The Crane's Walk

Cover

Download PDF (127.6 KB)
 

Title Page, Copyright Page

Download PDF (36.8 KB)
 

Contents

Download PDF (28.0 KB)
pp. vii-viii

Preface

Download PDF (25.8 KB)
pp. ix-

This is a book about establishing truth by a type of risk-taking, and the relation of that process to the nature of truth, to being one’s self, and to living responsibly in a pluralistic society. I say ‘‘establishing truth’’ and not ‘‘knowledge,’’ since I discuss truth not only as a property of knowledge but...

Acknowledgments

Download PDF (36.3 KB)
pp. xi-

Introduction: Understandings of Plato and a Feature of Truth-Seeking Thought

Download PDF (94.0 KB)
pp. 1-18

To try to understand the nature of truth might seem a very arrogant undertaking— and in an important sense, it is. But while not all of us try to understand the nature of truth, we all live as though we have already succeeded in understanding it...

Part I: Ideas of Truth and Knowledge

Download PDF (27.7 KB)
pp. 19-114

Introductory: Internal and External Connections

Download PDF (42.5 KB)
pp. 21-25

A very good way to read Plato is, perhaps, the way Jacob Klein stunningly exemplifies.¹ He reads each dialogue as it is presented to us by Plato, and pauses at each ambiguity to identify the different and often incompatible ways of understanding statements...

Idea 1: Artificiality and Nature (Sometimes Being Is Something Else)

Download PDF (63.8 KB)
pp. 26-36

For the presentation of this and the first few basic ideas, I must ask the reader’s indulgence. Aside from the already provisional nature of Part I with respect to Plato’s work, the initial discussion of the first few ideas must necessarily be incomplete...

Idea 2: Knowledge as Intervention: Difficulties and Solutions

Download PDF (81.2 KB)
pp. 37-52

The second idea I want to discuss as basic to Plato involves the relation between two properties or dimensions of knowledge. First, there is knowledge as true description, or an equivalent to true description, of what it is knowledge of. Second, there...

Idea 3: A Philosophical Rhetoric

Download PDF (41.6 KB)
pp. 53-57

The third general idea I believe is basic to Plato concerns the nature of a philosophical rhetoric. All the ways of maintaining descriptive truth through interventive truth have to do with the presentation of truth or knowledge, including its presentation to oneself...

Idea 4: Knowledge as Intervention: Advantages

Download PDF (57.9 KB)
pp. 58-67

First, given that truth and having knowledge themselves have effects, knowledge has practical value even before its applications to specific activities. The most purely theoretical knowledge already is concretely effective just in being what it is...

Idea 5: The Variegated Texture of Truth

Download PDF (71.7 KB)
pp. 68-78

The fifth idea I believe is basic to Plato concerns the nature of truth as a whole, truth considered in general. As I discussed in Idea 2 and Idea 3, if one takes into account the truth of truth itself, the self-incompatibility and self-externality of truth emerge...

Idea 6: The Artificiality of Rigorous Thought and the Artificial Dimensions of Reality

Download PDF (71.5 KB)
pp. 79-89

The sixth idea I want to discuss as basic to Plato is that the more rigorous thought is, the more artificial it is.¹ That is, it is more redundant, adds less with respect to the truth of its subject matter, and to that degree is an unnecessary, artificial addition to what is naturally...

Idea 7: The Risk of Rigorous Thought

Download PDF (41.0 KB)
pp. 90-94

The seventh idea basic to Plato concerns the risk dimension of establishing truth. Because the initial thing to be explained gives the measure for the explaining principles and factors, as I discussed in Idea 6, one can find truth only after encountering the things...

Idea 8: Mixture and Purity

Download PDF (104.7 KB)
pp. 95-114

The eighth idea I believe is basic to Plato concerns the importance of the confused mixture of considerations, meanings, dimensions, characteristics, and viewpoints in which thinking (and acting) begins. In Idea 6 I argued that rigorous thought is artificial...

Part II: Truth and Love

Download PDF (28.4 KB)
pp. 115-

1. What Plato Is About: An Overview

Download PDF (138.8 KB)
pp. 117-145

I argued in Part I that what Plato’s works are about is not simply a content we can describe, but also involves an interventive dimension that we realize (in both senses of the word) by our own thinking, actions, and attitudes. And this interventive dimension will sometimes rightly falsify...

2: Charmides: Lust, Love, and the Problem of Knowledge

Download PDF (144.6 KB)
pp. 146-176

In this chapter I look at the whole of Plato’s Charmides. In the next chapter I explore some details of the overall structure of the argument of the Republic, and in Chapter 4, I look similarly at the trilogy of dialogues consisting of the...

3. Republic: Justice, Knowledge, and the Problem of Love

Download PDF (147.3 KB)
pp. 177-207

In this chapter, I discuss some details of the overall structure of the argument of the Republic. Like the Theaetetus, which I discuss in Chapter 4, this dialogue is widely regarded as written in Plato’s ‘‘middle’’ period. Together with the...

4. Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman: The Tragicomedy of Knowledge, Reality, and Responsible Conduct

Download PDF (135.1 KB)
pp. 208-235

In this chapter I explore some details of the general structure of the arguments presented in the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman.¹ In doing so, I leave out a great deal that is both rich and relevant in these dialogues, but the more specific focus should...

Conclusion: The Unevenly Even Consistency of Truth

Download PDF (62.2 KB)
pp. 236-245

In his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle argues that knowledge is of universals, and therefore cannot be gained through sense perception: ‘‘Nor can one know [a thing] through sensation. . . . [S]ince demonstrations are universal, and since these...

Notes

Download PDF (398.6 KB)
pp. 247-332

Bibliography

Download PDF (87.3 KB)
pp. 333-347

Index

Download PDF (77.0 KB)
pp. 349-359