Abstract

IN PREVIOUS ESSAYS, I have argued in effect that the beginning and end of philosophy is the accessibility or intelligibility of what Philo was apparently the first to name the kosmos noëtos. It is relevant here to mention that I was led to such a conclusion largely as a result of an effort to understand the most fundamental, if not always most visible, differences between ancient and modern thought. In trying to perceive the roots of "the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns," I came to see that quarrel as best exemplified in a contrast between the thought of Plato and Hegel. In essence, this quarrel concerns the relationship between Being and Time. One may also state the issue in perhaps more accessible terms by saying that it is a question of the relationship between philosophy and history. Is there, or is there not, an eternal, rational structure, order, or ground of the Whole, independent of that complex of subjectivity and change which we may summarize under the name of history? Is the form of Being identical with, or different from, the form of Time? Are there, or are there not, Ideas in the Platonic sense of the term? Needless to say, it is difficult enough, perhaps impossible, even properly to formulate such questions, let alone to answer them. But when the effort is not made, philosophy is surely absent. In what follows, then, I offer some arguments and conjectures concerning the necessity and nature of Ideas. My remarks are in no sense intended as a complete theory or description of Ideas; and neither do they pretend to express "authentic" Platonic teaching. No one knows the authentic Platonic teaching, according to Plato himself. However this may be, I am not engaged in an interpretation of Plato's dialogues, at least not in the normal, scholarly sense. It seems obvious to me that the dialogues are impossible to understand if we take them by themselves as an object for analysis, without attempting to think through their fundamental themes on the basis of our total experience. This is surely the direction toward which the dialogues themselves are pointing. At the same time, we cannot think about our total experience without thinking about the dialogues. My present starting-point is the notion of the Idea as a problem or hypothesis, raised in and illuminated by the dialogues of Plato, but never explicitly or completely explained therein. In attempting to establish certain minimal conditions regarding the necessity and nature of Ideas, I am trying to clarify the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. Still further, I am attempting to defend the ancients against the moderns; or rather, to present part of the defense made by the ancients themselves. In such an effort, I derive my support primarily from Plato and Hegel.