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In te rn a ti o na l Jo u rn a l o f Ph i lo so p h ic a l S t ud i es Vol . 9 (1 ) , 4 7 6 1 ;

Anti-Realist Interpretations of Plato: Paul Natorp

Vasilis Politis
Abstract
The paper considers Paul Natorps Kantian reading of Platos theory of ideas, as developed in his monumental work, Platos Ideenlehre, eine Einfhrung 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 possibility and nature of thought in particular cognitive and indeed scienti c or explanatory thought and only as a consequence is it a theory about the nature of reality. Natrop thus argues that Platos theory of ideas is at its heart a transcendental theory, and that Platos metaphysics is built on this basis. The paper considers these claims and their textual basis in Plato in some detail, and attempts an initial evaluation of their plausibility as a reading of Plato. I am on the whole sympathetic to Natorps reading, though a proper assessment goes beyond the present paper. The wider interest of this idealist or anti-realist reading of Plato ought to be obvious, especially in view of the commonly accepted assumption these days that both Plato and Aristotle, and indeed the Greeks in general, took realism entirely for granted (see e.g. M. Burnyeat). Natorp argues that this is true of Aristotle, but quite untrue of Plato. But he is quite clear that the idealism 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 trascendental idealism that he ascribes to Plato is, I argue, very different from Kants. Keywords : Natorp, Kant, Neokantianism, transcendental idealism, metaphysics

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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 that all 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 of Kantian idealism, the epistemological thesis that reason has insight only
International Journal of Philosophical Studies ISSN 09672559 print 14664542 online 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09672550010012147

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into that which it produces after a plan of its own and that objects must conform to our knowledge?3 Is this kind of idealism, associated with Kants Copernican revolution in epistemology, equally absent from Greek philosophy? The question is not much discussed today; perhaps it is assumed that there is no idealism of either kind in Greek philosophy. But it 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 deny ontological realism. But epistemological idealism, commonly known as anti-realism, is very much alive, and the different contemporary varieties are arguably traceable to Kant.4 It is such epistemological varieties of idealism that Nagel rejects when he claims that the world is not dependent on our view of it, or any other view: the direction of dependence is the reverse.5 Is such a debate between epistemological realism and idealism at all present in Greek philosophy? In the monumental work Platos Theory of Ideas (1903 and 1921) 6 the Neokantian philosopher Paul Natorp identi ed a debate between epistemological realism and idealism at the heart of Greek philosophy, viz. between Plato and Aristotle. He argued that Platos philosophy is a species of epistemological idealism, directly opposed to Aristotles epistemological realism. Moreover, he thought that Aristotles realist interpretation of Plato is responsible for the traditional but, he argued, mistaken understanding of Platonic essences or ideas, the key elements in Platos epistemology, as substances. Natorps position is undoubtedly extreme, both in the degree to which it likens Platos epistemology to Kants and in the opposition it claims between Plato and Aristotle. Himself a convinced Kantian, Natorp is unconcerned to resist what Burnyeat describes as the standing temptation for philosophers to nd anticipations of their own views in the great thinkers 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 stimulus and occasion to consider whether and how epistemological idealism or antirealism 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 to Hermann Cohen, his friend, mentor and colleague at Marburg, Natorp recounts how his aim has been to develop what he considers Kants fundamental insight, but how at the same time he thinks that this requires one or two radical corrections of Kant. 7 The insight is Kants anti-realism and the transcendental turn, which Natorp sums up as follows: Any relation at all to an object, any concept of an object, hence also of a subject, originates purely in knowledge, according to the law of knowledge; for objects must conform to knowledge, not knowledge 48

