The necessary aesthetic dimension of epistemology: Plato's Theaetetus

Theaetetus is an aporetic dialogue.  There is no final answer given to the question "What is knowledge?"  Although it seems that knowledge must be justified belief plus an account, none of the accounts of account pass muster.   People generally assume that the answer is to be found either in (1) the notion of apprehension of the Forms as suggested in the Republic and other dialogues, or (2) the process of division in terms of species and genera described in later dialogues such as the Sophist, Philebus and Statesman, or (3) some sort of causal explanation as suggested in the Phaedo.   I want to suggest that there is internal evidence within the Theaetetus for another solution.  

However let's begin outside the Theaetetus with what we might think is required for a knowledge that is deep.  Deep knowledge in our culture is often referred to as wisdom.  We will distinguish here between having wisdom in general and having wisdom in something.  We will deal with wisdom in general later.  To have wisdom in something it is not sufficient just to be able to name all of the parts or even to give a definition of a thing of that sort.  Deep knowledge requires being able to make predictions in that domain and being able to solve problems.  Deep knowledge of car mechanics would require that we know about the parts and how they function in relation to each other.  An even deeper knowledge of car mechanics would require knowledge of how cars respond to surrounding conditions, for example driver handling, road conditions and weather.  Deep knowledge requires knowing something as an organic whole AND knowing how this thing functions in larger wholes to which it belongs.   If we are trying to understand a car it is not sufficient just to know the definition of "car" and whether this car meets this definition. Nor is it sufficient to know this plus knowing all of the car's parts or even knowing all of the cars parts and their functional relations with each other.  

Deep knowledge that is wisdom also requires contextualizing ones knowledge within the wider domain of culture and life itself.  I person could have deep knowledge of torture on one level, i.e. in knowing the techniques, how to get confessions, etc., but fail to recognize the ultimate inability to synthesize this practice into the operations of a good society.  So even an expert in torture would fail to have wisdom in the wider sense.  

All of this I think, so far, is implicit in Plato.  Another problem however is one that he raises and never adequately addresses.  It is the problem of knowing particulars, for example knowing a particular person, say the person Theaetetus.  (I am thinking of 208d-210b)  To really know a person, let us hypothesize, is to know his or her essence.  But Plato never talks about essences of particulars.  This is a deep problem for Plato nonetheless.  The philosopher-king, as described in the Republic, should be able to apply the knowledge he has gained from leaving the cave and perceiving the Forms to the world.  But this requires being able to see, for example, the Good, in particulars.  

The problem is that in order to really see the Good as it is present in the particular one must not only know the Good but also know the particular, and to know the particular is to know that which makes it unique, what distinguishes it from every other particular.  The philosopher-king will not be able to do his job unless he is able to to do this.  Similarly, following the Phaedrus, the rhetorician needs to be able to know his or particular audience in order to fit argument to audience.   It helps to break possible audiences into types.  But, as we are finding today with medicine, an individual-based approach has its own advantages.  Moreover, the relationship between the Lover and the Beloved, or between the wise Teacher and his Student, is one that requires awareness of the particular.  Socrates himself in the Theaetetus recognizes this as part of the role of the philosophical midwife:  to deal with the particular idea that the subject gives birth to, and to match the particular student with his most appropriate teacher.   

This is where aesthetics comes in, although in a way that, at first seems not to much involve the arts.  (Later I will point out that it does very much involve them.)  Two points need to be made.  First, Plato seems on first sight to be the great anti-aesthetic philosopher.  For example in the Republic he attacks lovers of sights and sounds.  He consistently attacks most of the arts, for example in book X of the Republic.  And yet aesthetics does play an important role in Plato, mainly by way of his erotics.  In Diotima's theory of love as set forth in the Symposium Diotima requires that the philosopher begin with love of a particular body.  This is followed by love a particular soul.  Now it may be true that all of this is forgotten when one gets to beauty itself.  But also remember that the process of moving up the ladder, as also reiterated in the Phaedrus through the allegory of the wings, requires both the Lover and the Beloved.  They stimulate each other through appreciation of the beauty of the Beloved and the reflection of that in the Lover.  They also stimulate each other through their shared discourses about virtue, i.e. about the excellences of things   Plato's system just does not work without appreciation of beauty in particulars.  Even when the Lover perceives the vast sea of beauty he perceives this, presumably, as a sea of particular things that are beautiful.   

The Theaetetus starts off with questioning whether knowledge is perception.  The term translated by "perception" is "aisthesis" from which we get the term aesthetics.   This path to knowledge is ultimately rejected.  But one has to wonder whether Plato is fully behind this rejection.  Some of the arguments are just too quick.  Perhaps he believes that perception does play an essential role in knowledge even though it can never be the whole story.  

Moreover, when Plato describes, in the famous interlude, the philosopher as someone who, like Thales, just does not know where he is going, one thinks that this is precisely not the sort of person one would want for a philosopher-king.  How could Plato be serious about the philosopher as described by Socrates in the interlude?  This "philosopher" is incapable of handling himself in court or in the political realm.  This would not be a person to make the pilot of the ship of state.  There must be some irony here.

