Plato and McLuhan: Truth and the Medium
In Understanding Media, McLuhan makes the case that the medium contains as much meaning as the content which the medium conveys. In a sense, McLuhan breaks deconstructs the process of communication to show that messages are not inseparable from the medium used to transfer them. Plato suggests however that messages are distinct from a medium in the sense that they relate to or do not relate to objective truth. McLuhan's focus is not on truth, but rather on the meaning of the medium used to convey ideas (whether those ideas are concerning truth is irrelevant). This paper will show how Plato's message relates to McLuhan's in the sense that the text which contains the Platonic philosophy is related to how the message is perceived and thus impacts the acceptance of that message. This knowledge of the medium bears on the overall idea of innatism by giving it substance (visual text) and validation (through the Socratic example of dialogue).
The written message in the text Phaedrus is essentially that all knowledge comes from a process of recollection -- which suggests that "truth" is innate -- that it is written on our souls or in our minds when we are created, and that when we recognize something as being "true" it is because we have this concept of truth already inside, and we recall it when that outside of us compels us to recall. In this sense, Plato is a believer in an objective truth outside ourselves -- a transcendental truth -- the unum, bonum, verum. As he states, "This is recollection of the things which our souls once saw during their journey as companions to a god, when they saw beyond the things we now say 'exist' and poked their heads up into true reality" (Plato 32). But as McLuhan notes, the printed text itself also conveys a message -- in this case, a message of authority.
McLuhan...
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