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to objects, if a lawlike relation between the two is to become at all intelligible.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 broad sense, an epistemological theory or, as Natorp prefers, a logical theory.9 Natorp sees a stark contrast between this epistemological reading of Kants transcendental idealism and metaphysical or psychological readings, which he rejects.10 He wants to dissociate Kants idealism both from the metaphysical claim that all there is is mind and its contents and from the view, which he calls psychological, that the fundamental contents of mind are non-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 elements, those belonging to sensibility and those belonging to understanding. Such a separation of sensibility (causal receptivity) and understanding (conceptual spontaneity), he argues, is incompatible with anti-realism and the transcendental turn: This [separation] really means wanting to construct knowledge from outside though in fact no standpoint is given or thinkable outside knowledge; it means to let knowledge originate in an apparently transcendent 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 knowledge implies wanting to explain knowledge from outside, i.e. outside the conceptual contents of knowledge, is a dif cult question, as is whether this desire was Kants. What does follow from the rejection of Kants separation between sensibility and understanding is the rejection of the possibility of purely subjective non-conceptual content: there is no such thing as the absolutely subjective content.12 Further, and vital for the viability of Kants epistemology, the rejection of the separation between sensibility and understanding allows Natorp to argue that it is thinking itself that lays down the representations of space and time as requirements for knowledge; hence these have the status of hypotheses, and are as such revisable.13 In this way Natorp can accommodate the possibility of conceiving of space in terms other than Euclidean. Secondly, in direct parting from Kant, Natorp denies that there is a xed number of functions of thought or judgment, or a xed number of categories. Rather, he argues that the unitary nature of thought, to which he remains committed and without which the nature of thought would not be determinable a priori, is compatible with the speci c forms of thought 49

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being capable of inde nite development and revision. 14 This emphasis on the revisability and open-endedness of thought is central in Natorp, and it 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 Theorie der Erfahrung (1871). 15 Cohen denies that Kant separated sensibility from understanding, i.e. that he believed in a separable non-conceptual and purely 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 conceptual] and it can be isolated only scienti cally [i.e. in analysis, but not in reality]. (p. 42) Even more boldly, Form is not so much to be identi ed with our subjectivity, such that content [Materie] would correspond to it as object; rather, both form and content are determinations of appearance. Nowhere is there any mention of real objects which subjectivity is supposed to encounter and receive impressions of. (p. 44) Now, denying that it is possible to separate sensibility and understanding ultimately implies denying any positive epistemological role to Kants notion of things in themselves, i.e. things considered in abstraction from the a priori conditions for our knowledge of things. For, suppose we set aside Kants version of this notion which refers to non-empirical things such as God and the immortal soul. We may set aside this as irrelevant to Kants positive account of our knowledge, since Kant thinks that such non-empirical entities, even if logically possible, are strictly and in principle unknowable to us. What positive epistemological role is left for things in themselves? Only, arguably: to be the cause of our empirical knowledge. But evidently they can have this role only if it is possible to abstract from the a priori conditions of our knowledge while still retaining some notion, however thin, of an object of knowledge. But this we can do only if we can separate the a priori contribution to our knowledge originating in us from the contribution to our knowledge originating causally in things. It is the denial of a possible separation between sensibility and understanding that explains why both Cohen and Natorp have little interest in and patience with Kants notion of things in themselves. There is hardly 50

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any room for this notion in their reconstruction of Kant. Still, while Cohen wants to exculpate Kant from separating sensibility and understanding and from assigning a positive epistemological role to things in themselves, Natorp thinks that we need to submit Kant to important revision and correction 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 decisive break from Aristotles interpretation, which conceives of Platonic ideas as substances, substances separate from perceptible things. Natorp argues that Platonic ideas are not substances at all, whether immanent or transcendent, but laws. Aristotles interpretation is responsible for the tendency to distinguish sharply between Platonic ideas and Socratic essences, the essences sought in the earlier Socratic dialogues. According to Aristotle, Socrates, presumably the Socrates of the early dialogues, did not separate or reify essences, but Plato is guilty of this move, presumably the Plato of the middle dialogues (see Metaphysics A6, 987b). But Natorp argues that Plato never rei ed essences, and that the separation between objects of perception and objects of thought that undoubtedly occurs after the early dialogues (e.g. in Phaedo 74, and 789 Republic V, 47680 and Theaetetus 1847) is epistemological, not ontological. Such separation means that essences cannot be known perceptually in this sense they are objects of thought and not perception. But objects of thought and objects of perception are not two separable sets of objects. This also allows Natorp to argue for a smoother 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 nature or reality but with no essential reference to thinking and knowledge. We may be able to grasp such laws through thinking, but without their function being speci cally logical or epistemological. But Natorp argues that this is the primary function of Platos ideas: to account for thinking and knowledge. 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 or idea that constitutes objects (t e kn ). (p. 50) Natorp thus defends two central theses: (1) Platos ideas, the central elements of his epistemology, are laws, not things; and (2) Platos ideas 51

