This paper compares three major approaches to philosophical inquiry — Platonic, Cartesian, and analytic — by examining how each orients the philosopher in relation to the object of study and what answers each yields to the question "who am I?" Drawing on Plato's Five Dialogues, Descartes' Discourse on Method, and analytic essays by Moore, Ryle, and Austin, the paper argues that the analytic approach is the most robust and relevant of the three. Because analytic philosophy engages directly with language — the medium that structures all human thought — it avoids the unproductive abstractions of Platonic idealism and the radical skepticism of Cartesian doubt, offering instead a grounded, self-aware method for understanding human experience and consciousness.
There are three distinct ways of approaching philosophical questions, and each of these three ways affects the conclusions of the philosopher's considerations differently. In short, a Platonic approach detaches the philosopher from physical existence, focusing solely on the realm of ideas; a Cartesian approach detaches the philosopher from the senses as a means of excluding all sources of doubt or confusion; and an analytic approach seeks to examine the very language that structures all human thought and culture. While each approach has its relative strengths and weaknesses and yields different answers to the same questions, examining each approach in detail reveals that the analytic approach to philosophical questions offers the most robust and relevant means of answering them. Because it concerns itself with understanding the constituent parts of human thought and experience — namely, language — it is uniquely capable of offering the linguistically bound human the best means of reasoning toward an understanding of the world. In particular, looking at how each approach regards the question "who am I?" will reveal the utility of the analytic approach due to its unique consideration of language.
Before considering the three approaches in tandem, it will be useful to examine each of them individually as a means of understanding their relative merits and the orientation they give the philosopher toward his or her object of study. The first is perhaps the most famous, and can be seen being formulated in Plato's Apology and Phaedo in his Five Dialogues. The Apology is supposedly Socrates' speech in his own defense against charges of disbelief in the gods and corrupting the young, and it contains what is perhaps the first and foremost thing to understand about Plato, Socrates, and philosophy in general: Socrates' recounting of how he comes to learn that the wisest person is the one who realizes how very little they actually know. Socrates sums up this counterintuitive notion when he reflects, "I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know" (Plato, 2002, Apology 21.d). This sentiment is crucial to understand, not only because it presents the philosopher's work in such a humble light, but because it establishes the human limitations of thought and wisdom — limitations that stand in contrast to the idealized Forms and the eternal soul discussed later in the Phaedo.
When Phaedo tells Echecrates that "although [he] was witnessing the death of one who was [his] friend, [he] had no feeling of pity, for the man appeared happy in both manner and words as he died nobly and without fear [...] so that it struck [him] that even in going down to the underworld [Socrates] was going with the gods' blessing and that he would fare well when he got there, if anyone ever does," not only is he engaging in what is likely a bit of mournful exaggeration, but he is also demonstrating the key distinction of a Platonic approach to philosophical questions (Plato, 2002, Phaedo 58.e). That distinction is to locate the inquisitive mind of the philosopher on an altogether different plane from ordinary, material reality — existing instead in the aptly named Platonic realm of ideal Forms and perfect reason. This discussion of Socrates' final moments and journey to the eternal afterlife opens the Phaedo and serves to dramatize the philosophical point made throughout the dialogue.
Having briefly covered the relevant details of Plato's approach to philosophical questions, it is now possible to consider a Cartesian approach, looking at how Descartes orients the philosopher and his or her object of study in an altogether different way than Plato (via Socrates). In his Discourse on Method, Descartes outlines the personal and academic experiences that led to the formulation of his philosophical schema, and describes the process by which that formulation leads him to detach the philosopher from the senses themselves — rather than from material reality, as Plato does. This provides Descartes with "the first principle of philosophy" he is looking for, because he writes that "whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat, and as I observed that this truth, I think, hence I am, was so certain and of such evidence, that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the skeptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might accept" it as the core, essential claim around which to orient the rest of his argument (Descartes, 2008, p. 30).
The Cartesian approach is therefore predicated upon an abandonment of the senses as reliable sources of information, because as Descartes notes, "the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep," so that "all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams" (Descartes, p. 30). In a sense, the object of study ultimately disappears, so that the only answer to the question "who am I?" becomes "whoever is asking the question" — because the "I" that thinks, the "I" of the philosopher, is all that remains after the rest of reality is revealed to be dependent on generally unreliable sensory inputs. Descartes may almost be seen as a middle ground between the Platonic and the analytic approaches: where Descartes reduces philosophical investigation to the self-consciousness-creating act of thought, the analytic approach reduces these questions to the self-consciousness-creating act of speech, writing, or reading, finding answers to philosophical questions in a roundabout way through the consideration of language.
"Language structures thought; Moore, Ryle, Austin analyzed"
"Analytic approach best answers identity question"
Different approaches to philosophical problems can provide different answers to the same questions, and by comparing these different approaches one may begin to understand which offers the most useful tools for a consideration of the human experience. After outlining the constituent ideas of the Platonic, Cartesian, and analytic approaches to philosophical questions, this paper has demonstrated that the analytic approach is most useful, because it addresses the limitations of human descriptive and cognitive ability directly by looking to the particular uses of language as a means of understanding how that language structures and influences human thought and behavior.
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