What decides when reason can be dismissed? In misology, it certainly isn't reason itself. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good post. I have been discussing a similar matter with @J, who may find this interesting. Schindler is on my list to read.

If we read Socrates in The Republic as saying that reason must be the ruler of the soul, then when someone is deciding when reason can be dismissed, their soul is not being ruled by reason. For Socrates this is tantamount to a tyranny within the soul.

In a consequentialist era the notion that reason is per se authoritative is elusive. On a Platonic metaphysic of participation, acting reasonably flows from the inherent authority (ex-ousia) of reason, just as warmth flows from the inherent heat of the sun. With consequentialist (and sophistical) thinking a strange reversal occurs, where acting reasonably is valued but reason is not; where the warmth is appreciated but not the sun. Viewing reason as inherently instrumental really is a sort of tyrannical move.

However, in his "Plato's Critique of Impure Reason," D.C Schindler makes a solid argument that these are two sides of the same misological coin. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really? D.C. Schindler? I didn’t realize you were that conservative.

Really? D.C. Schindler? I didn’t realize you were that conservative. — Joshs

Another top-rate contribution from Joshs. :roll:
At least this time your ad hominem doesn't have such elaborate wrapping paper.

Another top-rate contribution from Joshs. :roll:
At least this time your ad hominem doesn't have such elaborate wrapping paper. — Leontiskos

I have an antipathy toward religious philosophy, and others (perhaps yourself?) have an antipathy toward atheistic postmodernism. But, as my posting history will reveal, I’m perfectly happy to get into detailed and respectful discussion on such issues. Otoh, a perusal of your comment history shows a tendency to scurry away from contentious debate while heaping insults on the other party. You haven’t been on this forum for very long. I’ve been here for 6 years, and if you wish to read all of my contributions over that period, you will find nothing that compares to the harshness and direct hostility you have demonstrated toward certain posters. What you will mostly find are over-long posts filled with too much information.

Given my debate history with Count Timothy, he is probably familiar enough with my idiosyncrasies to see my short comment as a provocation, to which he might choose to respond with something like “What do you mean, decidedly non-conservative writers like Ian McGilchrist and John Vervaeke idolize Schindler”. And we could take it from there. I’m not sure why you’re so threatened by me. Many of us here make blunt comments from time to time, but my goal here isnt to alienate, but to clarify my own stance through back and forth argument with others.

I honestly have no clue who he is outside of having had the book recommended to me. The book doesn't seem particularly conservative so far; the argument about misology would seem to apply anywhere on the political spectrum and the discussion of Plato has a lot in common with Robert Wallace, who I wouldn't think is conservative (who knows, maybe he is?).

But if I'm that conservative for reading Schindler, I am equally a qualified liberal for having read Honneth, the heir to that great bastion of "Cultural Marxism" ... the Frankfurt School :scream:.

IDK, Honneth didn't strike me as super liberal. I once saw a book I liked by Leon Kass back to back denounced in reviews as the work of an Bush-II-working-with arch-conservative, and the work of "a denizen of liberal post-modern academia blaspheming the Bible" in back to back comments.

But, as my posting history will reveal, I’m perfectly happy to get into detailed and respectful discussion on such issues. — Joshs

Ad hominem "provocation" would be an odd way to initiate such a thing.

I believe that when someone writes a serious and thoughtful OP the initial posts have a particular responsibility to respond in kind if the thread is to succeed. Ad hominem quips intended to provoke are particularly pernicious at the very early stage of a thread. At best they derail.

I honestly have no clue who he is outside of having had the book recommended to me. The book doesn't seem particularly conservative so far; — Count Timothy von Icarus

To be honest, I had no idea who he was either till you mentioned him, and then I scrambled to find some of his youtube lectures and an article called Perfect Difference: Gender and the Analogy of Being. But he does say that liberalism is the political form of evil, and defends this by arguing that god has already revealed himself in history , so for liberals to deny god is to deny this real history as the foundation of the Good , regardless of their intentions.

It seems to me that equivocating the dogmatic fundamentalist with the radical relativist might be a bit inaccurate. First off, it isn't entirely clear if we are talking about all-encompassing relativism, or
just selective relativism, but I'll assume the latter because of this:

Where reason cannot be trusted, where dogma, or rather power relations or pragmatism must reign over it, is determined by needs, desires, aesthetic sentiment, etc. A good argument is good justification for belief/action... except when it isn't, when it can be dismissed on non-rational grounds.In this way, identity, power, etc. can come to trump argument. What decides when reason can be dismissed? In misology, it certainly isn't reason itself. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The relativist posits a sort of quasi-reasoning that is consistent in support of their denial of any sort of rigorous, reason-based approach to certain moral questions, whereas the fundamentalist cites a holy book with zero epistemic threshold. The relativist at least makes a practical claim in their denial that could indeed be verified: does morality, in this instance, depend entirely upon circumstance, perspective, culture, etc.? This could perhaps be verified, but the truth of the specific claims in the bible cannot.

You might claim that the relativist is wrong in every single instance in which they invoke this, but it is something that can be proven or disproven by something like this:

For act X, if a law Y prohibiting X exists, does Y exist to mediate human power relations, or does it exist for a fundamentally moral reason?

As an axiom, it demonstrates that the relativist is doing some valid reasoning even when they seemingly abandon it.

As I read him, Plato is a relativist. Only not the kind of relativist that Schindler attacks. The argument is simple. Knowledge of ignorance means that moral absolutes are beyond our grasp. In their absence Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle must settle for what on the basis of argument seems true and best to them. In the absence of knowledge we cannot say that absolutes do not exist, but we can recognize that we are not in possession of the them. We remain in the realm of opinion.

The problem of misologic is raised at the center or heart of Plato's Phaedo. Simply put, Socrates wants to provide his friends with arguments to support belief in the immortality of the soul. The arguments fail to accomplish this. Those whose trust in reasoned argument is excessive and unreasonable are shattered. They may become haters of argument because it has failed them.

The cure involves, as the action of the dialogue shows, a shift from logos to mythos. Socrates turns from the problem of sound arguments to the soundness of those who make and judge arguments. Socrates human wisdom, his knowledge of his ignorance, is more than just knowing that he is ignorant. It is knowing how to think and live in ignorance.

To be honest, I had no idea who he was either till you mentioned him, and then I scrambled... — Joshs

:lol:

But he does say that liberalism is the political form of evil, and defends this by arguing that god has already revealed himself in history , so for liberals to deny god is to deny this real history as the foundation of the Good , regardless of their intentions. — Joshs

This is a caricature. Schindler's argument there is two-pronged. The first prong is historical/cultural, and even Nietzsche would agree with it (namely that we cannot pretend to go back to a pre-Christian era). The second prong is that liberalism as Schindler defines it requires a denial of the ontological impact of the Incarnation, and that this is objectively evil (as privation) regardless of any good intentions involved. The second prong requires Christian premises, namely that the Incarnation had an ontological effect, and Schindler is not unclear about this fact.

(Relatedly: no, I don't view you as "a threat".)

In my attempt to make the OP short enough, I may not have explained the phenomena I am getting at. The relativist enters into misogyny when they deny the validity of argument and reason in grounding their opinion. Reduction or elimination vis-á-vis ethics is not necessarily misological, and it's unclear if it can rightly be called relativist either. To say something doesn't really exist, that it is really just some better known thing, is not to say that it is relative.

Someone who says something like, "based on this analysis and these arguments, I think morality reduces to statements of emotion," is not engaged in misology. Misology would enter the picture when the claim is something like "because all debates about morality are actually just power struggles, disputation resolves nothing in ethics. Rather, we must pragmatically pursue what we find good through power, and argument is just a means of shifting power relations." (This is pretty much the position of the Sophists.)

The person who reduces or eliminates ethics isn't really a relativist. They are not saying "what is good depends on power, aesthetic taste, etc." They are making a rationally grounded claim about the content of moral propositions, that statements like "rape is evil," are equivalent with something like "rape is not to my taste and I do not want people to do it for this reason." Good doesn't depend on context in this case, it simply doesn't really exist. But the eliminitivist position is often conflated with the relativist position, particularly because relativists will selectivity employ the language and arguments of the eliminitivist when it fits their needs (misology).

Edit: And note the elimination must narrowly defined what type of "good," turns out to be illusory. If all concepts of "good" turn out to be emotion, then we do end up at misology. For now what makes an argument or any criteria of judgement "good" has had the rug pulled out from under it.

