Abstract

Nothing could be more helpful to present philosophizing than a “Back to Plato” movement; but it would have to be back to the dramatic, restless, cooperatively inquiring Plato of the Dialogues, trying one mode of attack after another to see what it might yield; back to the Plato whose highest flight of metaphysics always terminated with a social and practical turn, and not to the artificial Plato constructed by unimaginative commentators who treat him as the original university professor. The suggestion that pragmatism must return to the Platonic dialogues is an interesting one. Dewey suggests that pragmatism, and philosophy on the whole, would benefit from revisiting the “dramatic, restless,... inquiring..