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Plato. General Facts. General Facts. 427-347 BCE Son of wealthy and influential Athenians Student of Socrates Aristotle was a student at his “Academy” in Athens. Early Philosophical Life. Early Philosophical Life. Studied with Socrates
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General Facts • 427-347 BCE • Son of wealthy and influential Athenians • Student of Socrates • Aristotle was a student at his “Academy” in Athens
Early Philosophical Life • Studied with Socrates • When Socrates died, Plato traveled to Egypt and Italy, studied with students of Pythagoras, and spent several years advising the ruling family of Syracuse • In 386 BCE, he returned to Athens and founded his own school of philosophy, the Academy
His Philosophy • Concerned with justice, virtue, character, and the human soul. • Wanted students to become independent thinkers (think for themselves). • The only good life or life worth living is a life reasoned by your own mind, not other’s ideas and opinions; change your life and mind! • Examine your life, history, and ideas, once you self examine, then you are ready for knowledge. • All knowledge begins in not knowing. To state “I don’t know” is the first step – open to learning.
His Philosophy • Everything has a truth or an “essence,” your job is to seek this truth. Life is an adventure and journey, not destination. • The good teacher will spark you, lead you to the truth with integrity, reason, imagination. • Virtue is excellence, or doing your best – reaching your highest potential for good. All human’s have potential for virtue, goodness, and to shape good character. • The potential rests in the human soul (or psyche/mind), everyone born with a soul. • Character is what is developed from this soul, and is molded and tested and shaped—a dynamic process.
His Philosophy • Plato was the first to unify a system of thought in Western society. • We all begin with common sense beliefs, opinions, we are lead further to ideas, and principles. • Human life always involves our fellow man and our personal and societal destiny. • Philosophy is not specialized nor technical but a way of life, requiring intellectual ability and moral goodness to pursue the good and truth. • Society is our ultimate teacher, and it may produce errors and evils, as well as wrong values. Previous generation may have been wrong and transmitted bad ideas and practices.
Literary Works 39 Dialogues – wrote in defiance of the arrest and death of his mentor, Socrates Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece The Republic – most famous dialogue; discusses the virtues of justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation as they appear in individuals and society; also argues that government should be led by philosophers
The Dialogue Form • Plato used the dialogue form of writing as the most effective means of presenting his philosophical ideas. • It was not Plato’s intention to answer specific question or to propose final and dogmatic solutions to any of the problems that were being discussed. • Plato preferred instead to do something that would stimulate original thinking on the part of the reader. This manner of presentation enabled Plato to present contrasting points of views as they would likely occur in a series of conversations taking place among individuals having different points of view. • Finally, by using conversational method (dialogue), it would be possible to illustrate ways in which current issues of the day were related to one another. • This is one of the reasons why none of Plato’s dialogues are devoted exclusively to the discussion of a single topic. Plato wanted to make it clear that in order to understand any particular subject, you must see how it is related to other subjects and to the field of knowledge as a whole.
Plato’s Theory of Knowledge • Plato described how the human mind achieves knowledge, and indicated what knowledge consisted of, by means of: • 1) his allegory of the Cave • 2) his metaphor of the divided line • 3) his doctrine of the Forms
The Cave – General Information • Allegory from The Republic • Socrates is talking to Glaucon, one of his followers • Story to explain knowledge/wisdom • Contends that we are ignorant and we are comfortable with the ignorance because it is all we know • Seeking the truth is a difficult process • Once you have had a taste of the truth, you never want to go back to being ignorant
The Scenario • Prisoners: Men living in a large cave; chained by the leg and neck since childhood so they cannot turn their heads and can only see what is in front of them • Elevation: Behind them is an elevation that rises abruptly from the level where the prisoners are. There are other people walking across this elevation carrying artificial objects (figures of animals, humans, etc.) • Fire: Behind the people carrying the objects is a fire • Entrance: Further back is the entrance to the cave
The Prisoners • Can look only forward against the wall at the end of the cave; cannot see each other, the moving persons, nor the fire • Can only see the shadows on the wall in front of them which are projected as the persons walk in front of the fire; they are not aware that the shadows are shadows of other things • When they see a shadow and hear a person’s voice echo from the wall, they assume that the sound is coming from the shadow because they are not aware of the existence of anything else • The only reality recognized by the prisoners are the shadows on the wall
Proposition 1: What would happen if one of the prisoners was unchained, forced to stand up, turn around, and walk with eyes lifted up toward the light of the fire? • All of his movements would be exceedingly painful • Would the objects being carried be less meaningful than the shadows seen before? • Would his eyes ache from looking at the light of the fire? • He undoubtedly would return to the things he could see with clarity and without pain, convinced that the shadows were clearer than the objects he was forced to look at in the firelight
Proposition 2: What if the prisoner could not turn back and was dragged forcibly to the mouth of the cave and released only after he had been brought out into the sunlight? • The sunlight would be so painful on his eyes that he would be unable to see any of things he was now told were real • It would take time for his eyes to become accustomed to the world outside the cave • Would at first recognize some shadows • Would next see reflections of things in water • In time, he would see things themselves • Next, he would see heavenly bodies at night • Finally, the sun
Prisoner’s Conclusion • the sun is what makes things visible • it is the sun too that accounts for the seasons and is the cause of life in the spring • would understand what he saw on the wall in the cave; that shadows and reflections differ from things as they are in the visible world • without the sun there would be no visible world
Proposition 3: How would such a person feel about his previous life in the cave? • He would recall what he and his fellow prisoners took to be wisdom, how they had a practice of honoring and commending each other (i.e. prizes for the sharpest eye, best memory, etc.) • Would the released prisoner still think that such prizes were worth having? • Would he envy those who received honors in the cave? • Instead of envy, would he have only sorrow and pity for them?
