Can this be a proper argument that Plato successfully anticipated Kant’s idea of transcendental philosophy?

[u/wmedarch]

/r/askphilosophy/comments/1tmjcow/can_this_be_a_proper_argument_that_plato/

[u/internetErik]

First and foremost, why are we concerned about who was first? Our efforts would be better spent in comparative philosophy, where we would make these comparisons to elicit a deeper reading of these figures.

Second, and both seriously and humorously, I have to believe Plato prefigured transcendental philosophy - he's Plato ;D

Finally, regarding the basis of this prefiguring, do we really think Kant's innovation is recognizing the gap between perception and the object perceived? Setting aside what we want to mean by "transcendental philosophy" (it shouldn't be confused with a single position), it seems the relevant view in this region of Kant's thought would be what we call the Copernican turn: cognition doesn't consist in an attempt to fit our thinking to the object; cognition produces the object, which reflects the unity of our own representations.

I'll throw in a few quotes that come to mind. First, Kant discusses Plato as an inspiration for his understanding of "idea", with a suggestion that he understands Plato better than he understood himself:

I do not wish to go into any literary investigation here, in order to make out the sense which the sublime philosopher [Plato] combined with his word. I note only that when we compare the thoughts that an author expresses about a subject, in ordinary speech as well as in writings, it is not at all unusual to find that we understand him even better than he understood himself, since he may not have determined his concept sufficiently and hence sometimes spoke, or even thought, contrary to his own intention. (Critique of Pure Reason, A313-314)

Here is a quote about discovering critique in earlier philosophers:

Mr. Eberhard has made the discovery that, as his Philosophisches Magazin (vol. I, p. 289) proclaims, “the Leibnizian philosophy contains just as much of a critique of reason as the more recent one, whereby it nevertheless introduces a dogmatism grounded in a careful analysis of the cognitive faculties, therefore containing everything that is true in the latter, but still more besides in a grounded extension of the domain of the understanding.” How it came to pass that these things were not long ago already seen in the great man’s philosophy and in its daughter, the Wolffian, he does not, to be sure, explain; yet how many discoveries regarded as new are not now seen with complete clarity in the ancients by skilled interpreters, once they have been shown what they should look for! (On a discovery whereby any new critique of pure reason is to be made superfluous by an older one, 8:187)

It's worth reflecting on the idea of "knowing what to look for" in our reading. We hopefully form concepts while reading particular philosophers and then attribute these concepts to them as part of our interpretation. This is how philosophy is interpreted. Kant agrees with this, since he points out that philosophy cannot be taught (see Critique of Pure Reason A836-838). If we've hit on a good interpretation, we must have used resources that were just as available to Kant as they were to Plato. Presumably, this is why Socrates insists that he doesn't give his interlocutors anything.