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Anti-Realist Interpretations ofPlato: Paul Natorp

Vasilis Politis

Abstract

The paper considers Paul Natorps Kantian reading of Platos theory ofideas, as developed in his monumental work, Platos Ideenlehre, eineEinfhrung in den Idealismus (1903, 1921). Central to Natrops reading are,

I argue, the following two claims: (1) Platos ideas are laws, not things; and(2) Platos theory of ideas in the rst instance a theory about the possibilityand nature of thought in particular cognitive and indeed scientic orexplanatory thought and only as a consequence is it a theory about thenature of reality. Natrop thus argues that Platos theory of ideas is at itsheart a transcendental theory, and that Platos metaphysics is built on thisbasis. The paper considers these claims and their textual basis in Plato in some detail, and attempts an initial evaluation of their plausibility as areading of Plato. I am on the whole sympathetic to Natorps reading, thougha proper assessment goes beyond the present paper.

The wider interest of this idealist or anti-realist reading of Plato ought tobe obvious, especially in view of the commonly accepted assumption thesedays that both Plato and Aristotle, and indeed the Greeks in general, tookrealism entirely for granted (see e.g. M. Burnyeat). Natorp argues that thisis true of Aristotle, but quite untrue of Plato. But he is quite clear that theidealism he ascribes to Plato is not Berkeleyan or metaphysical idealism,but a certain kind of transcendental or epistemological idealism. Natorp,however, is no uncritical follower of Kant, and the version of trascendentalidealism that he ascribes to Plato is, I argue, very different from Kants.

Keywords: Natorp, Kant, Neokantianism, transcendental idealism,metaphysics

1 Introduction1

In a well-known paper, Myles Burnyeat argued for the non-existence of

idealism in antiquity, idealism in the sense of the ontological thesis thatall there is is mind and the contents of mind.2 This is Berkeleyan idealism,which may be absent from Greek philosophy. But is the same true ofKantian idealism, the epistemological thesis that reason has insight only

International Journal o f Phi losophical St udies Vol.9(1), 4761;

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DOI: 10.1080/09672550010012147

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into that which it produces after a plan of its own and that objects mustconform to our knowledge?3 Is this kind of idealism, associated withKants Copernican revolution in epistemology, equally absent from Greekphilosophy? The question is not much discussed today; perhaps it is

assumed that there is no idealism of either kind in Greek philosophy. Butit used to be discussed, and I think that it is worthwhile to take up.Berkeleys idealism is hardly a live option, and few would want to denyontological realism. But epistemological idealism, commonly known asanti-realism, is very much alive, and the different contemporary varietiesare arguably traceable to Kant.4 It is such epistemological varieties ofidealism that Nagel rejects when he claims that the world is not depen-dent on our view of it, or any other view: the direction of dependence is

the reverse.5

Is such a debate between epistemological realism andidealism at all present in Greek philosophy?In the monumental work Platos Theory of Ideas (1903 and 1921)6 the

Neokantian philosopher Paul Natorp identied a debate between epis-temological realism and idealism at the heart of Greek philosophy, viz.between Plato and Aristotle. He argued that Platos philosophy is a speciesof epistemological idealism, directly opposed to Aristotles epistemologicalrealism. Moreover, he thought that Aristotles realist interpretation of Plato

is responsible for the traditional but, he argued, mistaken understandingof Platonic essences or ideas, the key elements in Platos epistemology, assubstances. Natorps position is undoubtedly extreme, both in the degreeto which it likens Platos epistemology to Kants and in the opposition itclaims between Plato and Aristotle. Himself a convinced Kantian, Natorpis unconcerned to resist what Burnyeat describes as the standing temp-tation for philosophers to nd anticipations of their own views in the greatthinkers of the past (p. 3). But I think that Natorps reading of Plato, in

spite of or precisely because it is extreme, serves as an excellent stimulusand occasion to consider whether and how epistemological idealism or anti-realism is present in Greek philosophy, especially Plato.

2 Natorps Reading of Kant, and its Origin in Hermann Cohen

In the 1912 paper Kant and the Marburg School, which he dedicated toHermann Cohen, his friend, mentor and colleague at Marburg, Natorp

recounts how his aim has been to develop what he considers Kants funda-mental insight, but how at the same time he thinks that this requires oneor two radical corrections of Kant.7 The insight is Kants anti-realismand the transcendental turn, which Natorp sums up as follows:

Any relation at all to an object, any concept of an object, hence alsoof a subject, originates purely in knowledge, according to the law ofknowledge; for objects must conform to knowledge, not knowledge

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to objects, if a lawlike relation between the two is to become at allintelligible.8

This is a theory of how object-directed thought is possible, a theory of

intentionality or conceptual thought and intentionality. It is, in this broadsense, an epistemological theory or, as Natorp prefers, a logical theory.9

Natorp sees a stark contrast between this epistemological reading of Kantstranscendental idealism and metaphysical or psychological readings, whichhe rejects.10 He wants to dissociate Kants idealism both from the meta-physical claim that all there is is mind and its contents and from the view,which he calls psychological, that the fundamental contents of mind arenon-conceptual data directly accessible to consciousness.

Natorp takes conscious leave from Kant in two important respects. First,he rejects Kants analysis of conceptual knowledge into two distinct ele-ments, those belonging to sensibility and those belonging to understand-ing. Such a separation of sensibility (causal receptivity) and understanding(conceptual spontaneity), he argues, is incompatible with anti-realism andthe transcendental turn:

This [separation] really means wanting to construct knowledge from

outside though in fact no standpoint is given or thinkable outsideknowledge; it means to let knowledge originate in an apparentlytranscendent causal relation. But this is to revert to metaphysics,which is strictly incompatible with the transcendental method.11

Whether Natorp is right that a (partially) causal analysis of knowledgeimplies wanting to explain knowledge from outside, i.e. outside theconceptual contents of knowledge, is a difcult question, as is whether

this desire was Kants. What does follow from the rejection of Kants sepa-ration between sensibility and understanding is the rejection of thepossibility of purely subjective non-conceptual content: there is no suchthing as the absolutely subjective content.12

Further, and vital for the viability of Kants epistemology, the rejectionof the separation between sensibility and understanding allows Natorpto argue that it is thinking itself that lays down the representations ofspace and time as requirements for knowledge; hence these have the

status of hypotheses, and are as such revisable.13 In this way Natorp canaccommodate the possibility of conceiving of space in terms other thanEuclidean.

Secondly, in direct parting from Kant, Natorp denies that there is a xednumber of functions of thought or judgment, or a xed number of cat-egories. Rather, he argues that the unitary nature of thought, to which heremains committed and without which the nature of thought would not bedeterminable a priori, is compatible with the specic forms of thought

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being capable of indenite development and revision.14 This emphasis onthe revisability and open-endedness of thought is central in Natorp, andit is striking that he thinks it compatible with the transcendental method,i.e. an anti-realist method in epistemology combined with a largely a priori

approach to the fundamental nature of thought and knowledge.Natorps reading of Kant grew out of Hermann Cohens, in Kants Theorieder Erfahrung (1871).15 Cohen denies that Kant separated sensibility fromunderstanding, i.e. that he believed in a separable non-conceptual andpurely causally explicable element in knowledge:

In Kant, sensation [the element in knowledge belonging to sensibility]is not a fully developed and independently existing psychological

process; rather, it is an initial step in intuition [conceived as concep-tual] and it can be isolated only scientically [i.e. in analysis, but notin reality].

(p. 42)

Even more boldly,

Form is not so much to be identied with our subjectivity, such that

content [Materie] would correspond to it as object; rather, both formand content are determinations of appearance. Nowhere is there anymention of real objects which subjectivity is supposed to encounterand receive impressions of.

(p. 44)

Now, denying that it is possible to separate sensibility and understandingultimately implies denying any positive epistemological role to Kants

notion of things in themselves, i.e. things considered in abstraction fromthe a priori conditions for our knowledge of things. For, suppose we setaside Kants version of this notion which refers to non-empirical thingssuch as God and the immortal soul. We may set aside this as irrelevantto Kants positive account of our knowledge, since Kant thinks that suchnon-empirical entities, even if logically possible, are strictly and in prin-ciple unknowable to us. What positive epistemological role is left for thingsin themselves? Only, arguably: to be the cause of our empirical knowl-

edge. But evidently they can have this role only if it is possible to abstractfrom the a priori conditions of our knowledge while still retaining somenotion, however thin, of an object of knowledge. But this we can do onlyif we can separate the a priori contribution to our knowledge originatingin us from the contribution to our knowledge originating causally in things.

