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Dossier : L'Empeiria chez Platon

Introduction

Empeiria in Plato’s Dialogues: Empirical experience, evaluative issues
Marion Pollaert
Cet article est une traduction de :
Introduction [fr]

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1This special issue gathers some of the papers presented at the international conference on Experience in Plato, held at the École normale supérieure in Paris on June 14-15, 20241. The event also marked the beginning of a collaboration between the Centre Jean Pépin (UMR 8230, PSL) and the Instituto de Filosofia da Nova in Lisbon.

  • 2 See D. Scott, Recollection and experience: Plato’s theory of learning and its successor, Cambridge, (...)
  • 3 G. Vlastos, “The Role of Observation in Plato’s Conception of Astronomy”, in Studies in Greek Philo (...)

2The notion of experience (empeiria) in Plato has largely been examined as a key point of divergence between Platonic rationalism and the Aristotelian approach, the latter of which gives it a more prominent role2. Plato himself seems to confirm “the anti-empirical strain in his whole philosophy,”3 devoting much of the Gorgias to contrasting τέχνη and ἐμπειρία, which Polus had presented as continuous.

  • 4 Plato, Gorgias 448c4-7, transl. Griffith and Zeyl modified.

There are many crafts (πολλαὶ τέχναι) among men. They have been discovered experimentally (ἐμπείρως ηὑρημέναι), through experiences (ἐκ τῶν ἐμπειριῶν). Experience (ἐμπειρία) makes our times march along the way of craft (πορεύεσθαι κατὰ τέχνην), while lack of experience <makes them march> haphazardly (ἀπειρία δὲ κατὰ τύχην).4

  • 5 Aristote, Met. A 1, 981a3-5 : ὡς φησὶ Πῶλος A; ὀρθῶς λέγων fort. Al. Asc. See, on Polus’ statemen (...)

3Quite tellingly, it is this same Polus whom Aristotle cites approvingly in Book A of the Metaphysics,5 noting that the person of experience may prove more effective than the person of knowledge, since experience (ἐμπειρία) concerns the individual case (καθ' ἕκαστόν), just as action does.

  • 6 981a12-15, transl. Ross slightly modified.

With a view to action (πρὸς μὲν οὖν τὸ πράττειν) experience (ἐμπειρία) seems in no respect inferior to craft (τέχνης), and we even see men of experience (οἱ ἔμπειροι) succeeding more (μᾶλλον ἐπιτυγχάνουσιν) than those who have a definition (λόγον) without experience (ἄνευ τῆς ἐμπειρίας).6

  • 7 F. Möbus, “Socrates on Cookery and Rhetoric”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 107, 1, 2025, (...)

4Plato’s sustained critique of all forms of practical skill that subordinate the primacy of reason suggests reading his philosophy as “anti-empirical,” to borrow Vlastos’ expression. Indeed, whenever knowledge of the cause – the ability to account for a practice or to spell out a rational cognitive norm – gives way to practical effectiveness or pleasure, the skill in question cannot, according to Plato, be considered a true τέχνη. Yet this foundational opposition does not prevent him from recognising the practical value of certain experiences. Recent studies have, accordingly, sought to identify forms of cooking or rhetoric that Plato regards not only as indispensable for the city but also as legitimate and justifiable.7 Such practices are explicitly and consistently subordinated to genuine knowledge. This subordination goes so far that experiential language is used to depict he intellectual “conversion” required in the pursuit of truth.

5Thus, the notion of experience functions less as a strict counterpart to τέχνη – the sole legitimate form of practical skill – than as the locus of an internal debate within the Dialogues. Experience encompasses both the remarkable effectiveness of certain skills – knacks, and above all rhetoric and poetry – whose potential dangers Plato highlights, and the enduring question of the particular, individual application of knowledge that is, by nature, general. This special issue aims to complement the critique of a flawed familiarity with the sensible, often called ἐμπειρία in the Dialogues, with a careful study of the ways in which Plato revalues experience.

