Plato, << PLAY toh >> (427?-347? B.C.), was a philosopher and educator of ancient Greece. He was one of the most important thinkers and writers in the history of Western culture.
Plato’s life
Plato was born in Athens. His family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in the city. His mother, Perictione, was related to the great Athenian lawmaker Solon. His father, Ariston, died when Plato was a child. Perictione married her uncle, Pyrilampes, and Plato was raised in his house. Pyrilampes had been a close friend and supporter of Pericles, the statesman who brilliantly led Athens in the mid-400’s B.C.
As a young man, Plato wanted to become a politician. In 404 B.C., a group of wealthy men, including two of Plato’s relatives—his cousin Critias and his uncle Charmides—established themselves as dictators in Athens. They invited Plato to join them. However, Plato refused the offer because he was disgusted by the group’s cruel and unethical practices. In 403 B.C., the Athenians deposed the dictators and established a democracy. Plato reconsidered entering politics. But he was again repelled when the philosopher Socrates, his friend, was brought to trial and sentenced to death in 399 B.C. Deeply disillusioned, Plato left Athens and traveled for a number of years.
In 387 B.C., Plato returned to Athens and founded a school of philosophy and science that became known as the Academy. The school stood in a grove of trees that, according to legend, was once owned by a Greek hero named Academus. The Academy was one of the first centers for higher education. Such subjects as astronomy, biological sciences, mathematics, and political science were investigated there. Except for two trips to the city of Syracuse in Sicily in the 360’s B.C., Plato lived in Athens and headed the Academy for the rest of his life. His most distinguished pupil at the Academy was the Greek philosopher Aristotle (see Aristotle ).
Plato’s writings
The dialogues.
Plato wrote in a literary form called the dialogue. A dialogue is a conversation between two or more people. Plato’s dialogues are actually dramas that are primarily concerned with the presentation, criticism, and conflict of philosophical ideas. The characters in his dialogues discuss philosophical problems and often argue the opposing sides of an issue. Plato achieved a dramatic quality through the interaction of the personalities and views of his characters. These dramas of ideas have much literary merit. Many scholars consider Plato the greatest prose writer in the Greek language—and one of the greatest in any language.
Plato’s better-known dialogues include The Apology, Cratylus, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, The Laws, Meno, Parmenides, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Protagoras, The Republic, The Sophist, The Symposium, Theaetetus, and Timaeus. A complete edition of Plato’s works, collected in ancient times, consists of 36 works—35 dialogues and a group of letters. Scholars today generally agree that about 30 of the dialogues and several of the letters were actually written by Plato. Scholars have also determined to a great extent the order in which the dialogues were written. Thus, Plato’s development as a writer and thinker can be traced.
The early dialogues
are dominated by Socrates, who appears as a major figure in each. These dialogues include Charmides, Euthyphro, Ion, and Laches. In these dialogues, Socrates questions people who claim to know or understand something about which Socrates claims to be ignorant. Typically, Socrates shows that the other people do not know what they claim to know. Socrates does not provide answers to the questions. He shows only that the answers proposed by the other characters are inadequate. Most scholars consider these so-called Socratic dialogues to be fairly accurate portrayals of the actual philosophic style and views of Socrates. See Socrates (The Socratic method) .
The later dialogues.
In the later dialogues, Plato uses the character of Socrates merely as his spokesman. These dialogues include The Republic, The Sophist, and Theaetetus. In these works, Socrates criticizes the views of others and presents complex philosophical theories. Thus, the later dialogues offer more complete and positive answers to questions being considered than do the early dialogues. But they lack much of the dramatic and literary quality of the earlier writings.
Plato’s philosophy
The theory of forms.
Many of Plato’s dialogues try to identify the nature or essence of some philosophically important notion by defining it. The Euthyphro revolves around a discussion and debate of the question, “What is piety?” The central question of The Republic is, “What is justice?” The Theaetetus tries to define knowledge. The Charmides is concerned with moderation, and the Laches discusses valor. Plato denied that a notion, such as piety (reverence), could be defined simply by offering examples of it. Plato required a definition of a notion to express what is true of, and common to, all instances of that notion.
Plato was interested in how we can apply a single word or concept to many different things. For example, how can the word table be used for all the individual objects that are tables? Plato answered that various things can be called by the same name because they have something in common. He called this common factor the thing’s form or idea.
According to Plato, the real nature of any individual thing depends on the form in which it “participates.” For example, a certain object is a triangle because it participates in the form of triangularity. A particular table is what it is because it participates in the form of the table.
Plato insisted that the forms differ greatly from the ordinary things that we see around us. Ordinary things change, but their forms do not. A particular triangle may be altered in size or shape, but the form of triangularity can never change. In addition, individual things only imperfectly approximate their forms, which remain unattainable models of perfection. Circular objects or beautiful objects are never perfectly circular or perfectly beautiful. The only perfectly circular thing is the form of circularity itself, and the only perfectly beautiful thing is the form of beauty.
