Great point Doug! As I recall Xenophon's Socrates is more pragmatic than Plato's. I'll have to refresh my memory of the Memorabilia and be more careful to differentiate them in the future. Plato's Socrates has an intensional core — but it's produced by Plato, not discovered by him!
Very nice. The corollary of your historical accounts would seem to be that in times of collapse the public (at least its elites) is open to new philosophies. It's not just that these examples were produced at such junctures, but that they famously became embedded in the history of philosophy as turning points.
If we're to consider actual influence on societies, Aristotle has been historically more important than Plato, scientifically, politically, and ethically. More recently, it's the latter Wittgenstein with the broader influence than the youth. And prior to the 20th century, some historians of philosophy claim Shaftesbury was the greater influence through Western Europe than Descartes or Locke, at least in the realms of ethics and aesthetics. Where those you make example of argued the proper basis for establishing opinions of the truth, Aristotle (in the Ethics) and Shaftesbury (throughout) both warned against living by opinion. Wittgenstein (young and old) also challenged how far we may rightly go with the certainty of opinions.
So there's this other tension between those who claim there is any way to build a body of opinion with total certainty -- a theory of everything -- and those who argue the contrary. (Yes, the scholastics took Aristotle as having produced a theory of everything; that was not his method or goal.)
Agreed! Crisis leads to flexibility, or openness to "paradigm change" in Kuhn's terms. I also agree that Aristotle has been more important since the late medieval period (from late antiquity to early medieval e.g. Augustine, probably Plato was more consequential). However as I've written about elsewhere, many of Plato's mystical points are made immanent in Aristotle and continue to be problematic. Especially in imputing "natural kinds" as secondary substance and "teleology" in Nature. Wittgenstein, I would argue, went from an interest in abstraction to an interest in concrete usage over the course of his life. https://www.bryankam.com/p/the-immanent-turn
Your point about the "theory of everything" vs. those who warn against certainty is fascinating. Even today, people call Aristotle a "complete philosopher" (like Marx) — but as you note, that completeness was imposed by later scholars.
The figures who gain lasting influence perhaps aren't the pure extremes, but those who find ways to synthesize or transcend the rationalist/empiricist divide. Aristotle's practical wisdom, Shaftesbury's moral sense theory, later Wittgenstein's language games — these all seem to point toward something beyond the certainty-seeking that drives the foundationalism I've written about here.
I suspect the real lesson is that while crisis initially produces both extreme responses and flexible receptivity to them, the lasting contributions come from thinkers who discard the crutch of absolute foundations, and face an ongoing and uncertain investigation.
What's your take on teleology? It's easy to come up with examples of taking it too far; but the striving to avoid any hint of it seems another extreme. I agree with the authors of Homo Prospectus: our consciousness is fundamentally involved with prospection, our psychology to be explained in light of it. If we admit the question of broader scales of consciousness, that it may be more than an isolated emergent epiphenomenon, can we avoid questions of teleology on a larger scale?
From another angle, Hoffmeyer's Biosemiotics makes a solid case that teleology is a fact at least across the realm of life (thus, nature), and biology inexplicable without it.
Plato put words into Socrates's mouth. I suspect this is one of those instances. Does Xenophon also show this rationalizing?
Great point Doug! As I recall Xenophon's Socrates is more pragmatic than Plato's. I'll have to refresh my memory of the Memorabilia and be more careful to differentiate them in the future. Plato's Socrates has an intensional core — but it's produced by Plato, not discovered by him!
Very nice. The corollary of your historical accounts would seem to be that in times of collapse the public (at least its elites) is open to new philosophies. It's not just that these examples were produced at such junctures, but that they famously became embedded in the history of philosophy as turning points.
If we're to consider actual influence on societies, Aristotle has been historically more important than Plato, scientifically, politically, and ethically. More recently, it's the latter Wittgenstein with the broader influence than the youth. And prior to the 20th century, some historians of philosophy claim Shaftesbury was the greater influence through Western Europe than Descartes or Locke, at least in the realms of ethics and aesthetics. Where those you make example of argued the proper basis for establishing opinions of the truth, Aristotle (in the Ethics) and Shaftesbury (throughout) both warned against living by opinion. Wittgenstein (young and old) also challenged how far we may rightly go with the certainty of opinions.
So there's this other tension between those who claim there is any way to build a body of opinion with total certainty -- a theory of everything -- and those who argue the contrary. (Yes, the scholastics took Aristotle as having produced a theory of everything; that was not his method or goal.)
Agreed! Crisis leads to flexibility, or openness to "paradigm change" in Kuhn's terms. I also agree that Aristotle has been more important since the late medieval period (from late antiquity to early medieval e.g. Augustine, probably Plato was more consequential). However as I've written about elsewhere, many of Plato's mystical points are made immanent in Aristotle and continue to be problematic. Especially in imputing "natural kinds" as secondary substance and "teleology" in Nature. Wittgenstein, I would argue, went from an interest in abstraction to an interest in concrete usage over the course of his life. https://www.bryankam.com/p/the-immanent-turn
Your point about the "theory of everything" vs. those who warn against certainty is fascinating. Even today, people call Aristotle a "complete philosopher" (like Marx) — but as you note, that completeness was imposed by later scholars.
The figures who gain lasting influence perhaps aren't the pure extremes, but those who find ways to synthesize or transcend the rationalist/empiricist divide. Aristotle's practical wisdom, Shaftesbury's moral sense theory, later Wittgenstein's language games — these all seem to point toward something beyond the certainty-seeking that drives the foundationalism I've written about here.
I suspect the real lesson is that while crisis initially produces both extreme responses and flexible receptivity to them, the lasting contributions come from thinkers who discard the crutch of absolute foundations, and face an ongoing and uncertain investigation.
What's your take on teleology? It's easy to come up with examples of taking it too far; but the striving to avoid any hint of it seems another extreme. I agree with the authors of Homo Prospectus: our consciousness is fundamentally involved with prospection, our psychology to be explained in light of it. If we admit the question of broader scales of consciousness, that it may be more than an isolated emergent epiphenomenon, can we avoid questions of teleology on a larger scale?
From another angle, Hoffmeyer's Biosemiotics makes a solid case that teleology is a fact at least across the realm of life (thus, nature), and biology inexplicable without it.