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Essays on Plato's Epistemology ESSAYS ON PLATO’S EPISTEMOLOGY ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY DE WULF-MANSION CENTRE Series I LIII Series Editors Russell L. Friedman Jan Opsomer Carlos Steel Gerd Van Riel Advisory Board Brad Inwood, University of Toronto, Canada Jill Kraye, The Warburg Institute, London, United Kingdom John Marenbon, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Lodi Nauta, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Timothy Noone, The Catholic University of America, USA Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA Martin Pickavé, University of Toronto, Canada Pasquale Porro, Università degli Studi di Bari, Italy Geert Roskam, KU Leuven, Belgium The “De Wulf-Mansion Centre” is a research centre for Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the KU Leuven, Kardinaal Mercierplein, 2, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium). It hosts the international project “Aristoteles latinus” and publishes the “Opera omnia” of Henry of Ghent and the “Opera Philosophica et Theologica” of Francis of Marchia. ESSAYS ON PLATO’S EPISTEMOLOGY Franco Trabattoni LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS © 2016 by De Wulf-Mansioncentrum – De Wulf-Mansion Centre Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium) All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. ISBN 978 94 6270 059 8 D/2016/1869/2 NUR: 732 To Giuliana, Giovanni and Anna Introduction Thought as Inner Dialogue (Theaet. e–a) Logos and doxa: The Meaning of the Refutation of the Third Definition of Epistêmê in the Theaetetus Theaetetus d–c: Truth without Certainty Foundationalism or Coherentism? On the Third Definition of Epistêmê in the Theaetetus What is the Meaning of Plato’s Theaetetus? Some Remarks on a New Annotated Translation of the Dialogue David Sedley’s Theaetetus The “Virtuous Circle” of Language. On the Meaning of Plato’s Cratylus The Knowledge of the Philosopher What Role Do the Mathematical Sciences Play in the Metaphor of the Line? Socrates’ Error in the Parmenides On the Distinguishing Features of Plato’s “Metaphysics” (Starting from the Parmenides) Is There Such a Thing as a “Platonic Theory of the Ideas” According to Aristotle? The Unity of Virtue, Self-Predication and the “Third Man” in Protagoras e–a Plato: Philosophy, Politics and Knowledge. An Overview Bibliography Index A passage from the Timaeus, one extensively quoted within the Platonic tradition (a), may be seen to effectively encapsulate Plato’s philosophy from an ontologi- cal as much as epistemological perspective: there are two kinds of reality, one eternal, invisible and immobile, the other ever-changing, visible and mobile; and these correspond to two modes of knowledge, “intellection accompanied by logos” and “opinion conjoined with sense-perception devoid of logos”.By examining other Platonic works, however, we soon realise that while this outline may be reliable on the ontological level (the presence of any intermediate mathematical entities in Platonic ontology would not affect its dualistic nature, since these entities would still be situated in the sphere of the intelligible), it is far less reliable on the epistemological level. What engenders some doubts is the nature of logos. In the passage from the Timaeus in question, logos is only fully attributed to noesis, whereas doxa is only the reflection of an alogos perception. Yet elsewhere (Theaetetus, Sophist, Philebus) Plato draws a very close link between logos and doxa: the knowledge founded on logos inherits the intrinsic fallibility of doxa, to which logos is connected, thereby considerably altering the clear-cut epistemo- logical dualism outlined in the passage from the Timaeus. If logos is fallible by nature (as we read in a passage from the Seventh Letter¹), what kind of knowledge can man actually attain? Two possibilities emerge here. If we believe that Plato grants man the possibility to attain certain knowledge of reality (which of course means of intelligible nature according to the philosopher), we can either attempt to demonstrate that man has access to a kind of intuitive knowledge higher than the one ensured by logos, or we can attempt to demonstrate that the connections between logos and doxa in Plato are only sporadic and unessential, so that it is indeed possible to find certain and infallible logoi (possibly to be identified with definitions). Alternatively – and this is the hypothesis upheld in the present book – we must admit that according to Plato human beings, precisely by virtue of their being confined within the realm of logos and doxa, have no access to certain and definitive knowledge in this life. The second hypothesis is not tantamount to claiming that according to Plato philosophy cannot attain any degree of truth at all or make any progress towards truth; less still does it imply that Plato was a sceptic philosopher. Rather, it means