Introducing Plato (D)

(Originally written November 16, 2016 in Book 26)

Introducing Plato
D. Robinson

Particulars are contingent
Universals are the properties that particulars share with one another.

Plato was the first philosopher to see that universals were problematic.

Plato tried to explain it with a two-world system. A perfect world of universals and an imperfect world of copies (particulars).

The world of forms/ideas is never quite explained perfectly.

Forms exist in their own world and can only be "recollected only in the minds of a few talented and well-trained individuals" (Robinson, 65).

Plato's epistemology is difficult because it is mystical and therefore, not directly communicable.

Plato needed the forms to deal with the problem of Heraclitus' flux.

"Forms are more 'real' than particulars, because, unlike particulars, they are eternal and unchanging. Authentic philosophical knowledge can only ever be of these 'forms'" (Robinson, 74).

Everyone is born with the knowledge of the forms because everyone encounters them in earlier lives.

Some of the reason why Plato thought this way about particulars and universals was an account of the Greek language. It was a sort of linguistic determinism. It equates "meeting" and "knowing".

Heidegger was similar in his thinking as German is similar to Greek in how it deals with nouns. It precedes nouns with either masculine, feminine and neuter articles, allowing Heidegger to think about "the nothingness" rather than nothingness.

The forms suffer from an infinite regress, or third man argument.

Plato was also unsure if all man-made objects had forms or not.

The forms have weird ontological problems as well. How can the forms have more reality than particulars? Can reality have degrees?

Plato, because of the notion that meeting and knowing are the same thing, "Maintaining that real knowledge has to be a kind of personal and mystical encounter" (Robinson, 84).

What about universals?

Aristotle - universals are real, but don't exist separately

British Empiricists - universals are a mental image arrived at by abstraction.

"Wittgenstein suggested that our craving for definitive generalities can never be ultimately satisfied, and it is rather unhealthy" (Robinson, 87).

Plato introduced a problem that has not been satisfactorily solved.

Political Philosophy

Plato's view of society is communitarian, emphasizing the social nature of individuals. "Individuals can therefore be judged primarily in terms of their contribution to the State" (Robinson, 88).

The formation of the State came from humans developing a taste for luxury. Divisions of labor is then necessary to provide the luxuries.

Plato would turn the education over to the State (away from the hands of the dangerous Sophists). His educational system is roughly based on the Spartan system which produced a strong army and a stable society.

Plato wanted his society to have experts in every profession. The experts in ruling would get the guardian status and guardian education.

Plato would teach the myth that each man was born of a certain type of metal, thus predetermining every man's status in life.

The myth of the Cave allegory illustrates the ability and the duty of the guardian class.

Those who exit the cave know true knowledge comes from thinking, not seeing.

Plato's ideal republic is hierarchical but because of the myth of the four metals it will function well because everyone will know and accept their place in society (like a beehive).

"By the second generation, everyone will believe this myth of hierarchical castes to be natural and inevitable. Plato is quite content to admit that his hierarchical society must be based on a lie" (Robinson, 101).

Marx inverted the term "ideology" to explain how Plato's big lie works in reality.

The Guardian life is extremely rigorously controlled:
- lived coed in the barracks
- own no property
- breed only with one another by lot
- children are not left with their parents

"Plato's guardians are allowed no individuality or personal freedom" (Robinson, 103).

The social system Plato advocates is severe but it is meritocratic and is not sexist.

"Socrates maintained that morality is a special kind of knowledge which, once known, would always be chosen. Plato seems to have agreed, but argued that this knowledge must be restricted to Guardian experts who will always know the 'correct' answers to all moral problems" (Robinson, 106).

Plato had no time for art in the ideal republic. Only art as propaganda would be admitted. (This art foreshadowed the propagandist art of the Nazis and Soviets).

Plato's moral geometry is often rejected for being inflexible and for reason linking morality and knowledge.

Plato was anti-democratic because democrats have to resort to populism to stay in power. Populist policies are thus favored over wise ones.

"Democratic politicians are merely the slaves of those they pretend to rule, and ordinary people are volatile, violent and bestial" (Robinson, 114).

Popper argued against Plato for his utopianism.

Utopianists often advocate for wiping the slate clean which entails the destruction of society to build a new one.

"The Laws makes a disappointing ending to a philosophical body of work that began with a total commitment to Socrates' own freedom of speech and thought" (Robinson, 131).

"Because Plato cannot have perfect people, he insists on perfect laws which must be obeyed because they are perfect" (Robinson, 131).

The Symposium

Plato seems convinced that homosexual love could be transformed into something spiritually transcendental.

What is love?

Phaedrus: a good thing that instills honor and self-sacrifice

Pausanias: love is sensual gratification but is somehow purer when directed at young men rather than young women

Eryximachus: "love is the cosmic force that constitutes the universe itself" (Robinson, 134).

