For once, some class notes – which, from Aristotle’s writings to Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, Heidegger’s seminars or Deleuze’s lectures, do play a rather significant role in the history of philosophy.
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§1. Consider the following diagram:
The A-circle (which is divided in two halves: A1 and A2) represents what we know. The domain of what we know grows over time, for it becomes bigger with each new knowledge that we add to our already acquired knowledge. How do we get new knowledge? By cultivating different sciences and techniques (sciences being, of course, far more important than mere techniques).
§2. In rigour, philosophy does not add new knowledge to that first circle; it rather adds a supplementary dimension to it: a reflective dimension formed by circles B and C, which represent the dimension in which we ask questions like “How do I know?” and “How do I know that I know?”
§3. It can be argued that, building on Heraclitus and Parmenides, Plato inaugurates this supplementary dimension. For, in a way, he is the first philosopher who makes explicit questions about how we know (= B). His response, as we have seen, is: we know through the ideas (= A2) that we have of things (= A1) – or, more precisely, it is through our ideas or mental representations (A1) that an otherwise unqualified reality (A0) is populated by things that thereby become knowable to us, which means that the difference between A1 and A2 is tenuous at best. Hence, for Plato, our ideas have both epistemological and ontological value.
§4. Take, e.g., the following statement: “X is red” (where “X” stands for an object). It amounts to affirm something (the idea of “red”) of something else (“X”) and, therefore, to present something (“X”) in a certain way (as being “red”). For we can look at it both from (1) the standpoint of the predicate (that which is said about something) and (2) the standpoint of the subject (that of which something is said) instead. In any event, I thus get to know “X” as “red.” Moreover, I know that “X” is, say, a “pencil,” which means that I know “X” to be both a “pencil” and something “red” – a “red pencil”; plus I know that “red” is a particular “colour” and that it is, as such, different, say, from “green” or “blue.” In short, I know what I know because of the ideas I have of what things are.
§5. Furthermore, Plato reflects on (α) the nature of our ideas (are they tangible? are they not?), (β) their topology (where can we locate them?), and (γ) their genesis (how do we acquire them?) – more on it in a minute. Plus, as we shall see another day apropos the idea of τὸ ἀγαθόν (which is commonly but imperfectly translated as “the good”), he reflects, too, on (δ) what makes it possible for us to have ideas in the first place. Now, to formulate these questions means to add another dimension to the aforementioned B-dimension: it means to ask not only how we know (= B) but how we know that we know (= C).
§6. With B and C we thus enter the domain of thought’s self-reference which, after Plato, will be cultivated, among others, by Aristotle in antiquity and Kant in modern times.
§7. Interestingly, our ideas are not limited to our representations of what things are. In addition to this type of ideas, our thought relies, too, on a different type of ideas, to wit, the categories by means of which we order our knowledge of all things, such as “identity” and “difference,” “quality” and “quantity,” that which is “determinable” and that which “determines” it in turn, etc. (Notice that all these categories form pairs of opposites.)
§8. Now if, drawing on Phaedo 100e–102e, we happen to put alongside one another (I) the things we know and speak about, (II) the representations that we have of them (i.e., our ideas as predicates), (III) the abstractions (which are yet another type of ideas) that sustain these (i.e., those same ideas considered as concepts in themselves), and (IV) the categories by which we confer order on our knowledge of reality, we will be able to observe an interesting shift that takes place when we transit from what I have labelled as LEVEL 1 to what I have labelled as LEVEL 2.
What has changed from LEVEL 1 to LEVEL 2? – Think on it carefully. If, on LEVEL 1, it is the thing (“X”) that is determinable (in the sense that “X” can be either “tall” or “short”) and our representations of it (“tall” or else “short”) what determines its being (and our knowledge of it) depending on the circumstances (is “X” taller or shorter than “Y,” or is it the other way round?), on LEVEL 2, contrarily, it is our representations qua predicates that are determined by the concepts on which they rely in turn (regardless of whether “X” is taller or shorter than “Y,” if it is tall it will be because of the idea of “tallness,” and if it is short it will be because of the idea of “shortness”).
