Plato and the possibility of knowledge

I’ve been bothered for a while with the question of whether Plato thinks that episteme is possible while we are embodied. There seem to be conflicting passages throughout the dialogues regarding the attainability of knowledge.

In the Phaedrus, for example, he indicates that only few ever catch a glimpse of the forms (and yet a few do!) (248a); in the Republic Socrates says that all men have the capacity (the dunamis) for knowledge (518c); in the Timaeus (51d) Timaeus notes that “of understanding, only the gods and a small group of people” have it; and in the Meno Socrates notes that while the slave boy doesn’t yet have knowledge, he can come to have knowledge if he were “repeatedly asked these same questions in various ways” (85c-d).

But there are also several places throughout the dialogues in which there is doubt that one can ever have knowledge of some (any?) thing. This is said explicitly at Laws 897d (“Still, in answering this question we mustn’t assume that mortal eyes will ever be able to look upon reason and get to know it adequately…”) and is implied (it seems) at Phaedrus 274a; Republic 531c & 531d; and Timaeus 29c-d by questioning whether one could ever adequately employ the method required for knowledge. (It should be noted, I suppose, that in none of these three passages is it Socrates who says that he is doubtful that one will ever adequately employ the method required for knowledge, but rather it is his interlocutor with Socrates giving his tacit agreement to the claim (by not disagreeing).) Oh, and then there’s the Phaedo. (But even the Phaedo seems a bit torn on the matter. Compare what Plato says when discussing the problem of the embodied soul with his later discussions of the hypothetical method and his exhortations to Cebes to continue this investigation.)

What’s also striking here is that the Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Republic all contain evidence to support the claim that knowledge is possible and bits that lay doubt upon our ability to attain such knowledge. This isn’t an instance where evidence in favor of the possibility of knowledge is found in one dialogue and evidence against this very possibility is found in a wholly unrelated dialogue. The same dialogues give evidence for both claims.

So what in the world is going on?

I suppose a lot is going on. A lot of this hinges on the method that Plato is putting forward (indeed, the Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Republic passages all have to do with worries about the difficulty of the method put forward). Plato seems to be wanting to stress that the method he’s putting forward isn’t just hard but is, perhaps, impossible to perfectly observe. We, as humans, may be able to practice the method somewhat – to better and worse degrees depending upon the capacities of the individual – but we will never get it perfectly right. We can’t because we’re finite creatures. But because we can’t get it perfectly right, we will never have perfect knowledge. This isn’t to say, though, that we can’t have imperfect knowledge. Insofar as Plato’s knowledge more fully maps onto our contemporary conception of understanding, we can recognize that one can have better or worse understandings of some matter. (My understanding of Plato is better than my understanding of Quine, say. But my understanding of Plato is itself far, far (far!) from perfect.) So even if I don’t have perfect understanding of something, I can still be said to understand it (albeit imperfectly). Or, substituting ‘knowledge’ for ‘understanding’ (while holding onto the same conception (that of understanding) for both) we can say that even if I don’t have perfect knowledge of something, I can still be said to know it (albeit imperfectly).

Might this be the way that we can accomodate Plato’s seemingly conflicting claims about the possibility of knowledge? We may never be able to attain perfect knowledge while in these mortal bodies of ours, but we can still attain some level of knowledge. This might be a nice way to think of the Phaedrus passage. Even there, Plato doesn’t say that the embodied soul has an easy glimpse of the Forms. The charioteer doesn’t just relax and enjoy the view, taking things in at his leasure while sipping a cold cocktail. Instead Socrates says, “Although distracted by the horses, this soul does have a view of Reality, just barely” (248a). This is a philosopher who has attained a high, high level of understanding – higher than any other human – but even still that knowledge fails to be perfect. But this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t say that he therefore fails to know. He does know. He just doesn’t have perfect knowledge. So too does this make sense of the Laws passage (quoted above) where it isn’t that the Athenian Stranger completely disavows any claims to knowledge, but just notes that mortal eyes will not be able to look upon and know reason adequately.

Hmm. This may well be the way to go here. More thinking needs to be done.