It is the denial of a possible separation between sensibility and under-standing that explains why both Cohen and Natorp have little interestin and patience with Kants notion of things in themselves. There is hardly


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any room for this notion in their reconstruction of Kant. Still, while Cohenwants to exculpate Kant from separating sensibility and understanding andfrom assigning a positive epistemological role to things in themselves,Natorp thinks that we need to submit Kant to important revision and cor-

rection on these scores. But now I turn to Natorps Kantian reading of Plato.

3 Natorps Two Central Theses about Plato

The centre of Platos philosophy, Natorp thinks, is the theory of ideas.But Natorp argues that Platos ideas are laws, not things. This is a deci-sive break from Aristotles interpretation, which conceives of Platonicideas as substances, substances separate from perceptible things. Natorp

argues that Platonic ideas are not substances at all, whether immanent ortranscendent, but laws.Aristotles interpretation is responsible for the tendency to distinguish

sharply between Platonic ideas and Socratic essences, the essences soughtin the earlier Socratic dialogues. According to Aristotle, Socrates, presum-ably the Socrates of the early dialogues, did not separate or reify essences,but Plato is guilty of this move, presumably the Plato of the middledialogues (see Metaphysics A6, 987b). But Natorp argues that Plato never

reied essences, and that the separation between objects of perceptionand objects of thought that undoubtedly occurs after the early dialogues(e.g. in Phaedo 74, and 789 Republic V, 47680 and Theaetetus 1847) isepistemological, not ontological. Such separation means that essencescannot be known perceptually in this sense they are objects of thoughtand not perception. But objects of thought and objects of perception arenot two separable sets of objects. This also allows Natorp to argue for asmoother development from the early to the middle and later dialogues.

So far the connection with epistemological anti-realism is not apparent.Even if Platos ideas are laws and not things, they may be laws of natureor reality but with no essential reference to thinking and knowledge. Wemay be able to grasp such laws through thinking, but without their func-tion being specically logical or epistemological. But Natorp argues thatthis is the primary function of Platos ideas: to account for thinking andknowledge. Platos ideas are primarily laws of thought and knowledge,and only as a consequence are they laws of nature and reality. In Natorps

favoured formulation, Plato thinks that being is constituted by thinking:

It is, quite generally, the law, i.e. the unity of thinking the eidos oridea that constitutes objects (te kn).

(p. 50)

Natorp thus defends two central theses: (1) Platos ideas, the centralelements of his epistemology, are laws, not things; and (2) Platos ideas


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are primarily laws of thought and knowledge and only derivatively lawsof being being is in this sense constituted by thinking.

4 Natorps Thesis that Being, According to Plato, is

Constituted by Thinking

Plato, Natorp argues, thinks that being is constituted by thinking. But whatview does this ascribe to Plato, and can the view be formulated without theKantian jargon? Clearly, some kind of dependence of being on thinking isasserted. The formulation in terms of constitution may suggest ontologicaldependence being is constituted by thinking in the way water is made upof molecules but this is precisely what Natorp does not intend. The depen-

dence is epistemological or logical, not ontological. Natorp provides valu-able clarication of the dependence in pointing out that by being he meansnot existence or what exists, i.e. things, but predicative being (das Seinder Prdikation, p. 71), i.e. what is judged to be true or to be the case:

Being means here [in the claim of Theaetetus 1847 that only judg-ment, not perception, can attain being], as always in Platos stricterand more philosophical use: the positing in thought, the unity of

determination, hence predication.(p. 103)

It follows that the dependence of being on thinking is not existential orontological: the being that depends on thinking is not what exists, i.e.things; hence the claim is not that things are mind-dependent. The claimis rather that what is judged to be the case is in a certain sense mind-dependent. The view that Natorp ascribes to Plato is, then, that there are

no states of affairs in reality, except by reference to thinking. The ques-tion that such a view addresses is not whether there is an external world,which it assumes there is, but whether there is something that this worldis like independently of thinking. The opposite view, which Natorp ascribesto Aristotle, is not that there is an external world, but that this world ismade up of states of affairs, viz. the particulars and their properties whichtogether constitute states of affairs, independently of thinking. A compa-rable modern controversy would not be that between Berkeley and

