As I understand it, her return to Plato stemmed from a sense that modern science and philosophy fails to fully capture what it means to be human. As she wrote in Against Dryness (1961): "Linguistic and existential behaviourism, our Romantic philosophy, has reduced our vocabulary and simplified and impoverished our view of the inner life [...] We need more concepts than our philosophies have furnished us with. We need to be enabled to think in terms of degrees of freedom, and to picture, in a non-metaphysical, non-totalitarian and non-religious sense, the transcendence of reality."
Thank you. What I meant to say was that I don't know why it's crazy, what is it about the modern world that makes Plato seem implausible? I imagine it has something to do with the explanatory power of science. Plato still makes sense in the interior life of an individual and in the social world of humans (as Murdoch so beautifully captures), but for Plato the physical world is a shadow--it's the least Real thing. Technology would be at the bottom of the list of what's valuable to Socrates, whereas we wrestle daily with its implications.
This is so excellent, Mary Jane. And thank you for making me a footnote!
I have, I will admit, also found myself struggling to reconcile Alan Watts' (richly stentorian) refrain that "life is a dance" with his succumbing to "the unenlightened remedy," as you put it.
As before, just a dizzying array of thinkers and syntheses here. You've succeeded in stoking an inchoate interest in Weil as well.
Thank you for your kind words! Weil is one of those writers who keeps on surprising me, which I think is why I find her to ultimately be the deeper thinker, although she certainly has her blindspots too!
It's kind of crazy Murdoch ends up being a Platonist in the modern world. I'm hard pressed to explain why though.
As I understand it, her return to Plato stemmed from a sense that modern science and philosophy fails to fully capture what it means to be human. As she wrote in Against Dryness (1961): "Linguistic and existential behaviourism, our Romantic philosophy, has reduced our vocabulary and simplified and impoverished our view of the inner life [...] We need more concepts than our philosophies have furnished us with. We need to be enabled to think in terms of degrees of freedom, and to picture, in a non-metaphysical, non-totalitarian and non-religious sense, the transcendence of reality."
Thank you. What I meant to say was that I don't know why it's crazy, what is it about the modern world that makes Plato seem implausible? I imagine it has something to do with the explanatory power of science. Plato still makes sense in the interior life of an individual and in the social world of humans (as Murdoch so beautifully captures), but for Plato the physical world is a shadow--it's the least Real thing. Technology would be at the bottom of the list of what's valuable to Socrates, whereas we wrestle daily with its implications.
This is so excellent, Mary Jane. And thank you for making me a footnote!
I have, I will admit, also found myself struggling to reconcile Alan Watts' (richly stentorian) refrain that "life is a dance" with his succumbing to "the unenlightened remedy," as you put it.
As before, just a dizzying array of thinkers and syntheses here. You've succeeded in stoking an inchoate interest in Weil as well.
Thank you for your kind words! Weil is one of those writers who keeps on surprising me, which I think is why I find her to ultimately be the deeper thinker, although she certainly has her blindspots too!