The Opinions of a Philosopher

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At the center of the dialogue, however, where an ergon is set into the logos, the opinion of mankind cannot be supposed away, for the many will have to be won to some sort of acceptance of philosophy if anything is to be done. But it is really as the individual inner source of this public opinion, as the faculty of the soul Glaucon will soon learn to call doxa, that opinion becomes of overwhelming importance at the center, for both the older and the younger lover of wisdom.

Phaedrus d , although opinion so well founded that Glaucon will not be able to follow him without a long course of study. Just as there are some who desire love, he says, and some who desire honor, there are some who desire wisdom, and all of it.

Specific Quotes and Definitions

Glaucon asks whether lovers of wisdom then include lovers of sights and sounds. Socrates answers with a distinction which he would have difficulty, he says, in getting anyone but Glaucon to admit e6: Now lovers of sights love—and apprehend—beauty in its manyness and are asleep with respect to true beauty itself, being unable to distinguish this one from the many, but the philosopher loves the one true beauty.

They will appeal to the lover of beauty in manyness and ask him if all these things he loves are not also sometimes ugly, and if the same is not true of things just, great, or heavy—that they will all be found at some time to be the opposite, so that they cannot be said to be or not to be one thing or another, but are tossed about in between being and non-being. So ends Book V: The foregoing argument cannot help reminding Glaucon of an earlier one Book IV , in which it had been concluded that cities derive their constitutions from the individual constitutions of their citizens.

If a man wants at the same time to drink and not to drink because he knows that he ought not to, then his soul must contain opposing parts: Glaucon, obviously listening to the name, thinks that it is more akin to desire than to reason. If we juxtapose the results of both exercises we get the following result:. For the middle parts, this correlation is indeed tacitly but unmistakably made in the dialogue. The logistikon, on the other hand, is not quite coextensive with gnosis.

Here we must stop to observe the name itself.

Nichomachean Ethics a13 , measuring, and weighing—in short, whatever corresponds only to the lower part of the knowing power, to that power of mathematical thinking which Glaucon will discover later, once again as a mean between opinion and knowledge; and will learn to call dianoia. How is this new soul to be understood? With the discovery of doxa Socrates has started Glaucon on this longer way. Compared to this learning soul, the three parts of the first soul sink to mere tendencies, dispositions, or appetites cf.

Your Answer

And of course, the very name of the thymos, with its allusion to epithymia, implies a kind of reflexive desire, as opposed to the desire that goes out upon an object. This means that in a sense all these parts function as desires, as activating human wants, and so it fits very well that the wisdom-loving part should not be coextensive with the knowing part, since when the soul truly knows, it no longer desires the objects of knowledge but has attained and moves among them.

Elements of definitions

This restlessly desiring tripartite soul is the embodied soul, a monstrous, precariously conflated unity d ; it turns into a single rising organ of love only at the sight of beauty Phaedrus d ff. In contrast, the increasingly more receptive soul of the center, although still using the senses, is more nearly the soul by itself, whose oneness, presumably similar to that of the Whole, is a subject, as Socrates says, for a more advanced inquiry.

However, the undertaking remains a mere exercise because, as we shall see, Socrates must exclude true dialectic from the Republic. He does not deny the accusation, but he will justify his demand for the rule of the philosophers by an image e5 and its explication a4 ; the image is that of a mutinous crew and the good but powerless captain. There follows a series of images that show that the greatest of all sophists, the Many, is in fact the greatest corrupter of natures, who corrupts the best most deeply; this Public Sophist is like a great brute that the little private sophists know how to propitiate ad.

Thus philosophy is left desolate and any little tinker may, as it were, take her to wife e.

Opinion: Philosophical definitions

Such a nature will run to shelter as from a storm and will live—and die—in private. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable.

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Questions Tags Users Badges Unanswered. Which philosopher discusses simultaneously considering an opinion and its opposite?

The Opinions of a Philosopher

It sounds to me a lot like doublethink, from George Orwell's Very related - a quote by F. To my best knowledge, a sentiment somewhat akin to this statement could be found in JS Mill's On Liberty , a utilitarian argument on why society should not silence the expression of contrarian opinions, partly to defend it from individual fallibility: Student 1 8. It's not a perfect mapping. Mill is arguing that societies should allow opposite opinions to be expressed, not that individuals should hold opposite opinions.

Conifold The question doesn't say anything about simultaneously holding two opinions. It talks about considering them, which would be analyzing them and possibly trying to choose one in this context. I don't think that by holding Hegel means accepting, there would be no need for sublation then.

Facts & Opinions | Issue | Philosophy Now

So "holding together" is essentially synonymous to "considering simultaneously", the tension to be resolved not in acceptance of one of the opposites, but in a breakthrough of their limitations. This would be different from considering and reflecting upon in trying to choose, usually done in turn though rather than simultaneously, but I agree that it is up to the OP to say what he had in mind.

Two philosophies come to mind. Pyrrhonism see Sextus Empiricus uses opposing arguments to leave one in a state of suspension of belief, and hence achieve ataraxia.

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