Modernity And Plato: Two Paradigms Of Rationality
by Arbogast Schmitt /
2012 / English / PDF
4.4 MB Download
Modernity's break with the Middle Ages is distinguished by a
comprehensive turn to a world of individual, empirical experience,
a turn that was a repudiation of Plato's idea that there is a
reality of rationality and intellect. Yet already in the
Renaissance it was no longer thought necessary to seriously
confront the "old" concept of rationality that emanates from Plato.
Arbogast Schmitt's book sets itself this until-now-unfulfilled
task, comparing the arguments for a life based on theory and one
based on praxis in order to provide a balance sheet of profit and
loss. Showing that the Enlightenment did not, as often assumed,
discover rationality, but instead a different concept of
rationality, the book opens one's view to other forms of
rationality and new possibilities of reconciliation with one's own
- that is, Western - history. Modernity and Plato was hailed upon
its publication in Germany (2003, revised 2008) as "one of the most
important philosophy books of the past few years," as "a book that
belongs, without any doubt, in the great tradition of German
philosophy," and as "a provocative thesis on the
antiquity-modernity debate." It is a major contribution to
synthetic philosophy and philosophical historiography, in English
for the first time. Arbogast Schmitt is Honorary Professor at the
Institute for Greek and Latin Philology at Free University, Berlin
and Emeritus Professor of Classical Philology and Greek at the
University of Marburg, Germany. Vishwa Adluri teaches in the
Departments of Religion and Philosophy at Hunter College, City
University of New York.
Modernity's break with the Middle Ages is distinguished by a
comprehensive turn to a world of individual, empirical experience,
a turn that was a repudiation of Plato's idea that there is a
reality of rationality and intellect. Yet already in the
Renaissance it was no longer thought necessary to seriously
confront the "old" concept of rationality that emanates from Plato.
Arbogast Schmitt's book sets itself this until-now-unfulfilled
task, comparing the arguments for a life based on theory and one
based on praxis in order to provide a balance sheet of profit and
loss. Showing that the Enlightenment did not, as often assumed,
discover rationality, but instead a different concept of
rationality, the book opens one's view to other forms of
rationality and new possibilities of reconciliation with one's own
- that is, Western - history. Modernity and Plato was hailed upon
its publication in Germany (2003, revised 2008) as "one of the most
important philosophy books of the past few years," as "a book that
belongs, without any doubt, in the great tradition of German
philosophy," and as "a provocative thesis on the
antiquity-modernity debate." It is a major contribution to
synthetic philosophy and philosophical historiography, in English
for the first time. Arbogast Schmitt is Honorary Professor at the
Institute for Greek and Latin Philology at Free University, Berlin
and Emeritus Professor of Classical Philology and Greek at the
University of Marburg, Germany. Vishwa Adluri teaches in the
Departments of Religion and Philosophy at Hunter College, City
University of New York.