I believe that when someone writes a serious and thoughtful OP the initial posts have a particular responsibility to respond in kind if the thread is to succeed. Ad hominem quips intended to provoke are particularly pernicious at the very early stage of a thread. At best they derail. — Leontiskos

I don’t necessarily disagree. I should have posted the youtube link right away , since I think it is relevant to the OP that Schindler’s arguments are supposed to represent a bulwark against dogmatism, and yet he presumes as fact the appearance of god in the world, and presumes the manner of his appearance. I don’t understand how that isn’t dogmatic.

even Nietzsche would agree with it (namely that we cannot pretend to go back to a pre-Christian era). The second prong is that liberalism as Schindler defines it requires a denial of the ontological impact of the Incarnation, and that this is objectively evil (as privation) regardless of any good intentions involved. The second prong requires Christian premises, namely that the Incarnation had an ontological effect, and Schindler is not unclear about this fact — Leontiskos

All post-Hegelian philosophy recognizes the dependence of contemporary thinking on all that came before. But one can show how modern thought arose out of Christianity and the Greeks without assuming a cumulative progress that subsumingly retains the meanings of that history.

I don’t necessarily disagree. I should have posted the youtube link right away , since I think it is relevant to the OP that Schindler’s arguments are supposed to represent a bulwark against dogmatism, and yet he presumes as fact the appearance of god in the world, and presumes the manner of his appearance. I don’t understand how that isn’t dogmatic. — Joshs

I think this is all wrong, but let's just assume for the sake of argument that D. C. Schindler is a giant hypocrite, and you were able to conclusively learn this by scrambling after short YouTube videos. Who cares? What does it have to do with the arguments of the OP? Is this not more ad hominem? The antipathy towards religion on this forum crosses a line at some point, impeding philosophical discourse.

let's just assume for the sake of argument that D. C. Schindler is a giant hypocrite, and you were able to decide this by scrambling after short YouTube videos. Who cares? What does it have to do with the arguments of the OP? Is this not more ad hominem? — Leontiskos

The argument of the OP rests on an analysis of the weaknesses of pragmatism and discourses of power relations. The claim is made that truth is relative on those occasions when it suits the purposes of those in charge, and is absolute on other occasions. That’s a familiar critique. For instance, Todd May writes:

Despite themselves, Deleuze, Foucault, and Lyotard predicate much of their political work on several intertwined and not very controversial ethical principles. The mistake, made by Deleuze and Foucault in avoiding ethical principles altogether and by Lyotard in trying to avoid universalizing them, is that their avoidance is itself an ethically motivated one. In the conversation cited above, where Deleuze praises Foucault for being the one “to teach us something absolutely fundamental: the indignity of speaking for others,” he is laying out a principle of behavior that it would be unimaginable to assume he does not think ought to bind the behavior of others. In resisting an essentialism about human nature, there may have been a resistance to telling people not only what they want but also what they ought to want.

Where they must form an ethical commitment, and this is a commitment in keeping with poststructuralist political theory, is at the level of practice. Some practices are acceptable, some unacceptable.

I dont agree with this assessment. i think that cultural history develops, such that a parallel progress can be traced in all domains of creativity, from philosophy and science to the arts and ethics. But this is a progress of construction, of invention rather than revelation. Human ethical knowledge , like knowledge in other fields, is the building and transformation of a niche. Through a pragmatic process of reciprocal interaction ( power relations are in fact shared patterns of valuation) we come to learn how to perceive the world through the eyes of the other more and more effectively.

There have to be "reasonable" dogmas, despite there being rare exceptions that are of little use and nothing but irrelevant distraction from a larger truth.

People don't like being tortured and killed, for example. That's a pretty fair tenet that modern law and decency is hinged upon, surely. Sure there's some who might enjoy it, perhaps mentally or physically ill-equipped in an unfortunate way that thankfully most people are not. What of it?

Sure, if you happen to enjoy something 99% of people do not. That's relativism, I suppose?

There's concepts we refer to as realistic, rational, and feasible that cut out the fat so to speak and place us all on as a better path. Wouldn't you agree, @Count Timothy von Icarus?

I dont agree with this assessment. — Joshs

Which assessment in particular?

The argument of the OP rests on an analysis of the weaknesses of pragmatism and discourses of power relations. The claim is made that truth is relative on those occasions when it suits the purposes of those in charge, and is absolute on other occasions.