So, cutting to the quick, Platonic interpretation aside, here is my take on deep knowledge that can be called wisdom.  Such knowledge is justified truth belief where the justification requires not only definition, classification, predictability, taking into account functional relations between parts, taking into account relations between the object known and surrounding context, but also knowledge of the essences of particulars, a kind of knowledge which is essentially aesthetic.  

Earlier I suggested that the arts do not play a role in this.  But in fact they do.  Who are the experts in aesthetic cognition (a term first developed by the originator of aesthetics, Baumgarten)?  They are the artists.  Sophocles, a great artist, focuses not only on Oedipus as representing man but also as a particular person.  Ironically, this works best for us in the audience because we too are particular humans as well as being human.  Paying attention to the particular requires paying attention to sensual characteristics, i.e. the particular nature of Oedipus who does particular things that can be seen and recounted, for example putting out his eyes.   Art engages us in the universal in the particular, and this distinguishes art from philosophy and science.  

Wisdom goes beyond philosophy and science to gives us also knowledge of the universal in the particular.  It has, therefore, a deeply practical or pragmatic dimension.  Again, the philosopher- king will only be of use if he is able to perceive the Good as manifested in the particular thing and this requires knowing the particular thing.   In short, wisdom requires synthesis of Art and Science, neither, by itself, being sufficient.

All of this is inspired by something said by Socrates as the end of the dialogue at 208d to 209d.  Notice that we return here to a point at the very beginning of the dialogue which, in fact. did refer briefly to a visual art, and, in fact, refers first to music and then to visual art: "If you and I had each had a lyre, and Theodorus had told us that they were both similarly tuned, should we have taken his word for it straightaway?  Or should we have tried to find out if he was speaking with any expert knowledge of music?"  (144e  Levett and Burnyeat).  If then we are interested in faces being alike, for example Theaetetus and Socrates, we should go to someone with knowledge of drawing.  And Theodorus is no artist, he is a Geometer.  (145a)  One would think that, on some accounts of Plato, Theodorus, being a Geometer, would be given some priority over the artist, for the Geometer has a better understanding of circles than a drawer of circles.   But this is not the case.  Somehow, the imitator of the bed who draws the bed, the very person who is degraded in the Republic, at last gains some respect here. 

So, now at the end of the end of the dialogue we have a paradox. As Socrates puts it, "if you get hold of the difference that distinguishes a thing from everything else, then, so some people say, you will have got an account of it."  Yet "so long as it is some common feature that you grasp, your account will be about all those things which have this in common."  (208d)  This poses, I believe, a deep problem with the theory that knowledge is true belief plus an account in terms the Forms.   An account of the difference that marks out the uniqueness of an individual like Theaetetus should be something that is ineffable:  it must not be in language since language always deals with the common.  Or, alternatively, it can be in language, but language understood as being so flexible that the meaning of a word can be different in every case in which it is used. (I think this is the better option.)

Socrates' problem with this account of account is "how...did it come about that you were the object of my judgment and nobody else?"  (209b1)  Even when we mention the very visual characteristics that Theaetetus shared with Socrates, snub nose and prominent eyes, we have not distinguished him from everyone else because we have not distinguished him from Socrates.  So Socrates asks Theaetetus, "Shall I even then be judging you any more than myself or anyone who is like that?"   (209c1)  

Then Socrates says ""It will not...be Theaetetus who is judged in my mind until this snub-nosedness of yours has left imprinted and established in me a record that is different in some way from the other snub-nosednesses I have seen...."  (209c4)  "and this will remind me, if I meet you tomorrow, and make me judge correctly about you," i.e. that you are indeed Theaetetus.  (209c6)   Isn't it interesting that this sort of talk takes us back to the discussions of the wax and aviary analogies which were brought up in relation to the issue of memory which was itself brought up in response to the defense of the perception theory of knowledge, that perception includes not only immediate perception but also remembered perceptions?  The aesthetic theory of knowledge had been rejected, but now it comes back when talking about an account, and most importantly when talking about the last and therefore most viable account of account found at the end of the dialogue.  

Yet Socrates draws out the argument in a different direction, saying, "then correct judgment must be concerned with differentness of what it is about," which leads to the idea that in correct judgment we already have an idea of how a thing differs from other things and so we do not need an addition of an account in terms of knowledge of differences.  And if adding an account means getting to know the differences, not merely judging them correctly, then we are absurdly defining knowledge in terms of knowledge.  And that is the end of the dialogue.

But what I have concluded is that there is an essential aesthetic component to knowledge, an aesthetic component which also contains an erotic component, and thus is essentially connected both to the love of beauty and to loving relations between humans.  That is, I do not think Plato's whole story about knowledge can be told (a story which I find pretty close to being correct) unless the erotic and the epistemological dialogues are synthesized. 

Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art in a nutshell

But how does all of this sum up, students often ask.  Here goes an attempt.  (Whatever I will say here will probably seem like an oversimplification or distortion to someone.)   For Heidegger the essence of art (great art is all he is interested in) is that it reveals truth.  But truth is not scientific or science-like in this case:  it is Being coming into unconcealment. But what is "Being"?  It is the inner meaning of things.  It is what we are no longer good at listening to.  It can be seen as the inner essence of things, if we understand essence in a much more dynamic and historically embedded way than allowed by Plato and Aristotle.  Heidegger is an atheist, but the most religious atheist I know.  In this regard he is somewhat like a Zen Buddhist who tries to get us to attend to things without presuppositions.  

