The good between Plato and Aristotle
31
Jan
The reason for this theme from classical antiquity to contemporaneity is the recognition for
various interpretations of everyday practice for the highest theorizing that our thought is still intricate from this idea of good.
Hans-Georg Gadamer in his book “The Idea of Good between Plato and Aristotle” (2009) disassembles from the beginning of the text “ideal and naive comparisons, such as” Plato, the idealist “,” Aristotle, the realist “” ( p.2) and affirms that this is the testimony of partiality “in the field of idealistic consciousness.” (idem).
He demonstrates this with Plato’s interpretation of Plato by Paul Natorp in approaching Plato and Galileo, where he interpreted “the idea” as “the natural law,” and who had been alerted by the break-up of Nicolai Hartmann with this kind of idealism, and (Robin, Taylor, Ross, Hardie, and Hicks) who showed the unity of the philosophy of the Logos with all “the conceptuality of Western thought” (page 3).
He recognizes that the knowledge that enjoys wide recognition is tekhné, while the knowledge that is most important to man: “on the Good it seems of another kind, unlike all known knowledge …” (p. 25), then this type is even more important for our day, as the “banality of evil” of Hanna Arendt or the “fragility of the goodness” of Martha Nussbaum, the theme is back.
How can this be said more directly: corruption, violence, terrorism, hunger and various types of intolerance demonstrate our ignorance even today on the subject.
In dense and complex analysis, Gadamer shows the Western foundation of this theme,
The author points out, from the Republic of Plato, that the idealized world of the State by the authors of Classical Antiquity, thought that this idea of State would harmonize society.
Plato in life observed the corruption of the Greek polis, Gadamer cites his Seventh Letter of the Republic: “unless a reformation of incredible dimensions occurred” (70),
There is the question of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom quoted by Gadamer: “Does Plato intend anything more than to characterize the conflict between theory and politics?” (p. 72), Gadamer’s answer will go (in a complex way) to an collective arete but we think that a true idea of the “common good” still needs to be made explicit with a reform of “incredible dimensions”.
GADAMER, H.G. O bem entre Platão e Aristóteles (The good between Plato and Aristotle). São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2009