Descartes on the status of objects but, e.g., the controversy between Quineand Armstrong on the status of states of affairs.16

Natorps clarication (in the above quotation) avoids the Kantian termi-nology of constitution and it makes good sense of a particular passage inPlato (Theaetetus 1847). The distinction between existential and pred-icative being is often called for in considering uses of the verb einai,especially philosophical uses. It is plausible to think that in claiming here(Theaetetus 1856) that only judgment and not perception can attain being,


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Plato means primarily attaining what is the case. Natorps notion ofpositingsomething in thought, despite its Kantian ring, is strictly faithful to Platosaccount of judgment as the act of thought of asserting a statement (cf.Theaetetus 189e190a). And his notion of unity of determination is an

attempt, I think felicitous, at understanding the common concepts (koina)introduced in Theaetetus 185ac (being, sameness and difference, likenessand unlikeness, number) as precisely concepts involved in all judging andas accounting for the possibility of judging. Natorps seemingly sweepingKantian readings of Plato are on the whole sensitive to individual texts.If there is a textual problem in Natorps approach, it is his less thanbalanced use of texts that especially lend themselves to an anti-realistreading to draw a broader anti-realist picture of Plato.

The epistemological anti-realism that Natorp ascribes to Plato, summedup in the slogan that being is constituted by thinking, is thus best under-stood as the view that there is no logical or predicative structure in realityindependently of thinking, i.e. the logical structure of states of affairs. Suchlogical structure is only introduced through thinking and predication.In this sense thinking, i.e. judgmental or propositional thinking to whichpredicative structure is essential, is prior to being, i.e. being primarily inthe sense of what is the case. In this way the priority between being

in thinking is reversed. What Kant called the Copernican revolution inepistemology is, in Natorps words, native to Plato (urwchsig,autochthon, pp. VIIIIX).

However, I think that there is a problem with Natorps anti-realistreading, even if we grant that Platos ideas are primarily elements in theaccount of thinking and knowledge. The problem concerns the status ofthinking in Plato. Natorp assumes that thinking in Plato is essentially theactivity of thinking subjects, thinkers: the activity of reasoning about state-

ments and judging statements to be true. This reading ts such passagesas Theaetetus 1847 and 18990, or Sophist 2634. But there are otherpassages where Plato conceives of thinking as subject-less or impersonal,as something like a general principle of intelligence or reason in nature.This is true especially of the concept of nous in Laws 895 ff., and theconcept of psuch in Phaedrus 2456, which the Laws refers back to,can be read in the same way. But if thinking is itself a principle ofreality, Natorps sharp distinction between thinking and reality is ques-

tionable. Natorp would no doubt reply that in making thinking a principleof reality, Plato is merely asserting that reality is intelligible, intelligibleto thinkers engaging in reasoning about statements and judging statementsto be true. This would make the notion of the thinking of thinkers thesource of the notion of a subject-less or impersonal thinking. But I suspectthat Natorp did not take this issue very seriously, which he should havedone. For if thinking is itself an element in reality, Plato may think thatthe thinking of thinkers can grasp reality because reality is in itself intel-


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ligible, rather than conversely. This would be to revert to realism. OrPlato may think that there is a structural identity but no directionof priority between the two kinds of thinking. This would be to argue fora no-priority view. Natorps sharp opposition between thinking and being

may fundamentally distort Plato.

5 Natorps Thesis that Platos Ideas are Laws, not Things, and

Primarily Laws of Thought and Knowledge

The motivation behind Platos theory of ideas, Natorp argues, is primarilyepistemological, not ontological: ideas are objects of thought, thought incontrast to perception. This characterization is so far neutral with regard

to the ontological status of ideas. Plato introduces objects of thoughtbecause he thinks that perception is insufcient for knowledge. He thinksthat perception is insufcient for knowledge, Natorp argues, because hethinks that perception as such cannot attain predicative being, i.e. it cannotjudge what is the case, whether truly or falsely, and judgment is requiredfor knowledge:

Setting aside the function of concepts, what is sensible is purely inde-

terminate, and by its own resources purely indeterminable. . . . Alldetermination is rather the achievement of thought.

