Idea y valor

Abstract

The text analyzes Emil Lask’s interpretation of Plato, particularly the lecture delivered in Heidelberg in 1911–1912 and included in the third volume of his Gesammelte Schriften. It shows how this lecture is closely linked to Lask’s systematic works, and how it reflects his distinctive approach to the Greeks, in continuity with the Baden School of Neo-Kantianism. Lask’s interest in Plato emerges early, although it only gains full force around 1910 as a counterbalance to his systematic writings. In his letters to Rickert, Lask expresses a clear view of Plato’s contribution: the establishment of a dualism between the sensible and the non-sensible, which founds Western metaphysics and centers on the problem of value. Plato appears as the “father of speculation” and as the one who inaugurates reflection on the Ideas of value (the Good, Beauty, Justice), which define the orientation of all subsequent philosophy. The polemical character of Lask’s interpretation is particularly noteworthy: his outright rejection of the “Marburg Plato” of Natorp, his preference for Windelband’s reading, and his distance from Husserl’s phenomenological Platonism. For Lask, Plato cannot be reduced to logical categories or to a theory of knowledge: his core lies in the axiological dimension and in the metaphysical validity of the Ideas. Thus, Lask’s so-called “Baden Plato” emerges as an alternative to the scientism of the Marburg Neo- Kantianism, affirming both the centrality of values and the orientation of philosophy as reflection on the suprasensible.