The Philosophical Economy of Plato\u27s Psychology: Common Concepts in the Timaeus

Plato\u27s insistence that the eternal immobile model is “the real thing” and the mobile world only an image is to stress the sincerity of his conviction that the intelligible pattern, the unchangeable network of principles, must be the foundation of the physical reality. Only because there is such a fundamentum in re can we have concepts that allow us to understand and explain the world. Without such really existing concepts our thinking would be nothing, it would be a groping for stability in a changing world that could at best provide similarities without any fix point to determine their nature. The concepts that we have are, however, at least for us not separable from the particular applications that we make of them, nor discoverable independently from the experienced world. The application of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ in specific ways allows the scientist to work in his field, in the way indicated so often for the musician and writing-instructor. ‘Sameness’ and ‘difference’ are applied in everyday connections all the time. What makes them less stable and precise is the fact that in the realm of becoming the conditions of sameness and difference, first of all, never remain stable (in this respect the same, different in this way) because the objects may constantly change at least in slight ways. Secondly, these conditions can never be fully given (the nuances do not allow us to specify with any precision, for instance, in which way the sound F# is the same as the one I heard a minute ago). The infinity of possible slight variations prevents precision here. Without immutable tools and arid a firm foundation not even relative certainty about the realm of the changeable can be attained

Platon et la philosophie analytique

Que la philosophie ancienne ait bénéficié de certains raffinements méthodologiques dus à la philosophie analytique n’est guère mis en question, même par ceux qui ne s’en réclament pas. À la grande époque de la philosophie analytique, certains de ses meilleurs représentants étaient encore fort versés en histoire de la philosophie et appliquaient leurs compétences analytiques à ce qu’ils considéraient comme des problèmes centraux chez les auteurs anciens. Cet article suggère à travers deux exemples que, s’agissant de Platon, cette attention n’a pas eu seulement des effets revigorants, mais également déformants. Dans le premier cas, la méthode diérétique si chérie de Platon a été marginalisée par d’éminents philosophes analytiques qui l’ont considérée comme triviale et inintéressante. Dans le second cas, le problème de l’« auto‑prédication » des Idées, qui est celui de savoir si les Idées sont des entités qui possèdent les propriétés qu’elles représentent, a été considéré d’une importance décisive pour la théorie platonicienne des Idées. À cause de ses conséquences supposément désastreuses, mentionnées une unique fois dans le Parménide, on a pensé que Platon avait renoncé à cette théorie sous sa forme classique. Au cours des dernières années, l’importance de la méthode diérétique a été réévaluée et celle du problème de l’auto-prédication réduite à de plus justes proportions. Cela ne diminue pas la valeur des contributions des philosophes analytiques à l’étude de Platon, mais signifie seulement qu’elles doivent n’être acceptées qu’avec précaution.That ancient philosophy has been benefited from certain methodical refinements that are due to analytic philosophy is hardly questioned even by specialists who are not adherents. In the heyday of analytic philosophy some of its best practitioners were still well versed in history of philosophy and applied their analytic skills to what they regarded as central problems in ancient authors. This article suggests via two examples, that in Plato’s case this attention had not only invigorating but also distorting effects. In the first case, the diairetic method, much cherished by Plato, was shunted aside by prominent analytic philosophers as trivial and uninteresting. In the second case, the problem of the ‘self-predication’ of the Forms, i.e. whether the Forms are entities that possess the properties they stand for, has been taken as critical for Plato’s Theory of Forms. Because of its allegedly disastrous consequences, mentioned by Plato only once in his Parmenides, he has been taken to have given up that theory in its classical form. In recent years the importance of the diairetic method has been resurrected and that of the problem of self-predication been scaled down. This does not diminish the value of the contributions of analytic philosophers to the study of Plato. It just means that they should be received with due care