Proposition 4: What if the released prisoner went back to his former seat in the cave? • He would have great difficulty seeing for going suddenly from daylight into the cave would fill his eyes with darkness • He would have trouble distinguishing the shadows on the wall • Those who had their permanent residence in the cave would win every round of competition with him • Those in the cave would find this very amusing and would taunt him saying that his sight was perfectly fine before and was now ruined • They would argue that it was not worth going out of the cave
The Allegory • The cave and the blurred world of the shadows = ignorance • The bright world of light = knowledge
Education • It is the function of education to lead people out of the cave into the world of light • Education is not simply a matter of putting knowledge into a person’s soul that does not possess it, any more than vision is putting sight into blind eyes. Knowledge, like vision, requires an organ capable of receiving it • It is necessary for the entire soul to turn away from the deceptive world of change and appetite that causes blindness of the soul
Education (cont.) • Education is a matter of conversion, a complete turning around from the world of appearance to the world of reality • “The conversion of the soul [is] not to put the power of sight in the soul’s eye, which already has it, but to insure that, instead of looking in the wrong direction, it is turned the way it ought to be” • However, even the “noblest natures” do not always want to look that way, and so Plato says that the rulers must “bring compulsion to bear” upon them to ascend upward from darkness to light • In addition, when those who have been liberated from the cave achieve the highest knowledge, they must not be allowed to remain in the higher world of contemplation, but must be made to come back down into the cave and take part in the life and labors of the prisoners
The Divided Line • In the process of discovering true knowledge, the mind moves through four stages of development • At each stage, there is a parallel between the kind of object presented to the mind and the kind of thought this object makes possible
Theory of Forms • The linchpin of Platonism is the theory of forms, a doctrine which receives surprisingly scant treatment in the dialogues but which nevertheless undergirds Plato's approach to ethics and metaphysics, aesthetics and epistemology. The theory is taken up in Book X of The Republic, is discussed in the Phaedo, taken apart in the Parmenides, and revisited in two later dialogues, the Timaeus and Laws. • ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, VOLUME 6: • "What was this Theory of Forms? • It originated out of several different and partly independent features of the general ideas or notions that constituted the recurrent themes of dialectical disputations.
Definitions • Definitions. Every discussion of a general issue turns ultimately upon one or more general notions or ideas. Even to debate whether, say, fearlessness is a good quality is to work with the two general notions of fear and goodness. Two disputants may disagree whether fearlessness is a good or a bad quality, but they are not even disagreeing unless they know what fear and goodness are. Their debate is likely, at some stage, to require the explicit definition of one or more of the general terms on which the discussion hinges. They may accept a preferred definition, but even if a preferred definition is justly riddled by criticism, this criticism teaches what the misdefined notion is not. If "fearlessness" were misdefined as "unawareness of danger," the exposure of the wrongness of this definition would by recoil bring out something definite in the notion of fearlessness. The Socratic demolition of a preferred definition may be disheartening, but it is also instructive.
Standards of Measurement and Appraisal • Standards of measurement and appraisal. Some general notions, including many moral notions and geometrical notions, are ideal limits or standards. A penciled line is, perhaps, as straight as the draftsman can make it; it deviates relatively slightly, sometimes imperceptibly, from the Euclidean straight line. The notion of absolute straightness is the standard against which we assess penciled lines as crooked or even as nearly quite straight. Rather similarly, to describe a person as improving in honesty or loyalty is to describe him getting nearer to perfect honesty or loyalty.
Immutable Things • Immutable things. Ordinary things and creatures in the everyday world are mutable. A leaf which was green yesterday may be brown today, and a boy may be five feet tall now who was two inches shorter some months ago. But the color brown itself cannot become the color green, and the height of four feet, ten inches, cannot become the height of five feet. It is always five feet minus two inches. A change is always a change from something A to something else B, and A and B cannot themselves be things that change.
Timeless Truths • Timeless truths. What we know about particular things, creatures, persons and happenings in the everyday world are tensed truths, and what we believe or conjecture about them are tensed truths or tensed falsehoods. The shower is still continuing; it began some minutes ago; it will stop soon. Socrates was born in such-and-such a year; the pyramids still exist today; and so forth. But truths or falsehoods about general notions such as those embodied in correct or incorrect definitions are timelessly true or timelessly false. Just as we cannot say that 49 used to be a square number or that equilateral triangles will shortly be equiangular, so we cannot say, truly or falsely, that fearlessness is now on the point of becoming, or used to be, indifference to recognized dangers. If this statement is true, it is eternally or, better, timelessly true. We can ask questions about fearlessness or the number 49 but not questions beginning "When?" or "How long?"