acknowledging the fact that well-founded doubts and objections are always possible, and hence that truth can only ever be grasped in a partial, approximate and incomplete way. The crucial assumption behind a reading of this sort, which ¹ On the Seventh Letter see ch. , n. aims to identify a guiding thread for Plato’s philosophy as a whole, is a realist interpretation of Plato’s metaphysics (i.e. the Two Worlds Theory) and doctrine of recollection. While this frame of reference may seem cumbersome (especially in the eyes of readers approaching Plato’s writing with a modern sensitivity), in my view it cannot be removed without jeopardising our capacity to understand Plato’s thought. Indeed, on the one hand the metaphysical framework provides a solid grounding in truth, enabling man to confidently pursue the task of discovering and interpreting reality; on the other hand, it explains why this task is a far from straightforward one in practice: why it is actually a rough and winding path laden with obstacles. It explains why, despite having the impression of living in a world marked by a clear-cut distinction between right and wrong, between true and false, between what works and what does not, man is not capable of producing unconditional and irrefutable truths to which everyone must bow. The reason for this apparent ambiguity lies precisely in reminiscence, which is to say the fact that truth is only accessible in a direct, evident and therefore indisputable way to the gods and the disembodied soul. Embodied souls, by contrast, can only draw upon their memories and the endless range of different logoi by which they strive to correctly describe a bygone vision. The pursuit of truth, for Plato, may therefore be seen as an attempt to find the unity or accordance (homologia) between logoi that comes closest to that pre-logical unity (the direct intuition of truth) which originally spawned the multiplicity of logoi. The interpretative framework just outlined sums up the overall view of Plato’s thought I have acquired ever since the first book I devoted to the philosopher.² The collection of studies presented in this volume – previously published essays that have been substantially revised³ – constitutes a further investigation of the ² Trabattoni (). Since I suppose that the image of Plato I draw in the book could appear to many readers somehow unusual and odd, I would like to mention here – in no particular order – various scholars I feel particularly in tune with (and, no doubt, I am forgetting many others): S. Rosen, K. Sayre, F. Gonzalez, D. Hyland, D. Roochnik, Ch. Griswold, E. Heitsch, R. Polansky, P. Stemmer, Ch. Rowe, M. Dixsaut, G. Casertano, W. Watson, R. Barney, A. Capra, G.A. Scott, W. Welton, D. Barton, D. Blank, W. Detel, P. Stern, B. Wachterhauser, M. McCoy, J. Kastely. ³ For each text I will be quoting the title, place of publication and date of the first (usually Italian) edition. Ch. : Il pensiero come dialogo interiore (Theaet. e–a), in Il Teeteto di Platone: strutture e problematiche, a c. di G. Casertano, Loffredo, Naples , pp. –; Ch. : Logos e doxa: o significado da refutação da terceira definição de epistêmê no Teeteto, in J. Trindade Santos (ed.), Do Saber ao Conhecimento. Estudos sobre o Teeteto, Lisboa , pp. – (it. transl. Λόγος e δόξα: il significato della confutazione della terza definizione di ἐπιστήμη nel Teeteto, in “Rivista di cultura classica e medievale” (), pp. –); Ch. : Theaetetus, d–c: Truth without Certainty, in A. Havlíček, F. Karfík, Š. Špinka (eds), Plato’s Theaetetus. Proceedings of the sixth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, above-described topics, with a special emphasis on epistemology. The revision work I just mentioned was chiefly carried out so as to lend unity and consistency to the volume, while reducing repetitions to a minimum. However, as the various chapters have not been conceived as a part of a single volume, this aim has only partly been achieved: some degree of repetition was unavoidable. This is particularly the case with the chapters on the Theaetetus, which – as might be expected in a work on Platonic epistemology – make up the bulk of the book. In the Theaetetus Plato addresses a crucial problem, the solution of which directly bears upon the nature and very existence of philosophy (if by this term we understand that activity through which one seeks to know the truth). This being the case, it is certainly striking that the question raised in the dialogue, namely “What is knowledge?”,is given no answer which withstands elenchos. This is all the more surprising given the fact that when he composed the Theaetetus Plato had already long ceased writing dialogues with aporetic outcomes. The Theaetetus is therefore widely regarded as a remarkable dialogue, one difficult to bring in line with what are regarded as the key texts of Platonic epistemology (starting from the central books of the Republic).
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