(p. 110)

The function of Platos ideas is thus, in Natorps other favourite formula-tion, to render determinate what is in itself indeterminate (die Bestim-mung des in sich Unbestimmten, e.g. p. 207), viz. reality as perceived. It isin this sense that Natorp understands Platos ideas as laws of thought and

knowledge.So far Natorps reading seems to me correct. Certainly a sharp distinc-

tion between judgmental or propositional thinking on the one hand andnon-propositional perception on the other is advocated in Theaetetus 1847,and Natorps appeal to the Philebus and Parmenides for a similar view(p. 110) is worth taking up. Plato, however, offers a further reason whyperception is insufcient for knowledge, which Natorp pays less attentionto, viz. that perception is relative, relative to the perceiver or the context,

while knowledge is free from such relativity (cf. Phaedo 74bc, RepublicV 47680). The relation between the two reasons for thinking that percep-tion is insufcient for knowledge the appeal to the relativity of perceptionand the appeal to the non-propositionality of perception is less than clear,but Plato does appear to think that they are connected. Thus in Phaedo99e, having earlier argued that perception suffers from relativity (74bc),Plato assumes that we must choose between studying things directly percep-tually and studying things through statements or propositions:


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I was afraid I might be completely blinded in my soul, by lookingat objects with my eyes and trying to lay hold of them with each ofmy senses. So I thought I should take refuge in statements (logoi),and study in them the truth of the things that are.

(Phaedo 99e26)

But why cannot we do both at once: search for truth in statements butdo so directly and perceptually? Plato must be assuming what he else-where (Theaetetus 1847) explicitly argues for, viz. that perception as suchis not propositional, that it does not as such have the content that state-ments have.

But is Natorp right to infer from the claim that there is no proposi-

tional structure in perception, but only in thinking, that there is nocorresponding logical structure in reality the logical structure of statesof affairs except by reference to thinking? Natorp thinks that the infer-ence is licensed, and he ascribes it to Plato. Commenting on Phaedo 99100(esp. 99e just quoted), which, like Theaetetus 1847, seems to offer crucialsupport for an anti-realist reading, he writes:

Already in 97b just two ways of proceeding were mentioned, and

now (in 99d) the two ways are contrasted: the attempt to grasp re-alities or facts (pmt or ) directly as given, viz. given insense perceptions, which is the dogmatic way of traditional naturalscience and which left Plato blinded (99e; see also 96c); and thenovel, logical way, which we may simply call the critical way.

(p. 153)

Notable in this otherwise intriguing reading of the second journey

( ~, 99c9d1) is Natorps association of perceptual anti-realism, i.e. the view that there is no propositional structure in perceptionbut only in thinking, with epistemological anti-realism in general, i.e. theview that there is no corresponding logical structure in reality except byreference to thinking. Later, in a chapter addressed to clarifying thevery distinction between epistemological realism and anti-realism (ch. 11:Aristotle and Plato), Natorp defends the equivalent association ofepistemological realism with perceptual realism:

The opposed view [i.e. opposed to critical or epistemologicalidealism] is that objects must, essentially and fundamentally, be givento cognition via sense perception and via further processes origi-nating in sense perception, if anything at all is to be made out aboutobjects with genuinely objective validity.

(p. 386)


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This refers to Aristotles view, explicitly directed against Platos Phaedo,17

that

from perception there comes memory . . . and from memory . . .

experience. . . . And from experience . . . explanatory knowledge[].(Posterior Analytics B 19, 100a39)

I would agree that Aristotles realism about states of affairs, i.e. theview that reality as such and without reference to thinking consists ofparticulars and their properties, is associated with perceptual realism. Thequestion is whether Platos rejection of perceptual realism is associated

with the rejection of realism about states of affairs.Natorps assumption here is that realism about states of affairs, i.e. theview that reality consists of states of affairs quite independently ofthinking, requires a causal account of objective knowledge about statesof affairs, i.e. about how we grasp that something is the case. In otherwords, Natorp thinks that the priority of reality over mind that charac-terizes epistemological realism requires a causal account of objectiveknowledge. But a causal account of objective knowledge is a perceptual