That's not really it; that would be a much more narrow diagnosis. The argument is that the validity or reason and argument is discarded selectively, and that this is a commonality in unquestioned dogmatism and relativism. It doesn't really matter why it is done so; that will take many forms.



Would it be more accurate to call this fallibalism rather than relativism? The possibility, or even inevitably of error or lack of certainty does not mean that epistemic justification is relative.

One thing to remember is that people are not inherently rational. It takes effort, oftentimes training, and a willingness to be wrong. Most people are rationalizing. In other words, they have an outcome they want to see and create justifications that support the conclusion they want, while only critically critiquing to reject anything which goes against what they want.

Pragmatism and politization are simply avenues where rationalization is more prevalent and accepted by others. I think misology can be a rationalization when what is rational rejects the conclusion that you want. But ultimately what is behind it all is that most people want what they want, and are inclined to reject points that deny that what they want is rational or correct.

The argument is that the validity or reason and argument is discarded selectively, and that this is a commonality in unquestioned dogmatism and relativism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It seems that until 'dogmatism' and 'relativism' are better defined, the claim reduces to something like, "Dogmatists and relativists are irrational in a similar way." The jumping-off point seems to be undergraduates. I do think this is right, for the inability to challenge or question one's own positions tends to involve a distrust of reason, and the belief that reason cannot suffice to establish firm conclusions also involves a distrust of reason. Yet if we are talking about undergraduate types, then we are from the outset restricting ourselves to an investigation of amateurs. Would the points still apply to well-developed thinkers? At the very least I think the inconsistencies would dissolve as we move away from a consideration of amateurs.

One thing to remember is that people are not inherently rational. It takes effort, oftentimes training, and a willingness to be wrong. Most people are rationalizing. In other words, they have an outcome they want to see and create justifications that support the conclusion they want, while only critically critiquing to reject anything which goes against what they want.

This is certainly true, but lack of reason is not the same thing as disrespect for reason or arguing that it is involved in justification for some claims. See below:

Dogmatists and relativists are irrational in a similar way.

This is sort of missing the point. Many people who agree on the authority of reason re claims and justification act irrationally at times. That isn't misology. The similarity between the dogmatist and the relativist lies in their claims that reason and argument simply cannot apply to/judge their claims. For example, argumentation of evolution is simply irrelevant because it must be decided by faith, or argumentation and justification re moral claims is simply irrelevant/lacks any authority because moral claims are decided by power and argument is only relevant as an exercise of power. What the two share is not general "irrationality," but the claim that rationality has no authority or cannot be trusted.

Many influential thinkers have attacked reason: Martin Luther, Rousseau, Hume, etc. That it seems particularly popular to do so writ large now is the relevance of college classes.

This is certainly true, but lack of reason is not the same thing as disrespect for reason or arguing that it is involved in justification for some claims. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To be clear, its not a lack of reason. Its rationalization. Its about constructing some reason to distrust those that would go against what you want. Using some political examples, the "liberal media". Because the liberal media is liberal, they are LIEberal and thus you cannot trust them. They are against conservatism, and sense they lie, you can't trust them so listen to Fox News.

You can explain to a conservative that buys into this why this is a false narrative. They aren't dumb. They just don't CARE. Conservatism is always correct and good, therefore anything which challenges that must be a trick and bad. Your "Rationality" is merely a liberal disguise to trick me into thinking conservatism is wrong.

Rationalizing people will often say they are being rational. They aren't rejecting rationality in their view. My 'common sense' is more rational than the experts. They are rejecting the source as being incapable of being rational, while holding up those who hold conservative ideology as being 'the real rational people'. Reject the source and the facts, and you can win the argument every time.

In short, it is a rationalizing argument to reject rational arguments, because it preserves the intelligence and 'rationality' of one's own argument. Its evil, yes, but it feels good.

I honestly have no clue who he is outside of having had the book recommended to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

D. C. Schindler is professor of metaphysics and anthropology at the John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC. He is the author of eleven books, including Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame Press, 2017).

A Catholic intellectual. It seems to me that many of the prominent advocates of Platonism and traditional philosophy generally are Catholic. This is something I wrestle with, as I'm not Catholic, rather more a lapsed Anglican. But the metaphysics of 'the Good' seems to me to imply a real qualitative dimension, a true good or summum bonum. That will fit naturally with belief in God but rather uneasily with cosmopolitan secularism, I would have thought.

students embrace a sort of all encompassing relativism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I suggest that is because in liberal political theory, the individual conscience is the sole arbiter of value. There is no higher authority in any moral sense. Respect for reason is often associated with the oppressive value structures of colonialism and cultural eurocentrism, deference to 'dead white males'.