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are primarily laws of thought and knowledge and only derivatively laws of 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 what view does this ascribe to Plato, and can the view be formulated without the Kantian jargon? Clearly, some kind of dependence of being on thinking is asserted. The formulation in terms of constitution may suggest ontological dependence being is constituted by thinking in the way water is made up of molecules but this is precisely what Natorp does not intend. The dependence is epistemological or logical, not ontological. Natorp provides valuable clari cation of the dependence in pointing out that by being he means not existence or what exists, i.e. things, but predicative being (das Sein der 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 judgment, not perception, can attain being], as always in Platos stricter and 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 or ontological: the being that depends on thinking is not what exists, i.e. things; hence the claim is not that things are mind-dependent. The claim is rather that what is judged to be the case is in a certain sense minddependent. The view that Natorp ascribes to Plato is, then, that there are no states of affairs in reality, except by reference to thinking. The question 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 world is like independently of thinking. The opposite view, which Natorp ascribes to Aristotle, is not that there is an external world, but that this world is made up of states of affairs, viz. the particulars and their properties which together constitute states of affairs, independently of thinking. A comparable modern controversy would not be that between Berkeley and Descartes on the status of objects but, e.g., the controversy between Quine and Armstrong on the status of states of affairs. 16 Natorps clari cation (in the above quotation) avoids the Kantian terminology of constitution and it makes good sense of a particular passage in Plato (Theaetetus 1847). The distinction between existential and predicative 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, 52

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Plato means primarily attaining what is the case. Natorps notion of positing something in thought , despite its Kantian ring, is strictly faithful to Platos account 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, likeness and unlikeness, number) as precisely concepts involved in all judging and as accounting for the possibility of judging. Natorps seemingly sweeping Kantian readings of Plato are on the whole sensitive to individual texts. If there is a textual problem in Natorps approach, it is his less than balanced use of texts that especially lend themselves to an anti-realist reading to draw a broader anti-realist picture of Plato. The epistemological anti-realism that Natorp ascribes to Plato, summed up in the slogan that being is constituted by thinking, is thus best understood as the view that there is no logical or predicative structure in reality independently of thinking, i.e. the logical structure of states of affairs. Such logical structure is only introduced through thinking and predication. In this sense thinking, i.e. judgmental or propositional thinking to which predicative structure is essential, is prior to being, i.e. being primarily in the sense of what is the case. In this way the priority between being in thinking is reversed. What Kant called the Copernican revolution in epistemology is, in Natorps words, native to Plato (urwchsig, autochthon, pp. VIIIIX). However, I think that there is a problem with Natorps anti-realist reading, even if we grant that Platos ideas are primarily elements in the account of thinking and knowledge. The problem concerns the status of thinking in Plato. Natorp assumes that thinking in Plato is essentially the activity of thinking subjects, thinkers: the activity of reasoning about statements and judging statements to be true. This reading ts such passages as Theaetetus 1847 and 18990, or Sophist 2634. But there are other passages 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 the concept 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 of reality, Natorps sharp distinction between thinking and reality is questionable. Natorp would no doubt reply that in making thinking a principle of reality, Plato is merely asserting that reality is intelligible, intelligible to thinkers engaging in reasoning about statements and judging statements to be true. This would make the notion of the thinking of thinkers the source of the notion of a subject-less or impersonal thinking. But I suspect that Natorp did not take this issue very seriously, which he should have done. For if thinking is itself an element in reality, Plato may think that the thinking of thinkers can grasp reality because reality is in itself intel53

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ligible, rather than conversely. This would be to revert to realism. Or Plato may think that there is a structural identity but no direction of priority between the two kinds of thinking. This would be to argue for a 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 primarily epistemological, not ontological: ideas are objects of thought, thought in contrast to perception. This characterization is so far neutral with regard to the ontological status of ideas. Plato introduces objects of thought because he thinks that perception is insuf cient for knowledge. He thinks that perception is insuf cient for knowledge, Natorp argues, because he thinks that perception as such cannot attain predicative being, i.e. it cannot judge what is the case, whether truly or falsely, and judgment is required for knowledge: Setting aside the function of concepts, what is sensible is purely indeterminate, and by its own resources purely indeterminable. . . . All determination is rather the achievement of thought. (p. 110) The function of Platos ideas is thus, in Natorps other favourite formulation, to render determinate what is in itself indeterminate (die Bestimmung des in sich Unbestimmten, e.g. p. 207), viz. reality as perceived. It is in this sense that Natorp understands Platos ideas as laws of thought and knowledge. So far Natorps reading seems to me correct. Certainly a sharp distinction between judgmental or propositional thinking on the one hand and non-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 why perception is insuf cient for knowledge, which Natorp pays less attention to, viz. that perception is relative, relative to the perceiver or the context, while knowledge is free from such relativity (cf. Phaedo 74bc, Republic V 47680). The relation between the two reasons for thinking that perception is insuf cient for knowledge the appeal to the relativity of perception and the appeal to the non-propositionality of perception is less than clear, but Plato does appear to think that they are connected. Thus in Phaedo 99e, having earlier argued that perception suffers from relativity (74bc), Plato assumes that we must choose between studying things directly perceptually and studying things through statements or propositions: 54