In order to understand what art is we need to understand that it exists and thrives in an dynamic relation between artist, art object, and art (as in, the artworld) itself.  Heidegger's approach to understanding art, as with everything else, is both phenomenological and existential.  The phenomenological part is that he attempts to understand the essence (or, rather, the origin, the dynamic emerging) of something by way of a certain kind of observation and consequent description (phenomenological description.)  By doing this he interestingly arrives at a similar place to Dewey's.  Both philosophers believe that one should start with experience, and both understand experience as something that is rich and deep, not as a mere collection of data. To understand art, we have to start with our experience of art, but also with the experience of the artist, since it is the artist who experiences the creative process and gives rise to the product which we then experience.

So Heidegger looks at the question "what is art?" and asks whether this can't be understood in a simple way, that each art work is a thing, and art is the collection of all of these things.  But this does not capture the dynamic nature of art.  He then considers what a thing is.  

This is where his philosophical discussion of art gets deep.  There is a traditional notion of a thing which understands things as if they were pieces of equipment, for example a hammer or a shoe.  A traditional view of things is that they are just examples of form applied to matter.  But if you just attend to the thingly nature of a thing this idea begins to dissolve.  That is, if you look at Chartres Cathedral and really see that it is made out of stone you also see that this stone is not mere stone:  it itself vibrates with meaning.  You become more aware, in the case of art, of the medium.  But even afterwards, when looking at stones in nature, you become more aware of the way in which the stones themselves can vibrate with meaning.  Back to the work.  You notice the stonely nature of a work of architecture made out of stone.  

So there is a view of art which says that it is just a physical thing with an added symbolic dimension, the symbolic dimension being the real meaning of the work.  Collingwood seems to have had a view like that.  You could say that Danto held this view as well.  So it is a prominent view even today.  Heidegger rejects it not because he thinks that the work is all the material thing or that he thinks it is all the meaning symbolized:  rather he seeks to deconstruct or dissolve the very notion of thing as matter shaped by form, i.e. where the two are radically distinct.  

So he uses the example of Van Gogh's painting of shoes to show that the thingly nature of a thing is not at all just the material side of a thing.  In describing Van Gogh's painting Heidegger seems at first to be engaging in a sort of wool-gathering, as though he were imagining a particularly tough life of a peasant woman who may have worn these shoes.  What he is actually doing is recognizing (much as Schopenhauer does when talking about the capacities of the artistic genius when observation a physical thing) that the artist is able to see deeply, in an existentialist sense, into the piece of equipment he is depicting, i.e. the shoes.  By the artist looking closely at the equipment he sees it in the context of its world, the world of the peasant woman who uses them.  And by us looking closely that a painting of this we too can see this world.   

Heidegger does not mention this, but we also see ourselves into this world, as we share certain fundamental existential realities with the peasant woman:  we are all beings heading to our deaths, and this is part of the way we experience the world.  You cannot see a painting of worn shoes except by thinking of them as things worn hard by a person who exists in her own phenomenological space. The point is that the shoes do not symbolize something other than themselves.  Rather this is their inner being, i.e. as present in the world of the peasant woman, i.e. as a window to that world.  Nor does the painting symbolize something other than itself:  it is in seeing the thingly nature of the painting that we see Being, that Being comes into unconcealment.  

So what is the relevant of all of this to us in the 21st. century?  We are surrounded by things but we do not notice the thingly nature of these things, nor do we notice the equipmental nature of equipment, i.e. what Heidegger calls reliability.  We are surrounded by things that have for us, usually, a kind of boring usualness.  Life, as a result, seems meaningless.  We the purchase more things to fill in the gap.  All we get is formed matter, matter that itself is inanimate and which has its meaning only by having form imposed on it.  Primitive peoples perhaps do not experience the world in this way, but we postmoderns are alienated from things, as we are from people.  For we also treat people as things; not as things ought to be treated, but as mere things.  Just as a work of art is not a physical object with a meaning appended so too a person is not a physical body with a soul appended.  This view of artworks and persons distorts both the physical side and the spiritual side.  Again, these two sides need to be dissolved together.

When Being shines forth in a thing then its Thingly nature shines forth, and this means that what Heidegger calls "reliability" shines forth.  The funny thing about this word "reliability" is that it means something quite different from what you would think it means:  the reliability that shines forth is the essentiality of the thing, or better the Being in it coming to unconcealment.  This is why it shimmers, it shimmers with Being.  Art then gives life meaning by bringing us back to the point where we can see that the equipmental natura of equipment, the thingly nature of a thing, and the workly nature of a work, are essentially the same.  You cannot reduce the work to the thing when the thing is taken as a mere thing, but then if you see the thing as something that manifests a world while at the same time doing through through its materials, through its medium, then Being comes forth.

So that's the theory in a nutshell.