§9. In this way it is possible to distinguish between:
- FIRST, reality, unqualified;
- SECONDLY, reality, qualified as a collection of things;
- THIRDLY, our representations, which turn reality into something susceptible of being diversely qualified and hence knowable – representations which are always situated;
- FOURTHLY, the pure concepts on which our representations rely, which, unlike these, are unchanging; and
- LASTLY, the categories that we use to confer order on our knowledge of reality, which are yet another kind of ideas.
Where exactly, then, do you think that the “ideal” or eidetic begins? And what about the real?
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§11. Let’s now go back – to end with – to Plato’s questions about the nature of our ideas, their topology, and their genesis. What are our ideas made of? Modern science teaches us that without the synaptic connections between our neurones – i.e., without the electric activity of the brain – our brain would not act, hence we would be unable to think and, as a result, we would not have ideas to begin with. Yet none of this makes of our ideas something physical. Put otherwise, physical processes are necessary for our ideas to be produced, but our ideas are nothing physical. Plato knew nothing about the brain’s synaptic connections, but he understood very well that our ideas are intangible, immaterial – in his own terms, invisible – entities.
§12. Additionally, Plato realized that our ideas are unchanging; what we see is permanently changing, that is, but our ideas do not change: we can surely change our minds (i.e., discard an idea and adopt a new one), for we can successively apply different ideas to something in particular (e.g., X can be said to be tall compared to Y, but then, if compared to Z, X may prove short instead), yet our ideas as such (e.g., our idea of “tallness” and “shortness”) do not change (the idea of “tallness” cannot become the idea of “shortness,” and vice versa). Allow me to repeat it again: this means that, as predicates, our ideas are always situated (X can be tall or short depending on the context or the circumstances) while, as pure concepts, they are not situated (again, the idea of “tallness” cannot change into its opposite, etc.).
§13. Where, then, can our “ideas” be located? Plato famously claimed that, due to their invisibility/immateriality and their unchanging nature, they are to be located far above the sky, since the sky is, in contrast to the earth which changes from one season to the next, the realm of that which is unchanging (the fixed stars) but visible. Our ideas, therefore, must dwell “above the sky,” says Plato: ὑπὲρ οὐρανός. Regretfully, this claim has often been interpreted in literal terms, as though it were anything but a metaphor… and a wordplay, since, in Greek, the first two syllables of the words οὐρανός (Uranus, the “sky”) and ὁρατής (the “visible,” understanding by it the earthly things we see and of which we have ideas) sound similar and yet different at the very same time.
§14. Plato also affirmed that it is with our soul that we perceive our ideas, since we cannot see them with our senses and, as we saw some sessions ago apropos the opening verses of the Iliad, the soul, in the Greek sense of the term, is that which detaches itself from the body (as a shadow!) and travels to the domain of the invisible (Hades). And inasmuch as, whenever we have an idea in our minds, even if it is for the first time, it seems as though it was somehow already there, he also affirmed that to know is to “remember.” In consequence, in his writings Plato puts forward a myth (a “saying,” as per the original meaning of the word μύθος in Greek) in which the soul contemplates the heavenly ideas before descending to the body and then remembers them during its earthly life. Again, however, this elegant (literary) way of approaching things has been interpreted in doctrinal terms (literally), and so Plato has gained undue reputation for having sustained that the soul is immortal.
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§15. To sum up: Plato paved the way to the reflection on how we know and how we know that we know. We know reality through the ideas we have of it, and the more ideas we bring together, the more nuanced our knowledge of reality becomes in terms of analysis and variation, as Leibniz puts it, in the sense that all ideas are decomposable into smaller ideas and that they connect to other of similar or even greater complexity. To reread Plato obliges to take this into consideration above anything else.
“The examined life: ultimate questions
– an introduction to philosophy”
November 10 & 15, 2022