account, perception being simply whatever causal mechanism the causalaccount of knowledge appeals to. In this way Natorp defends the viewthat realism requires perceptual realism. His appeal to Aristotle is helpful,since Aristotles account of perception, as the reception of the form of anobject without its matter (De Anima, e.g. II 5), can be understood asa causal account of direct apprehension of states of affairs, i.e. of whatthings are like and in this sense of their form. Since Plato rejects a percep-tual and causal account of our grasp of states of affairs, he must reject

that reality consists of states of affairs independently of thinking.It seems a moot question whether realism about states of affairs really

requires, as Natorp thinks, a causal account of our apprehension of whatis the case. If we bear in mind Natorps characterization of realism as theview that knowledge is derived from being [being in the sense of statesof affairs, not things] (p. 385), the inference seems plausible forhow could knowledge be derived from being except causally? But I thinkthat Natorp is right that this general characterization of realism is too

unclear to settle its own implications decisively (p. 385). At any rate, itseems natural to think that realism, in the sense of the epistemologicalpriority of reality over mind, is developed through a causal account ofour knowledge of what is the case.

The question, it seems to me, is rather what is involved in rejectingrealism in this sense, i.e. rejecting a causal account of our knowledge ofwhat is the case. Since Plato rejects a causal account of the knowledgeof what is the case, his epistemology is in one sense anti-realist. But what


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does this involve? Natorp is quick to conclude that it involves a reversalof epistemological priority between knowledge and being:

the one view [Platos] is that being is derived from knowledge, the

other [Aristotles] that knowledge is derived from being. (p. 385)

So the alternative to Aristotles causal realism about states of affairs,Natorp thinks, is a Copernican revolution in epistemology.

This seems too quick. There is room for Plato to deny a causal accountof objectivity, and hence to deny that being is epistemologically unquali-edly prior to knowledge and thinking, without therefore reversing the

priority. Plato may think that a subject-less kind of thinking is part ofbeing and that there is a structural identity but no priority between,on the one hand, reality and the subject-less thinking that is part of realityand, on the other hand, the thinking that we engage in as thinking subjects.

It would be a difcult but worthwhile task to examine which way Platosrejection of a causal account of the objectivity of thinking and knowledgetends: towards the view that thinking is epistemologically prior to being ortowards a no-priority view associated with a subject-less conception of

thinking. Natorp emphasizes such passages as Theaetetus 185ff., where cer-tain very general concepts (the koina) seem to be introduced specicallyas conditions of judgment; or the claim in Sophist 25960 that the most gen-eral kinds (the megista gen) and their ability to combine is a condition forthe possibility of statements (logoi) and the search for knowledge(philosophia).18 Natorps claim that Platos most general ideas performa similar function to Kants categories makes plausible sense of suchpassages. Commenting on Sophist 25960 and on the megista gen, he con-

strues these as categories in the Kantian sense, i.e. as conditions forstating and judging:

In general, however, a statement is a combination, hence being [pred-icative being] is the expression in general of such combination. Thismeans that being can be articulated only through the fundamentalkinds of combination, hence predication (the categories), which inturn provide the basis for all specic predications and make such

predications possible.(p. 292)

But other passages suggest that thinking or reason, rather than being theactivity of thinkers that consists in reasoning and judging, hence ratherthan being distinguishable from the reality which is reasoned or judgedabout, is itself a subject-less principle of reality. I earlier referred to Laws895 ff., which also refers back to Phaedrus 2456, for this view. Perhaps


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the most ambiguous source of this view is the Philebus. Natorp assumesthat the account of being in the Philebus, as the unity of peras and apeiria which Natorp unsurprisingly translates as the unity of determinationand indeterminateness (p. 315) provides direct support for the view that

thinking and knowledge is epistemologically prior to being. But Platosnotion of reason and thought here (nous kai phronesis, Philebus 28d9),as the principle of determinate and intelligible being, can instead be under-stood without essential reference to the reasoning and thinking of thinkers,or at least without involving the view that the reasoning and thinking ofthinkers is epistemologically prior to the subject-less reason or thoughtthat is part of being.

Still, I think that Natorp is right that Platos rejection of a causal account

of the objectivity of thinking and knowledge has anti-realist implications even if he gives a too extreme and Kantian account of these. A causalaccount like Aristotles of our cognitive grasp of what is the case is anaccount that allows us to grasp what is the case without relying on explana-tions of why it is the case. The search for explanations, Aristotle thinks,comes in only after weve established what is the case (Posterior Analytics,e.g. II 1, 89b29; II 8, 93a17; II 10, 93b32). This stands in sharp contrast toPlatos view that an adequate explanation is the only criterion of knowledge:

Hypothesizing on each occasion the statement [here: the explana-tory hypothesis] I judge strongest, I put down as true whatever thingsseem to me to accord with it, ... and whatever do not, I put downas not true.

