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GARETH B. MATTHEWSPERPLEXITY IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE, AND TARSKI(Received 7 August 1996)According to both Plato (Theaetetus 155d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics A2 982b14ff ), philosophy begins in wonder. But both Plato
and Aristotle, in the passages cited, link philosophical wonder with
perplexity, or puzzlement. I should myself prefer to say, more simply,
that philosophy begins in perplexity.If Plato and Aristotle are right, philosophical wonder and
perplexity moved Thales to philosophize. But neither Thales nor any
other pre-Socratic philosopher seems to have written anything about
perplexity, or about its role in the genesis of philosophy. Plato was
the first to do that. In Platos early dialogues especially, perplexity
is described, discussed, and linked directly to the pursuit of philosophical inquiry.What happens to perplexity in Plato after those early dialogues,
so aptly called aporetic because they begin and end in perplexity
(apora), is not so obvious. In this paper I want to say a little about the
career of perplexity in Plato and Aristotle and then make a comparison between perplexity in Aristotle and perplexity in a leading
twentieth-century philosopher, Alfred Tarski. My aim is to encourage
more general reflection on the relationship between philosophy and
perplexity, both in ancient times and today.* * *No doubt it is the picture Plato gives us of apora in those early
dialogues, where Socrates reduces his otherwise perfectly articulate
conversation partners to little more than a stammer, that we first think
of when we think of Plato and perplexity. In those aporetic dialogues
Socrates is made to question an otherwise articulate interlocutor in
a way that leaves him bewildered and disoriented. Meno, in the
dialogue named after him, describes the phenomenon this way:Philosophical Studies 85: 213228, 1997.
c[n0d] 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.214 GARETH B. MATTHEWSSocrates, before I even met you I used to hear that you are always in a state
of perplexity and that you bring others to the same state, and now I think you
are bewitching and beguiling me, simply putting me under a spell, so that I am
quite perplexed : : : like the broad torpedo fish : : : [who] makes anyone who comes
close and touches it feel numb, you seem to have had that kind of effect on me, for