At Quora, someone recently asked me who was the greater influence upon Plato: Socrates or Parmenides?
It is a fascinating question, to which I could only answer with some further related questions, a dash of context, and a joke.
I enjoyed it all so much, though, that I will reproduce it here.
To begin with, there is no good metric of “influence.” You can’t measure influence like inches or Celsius degrees and say X is exercising more of this unidimensional stuff than Y is. Who influenced John Dewey more: Charles Darwin [pictured] or William James?
Except that in the Dewey case we have much more information. We know what Darwin’s views on a wide range of subjects were, and what James’ were, and we can work to understand how Dewey’s thought was formed by each. We don’t depend on Dewey to tell us what James said or thought!
In the Plato analog, though, we do largely depend on Plato to tell us what Socrates said or thought. There are other sources who help at the edges — Aristophanes notably — but without Plato, Socrates would be a very minor figure in 21st century scholarship. Discussion of him would be confined to classicists.
So could we rely on Plato to tell us what Socrates said in a way that could make it clear even in principle that Socrates was less of a mover and shaker for Plato than Parmenides? Even if we did have an operational definition of this “influence” stuff? I’m not sure.
The fact is that Parmenides was an enormous influence. In fact, consider this joke. I won’t source it for you. The five greatest minds of Greek philosophy meet in heaven. Heraclitus says, “Change is the central fact of the world we lived in.” Plato says, “you’re right.” Parmenides said, “Change is a logical impossibility.” Plato, “You’re right.” Socrates, “I know only my own ignorance but … I don’t see how they can both be right.” Plato. “You’re right too!” Thales said to the lot of them, “You’re all wet.”
There is another difficulty in measuring influence. It might appear to exist but not exist or might exist only indirectly. Dewey's writings may appear to show Darwin's influence, but Dewey might not have read Darwin, and the appearance may be coincidental. But, even if he never read Darwin, Darwin's ideas were in the air, so to speak, and might have influenced Dewey indirectly.
ReplyDeleteTrue. At least with Darwin/Dewey we can exclude the possibility that we have the arrow backwards. With contemporaries there is often room for dispute whether, say, an idea common to Moore and to Russell originated with Moore, influenced Russell (perhaps through unrecorded personal conversations on the Quad) or vice versa. Or perhaps they had both had much the same rewarding conversation with Whitehead. With Darwin-to-Dewey, the possibility that Darwin -- who died in 1882 -- was on the receiving side of influence from Dewey, who didn't start making a splash in the world until the turn of the century --can be discounted. But as you imply the possibility that they had common influences can't be. Dewey might have been struck by Malthus' notorious population-growth argument in much the same way Darwin was. With Protagoras and Plato, the situation is much the same.
DeleteI agree with everything you write here, but I wasn't addressing common influences on Darwin and Dewey. I was suggesting that people whom Darwin influenced could have then influenced Dewey. Or people whom Darwin influenced could have influenced others who in turn influenced Dewey; that spells out the meaning of "in the air," I think. Theoretically, it could have occurred even if Dewey had never heard of Darwin.
ReplyDeleteInteresting notion, influence. It is no longer what we were used to. Now, it is better framed as pressure, or, extortion. Because, in a practical sense, that is what it is become. True, money can buy it---making it commodity. But that reduces to extortion in it's most base or elemental sense.
ReplyDeleteInsofar as people need money, are under pressure to acquire it---both extortion AND pressure come to bear on the issue. If influence had any purity of motive (it did), that attached to whatever may have been good for someone, without harming someone else. As children, we were influenced by our parents. That was for our good, in their eyes. It was long ago.
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