Plato concluded that these unchanging and perfect forms cannot be part of the everyday world, which is changing and imperfect. Forms exist neither in space nor time. They can be known only by the intellect, not by the senses. Because of their stability and perfection, the forms have greater reality than ordinary objects observed by the senses. Thus, true knowledge is the knowledge of forms. These central doctrines of Plato’s philosophy are called his theory of forms or theory of ideas.
Ethics.
Plato based his ethical theory on the proposition that all people desire happiness. Of course, people sometimes act in ways that do not produce happiness. But they do this only because they do not know what actions will produce happiness. Plato further claimed that happiness is the natural consequence of a healthy state of the soul. Because moral virtue makes up the health of the soul, all people should desire to be virtuous. Plato said that people sometimes do not seek to be virtuous, but only because they do not realize that virtue produces happiness.
Thus, for Plato, the basic problem of ethics is a problem of knowledge. If a person knows that moral virtue leads to happiness, he or she naturally acts virtuously. Plato differed from many Christian philosophers who have tended to view the basic problem of ethics as a problem of the will. These philosophers argue that often people know what is morally right, but face their greatest problem in willing to do it.
Plato argued that it is worse to commit an injustice than to suffer one, because immoral behavior is the symptom of a diseased soul. It is also worse for a person who commits an injustice to go unpunished than to be punished, because punishment helps cure this most serious of all diseases.
Psychology and politics.
Plato’s political philosophy, like his ethics, was based on his theory of the human soul. He argued that the soul is divided into three parts: (1) the rational part, or intellect; (2) the spirited part, or will; and (3) appetite or desire. Plato argued that we know the soul has these parts because they occasionally conflict with each other. For example, a person may desire something but fight this desire with the power of the will. In a properly functioning soul, the intellect—the highest part—should control the appetite—the lowest part—with the aid of the will.
Plato described the ideal state or society in The Republic. Plato wrote that, like the soul, this state or society has three parts or classes: (1) the philosopher kings, who govern the society; (2) the guardians, who keep order and defend the society; and (3) the ordinary citizens, farmers, merchants, and craftworkers who provide the society’s material needs. The philosopher kings represent the intellect, the guardians represent the will, and the ordinary citizens represent the appetites. Plato’s ideal society resembles a well-functioning soul because the philosopher kings control the citizens with the aid of the guardians.
Immortality of the soul.
Plato believed that though the body dies and disintegrates, the soul continues to live forever. After the death of the body, the soul migrates to what Plato called the realm of the pure forms. There, it exists without a body, contemplating the forms. After a time, the soul is reincarnated in another body and returns to the world. But the reincarnated soul retains a dim recollection of the realm of forms and yearns for it. Plato argued that people fall in love because they recognize in the beauty of their beloved the ideal form of beauty that they dimly remember and seek.
In the Meno, Plato has Socrates teach an ignorant slave boy a truth of geometry by simply asking a series of questions. Because the boy learns this truth without being given any information, Plato concluded that learning consists of recalling what the soul experienced in the realm of the forms.
Art.
Plato was critical of art and artists. He urged strict censorship of the arts because of their influence on molding people’s characters. Using his theory of forms, Plato compared artists unfavorably with craftworkers. He declared that a table made by a carpenter is an imperfect copy of the ideal form of a table. A painting of a table is thus a copy of a copy—and twice removed from the reality of the ideal form.
Plato claimed that artists and poets cannot usually explain their works. Since artists do not even seem to know what their own works mean, Plato concluded that they do not create because they possess some special knowledge. Rather, he believed that artists create because they are seized by irrational inspiration, a sort of “divine madness.”
Plato’s place in Western thought
After Plato died, his nephew Speusippus took over the leadership of the Academy. The school operated until A.D. 529. That year, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I closed all the schools of philosophy in Athens because he felt they taught paganism. However, Plato’s influence was not confined to the Academy. Plato’s philosophy deeply influenced Philo, an important Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, shortly after the birth of Christ. During the A.D. 200’s in Rome, Plotinus developed a philosophy based on Plato’s thought. This new version of Plato’s philosophy, known as Neoplatonism, had great influence on Christianity during the Middle Ages. See Plotinus ; Neoplatonism.
Plato dominated Christian philosophy during the early Middle Ages through the writings of such philosophers as Boethius and Saint Augustine. During the 1200’s, Aristotle replaced Plato as the greatest philosophical influence on the Christian world. A revival of interest in Plato developed during the Renaissance. During the 1400’s, the Medici family, famous patrons of the arts, established a Platonic Academy in Florence, Italy, as a center for the study of Plato’s philosophy. In the mid-1600’s, an important group of English philosophers at Cambridge University became known as the Cambridge Platonists. They used the teachings of Plato and the Neoplatonists to try to harmonize reason with religion.
