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Plato's Phaedrus is a dialogue about love and about words. But while the characters in it are talking about love and about words, the dialogue itself, Plato's dialogue, is, at the same time, reflecting on certain fundamental questions in metaphilosophy; at least that is the thesis that I am defending in the story that I tell in this paper. These questions concern philosophy's claim to track truth: how can philosophy achieve what it claims to achieve? And how can it justify its expectation that, by the process that Plato calls 'dialectic,' a philosopher places herself in a better position to know that what she says is true, or, indeed, importantly true? There is no doubt that Plato held that dialectic must be a rational process, and that it proceeds by methods of deduction or analysis that are open to rational scrutiny; plainly he thinks of the human soul as possessing a rational capacity capable of carrying out and judging such a procedure, and that such judgement will be marked by a detachment and sobriety that contrasts with the partiality and interested pleading of rhetorical discourse. But is that rationality the source of philosophy's orientation to truth? Surely not.
Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy Online – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1999
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