STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDA OF PHILOSOPHY: PLATO
“A person knows many things, not just one thing.”
A person can know more than one thing. Indeed, a person knows many, many things. The reason I mention this, is so the reader won’t be surprised when he or she meets the world’s greatest philosophers and their curious search for “one” answer. They want to figure out how a person can know anything.
Some are tempted to go so far as to suggest that human beings don’t really know anything—or can’t know they know anything—until these philosophers figure out a way to say how people know what they know, or think they know what they know.
The Philo Big Shots especially wish to find that one perfect prototype answer which will solve all their conundrums and illustrate all that is to follow. This single-minded devotion to finding the “one right approach” might make it seem as though they believe a person can only know one thing or only have one way of learning more than one thing, which amounts to the same state of affairs in the end.
Well, of course that’s not true! These philosophers would be better served to study human history first and realize that umpteen myriads of human beings knew thousands of things—both facts and ideas, skills and actions– before their search ever began!
This “one right way of knowing” whatever we know may be a bit of a simplification of what they are trying to express. It’s just that in pursuing the idea of how human beings know anything, philosophers often look for a single unifying theory which they speculate will hold true “for everybody.”
The search for a universal element is admirable in some respects but certainly risks leading them down a false path of dogmatism and simplification. Maybe a human being’s way of acquiring knowledge is multi-sensory and multidimensional and even multi-intellectual?
Maybe the way people learn involves a wide variety of styles and mannerisms: innate, intuitive, sensory, empirical? Settling on “one approach” could provide the key clue if true—the trouble is, it lacks the variety and complexity necessary to do justice to learning and enlightenment.
The fact is, while there may be many good ideas found within any of these approaches, other philosophers become very adept at finding a theory’s weakness and exposing what was presented as “a complete system” to be full of holes. Premises and assumptions are torn to shreds; reasoning and logical progressions are attacked and waylaid; solutions and conclusions are vilified and pilloried as though the misbegotten progeny of grotesque mental misfits.
If the originator (the first philosopher) is not self-critical, no matter–the comeuppance will occur later when a new phalanx of philosophers begin to find flaws and blemishes. A new generation of philosophers will tear his intellectual creation apart, clean to the bone . . . And often they will do so even while paying homage to the first philosopher during their savage attacks politely offered as modest constructive criticism as part of their “under improvement” campaign!
One genius is toppled to make way for the next, until in turn the winning guru likewise falls prey to the improving logic of contemporaries and devouring posterity. With luck, something valuable and irreplaceable may survive all these pointed criticisms and thoughtful revisions! This historical pattern demonstrates to us a need to be wary of accepting as “final” any system of thought, however well-crafted and developed, even those that once ranked highest in the “wow” factor among western philosophers.
It might be a bit much to claim these writings as giant steps in the cultures of all the world’s people even though egocentric Western philosophers may think so. In point of fact, many people around the world know very little about these “accomplishments” or may have their own unique philosophy which suits them just fine. For that matter, most people in the West know very little about such “intellectual “giants”, so really we are talking about the strides these writers made inside a rather narrow group of academic types within Western society.
Far from seeking enlightenment from what the latest generation of Philo Big Shots has to say, most people go on with their daily lives in much the same manner as if these men had never existed. That’s an ego-bruising view but it’s about time someone started to deflate these Philo Egotists just a bit who think the whole world is waiting on them to address philosophical conundrums only they can solve.
True, on the right campus and in the right department, some of these ancient hoary writers are still revered as gods because of their ability to be both brilliant and opaque at one and the same time. It makes them “intriguing”: brilliant in one place and extremely convoluted and despairingly dense in another! That just adds charm to their aura!
This philosophical approach of searching for the “one right answer” makes it seem as though human beings can’t really claim to know anything yet (at least not if they don’t understand how they learned it!
We ordinary mortals can’t know or understand life or even ourselves until the Big Shot Philosophers solve the mystery of how people learn: how they know anything, in other words.
If these philosophers had started with the realization that all human beings already know lots of things (regardless of cause) it probably would have made their lives a whole lot easier. Instead, they wrestle with this problem like Huck Finn’s father wrestled with the Angel of Death.