What the two share is not general "irrationality," but the claim that rationality has no authority or cannot be trusted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, and I was not saying that the common irrationality is unrelated to misology. I should have used the term misology, but I did specifically speak about "distrust of reason." My question was: does this scale up from undergraduates? Or is it only to be found in amateurs? My suspicion is that misology can be found in developed thinkers, but that the rational inconsistency dissolves as we move away from amateurs. If this is right then misology does not necessarily involve the inconsistencies (e.g. trusting medicine, opposing conservatism, etc.).

Many influential thinkers have attacked reason: Martin Luther, Rousseau, Hume, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is their error the same as the undergraduate's error?

---

Incidentally, you may enjoy the essay/chapter from Peter L. P. Simpson, "On Doing Wrong, Modern-Style," found in his book, Vices, Virtues, and Consequences: Essays in Moral and Political Philosophy. It begins with this same illustration of relativism in the classroom, but moves into moral philosophy, including the ancient view of the common ("shared") good that you speak of elsewhere.

Would it be more accurate to call this fallibalism rather than relativism? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Relativism is the term used in the OP as the opposite of an absolute position.

The problem with the term 'fallibilism' is that it is usually defined in terms of epistemology. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were zetetic skeptics. An examination of opinion.

In liberal political theory, the individual conscience is the sole arbiter of value. — Wayfarer

Hmm, I'm wondering who you have in mind here. If we take John Rawls as a paradigm liberal political philosopher, we certainly don't find him making such claims for conscience, as far as I can tell. Also, we shouldn't oppose duties of conscience to Catholic teaching. Looking at my old adult catechism, I find, from the Second Vatican Council, "Every one of us is bound to obey his conscience." Aquinas evidently agreed, writing that a person is obliged to follow their conscience even when, unknown to them, it is quite mistaken -- "to deny one's conscience is to turn one's back, if not consciously on God Himself, at least on moral authenticity," according to the catechism.

The question is then, How is one's conscience formed? And of course the catechetical Catholic answer will be very different from, say, the existentialists. "The sole arbiter of value," even for Sartre, doesn't come from conscience, but rather from a series of choices which then inform conscience. These choices may be arbitrary or absurd, but if so, it isn't conscience which will tell us so. We need reasoned discussion for that. Or perhaps a Catholic would add -- "and appeal to authority."

A Catholic intellectual. It seems to me that many of the prominent advocates of Platonism and traditional philosophy generally are Catholic. This is something I wrestle with, as I'm not Catholic, rather more a lapsed Anglican. But the metaphysics of 'the Good' seems to me to imply a real qualitative dimension, a true good or summum bonum. That will fit naturally with belief in God but rather uneasily with cosmopolitan secularism, I would have thought.

I think this is partly an accident. There are still a large number of Catholic universities with large philosophy programs, and that's where a lot of this sort of work gets done and where it is more popular/not met with disapproval. So you get a system where Catholics are introduced to it more and where non-Catholics go to Catholic settings to work in the area and become Catholic. Either process tends to make the the area of study more dominated by Catholics. Given trends in Orthodoxy, and podcast guests I've heard, I would imagine we would see a not dissimilar phenomena in Eastern European/Middle Eastern Christian-university scholarship but for the fact that they publish in a plethora of different languages and so end up more divided.

Robert Wallace (at Cornell, a secular land-grant college) hits on some extremely similar themes but doesn't seem to identify with organized religion at all. Indeed, his big point is that organized religion, particularly Christianity tends to make God non-trancendent (pace the Patristics and Medievals).

It seems to me that a major part of what’s going on in the world of “religion” and “spirituality,” in our time, is a sorting out of the issue of what is genuinely transcendent. Much conventional religion seems to be stuck in the habit of conceiving of God as a separate being, despite the fact that when it’s carefully examined, such a being would be finite and thus wouldn’t really transcend the world at all. Plus, it’s hard to know how we would know anything about such a being, which is defined as being both separate from us and inaccessible to our physical senses. In response to these difficulties, more or less clearly understood, many people have ceased to believe in such a being, and ceased to support whole-heartedly the institutions that appear to preach such a being. Thus we have the apparent “secularization” of major parts of (at least) European and North American societies.

