[lit-ideas] The Line in the Cave

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:48:57 EDT
In a message dated 4/21/2009 1:35:58 A.M.  Eastern Daylight Time, 
cblists@xxxxxxxx writes:
On 20-Apr-09, at 9:46 PM,  Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx wrote:

> (being the transcripts of the Third  Programme, Auntie Beeb):
>
> "Plato's morality is supported and  underlined by his theory of  
> Forms, according to which mathematics  is the paradigm case of  
> knowledge."

Auntie Beeb needs to  go back to her Introduction to Greek Philosophy  
course  notes.

For Plato, mathematical knowledge is 'dianoia', which is 'lower'  than  
'noesis' (knowledge of the 'forms').  See the 'divided line'  passge in  
the Republic - and its many commentators - for an outline of  Plato's  
epistemological hierarchy (and its ontological  correlates).

Both internal evidence in Plato's texts and the arguments of  the  
commentators (in particular Cornford) favor a view of  'mathematica' as  
the ontological correlates of 'dianoia'.  These  'mathematica' are  
elements of the ideal world of being, but they are  of secondary  
status, just as 'dianoia' is a secondary state of  knowledge.  They are  
*copies* of the 'forms'; the stuff of the  'dreams' of mathematicians  
rather than 'clear waking visions' of the  dialectician.

Chris Bruce,
perusing an old Greek philosophy  paper
("The epitemological Concpet 'Dianoia' and
its Ontological  Correlates in Plato's _Republic_"),

-----
 
Point taken.
 
I recall that when I was in Paris, I loved a particular bookshop  on  St. 
Germain des Pres. It catered for 'international' books and they were  
alphabetically ordered. I didn't have much money then, and I got my ladder and  
started with the "A". So I ended up buying -- I still treasure that copy --  
Austin, Philosophical Papers. Oxford paperback.

What fascinated me about this is that Urmson and Warnock had added an  
extra essay, "The line and the cave". From notes by a student.
 
I found the essay rather on the boring side, but the diagram was  nice.
 
Later, much later, when I read Grice on Plato's republic (in Ways of Words) 
 I just realised that this type of Greek-philosophy paper is so _Oxonian_  
(meaning 'playgroup') it hurts. It's the feeling ordinary-language 
philosophers  get on a Sunday night. 
 
They have spent Saturday mornings playing with "English", and the  
sunday-bloody-Sunday depression gets combined with a florid psychotic attack  
that 
Greek is all that matters. They get their OCT edition of Plato and start  
letting their imagination run 'amok'. 
 
Point taken about 'dianoia' and 'noesis'. The key is 'dia'. This is  
_terminal_. "He's quite dead". I would think that if the Greeks could use  
'quite' 
they would use 'dia'. "He is _dia_ dead."
 
The fact that it's also in 'dia-logue' is confusing.
 
I'm also puzzled that 'monologue' is pronounced /monolog/ in English,  
rather than /loug/. 
 
Note that dia-noein, and noein then produce two 'objects' of  knowledge.
One has a simple paradigm case, the circle. (Grice discusses knowledge of  
the circle as supralunary.
 
Then there's the other, noein, simpliciter. I would think it's puzzling,  
but the reality of things, that a prefix, dia-, in this case, _grades down_ a 
 type of activity.
 
cfr.  'fuck', 'overfuck'.
 
In Argentina, in the fashionable district of Recoleta, people (usually  
girls) use 're-', as a reduplicative prefix:
 
     "He is re-cute"      It's  pretty nice
     "Es re-aburrido".   It is very  boring
     "Esta re-muerto"  He is quite dead
 
I would need other examples than dianoein and noein to express the fact  
that a preffix grades down a concept.
 
under-estimate and estimate?  But under- is _not_ 'dia-'.
 
------
 
I never knew why Plato aimed at 'noiein' the forms, anyway. It seems  
plainly masturbatory in the platonic sense of the word. Of course this confused 
 
Aristotle.
 
Not only the non-sociological bits of his ethical tract (E. N.) end with  
that ramble on the
 
         'noesis noeseos': also  known as "God"  -- the thinker of thougts.
 
But it also leads with a most silly account of a or the paradigm case of  
the good life, the contemplative life (VITA CONTEMPLATIVA) which is wrong.  
Surely for a man for whom the see of the soul is the heart contemplation is 
not  enough.
 
As a Romancer, I am very BORED by contemplativa vita. All the Italians  
talking about it but never practising, ditto Spaniard monks, starting with Fray 
 Luis de Leon, translation of Horace, felix ille
 
      que descansada vida
      la que ha sido
      la de los que huyen el mundanal rui-do
      y siguen la escondida senda
      por donde han ido
      los pocos sabios que en el mundo han  sido.
 
"A quiet life it is, for those who avoid the madding crowd, and follow the  
hidden path troden
by the few sages that this world has known."
 
-------
 
If noesis is 'knowledge' (episteme) of the form, it's otiose. For  
_communicating_ about it, you require 'dialogue':
 
     DISCIPLE: Give me an example of a True Form,  master.
     MASTER:  Bugger off. I'm mediating. Dianoien  with your Mother.
 
Cheers,
 
JL
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[lit-ideas] The Line in the Cave

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