ABSTRACT
The late Richard Rorty famously argued that philosophy is identical with Platonism, broadly conceived; but that, since Platonism is indefensible, one ought to forswear philosophy. In this chapter, I take seriously the claim that Platonism is indeed identical with philosophy, although I try to show that Plato’s conception of philosophy is actually not subject to Rorty’s criticisms. Against the claim of naturalists, including Rorty, I argue that Plato’s greatness lies in his vision that there is a realm of knowledge independent of and irreducible to that of the natural sciences. Since Plato, the history of philosophy consists mainly in varieties of Platonism, misguided attempts of Platonists to make concessions to naturalism, and more recently, attempts by naturalists to make concessions to Platonism, ultimately unsupportable within a naturalist framework.
