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RE: Philosophy 101: How to Read Plato?

in #steemgigs7 years ago

@gigantomachia, Can you please elucidate exactly how a traditional reading of Plato is "mistaken"? To judge that it is mistaken is a serious evaluation. Worse, you did not provide qualification. Are you pointing out a hermeneutic problem in approaching the text, which is resolvable only by philologists? But I am supposing here (since you did not qualify your objections) that the "challenge to the traditional reading" that you are referring to considers a split between Socrates and Plato, whether what Socrates says in the Republic are authentic expressions of what Plato believes. I am aware that there's still a long-standing study whether Socrates was sheer mouthpiece to Plato in the Dialogues. BUT, I DO NOT think that such an inconsequential and trivial historical distinction would readily render the traditional reading as ultimately mistaken. Personally, I don't make distinctions even between Socrates and Plato. To me, Platonic Philosophy is embodied in the figure of Socrates in the Dialogues of Plato. Yet, that does not stop me from appreciating the value of the traditional reading (which you have yet to define btw). Also, I don't see it as a genuine philosophical undertaking to split hairs and to judge that a particular and long-standing reading of a philosophical text is just, without qualification, mistaken. It think it would behoove us both if you will qualify your objections, define your terms, and explain them clearly.

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Are you not aware of Plato's Seventh Letter? There Plato is pretty darn clear, "No where is my philosophy written".

As to qualifying, I did actually by citing Heidegger and Gadamer, who give a DETAILED account of how the tradition took way too many liberties in assuming exactly what you assume. If you have not read them, then I am not sure you are in a position to challenge the claim. I did my Masters Thesis on Heidegger and my Dissertation discusses how William James embodies similar tendencies as we see in rereading Plato through the lenses of the anti-traditional view. I can give you links to them if you want to read them.

ETA: and I find it somewhat ironic that you have a quote from Nietzsche in your profile, since he and Jacob Burckhardt really started the movement to reread Plato in light of the possibility that Plato was NOT writing down HIS philosophy per se. In fact, as Plato argued, philosophy is not something that can be captured by writing in the first place. Paging Phaedrus . . .