Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants
Plato's Theaetetus and Maritain's Le Philosophie Bergsonienne
Department
Philosophy Department
College
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Date Range
2013-2014
Disciplines
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
This paper draws attention to striking parallels between Socratic arguments against the Protagorean and Heraclitean views of Theaetetus and Theodorus in a long section of Platos Theaetetus, on the one hand, and Maritains arguments against Bergson in chapters 7-9 of his Le Philosophie Bergsonienne on the other. The very epistemological and metaphysical criticisms that Socrates makes of the Protagorean-Heraclitean theories held by Theaetetus and Theodorus--that knowledge consists in perceptual intuition only and that concepts and essential natures constitute a distorting arresting of a vital flux--are analogous to the criticisms Maritain makes of the analogous errors of Bergson. Furthermore, in the Theaetetus Socrates extracts from Theodorus an admission that the errors in intuitionism, in anti-intellectualism, and in the metaphysics of flux bring with them errors in theology. Maritain likewise (especially on pp. 38-42 of the 1947 Preface to the Second Edition of the English translation, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism) shows the way in which Bergsons errors in epistemology and metaphysics align him with certain disordered theological tendencies of Oriental-Indian thought.
Conference Name
37th Annual International Meeting of the American Maritain Association
Conference Location
Providence, Rhode Island
ScholarWorks Citation
Moes, Mark, "Plato's Theaetetus and Maritain's Le Philosophie Bergsonienne" (2014). Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 829.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg/829