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I was afraid I might be completely blinded in my soul, by looking at objects with my eyes and trying to lay hold of them with each of my 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 but do so directly and perceptually? Plato must be assuming what he elsewhere (Theaetetus 1847) explicitly argues for, viz. that perception as such is not propositional, that it does not as such have the content that statements have. But is Natorp right to infer from the claim that there is no propositional structure in perception, but only in thinking, that there is no corresponding logical structure in reality the logical structure of states of affairs except by reference to thinking? Natorp thinks that the inference is licensed, and he ascribes it to Plato. Commenting on Phaedo 99100 (esp. 99e just quoted), which, like Theaetetus 1847, seems to offer crucial support 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 realities or facts (p m t or ) directly as given, viz. given in sense perceptions, which is the dogmatic way of traditional natural science and which left Plato blinded (99e; see also 96c); and the novel, 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 antirealism, i.e. the view that there is no propositional structure in perception but only in thinking, with epistemological anti-realism in general, i.e. the view that there is no corresponding logical structure in reality except by reference to thinking. Later, in a chapter addressed to clarifying the very distinction between epistemological realism and anti-realism (ch. 11: Aristotle and Plato), Natorp defends the equivalent association of epistemological realism with perceptual realism: The opposed view [i.e. opposed to critical or epistemological idealism] is that objects must, essentially and fundamentally, be given to cognition via sense perception and via further processes originating in sense perception, if anything at all is to be made out about objects with genuinely objective validity. (p. 386) 55

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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. the view that reality as such and without reference to thinking consists of particulars and their properties, is associated with perceptual realism. The question 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. the view that reality consists of states of affairs quite independently of thinking, requires a causal account of objective knowledge about states of affairs, i.e. about how we grasp that something is the case. In other words, Natorp thinks that the priority of reality over mind that characterizes epistemological realism requires a causal account of objective knowledge. But a causal account of objective knowledge is a perceptual account, perception being simply whatever causal mechanism the causal account of knowledge appeals to. In this way Natorp defends the view that realism requires perceptual realism. His appeal to Aristotle is helpful, since Aristotles account of perception, as the reception of the form of an object without its matter (De Anima, e.g. II 5), can be understood as a causal account of direct apprehension of states of affairs, i.e. of what things are like and in this sense of their form. Since Plato rejects a perceptual 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 what is the case. If we bear in mind Natorps characterization of realism as the view that knowledge is derived from being [being in the sense of states of affairs, not things] (p. 385), the inference seems plausible for how could knowledge be derived from being except causally? But I think that Natorp is right that this general characterization of realism is too unclear to settle its own implications decisively (p. 385). At any rate, it seems natural to think that realism, in the sense of the epistemological priority of reality over mind, is developed through a causal account of our knowledge of what is the case. The question, it seems to me, is rather what is involved in rejecting realism in this sense, i.e. rejecting a causal account of our knowledge of what is the case. Since Plato rejects a causal account of the knowledge of what is the case, his epistemology is in one sense anti-realist. But what 56

