?????????? (epilelesthai) and ???? (lethe)

On Plato’s philosophy of forgetting

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00021.8

Keywords:

Plato, Paul Ricoeur, Forgetting, Oblivion, ἐπιλήθομαι, λήθη

Abstract

Scholars H. N. Fowler, R. Waterfield, J. McDowell, D. Davidson and J. M. Cooper translate both ?????????? (epilelesthai) and ???? (lethe) into “forgetting”. Yet it is problematic, as they designate two different meanings of forgetting Only J. C. B. Gosling, in his translation of Philebus, translates ????into “oblivion” and ?????????? into forgetting respectively. However, he does not explain why the difference matters. This paper aims at explaining the ambiguous meaning of forgetting in Meno, Phaedo, Theaetetus and Philebus. The one hand, ?????????? (epilelesthai) means the loss of memory in our ordinary life. On the other hand, ???? (lethe) means the loss of memory before-life or before we are born. I conclude by drawing attention to Paul Ricoeur’s critical examination of Plato’s philosophy of forgetting that he fails to provide an effective resolution to the ordinary forgetting as an attack on the reliability of memory.

DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00021.8

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Author Biography

  • Tang Man-to, PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Vol 5 No 3 and 4 (2017): Issue-September and December

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Published

20-04-2018

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 3 and 4 (2017): Issue-September and December

Section

Philosophy

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Copyright (c) 2018 Tang Man-to

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Date of revision: Creative common license: 05-02-2017
 

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Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Author(s) will retain all the right except commercial and re-publishing rights. In the case of re-publishing, they will have to obtain written permission from the journal. Additional licensing agreements (Creative Commons licenses) grants rights to readers to copy, distribute, display and perform the work as long as you give the original author(s) credit, they can not use the works for commercial purposes and are not allowed to alter, transform, or build upon the work. For any reuse or distribution, readers and users must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holders. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the authors’ rights. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Research Papers published in SOCRATES are licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

How to Cite

?????????? (epilelesthai) and ???? (lethe): On Plato’s philosophy of forgetting. (2018). SOCRATES, 5(3 and 4), 40-57. https://doi.org/10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00021.8