Per un’archeologia del concettuale: alcune riflessioni su Theaet. 184-187

In this essay, the notions of conceptualism and non-conceptualism are briefly introduced. The former argues that conceptual resources necessary to formulate judgments are already deployed by percep- tion. The latter argues that perceptual experience is rich enough to have a content regardless of one’s conceptual resources. Subsequently, I show that in the interpretation of a fundamental passage of Plato’s Theaetetus (184-187), scholarship has settled on two interpretative options that bear significant similarity to the conceptualist and non-conceptualist theses. In the essay, I offer a new interpretation of the passage, showing that Plato is developing an argument whose philo- sophical significance is much deeper than the content of perception – namely, the independence of reality from perception. Finally, I argue that for Plato reality is connected to thought, and reality’s independence is what makes it possible to formulate judgments about it.