/lit/ - Literature

>>15141053
>The project of constructing Platonism, which Plato probably thought was identical to the project of doing philosophy, was an immense task. I suppose that the dialogues are records of the state of the art of the ongoing collaborative project initiated in the Academy. The history of Platonism in antiquity is the history of the contributions to this ongoing project. Unquestionably, that history includes deep disagreements among self-declared Platonists as well as fellow travelers. One simple reason for this—and the reason why these disagreements sometimes appear more serious than they actually are—is that the principles of Platonism are underdetermining for the solution to may specifi c philosophical problems. To take one simple example, the proof for the immortality of the soul, which is a proof that the soul in some way inhabits the intelligible world, does not yield a clear answer to the question of whether the soul when inhabiting that world has or does not have parts. Or if it does have parts, in what sense does it do so. Indeed, embracing Platonic principles does not entail anything about the identity of a person and his soul.