List, I very much appreciate Jeff bringing up the topic of the influence of Plato on Peirce. Perhaps, like many Peirce scholars,I've been led (rightly or wrongly is the investigatory question) to think of Peirce as much more akin to Aristotle than to Plato and in some matters of logic he certainly does seem closer to Aristotle; and by his own admission. So I decided to do a keyword search of the EP and CP of 'Plato' (not Platonism, which I think is a very different matter with a strikingly different emphasis) in an attempt to discover for myself what he actually thought about Plato. I'm going to offer some of the passages I found to be helpful in my review -- and subsequent partial reconsideration of -- Plato's influence on Peirce..
Rather than present all the passages at once, I'm going to post two or three a day and, if I have the time this week, I'll send all my succinct summaries and sources of the quotations to come so that interested folk can read them in advance and in context should they wish to. Remembering reading philosophy texts in my 20's and 30's in libraries or used book stores, in old editions which occasionally had a short precis in boldface small print on the upper left side of each item, sometimes each paragraph, I've included my own succinct summary of each quotation so that forum members can quickly decide if they want to read that particular item. I have little doubt that some of my summaries may miss the mark and need correcting. Nonetheless, here are today's quotations preceded by my summary. ***** *Summary of EP 2:35: Peirce argues that in Plato's later works he shifts from a Theory of Ideas to view eternal essences as mathematical, not as things with 'Actual Existence' but as having 'Potential Being'. Plato’s philosophy evolves to view ideas as mathematical forms with relationships akin to numbers, thus perhaps moving in the direction of seeing them as continuous.* The dialogue of the Sophistes, lately shown to belong to Plato's last period,— when he had, as Aristotle tells us, abandoned Ideas and put Numbers in place of them,—this dialogue, I say, gives reasons for abandoning the Theory of Ideas which imply that Plato himself had come to see, if not that the Eternal Essences are continuous, at least, that there is an order of affinity among them, such as there is among Numbers. Thus, at last, the Platonic Ideas became Mathematical Essences, not possessed of Actual Existence but only of a Potential Being quite as Real, and his maturest philosophy became welded into mathematics. EP 2:35 * Summary of EP 2:37-38: Peirce highly praises Plato’s vision of science, especially in so far as he corrected the Heraclitan error of "holding the Continuous to be Transitory and . . . making the Being of the Idea potential." But he also criticizes him for overlooking two types of causation and for making Matter a negative, "a mere non-Being." Plato focused only on internal causes (form and matter) while Aristotle pointed out the need to consider external causes (efficient and final), and Peirce slightly modifies Aristotle's assessment. Peirce suggests Plato’s philosophy is fundamentally about relationship (3ns), but Plato misunderstood his own ideas by focusing on duality and dichotomy. But neglecting external causes he is also actually overlooking 2ns.* [I]n regard to the general conception of what the ultimate purpose and importance of science consists in, no philosopher who ever lived, ever brought that out more clearly than this early scientific philosopher [viz. Plato]. Aristotle justly finds fault with Plato in many respects. But all his criticisms leave unscathed Plato's definitive philosophy, which results from the correction of that error of Heraclitus which consisted in holding the Continuous to be Transitory and also from making the Being of the Idea potential. Aristotle for example justly complains that of the four kinds of causes Plato only recognizes the two internal ones., Form and Matter, and loses sight of the two external ones, the Efficient Cause and the End.Though in regard to final causes this is scarcely just, it is more than just, in another respect. For not only does Plato only recognize internal causes, but he does not even recognize Matter as anything positive. He makes it mere negation, mere non-Being, or Emptiness, forgetting or perhaps not knowing that that which produces positive effects must have a positive nature. Although Plato's whole philosophy is a philosophy of Thirdness,—that is to say, it is a philosophy which attributes everything to an action which rightly analyzed has Thirdness for its capital and chief constituent,—he himself only recognizes duality, and makes himself an apostle of Dichotomy,— which is a misunderstanding of himself. To overlook second causes is only a special case of the common fault of all metaphysicians that they overlook the Logic of Relatives. But when he neglects external causes, it is Secondness itself that he is overlooking. This self-misunderstanding, this failure to recognize his own conceptions, marks Plato throughout. It is a characteristic of the man that he sees much deeper into the nature of things than he does into the nature of his own philosophy, and it is a trait to which we cannot altogether refuse our esteem. EP 2: 37-38 *Commentary: In his introduction to "The Seven Systems of Metaphysics" in the 1903 Harvard Lecture Series, Nathan Houser writes: "Peirce aligns himself with the seventh system, arguing for the reality of all three categories. . ." EP 2:179 Note: Both Plato and Aristotle are included in this system, Aristotelianism being characterized as "a special development" of the Platonic philosophy.* The metaphysics that recognizes all the categories may need at once to be subdivided. But I shall not stop to consider its subdivision. It embraces Kantism,—Reid's philosophy and the Platonic philosophy of which Aristotelianism is a special development. EP 2:180 Best, Gary R
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