Philebus, Laws and Self-Ignorance

Title: Philebus, Laws and Self-Ignorance
Creator: Tarrant, Harold
Relation: Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy p. 223-236
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Resource Type: book chapter
Date: 2019
Description: This chapter distinguishes awareness of one’s ignorance, or “simple” ignorance, from ignorance of that ignorance, or “double” ignorance. The author illustrates how Plato is careful to show that self-ignorance and its corresponding pretense to knowledge isolates the interlocutor in a world of illusions at the same time as it alienates her from herself and others. Spanning dialogues that include, among others, the Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus, the author treats the erotics of both double and simple ignorance. The flight from recognition of ignorance that we find in the former is not merely epistemological but entails a failure to love oneself and others in their erotic complexity. On the other hand, the embrace of ignorance we find in the latter results in a love of self and other as what they are: erotic and ambiguous souls who could just as easily be Typhonic monsters as they could be divine beings.
Subject: ignorance; self-ignorance; Plato; Philebus
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1460353
Identifier: uon:45943
Identifier: ISBN:9781107184466
Language: eng