Socratic Ignorance An Essay on Platonic Self-Knowledge
This book is intended to offer an interpretation of an important aspect of Plato's philosophy. The matter to be interpreted will be the Platonic myths and doctrines which bear upon self-knowledge and self-ignorance. It is difficult to say in a word just w
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SOCRATIC IGNORANCE An Essay on Platonic Self-Knowledge
by EDWARD G. BALLARD Professor of PhilosoPhy Tulane University
D THE HAGUE
MARTINUS NljHOFF 1965
ISBN 978-94-011-8645-2 ISBN 978-94-011-9432-7 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-9432-7
Copyright 1965 by Martinus NijhoJf. The Hague. Netherlands Softcover reprint olthe hardcover 1st edition 1965 All rights reserved. including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
PREFACE
This book is intended to offer an interpretation of an important aspect of Plato's philosophy. The matter to be interpreted will be the Platonic myths and doctrines which bear upon self-knowledge and self-ignorance. It is difficult to say in a word just what sort of thing an interpretation is. Rather than attempting to provide a set of rules or meta-rules supposed to define the ideally perfect interpretation, several distinctions will be suggested. I should like to distinguish the philological scholar from the interpreter by saying that the latter uses what the former produces. The function of the scholarly examination of a text is to make an ancient (or foreign) writing available to the contemporary reader. The scholar solves grammatical, lexical, and historical problems and renders his author readable by the person who lacks this scholarly learning and technique. The function of the interpreter is to make use of such available writings in order to render their content more intelligible and useful to a given audience. Thus, he thinks through this content, explains, and re-expresses it in a form which can be easily related to problems, persons, doctrines, or events of another epoch or of another class of readers. At the minimum, the interpretation of a philosophic writing may be thought to prepare its teaching for application to matters which belong in another time or context. Detailed application of a doctrine is, of course, still another thing. And there exists, finally, the rather special use of an older philosopher's works which is to be found in the writings of another great original thinker; I have in mind the kind of creative use to which A. N. Whitehead put the Platonic writings in his Adventures oj Ideas. Since these four ways of treating a text, the scholarly, the interpretative, the applicatory, the creative, differ from each other with respect to the purpose which each serves, the standards by which each kind of treatment is to be judged will also differ from the others. The purpose of the present writing is to select from the dialogues certain significant and characteristic problems-particularly those connected with the nature of the self-and to analyze, explain, and
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PREFACE
interconnect these with the consequence that they become more intelligible to a present-day, philosophically minded audience. The initial meaning of the text of the dialogues will be regarded as analogous to the shadows in the Cave. In order to approach a sound interpretation, the text will be compared and contrasted with various readings and relevant philosoph
