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Dialogue as Monologue
In his discussion of the problematic of Kantian synthetic judgment and the “paradox of pedagogy” found in Plato’s doctrine of anamnesis, as put forward in the Meno, Kojin Karatani makes the following intriguing remarks:
In many courts of law, both opponents must obey a common rule that technically allows the prosecutor and the defense attorney to exchange roles at any time. Those who do not acknowledge and adhere to the legal language game are either ordered out of court or ruled incompetent by the court. In this sort of game, no matter how forcefully or enthusiastically they might oppose one another, neither opponent occupies the position of “the other.” As Rescher notes, this dialogue always has the potential to become a monologue. Indeed, in the works of Aristotle and Hegel, dialectics did become a monologue. And though Plato’s dialogues were written in the form of conversation, finally they, too, must be considered dramatic monologues—as Bahktin pointed out in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Western philosophy thus began as an introspective—that is, monologic—dialogue, or, alternatively, dialogic monologue.
Karatani then goes on to assert that mathematics is privileged because its knowledge goes beyond that of the subjective I of dialogic monologue, a characteristic that finds its expression Plato’s and Euclid’s notion that “only that which survives the process of legal argumentation can be deemed mathematics.”
In this manner, mathematical proof is presumed to be produced by intersubjectivity, that is, by that which lies beyond individual cognition. The true Socratic/Platonic invention
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