6The collection asks whether it is possible to distinguish a “stochastic” practice, termed ἐμπειρία, which relies on empirical generalisations and routine repetitions of phenomenal occurrences without the capacity to articulate an objective standard, from another form of “experience,” also sometimes called ἐμπειρία, which constitutes a necessary competence for practical action and can, in contrast, be objectively accounted for. The volume explores the multiple meanings of experience, paying particular attention to the normative dimension of each assessment, more or less explicit, that Plato makes of it. Experience is not limited to ἐμπειρία and its derivatives but also includes the various πάθη and παθήματα capable of affecting the soul, thus designating lived experiences with cognitive or affective consequences.

7Plato consistently appears to have aimed at criticising the misuses of experience in order to better highlight certain specific forms of experience whose practical utility he affirms. The questions addressed here therefore concern the experiential dimension of intelligible knowledge, Plato’s definition of craft and the arts, the material imperatives that constrain political action, the epistemological and practical challenge of concrete action that meets an objective standard, and, finally, the experience of tragic pleasure.

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8The first contribution, by Marie-Noëlle Ribas, offers a thorough examination of the various occurrences of ἐμπειρία and its derivatives in the dialogues. She shows that experience is not only negatively conceived as the basis for mere opinion in the absence of knowledge. Rather, it becomes a strategic qualifier, a contested marker of legitimacy, while also raising a difficulty for Plato: should the qualification of sensory experience endure – and even extend to denote knowledge – while remaining subordinate to intellectual experience, one must consider what, if anything, it continues to hold of a truly experiential nature when redefined as non-empirical. While ordinary experience remains blind without the guidance of truth, Ribas demonstrates that experience, when correctly directed, can hold cognitive value even if it does not qualify fully as knowledge.

9A central theme emerges: the contrast between technique and experience shows that experience does not coincide with flattery, prompting an inquiry into the exact nature of the experience that remains distinct from it. The experience of truth, non-empirical, stands in contrast to practice-based experience, particularly that shaped by social context, which philosophers are said to lack. Plato defends a structure of subordination: philosophical experience illuminates ordinary or empirical experience, which would otherwise remain blind. Both exist because of the dual nature of the soul. Plato thus acknowledges the practical value of ordinary experience, but it is circumscribed and subordinated to philosophical experience of the Forms.

  • 8 See for instance Phaedrus 266-272.

10Pedro Dotto examines the opposition between τέχνη and ἐμπειρία through the analogy of rhetoric and medicine. The focus is on adapting to particular cases, whether administering a remedy or persuading an audience. Medicine provides a conceptual framework clarifying when rhetoric qualifies as a true art, what Dotto calls “TARC” (the True Art of Rhetoric Claim). He shows that the Gorgias and Phaedrus are aligned on this issue and compares them to the Hippocratic corpus. Understanding Plato’s critique of experience and routine highlights his valuation of the technical schema and the capacity to adapt practice to particular cases. Using the distinction between ἐπιστήμη (theoretical knowledge) and μελέτη (practical training),8 Dotto shows that the gap between theory and practice in philosophical rhetoric does not invalidate its technical character, much like in Hippocratic medicine, where the gap reflects the normative scope of a conceptual programme. The article clarifies what distinguishes true craft from mere routine and raises the question of whether a technique can be axiologically neutral, capable of good or bad ends.

11Marion Pollaert revisits the opposition between routine experience and craft to explore its political significance, focusing on the fifteen years of ἐμπειρία in the guardians’ training (7.539d-540b). Does the ἐμπειρία that qualifies rhetoric as “flattery” allow for another type of experience whose use can be valorised, for example, in forming city leaders? This addresses the practical effectiveness of the Republic’s philosophical curriculum. Whereas Dotto stressed that τέχνη represents the valued opposite of ἐμπειρία, Pollaert shows that certain types of experience, and even associated terms such as στοχάζομαι, can carry positive significance, notwithstanding their pejorative sense in the Gorgias. The guardians’ curriculum serves two goals – training philosophers or educating rulers – producing an oscillation between diachronic (education as domesticating the sensible) and synchronic (curriculum’s purpose as full independence from the sensible) perspectives.