(Phaedo 100a37)

But this issue of whether objects and what they are like can be grasped

directly or can be grasped only within a science is, I think, a good wayof conceiving of the issue between epistemological realism and anti-realism.

The contrast between Aristotle and Plato on this issue is memorablysummed up by Natorp as the contrast between the view that objects andwhat they are like is something directly accessible in knowledge and theview that the grasp of objects and what they are like is an epistemolog-ical and scientic task or problem:

Critical idealism [der Kritizismus] emphasizes that the object ofknowledge is merely an x, i.e. it is always a problem and never adatum. . . . Objects are not so much given, as set as a task.

(p. 386)

Natorp characterizes this scientic task as essentially revisable andopen-ended (science consists in the unlimited advance of a method


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Wissenschaft . . . besteht . . . im unbeschrnkten Fortgang eines Ver-fahrens, p. 221). Aristotelian epistemology, by contrast, seems to implythe possession of unrevisable starting-points, viz. those states of affairsdirectly given in perception which all explanation in the end refers back to.

Finally, Natorp associates the question of whether objects and what theyare like can be grasped directly or only within a science with the ques-tion of whether reality consists of objects or it consists of laws, i.e. thelaws discovered through the search for explanations and explanatoryknowledge through a science. Natorp ascribes to Aristotle the view thatobjects are the ultimate source of laws, on the grounds that Aristotlethinks that objects are the ultimate source of causation:

Aristotle, in contrast to Plato, insists that causes are things, and thatif laws were not based in things, such free-oating laws could notoperate.

(p. 416)

This is how Natorp understands Aristotles familiar charge that Platoignored efcient causation, the causal operation of one singular object onanother. By contrast, Natorp argues, Plato thinks that causes are laws,

not things (p. 416), and that

empirical objects are, from a scientic point of view, analyzed intoan innite plurality of relations [i.e. the relations introduced in scien-tic laws].

(p. 401)

By reducing things to laws Plato can thus respond to Aristotles charge

that the basis of all causation is efcient causation, the causal operationof one singular object on another. It is, once again, Aristotles unques-tioned assumption that nothing which is not substance can be prior to(i.e. more fundamental than) substance (p. 421) that explains his resistenceto Platos purely nomological analysis of causation. And it is in generalthe rejection of the primacy of substance that characterizes Platos ownthought and its fundamental opposition to Aristotle:

According to Plato, the law of logic [i.e. of the logic of predication]is prior to (concrete) being [i.e. substance], is above being. This isthe principle of idealism. Did Aristotle hear nothing of this? It musthave escaped his hearing, being unintelligible to his intellect.

(pp. 4212)

Natorps association of the question of whether objects and what they arelike can be grasped directly or only within a science with the question


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of whether reality consists of objects or laws may seem surprising. But itis well prepared by Natorp through the question of what denitions, thecentral elements in both Platos and Aristotles epistemology, dene. It isfamiliar that, according to Aristotle, what denitions ultimately dene

is objects or kinds of objects, e.g. a man or a horse a this such or b. The linguistic expression of what is dened is thus a subject-expres-sion and an expression that cannot be negated, as opposed to apredicate-expression. But, Natorp argues, Plato thinks that what is denedis a predicate or what is designated by a predicate:

Plato is as well aware as Kant that concepts [Natorp is here thinkingof specic Platonic ideas, the objects of denition] are nothing but

predicates in possible judgments. (p. 80)

It follows, Natorp argues, that objects, the ultimate subjects of predication,are analysable in terms of judgments, i.e. ultimate subjects of predication areas such indeterminate and all determination belongs to predication:

But what are the ultimate subjects? They are as such nothing but

empty place-holders [leere Stellen of predication or determination].(p. 160)

But if, in addition to this predicative analysis of objects, Platos criterionof a true judgment is an adequately explained judgment, and if explana-tion is through laws, objects will ultimately be analysable in terms of laws.Of course, the concept of a law here is not that of the laws of thought ingeneral, but the concept of specic laws discovered by applying the laws

of thought to something by itself indeterminate, e.g. the apeiron of thePhilebus. Such specic laws of nature, as Natorp understands Platos latestthought, would ultimately be expressed in arithmetical formulae.