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does this involve? Natorp is quick to conclude that it involves a reversal of 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 account of objectivity, and hence to deny that being is epistemologically unqualiedly prior to knowledge and thinking, without therefore reversing the priority. Plato may think that a subject-less kind of thinking is part of being 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 reality and, on the other hand, the thinking that we engage in as thinking subjects. It would be a dif cult but worthwhile task to examine which way Platos rejection of a causal account of the objectivity of thinking and knowledge tends: towards the view that thinking is epistemologically prior to being or towards a no-priority view associated with a subject-less conception of thinking. Natorp emphasizes such passages as Theaetetus 185ff., where certain very general concepts (the koina) seem to be introduced speci cally as conditions of judgment; or the claim in Sophist 25960 that the most general kinds (the megista gen ) and their ability to combine is a condition for the possibility of statements (logoi) and the search for knowledge (philosophia ).18 Natorps claim that Platos most general ideas perform a similar function to Kants categories makes plausible sense of such passages. Commenting on Sophist 25960 and on the megista gen , he construes these as categories in the Kantian sense, i.e. as conditions for stating and judging: In general, however, a statement is a combination, hence being [predicative being] is the expression in general of such combination. This means that being can be articulated only through the fundamental kinds of combination, hence predication (the categories), which in turn provide the basis for all speci c predications and make such predications possible. (p. 292) But other passages suggest that thinking or reason, rather than being the activity of thinkers that consists in reasoning and judging, hence rather than being distinguishable from the reality which is reasoned or judged about, is itself a subject-less principle of reality. I earlier referred to Laws 895 ff., which also refers back to Phaedrus 2456, for this view. Perhaps 57

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the most ambiguous source of this view is the Philebus. Natorp assumes that the account of being in the Philebus, as the unity of peras and apeiria which Natorp unsurprisingly translates as the unity of determination and indeterminateness (p. 315) provides direct support for the view that thinking and knowledge is epistemologically prior to being. But Platos notion of reason and thought here (nous kai phrone sis, Philebus 28d9), as the principle of determinate and intelligible being, can instead be understood without essential reference to the reasoning and thinking of thinkers, or at least without involving the view that the reasoning and thinking of thinkers is epistemologically prior to the subject-less reason or thought that 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 causal account like Aristotles of our cognitive grasp of what is the case is an account that allows us to grasp what is the case without relying on explanations 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 to Platos view that an adequate explanation is the only criterion of knowledge: Hypothesizing on each occasion the statement [here: the explanatory hypothesis] I judge strongest, I put down as true whatever things seem to me to accord with it, ... and whatever do not, I put down as 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 way of conceiving of the issue between epistemological realism and antirealism. The contrast between Aristotle and Plato on this issue is memorably summed up by Natorp as the contrast between the view that objects and what they are like is something directly accessible in knowledge and the view that the grasp of objects and what they are like is an epistemological and scienti c task or problem: Critical idealism [der Kritizismus] emphasizes that the object of knowledge is merely an x, i.e. it is always a problem and never a datum. . . . Objects are not so much given, as set as a task. (p. 386) Natorp characterizes this scienti c task as essentially revisable and open-ended (science consists in the unlimited advance of a method 58

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Wissenschaft . . . besteht . . . im unbeschrnkten Fortgang eines Verfahrens, p. 221). Aristotelian epistemology, by contrast, seems to imply the possession of unrevisable starting-points, viz. those states of affairs directly given in perception which all explanation in the end refers back to. Finally, Natorp associates the question of whether objects and what they are like can be grasped directly or only within a science with the question of whether reality consists of objects or it consists of laws, i.e. the laws discovered through the search for explanations and explanatory knowledge through a science. Natorp ascribes to Aristotle the view that objects are the ultimate source of laws, on the grounds that Aristotle thinks that objects are the ultimate source of causation: Aristotle, in contrast to Plato, insists that causes are things, and that if laws were not based in things, such free- oating laws could not operate. (p. 416) This is how Natorp understands Aristotles familiar charge that Plato ignored ef cient causation, the causal operation of one singular object on another. By contrast, Natorp argues, Plato thinks that causes are laws, not things (p. 416), and that empirical objects are, from a scienti c point of view, analyzed into an in nite plurality of relations [i.e. the relations introduced in scienti c laws]. (p. 401) By reducing things to laws Plato can thus respond to Aristotles charge that the basis of all causation is ef cient causation, the causal operation of one singular object on another. It is, once again, Aristotles unquestioned assumption that nothing which is not substance can be prior to (i.e. more fundamental than) substance (p. 421) that explains his resistence to Platos purely nomological analysis of causation. And it is in general the rejection of the primacy of substance that characterizes Platos own thought 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 is the principle of idealism. Did Aristotle hear nothing of this? It must have escaped his hearing, being unintelligible to his intellect. (pp. 4212) Natorps association of the question of whether objects and what they are like can be grasped directly or only within a science with the question 59

