Plato’s Philosopher
Donald Davidson
It is a fine question how the aim and method of the philosophical enterprise is to be related to the beliefs we bring to that enterprise. It is bootless to pretend we can start by somehow setting aside the equipment with which we approach philosophy, for then there would be nothing with which to work. We can, however, ask whether the main point of philosophising is to examine, clarify, reconcile, criticise, regroup, or even unearth, the convictions or assumptions with which we began, or whether something more is possible: a search which might lead to knowledge or values that were not in sight at the start, and not necessarily implicit in what we then knew.
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[1] ‘Saving Aristotle’s Appearances’ by Martha Nussbaum: Language and Logos, ed. by M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum (Cambridge, 1982).
[2] Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (Clarendon, 1983).
[3] See Vlastos’s ‘Afterthoughts on the Socratic Elenchus’. Ibid.
[4] J.C.B. Gosling’s translation in Plato: Philebus (Oxford, 1975).
[5] For an authoritative discussion of the dating of the dialogue see R.E. Allen’s Introduction to the first volume of his new translation of the dialogues.