World Cup Wishes

From ‘Metamorphoses: Great Minds who Changed their Mind’, a shelved philosophy thesis by Yuval Freed

Only after the death of Plato, his spiritual father, did Aristotle leave the Academy in Athens and move to Asia Minor. And only there (with the confidence that distance brings?) did he dare for the first time to refute the theory of his teacher and master, the theory he had been raised on for twenty years, from the age of seventeen. Plato had erred all along, Aristotle claims. There is no point in talking about abstract ideas we do not have the ability to see or feel. All our attempts to discuss anything beyond our experience are destined to fail. Therefore, philosophy must limit itself to a study of the space accessible to our senses, which, in and of itself, is a broad subject that calls for much deliberation.

‘So farewell to Platonic ideas, for they have no more meaning than singing la la la,’ Aristotle writes. And that sentence is so coarse and resolute that it immediately raises the question: when did that extreme turnabout in his ideas occur? Had the doubt germinated in him during his studies at the Academy, and did he keep silent in order not to disrespect his spiritual father, or was it Plato’s death and Aristotle’s liberation from his great shadow that made the change in his thinking possible? Were there intermediate stages on the road to the great defection, or did Aristotle awaken one morning in his home in the port city of Assos, look at the actual fishing boats and tangible fishing nets and suddenly understand everything?

And another question, to which, of course, there was and never will be a single answer: what would have happened if Plato had lived longer?

Would Aristotle have stood up one evening in the presence of all the students and confronted his spiritual father face to face?