Abstract

The dissertation articulates the relationship between aporia and several key elements of Plato's philosophy. Aporia is the characteristic state of befuddlement or perplexity that figures so prominently in the dialogues. The failure of scholars adequately to investigate the role of this state of conceptual impasse is considered and explained. A thorough analysis of the meanings of 'aporia' and its related forms, coupled with an examination of their occurrences in non-philosophical Greek, in the Pre-Socratics and in Plato, prompts several lines of inquiry. Most importantly, it is seen that the state of aporia points to the fundamental inadequacy of certain modes or levels of thought. The intellect is brought to impasse by its own flawed way of conceiving things. Aporia emerges as the motivating factor in the mind's transcendence of the lower levels of the divided line. Hence, it is the necessary concomitant of properly dialectical thought. Such an interpretation is borne out not only by the analysis of the central books of the Republic, but also by the evidence of the early Socratic dialogues, other middle dialogues, and even the later dialogues in which the Socratic elenchus is replaced by the process of division. In this, it is argued that the works of Plato present to us a unified account of philosophical methodology rather than what some scholars have seen as the gradual progression of "the Platonic" out of "the Socratic." In a review of the various characterizations of aporia among Socrates and his interlocutors, several types of reactions to the state of impasse are observed. The classification of these leads to a most perspicuous formulation of the Platonic definitions of sophist, philosopher, demagogue and politician. Some considerations are raised, finally, about Socrates' part in the dialogues and the light that Plato's understanding of aporia sheds upon his use of the dramatic format