6 Conclusion

I think that there is much to be said for considering the contrast betweenAristotles and Platos epistemology and metaphysics as a contrast be-

tween realism and anti-realism. This is especially so if the contrast betweenrealism and anti-realism is understood in Natorps less pronouncedlyKantian ways, i.e. through the questions: (a) whether our grasp of whatis the case can be accounted causally, hence perceptually; (b) whetherobjects and what they are like can be grasped directly or only withina science; and (c) whether reality consists of objects or it consists oflaws. However, as a committed Kantian, Natorp goes a step further andseeks in Plato the view that the ultimate source of science and of the laws


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discovered by science lies in the account of thinking and knowledge, thethinking and knowledge of thinking subjects, rather than in reality. Thisseems to me a step too far. For while there are enough passages in Platoto support the view that the function of the most general ideas or kinds

is to account for thinking and knowledge, I suspect that Natorps sharpand characteristically Kantian opposition between thinking and being maywell fundamentally distort Plato.

But I hope to have made a case for thinking that while Berkeleys onto-logical idealism may be absent from Greek philosophy, this is not true ofidealism or anti-realism in general. Natorp, in spite of what may at rstseem an anachronistically Kantian approach, shows that the more moderndebate between epistemological realism and anti-realism, which is as much

alive today as when Natorp wrote and which after all goes back to Kant,can usefully be sought at the centre of Greek philosophy, viz. betweenPlato and Aristotle. Whether or not we agree with Natorps individualconclusions, or with the extent to which he contrasts Plato and Aristotle,I have no doubt that using the debate between epistemological realismand anti-realism to consider Aristotles and Platos epistemology and meta-physics is both valuable and illuminating.

Trinity College, Dublin

Notes

1 I am grateful to The Dublin Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition,and especially to John Dillon, for providing the occasion for working on thisaspect of the reception of Plato the Neokantian reception. I am also gratefulto Werner Beierwattes, David Charles, John Dillon and Dermot Moran forspecic comments on the paper.

2 Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed,Philosophical Review, 91 (1982), pp. 340; quotes from pp. 4 and 8.

3 Critique of Pure Reason, B xiii and xvi, in Kemp Smiths translation.4 See, e.g., P. F. Strawson, Kants New Foundation of Metaphysics, in his Entity

and Identity and Other Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 23243,esp. 2334.

5 The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 1089.6 The full title is Platos Ideenlehre: Eine Einfhrung in den Idealismus. Here

idealism is to be understood as Kantian or transcendental idealism. Thework has recently been reissued in Meiners Philosophische Bibliothek, fromwhich I am quoting (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994). No English translation exists,and the translations provided here of individual passages are my own.

7 See the rst pages of Kant und die Marburger Schule Kant Studien 17(1912).

8 Ibid., p. 202.9 Natorp uses the term logicalin conscious association to the Greek term logos,

which he understands to refer precisely to conceptual thought.10 Ibid., p. 196.11 Ibid., p. 201.


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12 Ibid., p. 208. Whether Kant is committed to non-conceptual content is againdisputable.

13 Ibid., p. 203.14 Ibid., p. 209.15 See Hermann Cohen, Werke, Band 1 (Hildesheim, Zrich, New York: Georg

Olms Verlag, 1987).16 For D. M. Armstrongs realism about states of affairs, see especially his recentA World of States of Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Quines anti-realism about states of affairs, Armstrong laments, had to endin tears (p. 5). Armstrongs realism is expressly Aristotelian (see, e.g., p. 13).Of course, I intend no further analogy between Natorps Plato and Quinethan the view that the notion of states of affairs is dependent on the notionsof thought, knowledge and science.

17 The account of knowledge that Aristotle endorses here, in Posterior AnalyticsB 19, 100a39, is phrased in terms that are meant to recall the account of

knowledge that Plato rejects in Phaedo 96b58.18 See also Parmenides 135c, where ideas are said to be the condition for

discourse (dialegesthai) and the search for knowledge (philosophia).


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