For twenty-four centuries, much has been said about Plato. He is the author considered to be the inaugurator of Western “metaphysics”. Several conflicting, and even mutually exclusive, interpretations predominated over a certain mode of read it and ended up obscuring its vivacious and robust thinking, characteristic of the artistic force of Greece old.
Incomprehensible, what is conventionally called Platonism seems, even today, to correspond to a kind of hypothesis ad hoc, that is, saving a theory or continuing to develop it on a given paradigm.
In his work, the Dialogues, there is a dramatic enactment between various discourses, which claim to be true: be it the relativist discourses of the sophists, be it the philosophical ones or the search for definitions of Socrates (as well as those who expose what they think with more or less simplicity and/or difficulties), there is a sensitive web of positions that come into combat, in conflict direct. Showing, demonstrating and refuting; allegories, myths, mathematics, imagery, are discursive forms that try to make something see, make something appear.
However, this something is never said directly from Plato's mouth. He, as the author of the dialogues, does not meddle in the dramatic scene or when he does it is irrelevant to the context. It is Socrates or Gorgias, or Callicles, or Theaetetus, or the Stranger, etc., who speak. All correspond to a determined intention of the author.
We must, therefore, make a methodological suspension of the Platonic tradition in order to read the dialogues more clearly and try to find out whether it is possible or not. extract a Platonic philosophy itself, conceiving Plato first as an author to find out if he can also be a philosopher and under what conditions this from the.
To understand what Plato's intention in writing in dialogical form is to seek, from the establishment of temporalities, lexis (what is said), knotesis (what is understood), genesis (the author's historical moment, life, etc.) and poetry (the chronology of the works) and verify, in this order, how the genesis influences and determines the poetry. Show that this intention shows how much Plato may have inherited from Socrates and at the same time distanced himself from the "master", intending to make dialogue an artistic form that would compete with other ways of representing reality in Greece old. It means that Plato intends to make good use of imitation and not completely despise it.
Thus, as in dialogue there are several discourses, language is the object of different valuations and can be taken as being what it is not, as being worth more than it is. And this is the criticism of Socrates no.THERepublic, books II-III. Therefore, it is necessary an always critical appropriation of the immediacy of appearing and not its summary exclusion. So, the challenge of the dialogues would be to think about what is and what is not and to be able to say them discursively. We can thus list some specific goals in the author's intention to write in dialogic form. Are they:
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- Show that Plato aims to compete with other artistic forms (discursive, other modes of expression of the Logos), because even though he does not have a fixed doctrine, he believes in the possibility of intelligibility (understanding and discernment), assuming that the end of communication is persuasion. Therefore, he intends, by expressing the Socratic odyssey and contrasting it with various discourses, to promote a minimum posture for those who want to know something, encouraging the reader to seek knowledge for themselves same;
- Plato adheres to the dialectical method. It is the only dogma that can be extracted from both his life and his work. He is neither skeptical nor dogmatic, but a philosopher, that is, he seeks the truth, aware of the impossibility of fully possessing it. Here, even if the author does not interfere in the drama of the dialogues, there are points in his personal life that allow him to get closer to some of the characters' opinions;
- The relationship Eros and Logos, inscribed in the dialogues, could it serve as an internal methodology? Philosophy, at the end of the odyssey, does not understand the need for strong knowledge, but it also recognizes the difficulties or even impossibility of achieving it. So what remains in the search? Dialectics, as a condition of existence for those who want to know, helps to clarify points and raise understanding, at least temporarily. It never means that the so-called theory of Ideas or Forms corresponds to a fixed doctrine. One might think that it would be a hypothesis, Socratic, that did not work out or that clarified points, got into difficulties and demanded overcoming. Hence, the need for persuasion, language, dialogue!
- The way in which appearing is inserted and not excluded in Socratic thought. What is criticized in art, according to the texts, is not its ontological insufficiency, the inferiority of appearance in relation to essence. There is no world of ideas different from the world of things. What happens is greater or lesser intelligibility about what appears. Note: What makes one thing more real than another? This is not explicit in the dialogues, it cannot be stated categorically.
So, it can be said that the nuances that make up this problem are better understood if it is organized in such a way as to make the knotesis correctly match with the lexis and from these the way can be opened for the dialectical unification of the different temporalities and, only in this way, to understand the real meaning of Platonic philosophy.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP