Plato

Good day my dear Young Philosophers! I would like to welcome you on our lesson, Plato. Plato is one of the best known, most widely studied and most influential philosophers of all time. As students of philosophy, we should pay our respect to the man who greatly contributed to the development of philosophy as an academic field of endeavor. In fact, much of the things that we know today traces their origins to him. Together with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, he provided the main opposition to the Materialist view of the world represented by Democritus and Epicurus, and he helped to lay the foundations of the whole of Western Philosophy. His influence is so encompassing that the great philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead exclaimed:

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Intended learning outcomes (ILOs)

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

  1. Discuss the philosophical concept of Truth and Goodness according to Plato.

Who is Plato?

Plato was the most famous student of Socrates. Plato was born in Athens some time between 429 and 423 B.C. He was possibly originally named Aristocles after his grandfather, and only later dubbed “Plato” or “Platon” (meaning “broad”) on account of the breadth of his eloquence, or of his wide forehead, or possibly on account of his generally robust figure.

Plato was part of a the aristocratic class in Athens and was able to receive the finest education at the time. He had also attended courses of philosophy and was acquainted with Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus, before meeting Socrates. This life-changing event occurred when Plato was about twenty years old, and the relationship between master and pupil probably lasted eight or ten years.

Plato was in military service from 409 to 404 B.C. and, for a time, he imagined a life in public affairs for himself. The execution of Socrates in 399 B.C. had a profound effect on him, and he decided to have nothing further to do with politics in Athens. After Socrates’ death, he joined a group of Socratic disciples who had gathered in the Greek city of Megara under the leadership of Euclid of Megara, before leaving and traveling quite widely in Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene. During his time in Italy, he also studied with students of Pythagoras and came to appreciate the value of mathematics.

When he returned to Athens in about 385 or 387 B.C., Plato founded the Academy (or Akademeia), one of the earliest and most famous organized schools in western civilization and the prototype for later universities. The Academy was the first multi-subject, multi-teacher institution of higher learning in Western civilization. He was deeply influenced by Pythagoras he required his students to learn Mathematics before admission. The Academy survived for nine centuries until it was closed by the Roman emperor Justinian I.

The Works of Plato

Plato is perhaps the first philosopher whose complete works are still available to us. He wrote no systematic treatises giving his views, but rather he wrote about 35 written in the form of conversations, a form which permitted him to develop the Socratic method of question and answer. In his dialogues, Plato discussed some philosophical areas, including:

  • Ethics (with discussion of the nature of virtue),
  • Metaphysics (where topics include immortality, man, mind, and Realism),
  • Political Philosophy (where topics such as censorship and the ideal state are discussed),
  • Philosophy of Religion (considering topics such as Atheism, Dualism and Pantheism),
  • Epistemology (where he looked at ideas such as a priori knowledge and Rationalism),
  • The Philosophy of Mathematics, and
  • The Theory of Art (especially dance, music, poetry, architecture and drama).

The Dialogues

Plato wrote extensively and most of his writings survived. His works are in the form of dialogues, where several characters argue a topic by asking questions of each other. This form allows Plato to raise various points of view and let the reader decide which is valid. Although the exact order of the dialogues is not known, the following is a consensus ordering based on internal evidence:

  1. Early Dialogues. In these dialogues, Socrates is the central character, and is believed to be expressing his own views. These are the only remaining record of Socrates’ teachings; hence these are known as the Socratic dialogues.
    1. The Apology, which depicts and philosophically examines Socrates’ trial and execution;
    2. The Meno, which is concerned with whether virtue can be taught;
    3. The Gorgias, which concerns the nature of right and wrong; and
    4. The first book of the Republic, his masterpiece explains and interrelates his conceptions of justice, the ideal state, and the Theory of Forms.
  2. Middle Dialogues. In these dialogues, Plato begins expressing his own views, in the guise of Socrates. The Symposium and Republic are the most important works in this period. The rest of his works include:

    1. The Republic, his masterpiece explains and interrelates his conceptions of justice, the ideal state, and the Theory of Forms.

    2. The Phaedo, talks about the immortality of the soul.

    3. The Symposium, talks about love and its good effects on human affairs.

    4. The Phaedrusrevolves around the art of rhetoric and how it should be practiced

    5. The Cratylus, deals whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify.

    6. The Parmenides account of a meeting between the two great philosophers of the Eleatic school, Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, and a young Socrates.

    7. The Theaetetus, discuss three definitions of knowledge: knowledge as nothing but perception, knowledge as true judgment, and, finally, knowledge as a true judgment with an account.

  3. Late Dialogues. The later dialogues are deeper developments of the philosophy expressed in the earlier ones; these are the most difficult of Plato’s works.
    1. The Timaeus, which is Plato’s account of the creation of the universe;
    2. The Sophist, which examines the nature of non-being;
    3. The Laws, which is concerned with what laws a good constitution should contain;
    4. The Laws is Plato’s longest dialogue and the only dialogue in which Socrates is not present.

The Allegory of the Cave

The essence of Plato’s philosophy is depicted allegorically in the “Allegory of the Cave.” It appears in his most important work, The Republic. The allegory runs similar this:

He invites us to imagine a cave in which some prisoners are bound so that they can look only at the wall in front of them. They were tied from head to feet that they have no means to look behind them. Behind them is a fire whose light casts shadows of various things and objects on the wall in front of these prisoners. The only things they saw since birth are these shadows and hence, they thought that all these are real and authentic. They have no means to verify and discern the truth since they are imprisoned.

