Browsing by Subject "Plato."
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Item Kierkegaard's dialectic of the one and the many : a Platonic quest for existential unity.(2009-08-25T16:21:41Z) Nam, Andrew S.; Evans, C. Stephen.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.The dissertation argues that Kierkegaard's major philosophical works overall offer faith in Christ as the only genuine solution to 'the problem of the one and the many.' The problem lies with the apparently contradictory properties of 'being' (e.g., universal/particular, infinite/finite, etc.), that—speaking most generally—everything has the same being insofar as it exists and yet each thing has a different being, its own being, from every other. The solution then must be one of 'dialectical unity,' the kind of unity that validates both contradictories equally. Kierkegaard argues that the one/many problem is really the problem of freedom, for the very consciousness of the contradiction arises from sinning against God, our self-conscious misrelation of 'being' by loving the finite infinitely. Therefore, unity cannot be obtained at the theoretical—metaphysical-epistemological—level, but rather, must be practically realized by becoming a dialectically unified self, achieving 'existential unity.' To explain the thesis, I conceptually reconstruct Kierkegaard's stages of existence theory in terms of this dialectical problem: the contradiction between the aesthetic (capable of affirming particularity only) and the ethical (universality) gets resolved in a higher dialectical unity, the religious. Kierkegaard describes faith in Christ as the self's final telos, the highest form of existential unity, explaining the final religious stage by comparing and contrasting Christian categories of existence with the corresponding philosophical categories in Plato's works, specifically meant to address the one/many problem. Three Christian/Platonic counterparts are explained here: (1) the general characteristic of faith as 'repetition' vs. the philosophical existence characterized by recollection; (2) the ontological 'moment' of the God/man and the epistemological 'moment' of faith in Christ vs. Plato's idea of 'the instant' in the Parmenides in addressing the problem of universals; (3) love of the neighbor vs. Platonic Eros. I shall analyze the one/many dialectic in these Platonic and Christian categories so as to clarify Kierkegaard's claim that only the fully lived life of faith, characterized by a dynamic love relation between God and the self and the resulting progressive revelation of divine love in and from the self, can reconcile the one and the many.Item The other as friend : a platonic response to the political thought of Jacques Derrida.(2012-08-08) Dinan, Matthew D.; Nichols, Mary P.; Political Science.; Baylor University. Dept. of Political Science.This dissertation presents a critical examination of the political thought of Jacques Derrida, suggesting that some of its aims are better realized by Plato. I argue that Derrida's late political works respond to a concern expressed in his early essay, "Plato's Pharmacy," where he suggests that Plato suppressed the subversive insights of philosophy, merely "deciding" to preserve the possibility of hierarchical order in politics. Derrida's explicitly political works identify the same Platonic logic of "closure" in Western political thought's prioritization of the "self" or "commensurability" to the other or "incommensurability." Such closure runs the risk of a nihilistic denial of the ultimate incommensurability: future time. Derrida responds to this politico-philosophical crisis through his notion of "democracy to come," in which he argues that democracy is never fully present, because it alternates between its irreconcilable principles of equality and freedom, in turn. Democracy is thus the one regime receptive to the radically incommensurable future or "to come." While Derrida's efforts to disrupt the nihilistic denial of the future in his political thought are admirable, his account relies heavily on a problematic conception of the self, assumes receptivity to the other to be incompatible with meaningful political limitations, and oversimplifies the Western tradition of political thought in both of these regards. In response, I return to the origin of Derrida's political interventions: the dialogues of Plato. I first examine the Sophist, arguing that Plato preempts Derrida's suggestion that he suppresses philosophy in the name of political order by criticizing the Eleatic Stranger's diacritical ontology for its inability to censure sophistry without recourse to the very decisionism Derrida supposes Plato to recommend. Turning to the Phaedrus I argue that Plato demonstrates Socrates' superiority to the Stranger in the Athenian's recognition of the human context in which thought occurs. Furthermore, Socrates models a type of friendly openness to Phaedrus that mitigates the neutralization of the incommensurable other feared by Derrida, while at the same time providing a foundation for meaningful politico-philosophical limitations. Plato thus offers a model of politico-philosophical openness through which it is possible to better obtain the political goals of Derrida.Item Tragic philosophy and human desire : bringing Nietzsche and Plato into conversation with contemporary ethics.(2013-05-15) Coblentz, William Travis.; Schultz, Anne-Marie, 1966-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.In his Retrieval of Ethics, Talbot Brewer complains of a fundamentally inadequate moral psychology within contemporary ethics, most importantly the limitation of human desire to the instrumental. In response, Brewer, drawing primarily from Aristotle, develops an account of human desire that finds fulfillment-without-ceasing within “dialectical” activity, that is, activity that has an object irreducible to a propositionally describable state of affairs. In this work, I pursue interpretations of Nietzsche and Plato, arguing that they both practice tragic philosophies, implying in turn that that they both held that fundamental human desire can be fulfilled only in dialectical activity. In chapters two through four, I trace Nietzsche’s development from a metaphysical description of tragedy to the practice of tragic philosophy that rejects any metaphysics from which one may derive a telos or morality. This allows a fulfillment of human desire in the constant failure of knowledge to grant the state of affairs necessary to fulfill desires-that is, disappointment. And out of disappointment, one may fulfill-without-ceasing the will to power in ever new forms of creation, thus affirming the activity that is life. Chapters five through seven offer an interpretation of Plato, in which he presents a Socrates who practices an erotic and tragic philosophy that shows a complementary relationship between the aporetic and constructive dialogues. Socrates’ ironic claim to ignorance expresses both the human inability to acquire knowledge of metaphysics and the possibility of the practice of dialectic to bring one into the presence of the Good/Beauty. Socrates’ practice of philosophy is both tragic and erotic, in that it expresses constant striving without the claiming of its goal (lack), and yet achieves the fulfillment-without-ceasing that can be the only “object” of eros. Both Nietzsche and Plato expose a rich view of human desire, fulfilled only in dialectical activity. Their tragic philosophies reflect their views of desire, and so offer resources for contemporary ethics both in terms of philosophical method and more adequate accounts of human desire. In terms of fullness and lack, an important distinction arises between eros and the will to power that may encourage further discussion.