Philosophos: Plato’s missing dialogue
Dear Professor Gill,
I wanted to write to you because I very much enjoyed your book; Philosophos: Plato's Missing Dialogue (Oxford, 2012).
It really captures the essence of Plato’s project; that each of the dialogues have a pedagogical and maieutic purpose; that they are intended to serve as a surrogate midwife for the reader.
Namely, that the early dialogues demonstrate the futility of changing anyone’s mind via argument alone; even if it is via self-refutation.
The later dialogues have a momentum that the reader is expected to continue after the dialogue ends; to realise for themselves the knowledge that cannot be communicated in language, just as Plato demonstrated in the Meno. Indeed, he made his thoughts on writing quite clear, that it is dead and cannot answer questions, and confirmed this in the 7th letter.
It is just a shame that Aristotle took the arguments so literally, and missed the underlying purpose.
Anyway, thank you very much. I enjoyed reading it very much.
It is a shame that your peers, even after your excellent book, still don’t quite understand it as you do.
Many thanks, and best wishes,
Phill
On 10 Aug 2021, at 15:06, Gill, Mary-Louise <mlgill@brown.edu> wrote:
Dear Phil,
Thank you so much for your kind letter! It is so heartening to hear that you enjoyed my book and that you agree that the late dialogues have a pedagogical purpose. Yes, they are maieutic, and Plato make us do the bulk of the work. I keep learning from him and totally loved working on the project!
What are your interests and how did you come to read the book?
Best wishes,Mary-Louise Gill
Dear professor Gill,
Thank you for the kind response. My interest stemmed from my own reading of the dialogues; the purpose that I had suspected, was both confirmed and improved by your book.
I wrote an essay arguing that the dialogues were intended to serve a maieutic purpose.
My own effort was rather limited, and your book was so comprehensively and cogently argued, and made the maieutic purpose quite explicit. Yet, after reading one of the reviews that came later, (one such attached below), I struggled to comprehend why the reviewer could not grasp the same meaning, especially after your wonderfully clear argument. This intrigued me.
A maieutic purpose just seems to make more sense of the dialogue format and the fact that Plato does not give us any explicit answers; perhaps because it is neither possible nor desirable to do so. It would seem that the aspiring philosopher, in order to become the philosopher that Plato envisioned, must intentionally do the work themselves. This is why our understanding of the dialogues can improve over time, which give us a fresh perspective into their meaning.
From this perspective, the dialogues provide the necessary clues to help direct the inquiring philosopher’s thinking towards realising the right answers, which helps improve our understanding, and so when a correct understanding has been achieved, then all the apparent inconsistencies and puzzles will resolve themselves. At this stage the dialogues make coherent sense. In this way, the dialogues also tell you when you are correct, and so provide a form of error-checking and help the aspiring philosopher to discern when one has achieved episteme rather than a mere wind-egg. It seems like a coherent and internally consistent form of philosophical training in itself. Yet, it is a process that is only possible if one is willing to keep inquiring and challenging one’s former interpretation, rather than hold onto the wind-eggs that may already be in your possession, and argue to defend them.
The reviewer seemed to miss this understanding entirely; that they neither understood your book nor Plato’s dialogues themselves, because they seemed to not to understand the very intentional process necessary to truly understand it. I couldn’t help but think that the dogmatic philosopher was too attached to his own wind-egg, to recognise episteme and a clear explanation of the means to achieve it, when it was presented before him.
I couldn’t help but think of the early dialogues, and Socrates' own attempt to dialogue with the Sophists; even when argued to the point of elenchus, they would simply walk away rather than try to understand where they may have erred. I was then led to similar situation in the history of science, where a new interpretation of the evidence was resisted until sufficient progress was made, and new theories were only accepted when they were confirmed empirically.
So now I’m working on a scientific approach to philosophy, using the history of science as a source of empirical evidence from which discoveries can be made, to argue a new ontology of understanding, and a subconscious process by which it forms, which at a later stages of development, can then be applied intentionally to the process of understanding. This provides a basis from which to then explain how the maieutic process works, and I cite your book in my thesis as an example of how this very process works. I would very much love to have you write a brief exegesis of your book and this intentional process to include my thesis.
This new ontology then enables me to argue a more complex form of systematic philosophy; one which requires an intentional process to understand it, and indeed, my own thesis is intended to serve a similar maieutic purpose; it explains this process necessary to understand it quite clearly at the outset, it provides the necessary empirical justification to support this interpretation, and the remainder constitutes a systemic form of philosophy that requires an intentional process to understand it. Namely, it explains the history of science according to this new theory, which provides the necessary empirical justification for it to be accepted, rather than simply ignored or criticised by those who demonstrably do not understand it.
Indeed, it seems to me that perhaps the whole history of philosophy is not to be interpreted analytically, as it has been, but could indeed also serve a maieutic purpose; that knowledge is not to be consumed, accumulated and merely reasoned upon, but an intentional effort is required to make coherent sense of it. At the end of this process, when one becomes the philosopher that Plato envisioned, then the errors made at each stage of one’s own understanding become apparent, as do the errors made in the whole history of understanding. When a true understanding has been attained, all the inherent inconsistencies will resolve themselves, and so make sense of the whole history.
Hegel summed this up quite neatly:
“We must hold to the conviction that it is the nature of truth to prevail when its time has come…[and finds a public ripe to receive it]” Hegel §71 Phenomenology of Spirit.
and so usher in an age of wisdom, for those who do aspire to become the philosopher, and engage in the very intentional process you characterise in your book, and continue inquiry in the pursuit of a true understanding. Indeed, Hegel has already explained what will become of the dogmatic philosopher who is so attached to defending his own understanding, who fails to make any intentional effort to improve their own understanding:
“what in former ages occupied men of mature mind, has been reduced to the level of facts, exercises and games for children” §28
I want to thank you for your wonderful interpretation of Plato’s purpose. I hope to see it celebrated and become canon in the near future.
It gave me the confidence to stay committed to the intentional process of inquiry necessary to become the philosopher that you argued so wonderfully has been lost to us. Goodness knows we need some living wisdom in the world.
Many thanks once again.
Best wishes,
Phill