Philosophy: Fifteen Years Ago Today

Fifteen years ago today, I put a scholarly paper onto the Internet. Here. It was wonderful to be able to skirt around all the elitist “gatekeepers” who had been keeping me down for years.

For those who have never heard of Plato’s unwritten doctrines, I heard one scholar refer to them as the black hole of Platonic studies. They are views that we know about only via Aristotle and other ancient commentators that seem strange and quite unnecessary. Plato held that there are two basic principles, the One and the Indefinite Dyad, which underlie everything. For those who love Plato’s theory of forms, this view seems a rather ugly addition to what is already perfect, and so people want to deny that Plato actually said this sort of thing. “These views must be an Aristotelian misinterpretation,” they exclaim. Unfortunately, they are too well-attested for that reaction to work.

I feel fortunate that I was able to formulate a solid explanation for what they are all about. My explanation is in fact an explanation of Plato’s entire late period. I claim that in his late period Plato was dealing with a student revolt which was led by his own nephew Speusippus. Speusippus had invented some powerful objections to Plato’s theory of forms (which show up in his dialogue the Parmenides), and as part of his response to these objections, Plato found himself forced to postulate the One and the Indefinite Dyad as a way of countering what Speusippus was saying.

I was gratified when a big-name scholar in Switzerland happened upon my article and said he was very fond of it.