2014-11-13
15 分钟This is philosophy bites with me, Nigel.
Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
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All of philosophy is just a footnote to Plato.
That's a famous quote, but also a rather depressing one because it suggests that philosophy hasn't made much progress since the fourth century BC.
Here's Rebecca Goldstein to cheer philosophers up.
Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein, welcome to philosophy Bites.
It's a pleasure to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on is progress in philosophy.
Now, it seems to many people there isn't any progress in philosophy because we're still discussing the same sort of problems that Plato was discussing in fifth century Athens.
Well, in a sense, we are.
Some of the questions that he was discussing have developed.
I would say that Plato is terrifically significant because he raises almost all of the paradigmatic philosophical questions, raises up in the process, all the different subgenres of philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, in some sense, even philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, political theory, ethics.
I think there's some justification for Alfred North Whitehead's statement that all of philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato, but not in terms of his questions.
Plato, I think if he came back and he looked at us, I mean, the first question would be, what?
No slaves.
It never occurred to him.
No slaves.
So we've made some progress.