Wallace - on his blog

But he identifies a number of religious thinkers with his conception of the truly transcendent and transcendent love/reason tied to the Good. "Plato, Plotinus, St Paul, St Athanasius, St Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, Hegel, Emerson, Whitman, Whitehead, Tillich, Rahner." I would add Merton here, who is probably the biggest English-speaking Catholic intellectual in the past century, and John Paul II, probably the biggest recent Catholic intellectual period (IDK, maybe Edith Stein?)

Some of his key points re Plato and Hegel are quite similar to Schindler it seems though:

Further, in contrast to the presumptuous self-limitation of reason within modernity, Schindler avers that reason is ecstatic, that it is “always out beyond itself” and “always already with the whole.” The result of this ek-stasis is that reason is already intimately related to beings through the intelligibility of the whole; thus, reason is catholic.

Review of Schindler's "The Catholicity of Reason" (small c "catholic" here, not "Roman Catholic.")

But nothing in Schindler's framing really seems to point towards political conservatism or necessarily just Roman Catholicism.

Is their error the same as the undergraduate's error?

Broadly speaking yes, although each thinker has their own unique attack on reason and it comes into their thought in different ways.

I have seen a lot of very flattering analyses of Hume. I don't think I've ever seen one on his moral philosophy that wasn't highly critical. For example:

Hume's answers to these questions [about why to be moral] reveal the underlying weakness of his account.For he tries to conclude in the Treatise that it is to our long­ term advantage to be just, when all that his premises warrant is the younger Rameau's [Diderot] conclusion that it is often to our long-term advantage that people in general should be just.And he has to invoke, to some degree in the Treatise and more strongly in the Enquiry, what he calls 'the communicated passion of sympathy': we find it agreeable that some quality is agreeable to others because we are so constructed that we naturally sym­pathize with those others. The younger Rameau's answer would have been: 'Sometimes we do, sometimes we do not; and when we do not, why should we?'

Once reason is made "a slave of the passions," it can no longer get round the passions and appetites to decide moral issues. Aristotle's idea of the virtues as a habit or skill that can be trained (to some degree) or educated has the weight of common sense and empirical experience behind it. We might have a talent for some virtues, but we also can build on those talents. But if passion comes first, then the idea of discourse in the "good human life," or "the political ideal," loses purchase on its ability to dictate which virtues we should like to develop.

Nietzsche's attack on reason is different, and leads to different problems. In the final book added to the Gay Science in later additions, he is focused on the tyranny of old ideas on us. The rule of reason becomes a sort of tyranny across his work, and there is a great focus on a sort of freedom that must be sought (within the confines of a sort of classical fatalism).

But how might our freedom be properly expressed and executed? Here is where the "no true Nietzschean," problem springs up, for followers on the left and right are sure that the other's moral standpoints are incompatible with Nietzsche, but seem unable to articulate why in any sort of a systematic manner (e.g. "anti-Semitism isn't Nietzschean because he didn't like it.") The separation of reason from the will, and the adoption of Hume's bundle of drives ("congress of souls" in BG&E) makes it unclear exactly who or what is being freed, and how this avoids being just another sort of tyranny, even if it is a temporary one.

The identity movements of the recent epoch run into similar problems. I recall a textbook on psychology that claimed that a focus on quantitative methodology represented "male dominance," and that the sciences as a whole must be more open to qualitative, "female oriented," methods as an equally valid way of knowing. The problem here is not that a greater focus on qualitative methods might not be warranted, it's the grounding of the argument in identity as opposed to reason. For it seems to imply that if we are men, or if the field is dominated by men, that there is in fact no reason to shift to qualitative methods, because each sex has their preferred methodology grounded solely in identity, making both equally valid.

Rawls might be another example. In grounding social morality in the desired of the abstract "rational agent," debates become interminable. We might try to imagine ourselves "behind the viel of ignorance," but we can't actually place ourselves there. Thus, we all come to it with different desires, and since desires determine justice, we still end up with many "justices." The debate then, becomes unending, since reason is only a tool, and everything must circle back to conflicting desires. Argumentation becomes, at best, a power move to try to corral others' desires to our position.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were zetetic skeptics.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle didn't think rational inquiry was useful? Is Plato sceptical of the dialectical having any utility? This would seem strange.