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of whether reality consists of objects or laws may seem surprising. But it is well prepared by Natorp through the question of what de nitions, the central elements in both Platos and Aristotles epistemology, de ne. It is familiar that, according to Aristotle, what de nitions ultimately de ne is objects or kinds of objects, e.g. a man or a horse a this such or b . The linguistic expression of what is de ned is thus a subject-expression and an expression that cannot be negated, as opposed to a predicate-expression. But, Natorp argues, Plato thinks that what is de ned is a predicate or what is designated by a predicate: Plato is as well aware as Kant that concepts [Natorp is here thinking of speci c Platonic ideas, the objects of de nition] 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 are as 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 criterion of a true judgment is an adequately explained judgment, and if explanation 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 in general, but the concept of speci c laws discovered by applying the laws of thought to something by itself indeterminate, e.g. the apeiron of the Philebus. Such speci c laws of nature, as Natorp understands Platos latest thought, would ultimately be expressed in arithmetical formulae. 6 Conclusion I think that there is much to be said for considering the contrast between Aristotles and Platos epistemology and metaphysics as a contrast between realism and anti-realism. This is especially so if the contrast between realism and anti-realism is understood in Natorps less pronouncedly Kantian ways, i.e. through the questions: (a) whether our grasp of what is the case can be accounted causally, hence perceptually; (b) whether objects and what they are like can be grasped directly or only within a science; and (c) whether reality consists of objects or it consists of laws. However, as a committed Kantian, Natorp goes a step further and seeks in Plato the view that the ultimate source of science and of the laws 60

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discovered by science lies in the account of thinking and knowledge, the thinking and knowledge of thinking subjects, rather than in reality. This seems to me a step too far. For while there are enough passages in Plato to support the view that the function of the most general ideas or kinds is to account for thinking and knowledge, I suspect that Natorps sharp and characteristically Kantian opposition between thinking and being may well fundamentally distort Plato. But I hope to have made a case for thinking that while Berkeleys ontological idealism may be absent from Greek philosophy, this is not true of idealism or anti-realism in general. Natorp, in spite of what may at rst seem an anachronistically Kantian approach, shows that the more modern debate 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. between Plato and Aristotle. Whether or not we agree with Natorps individual conclusions, or with the extent to which he contrasts Plato and Aristotle, I have no doubt that using the debate between epistemological realism and anti-realism to consider Aristotles and Platos epistemology and metaphysics 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 this aspect of the reception of Plato the Neokantian reception. I am also grateful to Werner Beierwattes, David Charles, John Dillon and Dermot Moran for speci c comments on the paper. Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed, Philosophical Review, 91 (1982), pp. 340; quotes from pp. 4 and 8. Critique of Pure Reason, B xiii and xvi, in Kemp Smiths translation. 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. The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 1089. The full title is Platos Ideenlehre: Eine Einfhrung in den Idealismus. Here idealism is to be understood as Kantian or transcendental idealism. The work has recently been reissued in Meiners Philosophische Bibliothek, from which I am quoting (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994). No English translation exists, and the translations provided here of individual passages are my own. See the rst pages of Kant und die Marburger Schule Kant Studien 17 (1912). Ibid., p. 202. Natorp uses the term logical in conscious association to the Greek term logos , which he understands to refer precisely to conceptual thought. Ibid., p. 196. Ibid., p. 201.

2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11

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12 13 14 15 16

17 18

Ibid., p. 208. Whether Kant is committed to non-conceptual content is again disputable. Ibid., p. 203. Ibid., p. 209. See Hermann Cohen, Werke, Band 1 (Hildesheim, Zrich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1987). For D. M. Armstrongs realism about states of affairs, see especially his recent A World of States of Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Quines anti-realism about states of affairs, Armstrong laments, had to end in tears (p. 5). Armstrongs realism is expressly Aristotelian (see, e.g., p. 13). Of course, I intend no further analogy between Natorps Plato and Quine than the view that the notion of states of affairs is dependent on the notions of thought, knowledge and science. The account of knowledge that Aristotle endorses here, in Posterior Analytics B 19, 100a39, is phrased in terms that are meant to recall the account of knowledge that Plato rejects in Phaedo 96b58. 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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