The paper puts forward a new interpretation of the image of the Cave, that is the image on human paideia (education) and apaideusia (lack of education). The cause of the apaideusia (R.514a) is identified as a separation from the origin. (1) First, the relation between the Cave, the analogy of the Linie and the Sun is shown not to be a strict parallelism, but a resemblance, which implies sameness and difference between Sun, Line and Cave. (2) Second, the (...) author argues that the idea of the Good is the necessary condition for the possibility of being, truth and thought. It is the highest principle and the ultimate foundation of Plato’s ethics. (3) Third, the author describes Plato’s paideia (education) as holistic, that is: it involves the spiritive and appetitive part of the soul. (shrink)

Against the modern tendency to considerate just the formal-empirical knowledge as Science, and this one mathematized as much as possible, here many declarations of Aristotle are raised in order to show that the scientific rigour is not univocal but analogic: it is determined according to the nature of the object to be known. This is a so elementary epistemological rule that not knowing it is understood by that philosopher as apaideusia, i.e., lack of basic education in the knowledge sphere (...) in general. To the Stagirite, a pepaideuménos, i.e., a well educated spirit requires to every subject just the kind of rigour which is adequate to it, attempting not to impose whether the demonstrative or the mathematical rigour to the subject. It is specially truth for the theological Science, whose subject, by being transcendent, asks for a sui generis rigour which has to be so faithful as possible to it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Nietzsche Explains and WhyDaniel ToueyIt is very much a matter of debate whether we are experiencing the end of philosophy or, as others would rather say, simply enduring an aberrant period during which such extravagant claims are being inexplicably tolerated. This debate has been going on for some time now. It will generate additional inconclusive discourse as long as there are differing notions of what “philosophy” consists of, (...) what it means to be doing it, and what it means not to be doing it. But I think that it is quite plausible that philosophy is changing its nature and that a whole group of philosophical questions has at least shifted in emphasis for our time.I would like to examine, in a speculative way, what seems to me to be a fundamental reorientation in how we ask philosophical questions and what sort of answers we expect to be able to give them. I will be mainly concerned with what may be roughly called the philosophy of explanation—with what, in our ongoing inquiries, we take to be shifting, problematic, obscure, and in need of explanation and what, in turn, we take to be stable, foundational, and known, which acts as the means through which we account for the former. But I would like also to touch upon a second aspect of this reorientation—the implications of our philosophy of explanation for an ongoing interpretive and critical assessment of society. In both of these exercises I will be relying on the philosophy of Nietzsche, who is one of those figures who announced the shift that I am claiming has overtaken philosophy and who continues to be a useful exemplar for our attempt to conceptualize it.The Structure of ExplanationAristotle makes a basic point about the structure of explanation or demonstration (apodeixis) in the Metaphysics while arguing for the priority of the principle of noncontradiction.Some thinkers demand a demonstration even of this principle, but they do so because they lack education; for it is a lack of education [End Page 485] [apaideusia] not to know of what things one should seek a demonstration and of what he should not. For, as a whole, a demonstration of everything is impossible, for the process would go on to infinity, so that even in this manner there would be no demonstration. 1I take Aristotle’s meaning to be that in any demonstration, or explanation, we must take something as primary, as given and self-evident, before it can proceed. Elsewhere he says that the starting-point (arché) of an inquiry is “to hoti “—“the that” or the simple fact. Seeing its inherent validity is necessary for the inquiry to go on. 2 Aristotle believed that these primary assumptions which guided inquiry were not arbitrary, that they were rooted in the nature of things. But we do not have to hold that the metaphysical commitments which determine the basic structure of our inquiries are supported in such a way. Wittgenstein, who makes the same basic point about the need for privileging some things in order to make successful explanations, does not think that we have any absolute means for legitimating those choices.Can’t an assertoric sentence, which was capable of functioning as an hypothesis, also be used as a foundation for research and action? I.e. can’t it simply be isolated from doubt, though not according to any explicit rule? It simply gets assumed as a truism, never called in question, perhaps not even ever formulated. 3Both Wittgenstein and Aristotle describe how the validity of those fundamental, operative assumptions, which cannot be demonstrated because they are means by which everything else is demonstrated, is established in practice. Aristotle says that the foundations of thought and discourse, like the principle of noncontradiction, can be doubted only in speech. Someone can make the pretense of denying them, but if we push hard enough we can show him that he is continually making use of those principles which he believes he is rejecting. 4 Of a fundamental truth Wittgenstein says that “everything speaks in its favor, nothing against it.” 5 Both suggest that we discover how deeply entrenched and indispensable... (shrink)