Plato (I wouldn't lump Aristotle in here) does seem to imply at times that words deal with the realm of appearances, but he also seems to allow that they can point to, aid in the remembrance of, knowledge (e.g. the Meno teaching scene). A person must be ruled over by the rational part of the soul to leave the cave, but they can also be assisted in leaving if they are willing. Plato never gets around to an inquiry on semiotics, but I would imagine he would agree with something like the early Augustine, where signs are reminders pointing back to our essential connection with the proper subjects of "knowledge."

I would tend to agree with assessments that the divided line is not a demarcation of a dichotomy, opinion lying discrete from knowledge. Being in Plato is a unity. The appearance is still part of the whole; there is a strong non-dualism in Plato brought out in Plotinus, Eckhart, etc. And this is why we are not cut off completely in a world of appearances. Indeed, the appearance/reality distinction has no content if all we ever can experience/intuit/know is appearance. Then appearance is just reality.

The problem of misologic is raised at the center or heart of Plato's Phaedo. Simply put, Socrates wants to provide his friends with arguments to support belief in the immortality of the soul. The arguments fail to accomplish this. Those whose trust in reasoned argument is excessive and unreasonable are shattered. They may become haters of argument because it has failed them.

The interlude on misology is a warning against abandoning reason when one has discovered that what has seemed to be a good argument turns out to be a bad one. To drive this home, Plato next has Socrates advance three (arguably four) arguments about why the soul is not like a harmony, which are of varying quality.

I don't get how you get a reading out the interlude to the effect of "don't trust reason to much, or be lovers of wisdom, because then you will get let down." It is "if you get let down, don't stop being lovers of reason."

The cure involves, as the action of the dialogue shows, a shift from logos to mythos. Socrates turns from the problem of sound arguments to the soundness of those who make and judge arguments. Socrates human wisdom, his knowledge of his ignorance, is more than just knowing that he is ignorant. It is knowing how to think and live in ignorance.

Plato uses mythos for a number of reasons. At the end of the Republic, it is arguably a nice story for those who failed to grasp the full import of the dialogue. Sometimes he uses it to demonstrate the essentially ecstatic and transcendent nature of reason (the Phaedrus), and sometimes it is as you say, a way around an insoluble problem (the Phaedo).

This move in the Phaedo and other places often is refered to as the "second sailing." Being unable to catch the right "wind" to resolve the appearance/reality distinction and explain the forms, Plato switches to another form of communication. He likens this to how sailors who cannot catch the wind must sometimes pull out the oars.

But Plato seems to catch the wind in The Republic, where this subject is tackled more head on.

To the point, consider the following:

...is the man who holds that there are fair things but doesn’t hold that there is beauty itself and who, if someone leads him to the knowledge of it, isn’t able to follow—is he, in your opinion, living in a dream or is he awake?

Does Plato think it is impossible to learn of beauty itself or for someone to be led to it?

Rawls might be another example. In grounding social morality in the desired of the abstract "rational agent," debates become interminable. We might try to imagine ourselves "behind the viel of ignorance," but we can't actually place ourselves there. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not a Rawlsian all down the line, but I do think you're being unfair here. The veil of ignorance, or the "original position," is a technical contrivance Rawls uses to set a basis for his very complicated discussion. He's well aware that no one actually starts from there, any more than we formally adopt "the social contract." If you want to read some good objections to the original position from a sympathetic philosopher, read Martha Nussbaum's Frontiers of Justice. Her basic criticism is that the conditions Rawls asks us to be ignorant of -- race, class, sex, a particular conception of the good -- may not include some other equally important ones, such as disability or even species.

That was a bit off topic, but my next comment is relevant, I think. You say "debates become interminable" if social morality is based on the prudential desires of abstract rational agents. But one person's "interminable debate" may be another's "ongoing process of communication and refinement of values." It raises the question, Why do we expect rational debate to terminate? Are there in fact instances of this, in philosophy? Might not one of the virtues of rationality be its (perhaps) endless willingness to continue the conversation? When I deny misology and put my trust in reason, I'm also declaring my faith in certain human characteristics and values -- patience, fairness, inclusion, intellectual honesty. Is this model of reason in fact Eurocentric, or patriarchal, or similarly flawed by historicity? That may well be -- but the only way find out is to keep talking about it.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle didn't think rational inquiry was useful? Is Plato sceptical of the dialectical having any utility? This would seem strange. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Both terms 'zetetic' and 'skeptic' originally meant inquiry. It is not skepticism in the modern dogmatic sense, which denies the possibility of knowledge, but rather an acknowledgement that one does not possess knowledge. Hence, to proceed by inquiry, which in large part is dialectical, that is, via argument.

