Readings in Platonism

Introductory chapter to Lloyd Gerson's 2020 book, Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. Gerson begins by considering the claim made by (anti-Platonist) philosopher Richard Rorty that, Platonism and philosophy are more or less identical. in unpacking this shocking claim, Gerson discusses what is at stake in it: namely, the question of whether there is a distinctive subject matter of philosophy, or whether naturalism—the view the putative subject matter of philosophy is identical with that of the natural sciences—is true. In this book, Gerson aims to show that the former is the case, that Plato also held this to be true and that he identified the distinctive subject matter of philosophy with the "intelligible", and especially with an "unhypothetical first principle of all" which he called "the Good" or (if Aristotle's testimony is to be trusted) "the One". Gerson will explore the arguments found in the dialogues against the various elements of naturalism (materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism).