[woodandsteel]

"Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind"

So if Plato is misunderstood, it is because he failed to make himself clear by clearly stating that an easy way of misunderstanding him is not what he actually meant.

"most of what is good in Aristotle is Plato's, often ill digested; but if you haven't heard of Aristotle yet, you are lucky and enjoy your luck as it last, and forget about Aristotle; only be aware that even if you don't know it, Aristotle had a great influence on our way of understanding the world, and contributed to instilling in our mind the wrong notions about Plato, this picture of Plato as an idealist dreaming in a world of "ideas" or "forms" unconnected with the real world).

So the author believes that Aristotle was part right in his philosophical beliefs and part wrong, and that the parts he got wrong, Plato got right. And that the modern world follows Aristotle, and so we need Plato to correct our beliefs.

I wonder what the author's metaphysical and political beliefs are, and how they would stand up against critiques from Aristotle and also various modern philosophers if the author presented them as such in a well-organized fashion. My guess is they would fair quite poorly, and he hiding behind Plato as a way of keeping this from happening.

[curious_yogurt]

>So if Plato is misunderstood, it is because he failed to make himself clear by clearly stating that an easy way of misunderstanding him is not what he actually meant.

I think your inference is partly true, but partly not true. In some cases, of course it is the case that by not saying "this is an easy way of misunderstanding" a particular claim does lead to Plato being misunderstood. But Plato is very much unlike Aristotle or the vast majority of other philosophers in that he wrote dialogues. These dialogues are (almost entirely) fictional, but they read more like a play than a treatise. So, it's not always the case that Plato is trying to be clearly understood in terms of propositions being conveyed in language.

For example, in the dialogue the Phaedo, Socrates is talking to two Pythagoreans about life and death. They ask Socrates to make arguments supporting their quasi-religious beliefs that the soul goes on after death, which Socrates does. But he does so in a very interesting way: the sequence of arguments keep pushing them until they become uncertain about their beliefs concerned the afterlife (which they then express).

So the question is: what does Plato actually want us to take away from this sequence of arguments? It seems, at least, that he is not coming at it head-on. He is not saying you should believe proposition P. Hence my scepticism that you claim is wholly true — that Plato is misunderstood because he failed to make himself clear. I do not think it is obvious that being clear was always Plato's ultimate goal. My suspicions are that he wanted to put the readers into a position where we have to figure out what we actually think is true, and what we think about the arguments themselves. I guess what I want to say here is that making himself clear, in the sense of stating propositions, is not obviously the goal of Plato.

[woodandsteel]

My suspicions are that he wanted to put the readers into a position where we have to figure out what we actually think is true, and what we think about the arguments themselves. I guess what I want to say here is that making himself clear, in the sense of stating propositions, is not obviously the goal of Plato.

You are coming at this all wrong. The important question is not what Plato did and was trying to do, it is what is the truth and how can it be clearly communicated to people so they can make use of it. If Plato communicated in a way that in fact lead many of those who read him to not actually arrive at the truth, which seems to be what has happened, then it doesn't matter if he himself knew the truth and wanted people to understand it correctly.

(Oh, and by the way, the author's claim that Aristotle misunderstood Plato seems quite dubious, given that he was Plato's student for many years, and so Plato had abundant opportunities to test out his understanding and correct it if it was wrong.)

Here is a way of looking at it. Take two scenarios

1) Plato is wrong, people correctly understand him, and they are persuaded he is correct, and so live according to mistaken ideas.

2) Plato is wrong, people misinterpret him as believing ideas that are in fact true, and they themselves are persuaded of those ideas, and so live according to the truth.

Now which is the better state of affairs? Obviously the second one. So the philosophical search for truth is more important than correctly interpreting Plato. And if you are sincerely interested in finding the truth, then you should read many more philosophers than Plato, and above all try to think independently rather than slavishly following any particular philosopher.

