Writing and Communicating Philosophy. Consonances between Plato and Wittgenstein

This article questions some possible consonances between Plato’s and Wittgenstein’s conceptions of writing and communicating philosophy, by adopting the same methodology by Wittgenstein in Philosophische Untersuchungen, that is showing both similarities and differences by means of Übersicht. This method does not presuppose any given criteria of comparison, but by pursuing a synoptic vision it will make such criteria emerge by means of an actual comparison between the two philosophers’ views. Borutti focuses on the main aspects of the Wittgenstenian idea of ‘doing philosophy’ as pursued in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Philosophy is there conceived as an activity, as a work on oneself, and as an overall experience of elucidation through specific figurative forms of argumentation, delimitation and silence. De Luise analyses the complex Platonic conception of communicating philosophical truth as it appears in the Seventh Letter and in Phaedrus. Truth is depicted as a dialogical experience and as a game of producing truth, on the backdrop of the theatrical mimesis of philosophical research and of the topical Platonic theme of writing on the soul. The two authors jointly draw some conclusions firstly about the way in which philosophy as an anti-doctrinal experience might converge with a view which sees it as a work on the soul; and secondly about the significance of the differences between the Wittgensteinian view of a sagen/zeigen (science/philosophy) distinction and the Platonic project of truth as a socially shared good, capable of re-interpreting the knowledge of the ancient masters of truth.