One Over Many • One over many. It is often the case that we can find or think of many so-and-so's or the so-and-so's, for example, of the numerous chimney pots over there or of the prime numbers between 10 and 100. Things, happenings, qualities, numbers, figures, can be ranged in sorts or characterized as sharing properties. Hence, where we speak of the so-and-so's -- say, the storms that raged last week -- we are talking of storms in the plural, and we are thereby showing that there is something, some one thing, that each of them was -- namely, a storm. Or if there are twenty idle pupils, there is one thing that all twenty of them are -- namely, idle. Sometimes we do not and even cannot know how many leaves, say, there are in a forest, and we may ask in vain, How many leaves are there? But however many or few there are, there must still be one thing -- namely, leaf -- which each of them is. It is one or singular; they are many or plural. We have not seen and may never see all or most of them. But it, that which each of them is, is in some way known to us before we could even begin to wonder how many leaves there are.
Intellectual Knowledge • Intellectual knowledge. For our knowledge of, and our beliefs and opinions about the things, creatures and happenings of the everyday world, we depend upon our eyes, ears, noses and so on, and what our senses tell us is sometimes wrong and is never perfectly precise. There is nobody whose vision or hearing might not be even slightly better than it is. On the other hand, our apprehension of general notions is intellectual and not sensitive.
Conceptual Certainties • Conceptual certainties. Last, but not least in importance, dialectical debates are concerned only with general ideas, like those of fearlessness, goodness, danger and awareness. The answerer's thesis is a general proposition, such as "Virtue is (or is not) teachable" or "Justice is (or is not) what is to the advantage of the powerful." When such a thesis has been conclusively demolished, something, if only something negative, has been conclusively established about virtue or justice. In the domain of general ideas or concepts certainties, if seemingly negative certainties, are attainable by argument. About things or happenings in the everyday world no such purely ratiocinative knowledge is possible.
Ontology of Forms • Ontology of Forms. Most of the above ways of characterizing general ideas or concepts has been brought out severally or together in Plato's elenctic dialogues. Yet his Socrates did not in these dialogues put forward the Theory of Forms. The Theory of Forms, as first fully developed in the Phaedo, is a unified formulation of these several points, but it is also more than this. For Plato now proffers an ontology of concepts. A general idea or concept, according to this new doctrine, is immutable, timeless, one over many, intellectually apprehensible and capable of precise definition at the end of a piece of pure ratiocination because it is an independently existing real thing or entity. As our everyday world contains people, trees, stones, planets, storms and harvests, so a second and superior, or transcendent world contains concepts-objects. As "Socrates" and "Peloponnesus" name perceptible objects here, so "justice," "equality," "unity," and "similarity" name intellectually apprehensible objects there. Furthermore, as the human mind or soul gets into contact, though only perfunctory and imperfect contact, with ordinary things and happenings in this world by sight, hearing, touch and so on, so the human or soul can get into non-sensible contact with the ideal and eternal objects of the transcendent world. We are ephemerally at home here, but we are also lastingly at home there. The immortality of the soul is proved by our ability to apprehend the everlasting concept-objects that Plato often calls the Forms. . ."
The Forms - Summary • Separated the world of thought from the world of flux and things • Ascribed true reality to the Ideas and Forms, which, he thought had an existence separate from the things in nature • Example: All trees are reflections of a tree whose form is ideal, but which does not exist in nature
Governance • The State as Man Writ Large – Plato argued that the state grows out of the nature of the individual • State reflects the structure of human nature • The origin of the state is a reflection of people’s needs (esp. economic) • Three classes – craftsmen/guardians of the community, guardians of the state, highly trained guardians • Classes represent 3 part of the soul: appetites, spirited element, rational element
The Philosopher-King • Competence should be the qualification for authority • The causes of disorder in the state are the same as those that cause disorder within the individual—the lower “elements” usurp the role of the higher “faculties” = anarchy • Rational element must be in control
The Philosopher-King (cont.) • Who should lead then? • Who should be the person in control of a ship—the most “popular” person, or someone with a keen knowledge of the art of navigation? • Who should rule the state—someone with training in war or commerce?
Who is the Philosopher-King? • Fully educated; one who understands the difference between the visible world and the intelligible world, the realm of opinion and knowledge, between appearance and reality • By 18, he will have had training in literature, music, and elementary mathematics • This will have been followed by extensive physical and military training, and at 20, a few would be selected to pursue an advanced course in mathematics • At age 30, a five-year course in dialectic and moral philosophy would being and for the next 15 years would be spent gathering practical knowledge through public service • Finally, at age 50, the ablest men would reach the highest level of knowledge, the vision of the Good, and would be ready for the task of governing the state