And if after doing this you conclude that Plato's ideas are correct, what you definitely should not do is urge everyone to spend their next ten years reading Plato according to your interpretation, as veryfew will do that. What you should instead do is present Plato's ideas to the world as an organized philosophical work,complete with arguments, making occasional reference to Plato, and then see if these ideas stand up to critical examination by other philosophers. When philosophers who are Plato-enthusiasts don't follow the correct route, I assume it is because they sense, correctly, that their beliefs could not stand up to critical scrutiny, but don't want to admit it to themselves.

That is why I turned to the question of what the author thinks is true, and could it stand up to critical examination. As I said, I think he is hiding behind Plato, and it seems to me you are doing the same, turning the question away from what is the truth to your interpretation of Plato.

And with that in mind, let me ask you, what is your metaphysics and what is your political philosophy? Also, for one particular topic, namely biology, do you agree that Aristotle invented scientific biology, and that this was a great advance? Or do you claim that Plato actually invented it, or do you agree that Aristotle did but that it was invalid and unimportant, or what? Ditto formal logic.

[AnimalMuppet]

What if Plato thought that (at least part of) the truth was that it was more beneficial for people to think and seek than to be told the pre-canned truth? Then getting people to actually read and think about Plato (or other Plato-ish philosophers) would be more valuable than to "present Plato's ideas to the world as an organized philosophical work".

> Also, for one particular topic, namely biology, do you agree that Aristotle invented scientific biology, and that this was a great advance?

I don't know. If I understand correctly, Aristotle said that women had fewer teeth than men. He was married twice, but apparently never bothered to open either wife's mouth and count. That may have been biology, but it wasn't very scientific.

[woodandsteel]

What if Plato thought that (at least part of) the truth was that it was more beneficial for people to think and seek than to be told the pre-canned truth?

No, what happens through this process is the student gets an idea in their head and thinks it is correct. The only way to check it out is for the student to state it in a prepositional form to some other smart philosophers and see if they punch any holes in it. But I guess you don't want them to do that because you sense, I would say that correctly, that many Plato's ideas couldn't stand up to that sort of critical scrutiny.

By the way, I do think Plato's dialogues are well-worth reading, it's just that I think many of his ideas were mistaken.

[woodandsteel]

What if Plato thought that (at least part of) the truth was that it was more beneficial for people to think and seek than to be told the pre-canned truth?

And what if was wrong about that? Or is it your assumption that Plato was right about everything, and so therefore he must be right about that particular idea?

As to Aristotle's specific empirical claims in the realm of biology, the great majority have been confirmed by modern science.

[woodandsteel]

Here's a further point. The question with Plato's dialogues is not whether a personal dialogue with a philosopher might be the way to go, but rather is a published dialogue better than a published work of straightforward exposition.

The fact that people disagree so much as to Plato's ideas, but far less over works of straightforward exposition, would seem to indicate that, when it comes to written texts, the latter is far superior.

In fact, the dialogue boosters actually seem to believe this. I say this because when they are writing their interpretation of a dialogue, and they get to a point people disagree on, they don't write more dialogue, but rather use a series of propositions to present what they think Plato actually meant.

Beyond that, my impression with the dialogue boosters is that at least most of them are more devoted to the idea of promoting the superiority of dialogue than to rationally determining if Plato's ideas are actually correct.

[empath75]

> The important question is not what Plato did and was trying to do, it is what is the truth and how can it be clearly communicated to people so they can make use of it.

You’re assuming such an entity as truth exists which is a fairly platonic position...

[woodandsteel]

There are a lot of other philosophies that claim objective truth exists, such as materialism and Pragmatism.

[empath75]

You think materialists believe that a non-physical entity like ‘truth’ exists?

[woodandsteel]

Wow. I have been studying philosophy for half a century (and in fact am planning to write a book on the subject), and I have never heard anyone claim that materialists don't believe in truth because they don't believe in non-material objects. That is one damn strange argument.

The fact is, materialists have a different understanding of the correct meaning of the term "truth" than that. Ditto the pragmatists.

The fact that you don't seem to be aware of that indicates to me that you have a quite poor understanding of Western academic philosophy.