http://www.platonicrelationship.com/blogger.php/?p=478 Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:10:49 -0400 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://www.platonicrelationship.com/blogger.php/?p=478&cpage=1#comment-14679 Phil Flemming Sat, 09 Apr 2005 00:57:01 +0000 http://www.platonicrelationship.com/blogger.php/?p=478#comment-14679 A very thoughtful essay. May I suggest that one of the places where Plato tries hardest to make this concept of "near knowledge" or "imperfect/impure knowledge" work is early in the Phaedo, beginning at 65b, but especially 66e-67a. It ends with the remarkable claim that we have to be dead to really know anything! Intuitively, as you point out, we have a sense of what it means to say that someone knows Greek or quantified modal imperfectly. We know some it, part of it, some constructions & theorems, but not others. OK, can we apply this same model to imperfectly knowing justice or courage or temperance? Is knowledge of these aretai essentially a mastery of proper action, on the craft analogy, or some sort of direct intuition of the pure form? Imperfect mastery seem quite possible in the former case, but what would an imperfect or defective eidetic intuition amount to? Indeed, what sense can we make of impure/imperfect knowledge of any of the Forms ? Maybe it would be useful to think more about what sorts of things Plato is thinking about when he waxs or wans optimistic about knowing. A very thoughtful essay.
May I suggest that one of the places where Plato tries hardest to make this concept of “near knowledge” or “imperfect/impure knowledge” work is early in the Phaedo, beginning at 65b, but especially 66e-67a. It ends with the remarkable claim that we have to be dead to really know anything!
Intuitively, as you point out, we have a sense of what it means to say that someone knows Greek or quantified modal imperfectly. We know some it, part of it, some constructions & theorems, but not others.
OK, can we apply this same model to imperfectly knowing justice or courage or temperance? Is knowledge of these aretai essentially a mastery of proper action, on the craft analogy, or some sort of direct intuition of the pure form? Imperfect mastery seem quite possible in the former case, but what would an imperfect or defective eidetic intuition amount to? Indeed, what sense can we make of impure/imperfect knowledge of any of the Forms ?
Maybe it would be useful to think more about what sorts of things Plato is thinking about when he waxs or wans optimistic about knowing.

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