The Problem of Philosophy
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2011
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Haverford College. Department of Philosophy
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
This thesis explores the integral role of aporia in Platonic philosophy by exploring its epistemological, philosophical, and ethical contexts. Aporia is the disruption of pre-philosophical opinion – some call it intuition – by pointing out its inherent inconsistency and partial constitution in falsity itself. Opinions, however, also always have something of truth in them, thus they can be called intuitions at all and can allow for the aporetically stirred soul to approach truth at all. This disruption, moreover, occurs philosophically in a realm of value, as it is always due to the need to determine what is good over what is bad that causes one to get mixed up in the first place. Because of this, philosophy is always concerned with coming to know what is good and, because the philosopher is never satisfied by opinions that are inevitably false, this good eventually becomes an ethical problem of ‘goodness’ against ‘badness’ in general. Philosophy is a maddening pursuit after knowledge of truth and goodness, because as soon as one grasps what one is after it becomes immediately apparent that they have again grasped mere opinion. To this extent the acquisition of knowledge comes not in the accumulation of true propositions – opinions – but rather in the honing of one’s skill in understanding them. Aporia non-intuitively begins and ends philosophy by generating the creative pursuit of truth.