Timaeus. Results of that attempt can be found in the thread Shaken to the Chora

A bit more from that thread on the "bastardly discourse" that Sallis refers to:

The chora, to the extent it is understood, is grasped by:

… some bastard reasoning with the aid of insensibility, hardly to be trusted, the very thing we look to when we dream and affirm that it’s somehow necessary for everything that is to be in some region [topos] and occupy some space [chora] and that what is neither on earth nor somewhere in heaven is nothing (Timaeus 52b-c).

To be clear, it is not that the chora is posited as the result of bastard reasoning. It is the attempt to understand it that relies on bastard reasoning. We cannot understand the chora itself. We rely on images of space and place. In dreams we mistake images for their originals (Republic 476c), but the chora is not some thing with its own properties and identity. Reasoning about it cannot make use of the image/original distinction. It is indeterminate and something thought of only in terms of images.
The image of chora as mother and the father as that “from which” the offspring come raises the problem of paternity. Both the divine craftsman and the Forms have been identified as the father of what comes to be.

From what I can tell, American conservatism is Locke's classical liberalism. — BillMcEnaney

Not anymore. The roots of both liberal and conservative ideologies can be found in the works of classical liberalism but today's Republican Party is not conservative as the term was generally understood in the pre-Trumpian era.

With its emphasis familial piety, ritual, and ren (virtue) Confucianism is conservative in a way that differs from Liberalism with its emphasis on the individual.

Saying that facts condition our grammar, as per Moyal-Sharrock, seems to diminish the autonomous nature of grammar, especially since it’s grammar that determines what we mean by fact, object, and reality. So, our grammar presupposes these concepts, but it’s not independent of reality. — Sam26

How are we to understand the following?

PI 497. The rules of grammar may be called “arbitrary”, if that is to mean that the purpose of grammar is nothing but that of language.
If someone says, “If our language had not this grammar, it could not
express these facts” - it should be asked what “could” means here.

It is not that grammar determines facts:

Do I want to say, then, that certain facts are favorable to the formation of certain concepts; or again unfavorable? And does experience teach us this? It is a fact of experience that human beings alter their concepts, exchange them for others when they learn new facts; when in this way what was formerly important to them becomes unimportant, and vice versa. (It is discovered e.g. that what formerly counted as a difference in kind, is really only a difference in degree.

(Zettel 352)

The logical role of hinges is that of being beyond doubt and therefore beyond truth and falsity. To bring in the idea that hinge beliefs are true and false is to miss one of the core points of On Certainty. It’s like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. — Sam26

It is not that they are beyond doubt and truth or falsity, it is that their truth is not doubted. But this is not eternal and immutable. At one time it was accepted that the sun revolves around the earth and that no one has been on the moon.

The baby and the builder are not unaware of their hands, any more than aware of their hands. — Banno

I won't get into early child development and body awareness, but researchers do not agree. Having spent a great deal of time with my own children I cannot agree either.

Which comes first, meaning or mental content? Will we follow Sellers in taking mental content as deriving from linguistic meaning? Or Grice in taking linguistic meaning as deriving from mental content? — Banno

This is a different issue. Awareness of having hands, confidence that one has hands, knowledge that one has hands is first and primarily physical not conceptual.

There are deep differences between the aesthetics of the Tractatus and the Investigations — Banno

From the article you cited:

By “entirely misunderstood”, it emerges that he means both (1) that aesthetic questions are of a conceptual type very distinct from empirical questions ... and (2) that the philosophically traditional method of essentialistic definition – determining the essence that all members of the class “works of art” exhibit and by virtue of which they are so classified – will conceal from our view more than it reveals.

This speaks directly to my question:

Is there anything he says in the Investigations that refutes the insight in the Tractatus that ethics and aesthetics are not matters to be resolved by linguistic analysis? — Fooloso4

and indicates continuity from the Tractatus to the later works. By silence he does not mean not saying anything at all about aesthetics. It is not a prohibition against expressing appreciation or what one experiences when seeing or hearing something beautiful. It is, rather, not to speak of such things as if they are the same as the propositions of natural science.

So again, it is perhaps a mistake to see any of Wittgenstein's writings as complete, and hence an exegetical error to attempt to set out a coherent and complete picture. — Banno

Has anyone claimed that they are?