Now, imagine that one prisoner is unchained, turned around, and tries to look at the true source of the shadows. But the fire and the light pains his eyes. He then turns away from the light and gazes back at the dark. He saw the difference between the real objects and things. He can’t comprehend what he saw but the pain in his eyes bothers him more than his strange discovery. He decides to shy away from the light. He prefers the pleasant deception of the shadows.

Behind and above the fire is the mouth of the cave, and outside, in the bright sunlight (only a little of which trickles into the cave) are real objects and things such as humans, animals, trees, rivers, mountains, and sky. Now, this prisoner who was now fueled by his curiosity, the former prisoner is forced up the “steep and rugged ascent” (Plato’s allegory of education) out of the cave and finally was brought to the sunlit exterior world. He was now experiencing the bliss of being liberated from the grasp of the shadows inside the cave.

But the light blinds him. Initially, he was not able to gaze directly at the sun. He must first look at the shadows of the trees (he is used to shadows), then at the trees and mountains. Finally he is able to see the sun itself (the allegory of enlightenment). Plato suggests that if this enlightened man were to return to the cave, he would appear ridiculous because he would see sunspots everywhere and not be able to penetrate the darkness. He will have a hard time navigating through his path on his way back to the cave if he wishes to.

And if he tried to liberate his fellow prisoners, they would be so angry at him for disturbing their illusions that they would set upon him and kill him (a clear allusion to the death of Socrates). The allegory of the liberation of the slave from darkness, deceit, and untruth and the slave’s hard journey into the light and warmth of the Truth has inspired many philosophers and social leaders. Various interpretations by various philosophers were presented through the years and it became apparent that Plato was successful in igniting the imagination of various generations. But Plato meant it as more than just a poetic vision.

Theory of the Divided Line

Plato’s allegory of the cave was likewise used by Plato as his vehicle to expound his entire philosophical enterprise. His Theory of the Divided Line was his way of scientifically explaining his literary-based allegory of the cave. Plato believes that everything is being represented as placed on a single line, extending from the lowest to the highest sense of reality.

There are two main sections of the line, representing those things apprehended by the senses (the lower section) and those things only apprehended by the mind (the upper section). The upper section (the intelligible world) is divided again in the purest form of reality (the forms and the Good – which is the highest form) and the mathematical objects which are an essential preliminary stage on the mind’s way to reach the grasping of the ultimate reality.

On the left side of the Line we have Plato’s epistemology (theory of knowledge); on the right side, an ontology (theory of being). In addition, we have an implicit ethics (moral theory) and aesthetics (theory of beauty). The totality constitutes Plato’s metaphysics (general worldview).

For each state of being (right side of the Line), there is a corresponding state of awareness (left side). The lowest state of awareness is that of Conjecture, which has as its object Images, such as shadows and reflections (or images on the TV screen and video games). The next level, that of Belief, has as its object a particular thing—say, a particular horse or a particular act of justice. Like Conjecture, Belief still does not comprise knowledge but remains in the sphere of Opinion, still grounded in the uncertainties of sense perception. For Opinion to become Knowledge, the particular object must be raised to the level of theory. This stage, Understanding, corresponds to the status of the released prisoner looking at the shadows of the trees in the world above the cave.

The Theory of Forms

Plato believes that everything that our senses perceive in the material world is like the images on the cave wall, merely shadows of reality. This belief is the basis of his Theory of Forms, which is that for every earthly thing that we have the power to perceive with our senses, there is a corresponding “Form” (or “Idea”)—an eternal and perfect reality of that thing—in the world of Ideas.

Forms are the eternal truths that are the source of all Reality. Consider, for example, the concept of beauty. Things in the sensible world are beautiful to the extent that they imitate or participate in Beauty. However, these beautiful things will break, grow old, or die. But Beauty itself (the Form) is eternal.

Furthermore, just as the sensible world and awareness of it are dependent on the sun, so are the Forms and knowledge of them dependent on the Good, which is a Superform, or the Form of all Forms. The state of beholding the Good is represented in the Myth of the Cave by the released prisoner beholding the sun itself.

Plato’s theory is such that the whole of Reality is founded upon the Good, which is Reality’s source of being. And all Knowledge is ultimately knowledge of the Good. Forms are eternal. Forms are unchanging. Forms are indivisible and unchanging.

For Plato the study of mathematics was a crucial step in the path leading the mind to the truth. He was convinced that the road to knowledge lay in exact reasoning, as in mathematics. In fact, in the entrance to his Academy, a famous inscription reads:

“Let no one who does not know geometry enter here.”

*Images are courtesy of Donald Palmer

References

  • Stumpf, S. (2008). Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy. New York: McGraw Hill Higher Education.
  • Gaarder, Jostein.(2004). Sophie’s World. Great Britain: Phoenix House.
  • Palmer, Donald. (2006). Looking at Philosophy: The unbearable heaviness of philosophy made ligther, 4th Edition. New York: McGraw Hill Higher Education.
  • McGoodwin, Michael. (2006). Plato: Dialogues (Dialogs). A Summary. Accessed on June 30, 2017. From https://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/otherbooks/plato.html
  • John Bruno Hare. (2010). The Dialogues of Plato. Retrieved from http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plato/
  • http://www.plato.standford.edu
  • http://www.philosophybasic.com

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