Sunday, September 6, 2009

On Paragraph 74: fear of error = division between self and cognition = division between cognition and absolute = impossibility of cognizing absolute = impossibility of truth = fear of truth or lazyness that gives up on seeking truth.

I am struck by a parallel between Hegel's argument here and Plato's Meno. Meno argues that if we claim ignorance, we don't know what we are looking for and thus we can't set out in search of it (80d). How will you know you have found it if you don't already know what it is? Socrates responds by talking about the possibility of an immortal soul. If the soul is immortal, then learning may be recollecting knowledge we already have but have forgotten. Socrates notes that whatever the problems with recollection might be, it makes us ready to search, it makes us better and braver while Meno's objection makes us lazy (86b-c).

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure what you are asking. ATM, I prefer the Bartlett translation of the Meno (Cornell).

    ReplyDelete