Plato is one of the most contentious voices in the history of Philosophy. In terms of the academic discipline, only Heidegger inspires more divergent readings in the literature. This comes as no great surprise to me as, though he doth much protest, Heidegger is the greatest neo-Platonist of the 20th century, but that debate is for another day. Every word of his texts has been analyzed, translated, re-translated, twisted and turned by the entirety of the history that unfolded after - 2500 years of talmudic hermeneutics. For some he is a giant leap toward a
scientific understanding of the world, for others a mystic describing a disembodied world of `the good', the
agathon, which only the few can attain. For me, he is simply the inventor of the philosophical idea, indeed, category, of
ousia, `substance'.
I mean this as my introduction to a few Plato diaries [which given my record in keeping this series afloat, will never happen :0]. It will be a sketch of the critical issue at stake within Plato [and further an argument as to why Republicans should never be in power in any self-respecting democracy].
Anyhow, straight to the matter at hand. Plato, through his ever clever interlocutor, Socrates, is most famous for one question: what is x
qua X? [I capitalize the latter for a reason.] Though there is plenty of scholarly contention on there being different `periods' in Plato's writings [the most famous being Vlastos' contention of early, transition, middle and late - the early being `Socrates proper', transition being the development of the theory of ideas, etc. etc.], this is the one question that is
always asked, throughout all of Plato: what is justice in virtue of itself; what is knowledge in virtue of itself; what is
x in virtue of itself? That tricky word "
qua" - it is something that isn't really translatable in an anglo case system. It is thoroughly possessive [i.e. of] but it also has a case sense absent from our understanding of language [i.e. in]. The closest we can come is as a sense of `is' - an idea of being - but it is an idea of being whose principle predicate is that of being at home - residing within a truth. So this essential question is asking what something is with respect to its being within some abstract notion of possession. What is
dike, justice as it is possessed by its
being? This is the way we might phrase this question in an anglo idiom.
Already one sees how the `Idion' is present from the moment Socrates opens his mouth. [Though I revere Vlastos for much of his scholarship, he's dead wrong on this issue - just as an aside]. The question x qua X is the fundamental question in all of Plato's Dialogues. And there is a reason for that:
[reason] treat[s] its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings, and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting point of all, and after attaining to that again taking hold of the first dependencies of it, so to proceed downward to the conclusion, making no use whatever of any object of sense but only of pure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas. Republic 511B 4-C 2
When Socrates proposes here in Republic is that we move from the `great' to the `small', this is the art of dialectic [hence Dialogues]. This claim is not so bold as it may sound. The discourse of all Platonic Dialogues follows this course. We conclude that it is best to look at the `greater' object first. However, as we proceed we don't dissect any actually existing manifestation of the entity we study. Rather, we postulate the origin of that entity, hypothesizing as we go about how that entity exists in an equally hypothesized social order. Indeed, we speak nothing whatsoever of `any object of sense', but use our speculations as `springboards' to that `which requires no assumption' as we again find in all Platonic Dialogues. In this sense, the `great' and the `small' take on an entirely different meaning. The `great' is that which is most clear to us -- hypotheses and assumptions which follow according to our logos; while the `small' is that which is least clear to us -- the invisible truth to which we ascend through the ladder of reason. This is the very movement from image to truth by which we become illuminated by the Idea and are thenceforth able to discern the relationship between it and its copies.
I say copies specifically here to bring me back to the contention of what is x qua X. For Plato, because of this very question, there is posited a hierarchy between what is in the human order and what is in reality. This might sound all scientific. Unfortunately, it is not. What is envisioned by this question is a circular hierarchy in which assumptions become eternal laws - truth is only found through an idea of possession. Darwin must be wrong because we know the world is only 6000 years old.
This is the problem with all things Plato - he founded the idea of `substance' - in fact this is what the very idea of substance is. Ousia, substance, literally means one's aristocratic inheritance. He founds a science on the ancestral passage of knowledge and wealth from one generation to the next - it is an idea in which knowledge was pure before, in the past, and through successive generations becomes corrupt. It is an idea of knowledge that completely prevents us, in the present, from having it.
It is also the idea of inheritance and authenticity that grounds 20th century fascism. But it is here in the 21st century too. Knowledge, as we know it in the humanist tradition is made, not begotten. The birth of science was precisely the death of folklore in that science is forward looking - it looks to explain what we don't know, as opposed to what we've known.
This outlook, though birthed through the modern idea of science, is not limited to it. This idea has permeated every aspect of our being as modern beings: it is the foundation of the notion of the soul. And our souls aren't something conceived in a test tube; they aren't even conceived when we're teenagers. Our soul is our life, our life experience, our reason, our learning, our evolution through this long or short path that we run. Our soul always looks forward, even if we rely on the folk wisdom of the past.
To do anything other is to assume that your soul can only be true through possession within an order greater than your dreams and visions - that your soul can only be if you take your place.
It is no surprise to me that the Neo-cons all studied under one of the last century's greatest neo-Platonists, Leo Straus.