Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Plato

  • Suffering Pleasure

    We suffer pain, but we also suffer pleasure. Fundamentally, to suffer is to be passive, to be patient rather than agent, to be acted upon, to be in the thrall of another, to be at the mercy of what is not oneself. Excessive pleasure and pain should both be avoided as one avoids heteronomy, the…

  • Untangling Plato’s Beard

    I was asked by a commenter what motivates the thin theory of existence.  One motivation is  . . . the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing. Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the…

  • Platonism and Christianity

    Brother Dave writes, I'm re-reading Boethius' Consolation. Boethius does have a foot in Athens and one in Jerusalem, it seems to me. Now you sir are a Christian, and argue your positions in a blog subtitled Footnotes to Plato . . . .  Would it be fair to refer to you, as I would to Boethius, as a Christian…

  • The Owl of Minerva and the Consolations of Philosophy

    It appears that a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible.  Collective race madness blankets the land, the dogs of destruction have been set loose, and the authorities have abdicated. Should any of this trouble the philosopher? Before he is a citizen, the philosopher…

  • The Lure of the Good

    Some of us hear the call to perfect ourselves morally, or at least to better ourselves. Whence the call? The Whence is cloud-hidden, and what is hidden may be doubted. And yet conscience intimates a reality absolute and complete that sustains and envelops this vale of transience.  The love of truth and the love of…

  • Plato’s Cave and the Garden of Eden

    An archeologist who claimed to have uncovered the site of Plato's Cave would be dismissed as either a prankster or a lunatic.  There never was any such cave as is described in the magnificent Book VII of Plato's Republic.  And there never were any such cave-dwellers or  goings-on as the ones described in Plato's story.  And…

  • Plato’s Great Inversion

    A rerun unredacted from February, 2014.  To the memory of John  Niemeyer  Findlay. ……………………………………… Our long-time friend Horace Jeffery Hodges kindly linked to and riffed upon my recent quotage of a bit of whimsicality from the second volume of J. N. Findlay's Gifford lectures.  So here's another Findlay quotation for Jeff's delectation, this time from Plato…

  • ‘Platonic’ Propositions: A Consideration Contra. The Argument from Intrinsic Intentionality

    Commenter John put the following question to me: Which Platonist theories of propositions did you have in mind in your original post, and what are the problems involved in accepting such views? I had in mind a roughly Fregean theory.  One problem with such a view is that it seems to require that propositions possess…

  • This Platonizing Owl Feels a Little Guilty . . .

    . . . at deriving so much intellectual stimulation from the events of the day.  It is fascinating to watch the country fall apart. What is a calamity for the citizen, however, is grist for the philosopher's mill. Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous…

  • Two Assurances of Religion and the Case of the Philosophically Sophisticated Rapist

    Karl Britton, Philosophy and the Meaning of Life, Cambridge UP, 1969, p. 192: Religion tries to provide two great assurances: that there is an absolute good and bad in the world at large, and that the absolute good has power. I agree that religion does attempt to provide these two great assurances. The first assurance…

  • Is the Unexamined Life Worth Living?

    Written in October of 2004. I recently read Norman Podhoretz's Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (The Free Press, 1999). It is an enjoyable and stimulating analysis of the breakdown of friendship in the crucible of political disagreement. I recommend it. But an early…

  • A Similar Pattern of Argument in Buddhism and Benatar

    On Buddhism the human (indeed the animalic/sentient) condition is a profoundly unsatisfactory predicament from which we need extrication.  The First Noble Truth is that fundamentally all is ill, suffering, unsatisfactory, dukkha. That there is some sukha (joy, happiness) along with the dukkha is undeniable, but the little sukha is fleeting and unsatisfying and leads to…

  • Not Plausibly Deniable

    This ephemeral world is not plausibly deniable like God and the soul.  Paradoxical! The more real appears less real and the less real more real. Here is a good animated introduction to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. About eight minutes in length.

  • Platonism in One Case

    The Christian is a Platonist about one man, Christ: he pre-exists both his conception and his birth. But there is no Platonism about any other human. The rest of us enjoy no Platonic pre-existence.  We are literally nothing until we are conceived.  One could say that orthodox Christians are anthropological exceptionalists with respect to one…

  • Metaphysical Grounding and the Euthyphro Dilemma

    The locus classicus of the Euthyphro Dilemma (if you want to call it that) is Stephanus 9-10 in the early Platonic dialog, Euthyphro. This aporetic dialog is about the nature of piety, and Socrates, as usual, is in quest of a definition. Euthyphro proposes three definitions, with each of which Socrates has no trouble finding…