... he also seems to allow that they can point to, aid in the remembrance of, knowledge (e.g. the Meno teaching scene) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Recollection (anamnesis) is a myth. As a reasoned argument it suffers from the problem infinite regress. There must have been some previous life in which one learned what in later lives is recollected. In that case knowledge would not be recollection.

Recollection also plays a part in our life here and now. In the Phaedo Socrates gives the following example:

Well now, you know what happens to lovers, whenever they see a lyre or cloak or anything else their loves are accustomed to use: they recognize the lyre, and they get in their mind, don't they, the form of the boy whose lyre it is? And that is recollection. Likewise, someone seeing Simmias is often reminded of Cebes, and there'd surely be countless other such cases.

(73b-d)

There seems to be no distinction here between recollection and being reminded of something. In the example given recollection is independent of stories of death. Simmias must be reminded of the argument that learning is recollection. If he is to learn that learning is recollection he learns it by being reminded of the story, not by recollecting something from a previous life. As he says:

'I don't doubt it,' said Simmias; 'but I do need to undergo just what the argument is about, to be "reminded".

It should not escape notice that he says "undergo". Accepting the story is more like an indoctrination than simply hearing the story.

A person must be ruled over by the rational part of the soul to leave the cave — Count Timothy von Icarus

Reason functions in the same way in the cave:

And suppose they received certain honours and praises from one another, and there were privileges for whoever discerns the passing shadows most keenly, and is best at remembering which of them usually comes first or last, which are simultaneous, and on that basis is best able to predict what is going to happen next.

(Republic 516c-d)

Reason can rule even for us ignorant cave dwellers who are not ruled by the myth of transcendence.

I'm not a Rawlsian all down the line, but I do think you're being unfair here. The veil of ignorance, or the "original position," is a technical contrivance Rawls uses to set a basis for his very complicated discussion.

I don't see where I stated otherwise. The point is merely that desire drives the ship. What "would we want?" is the framing, not "what should we want?" The relevance of us being unable to abstract ourselves into identical "rational agents," is its implications when desire is driving the ship, not that this somehow ruins the utility of Rawls' thought experiment, nor that Rawls assumes we can really do this (he doesn't). If we could all actually get "behind the viel," then what would be good would simply be "good" in virtue of the fact that this is what people behind the viel want.

But why does the abstract rational agent want the society they want? If it's because of their reason alone, then reason turns out to actually be behind the preferences, and we have gone back in time to a point where it is possible to articulate through reason the grounds for justice and morality. If this desire is unanalyzable, then the fact that we can't actually get behind the viel is quite a problem, for we cannot come to possess this unanalyzable desire.

But one person's "interminable debate" may be another's "ongoing process of communication and refinement of values." It raises the question, Why do we expect rational debate to terminate? Are there in fact instances of this, in philosophy?

This is a fair point. "Interminable," might be the wrong description, although they certainly are interminable. It is more that these debates turn into people talking past one another and splitting off into silos. The defining feature might be politicization, the shift of debate into power struggles, grounded in mutually exclusive presuppositions about the applicability of reason and argument to various subjects of debate.

why does the abstract rational agent want the society they want? — Count Timothy von Icarus

We should probably start a different thread to pursue this. But I think you're right that the liberal/Kantian ethical position begins by refusing to specify morality ("what should I want?") and instead assumes that a just society will make maximal allowance for many ethical points of view and prudential goals. This, then, at a higher level, is "what I should want" -- a contractarian respect for something that looks like the categorical imperative with a dash of tolerance added. And the (perhaps interminable!) debate is about what that maximal allowance should be. Free speech? Sure. Free speech that directly threatens me with death? Surely not. Free speech that promulgates morally obnoxious points of view, according to me? Not so clear . . . European liberal democracy often says no, US Constitution usually says yes. And the conversation goes on.