Philosophy as an Ongoing Dialogue with Tradition

Abstract

Since the invention of his name Philosophy was understood as contemplation, as «theory», a knowledge learned through the eyes of the soul. This «visual» conception of philosophical knowledge has its first expression in the Pythagorean «mathesis» and reaches the theory of illumination of the Neoplatonists, having as fundamental milestones of its unfolding among the Greeks the «noûs» of Parmenides and Anaxagoras, the Platonic vision of the Good, which the eye of the soul contemplates, and the «noesis» of the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover.
Together with this tradition which conceives philosophy as a gaze, another one also develops among the Greeks, not less important, but eclipsed by the brilliance of the first one. It is the conception of Philosophy as knowledge learned by the ear, as listening to the word. Here begins the path of Philosophy assumed as a dialogue with a tradition.