So many philosophers, ancient and modern, fret and worry and manipulate their self-imposed conundrums until they become ever more entangled in words and concepts overlapping, contradicting, and self-destroying.
They themselves—the Philosophers–become an unrecognizable tangled mess of unfathomable phrases, uncontrolled ideas, and misdirected energies. True, each philosopher who reaches any degree of prominence has made a contribution of some sort. Generally, this contribution is not “the solution” but only one part of a much bigger picture. Few complete a successful attempt to present the whole enchilada: at least, not yet. Perhaps if Socrates returns!
I hate to confess my ignorance but I have to say plainly that, try as I might, I’m still not sure I understand Plato. I’m not writing as a professional philosopher but as an amateur essayist. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato thought the world was defective.
This view is incredibly inept although it does help Plato lead the reader to “Forms” and “Ideas.” Before I bash Plato any further, I should say I’m free of the usual inhibitions against talking trash against the mighty Plato. I don’t pretend I’ve imbibed much liquid gold from the rare fountains of philosophy where the deep thinkers go.
On the other hand, there’s only so much to be said for the self-deprecatory essayist. This self-deprecation might work for comedians who get laughs that way but even an amateur essayist with only a budding knowledge of philosophy still has the right to have his say: to sink or swim as whim and fancy dictate.
I might add that the same Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article indicates that Plato does not always seem to have a single discernible philosophical approach to the world so I guess I’ll concede as much at the outset. I don’t want to attribute something to him that nobody else does but he is still fair game in lots of other ways. He’s made a lot of students suffer who didn’t really care about what he or any other philosopher thought, so payback is always in order!
Lots of people might say the world is perfect just the way it is. Buddhists and Native Americans thrive on a deep level of acceptance and appreciation, holding life and the world in awe and reverence. So just because Plato is unhappy with the world as he sees it, it doesn’t mean all people everywhere in all cultures feel the same way!
The key question is: suppose Plato had started with a different assumption? Instead of starting with “something is imperfect”, how about “something is perfect”? Can he still get to where he is going with “Forms” and “Ideas” or would such a contrary assumption ruin everything?
One can see how his negative supposition makes some of his ideas easier for him to handle. It’s a small step to say–if the world is not perfect–then something is not what it should be or something is not what it seems to be: an illusion. That in turn would imply a deeper knowledge is available to the soul/body or, in recognition of modern science, to thought/brain.
Be that as it may, Plato chose the negative over the positive. From “something is imperfect” and “the world is defective”, Plato can now deal with all kinds of wandering abstractions while keeping a furtive eye on physical “reality” and “materialism.” The door is opening for him to go anywhere and to forge his own pathway just as he sees fit!
Philosophers are a very intellectual bunch by and large, so naturally their own proclivities often run more toward the abstract than handling the mundane details of ordinary daily existence. In other words, “the game’s afoot” when they get to the point of “thinking about thinking” since for humans that’s a very high level of abstraction.
It’s really “doubly abstract” although theoretically it never loses touch with its point of origin with visible reality. Yet so enthralled do they become with the sound of the waterfalls of their own words, they will blithely fail to see the warning signs of an intellectualism wandering about until hopelessly lost and increasingly divorced from material reality.
Granted, some of the terms used here need to be refined. Indeed, there’s hardly a philosopher in the Western Socrates-Plato tradition who wouldn’t lick his chops and relish a chance to play havoc with such words as reality, materialism, abstraction, and the like. I know that and that’s why there’s an advantage to discussing dead people since they can’t respond.
How do humans acquire knowledge? Is it innate or a product of our senses and absorbed from our environment? Ultimately, in this Western tradition, ideas about the world—including knowledge and learning—will lead to a discussion of morality and standards of right conduct for human beings, meaning Homo Sapiens himself and Homo Sapiens herself.
I say “herself” because this is a Good Old Boys network wherein the ladies are usually left out of the discussion as though they have nothing to say, think, or contribute to such weighty matters—even though women, as mothers and daughters and sisters, have helped shape human thought and morality from time immemorial.
That these mighty philosophers have never seen fit to glean their knowledge from the women in their lives can only make one wonder: just what kind of men are they? Is this a philosophy for 50% of the population only (just the males) or is it for everyone? If for everyone, then where are the voices of the women? Hhmmm?