12Pollaert builds on Ribas’ strategic reading: Socrates legitimises Callicles’ critique of the philosopher’s lack of practical ability while contrasting it with a πρᾶξις aligned with intelligible knowledge. Unlike the Theaetetus, what Socrates opposes to Callicles’ ἐμπειρία is not merely theoretical leisure but the figure of the demiurge. Political demiurgy in this reading of the Gorgias and Republic allows for practical skill that, through conformity to an objective model, ensures correctness. Two distinct senses of ἐμπειρία thus coexist.

13Πάθος and πάθημα denote anything affecting the individual and thus qualify as experience. Paulo Lima examines Plato’s engagement with learning through suffering – the tragic πάθει μάθος, paradigmatically in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (v. 177) but traceable to Homer – and examines how Plato questions its psychological translation. Book 10 of the Republic is largely concerned with the relation between tragic passions and knowledge. Plato holds that poets impart no knowledge, and that the passions they represent do not entail the possession of knowledge. Tragic passions nourish the irrational soul and invert causality, subordinating reason and producing injustice. Yet Plato does not entirely deny a link between παθεῖν and μαθεῖν: through educational effort, knowledge results from a certain experience (πάθος) of truth. Suffering corresponds to preliminary activity prior to knowledge and the need to overcome resistance to contemplative pleasure, while the experience of truth is itself purely pleasurable.

14This dossier shows that the notion of experience in Plato cannot be reduced either to mere empirical observation or to a rigid opposition to τέχνη. Rather, it lies at the intersection of epistemological, normative, and practical questions, encompassing intelligible knowledge, the concrete application of skills, the definition of arts and techniques, and the constraints of political action. Without claiming to exhaust these issues, this dossier paves the way for further exploration of the varied and normatively differentiated forms of experience in Platonic thought.

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Notes

1 See https://umr8230.cnrs.fr/colloque-international-empeiriachez-platon/. All participants are gratefully acknowledged; only some of the contributions are included in this issue.

2 See D. Scott, Recollection and experience: Plato’s theory of learning and its successor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 3 and the overall structure of the book; note, however, the more nuanced assessment on p. 90 ; see also C. Balla, “Plato’s Criticism of Empiricism in the Gorgias and in the Phaedrus”, in M. Protopapa, E. Moutsopoulos (eds), Plato: Poet and Philosopher. In memory of Ioannis N. Theodoracopoulos, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Philosophy, Athènes, Academy of Athens, 2013, p. 137-152, especially p. 149, with the qualifications introduced on p. 151 and further refined in “Plato and Aristotle on Experience and Expertise”, Philosophical Inquiry, 25, 3-4, 2003, p. 177-188: 185. See finally M.-N. Ribas, La Querelle de l’expérience : Aristote, Platon, Isocrate, Paris, Garnier, 2019.

3 G. Vlastos, “The Role of Observation in Plato’s Conception of Astronomy”, in Studies in Greek Philosophy, II: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 223-246: 223.

4 Plato, Gorgias 448c4-7, transl. Griffith and Zeyl modified.

5 Aristote, Met. A 1, 981a3-5 : ὡς φησὶ Πῶλος A; ὀρθῶς λέγων fort. Al. Asc. See, on Polus’ statement, R. Renehan, “Polus, Plato, and Aristotle”, Classical Quarterly, 45, i, 1995, p. 68-72. Cf. M. Frede, “Aristotle’s Rationalism”, in M. Frede, G. Striker (eds), Rationality in Greek Thought, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 157-173 : p. 158 on Aristotle’s engagement with medicine and a form of “empiricism”.

6 981a12-15, transl. Ross slightly modified.

7 F. Möbus, “Socrates on Cookery and Rhetoric”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 107, 1, 2025, p. 1-28, or G. R. Carone, “Socratic Rhetoric in the Gorgias”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 35, 2, 2005, p. 221-241.

8 See for instance Phaedrus 266-272.

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Marion Pollaert, « Introduction »Études platoniciennes [En ligne], 20 | 2025, mis en ligne le 27 janvier 2026, consulté le 13 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesplatoniciennes/3655 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15lfr

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Marion Pollaert

Centre Jean Pépin/Ifilnova

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