Aristophanes: Everyone was originally male, female and hermaphrodite. Love is the quest to find the lost part of one's soul. (Zeus punished humanity by splitting everyone into single genders).

Agathon - love is a yearning towards some object of beauty which is not yet possessed.

Diotima - love is the link between sensible and spiritual worlds. "If love is that which moves towards what is beautiful, and wisdom is beautiful, then love is the manifestation of the human soul seeking out the true wisdom of the forms" (Robinson, 136).

The Timaeus

Presents a cosmological account of creation.

"Time is simply a series of numbers that measure how the sub-standard cosmos is always changing" (Robinson, 142).

Plato follows Empedocles' view that all matter is various combinations of the four elements.

Humans are different because of their soul. The soul will return to its star after death if the owner of the soul lived a deserving life.

Plato also advocated metempsychosis (reincarnation) for those souls who aren't worthy of returning to its home star.

Plato's cosmology is similar to M-theory and other string theories that rely on mathematics.

Plato vacillates in the Thaetetus on his theories of perception. Sometimes he is a phenomenalist (we perceive mental images of the world, not the world itself). Sometimes he is a naive realist.

Despite his waffling on the notion of perception he remains staunchly a rationalist - all permanent knowledge comes through thought.

Being a rationalist, Plato had to come up with reasons for error. He claimed that errors arose from memory misapplication.

Knowledge - that which we believe, that which is true and that which we can clearly identify.

The Phaedrus condemns writing because writing is complete. Philosophy is always a process and therefore never complete. As such, dialoge is the best tool for philosophical discovery.

Plato had a long and varied influence:
- Origen developed a neo-platonic theology
- Galileo embraced Plato in his anti-Aristotelian view
- Hegel's dialectical philosophy

A Reading List

(Originally Written April 1, 2009 in the Journal)

Books to Explore

Viking History
Heimskringla (History of the Kings of Norway) - Snorri Sturluson

Voltaire
The Fables of Reason: A study of Voltaire's contes philosophiques - Roger Pearson
La Religion de Voltaire - Rene Pomeau
D'Arouet a Voltaire- Rene Pomeau
Voltaire & English Literature, Studies on Voltaire and the 18th Century
Voltaire en toutes lettres
Voltaire: A biography - Haydn Mason
Voltaire - Haydn Mason
Voltaire dans ses Contes - Jacques Van den Heuvel
Disabled Powers: A Reading of Voltaire's Contes - Robin Howells
Complete Works (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation) - Voltaire

Existentialism

Soren Kierkegaard
Jean-Paul Sartre
Martin Heidegger
Karl Jaspers
Paul Tillich

Other Books

Personal Knowledge - Michael Polanyi
Lectures on the Religious Thought of S. Kierkegaard - E.O. Geisman
Kierkegaard - Walter Lowrie
A Short Life of Kierkegaard - Walter Lowrie
Something about Kierkegaard - David Swanson
What is Existentialism - William Barrett
An Introduction to contemporary German Philosophy - Werner Brock
Existentialism - Guido Ruggiero
The Future of Mankind - Karl Jaspers

Aesthetics - What is Beauty? What is Art?

(Originally Written on December 25, 2007 in the Journal)

Aesthetics - What is Beauty? What is Art?

Part I: What is Beauty?

Questions for consideration:

1) Is beauty subjective, objective, or a combination thereof?
2) What is taste?

Part II: Explore different mediums, define art (as a language?)

Research Topics

Immanuel Kant
David Hume
Ludwig Wittgenstein
John Dewey
Leo Tolstoy
Plato
Nelson Goodman
Arthur C. Danto
Martin Heidegger
Jerrold Levinson
Terry Eagleton
Michel Foucault
Friedrich Nietzsche
Aristotle
Edmund Burke
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Topics: mediums, perception of art, why create?

"Of the Standard of Taste"
By: David Hume

It is useful for us to seek a "standard of taste".

A standard of taste is "a rule by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled".

Some Notes on God and Language

(Originally written March 15, 2007 in Book 13)

Part 3: God and Language

The problem of religious language

Means of Expressing God:

Many ways of expressing God are available: ritual, symbol, myth, dogma, etc.

Some nonlinguistic means of expressing religious transcendence

Some argue that ritualism came before myth because even animals are ritualistic.

Religious Expression in Ritual

Ritual - "formalized symbolic way in which a social group periodically expressed and strengthens its beliefs and values" (212).

Religious Expression in Symbol

Symbol involves both myth and ritual.

Religious symbols point toward the transcendent.

Religious expression in myth

Myths are symbols of faith combined in stories about human-divine encounters.

A myth is a true story to the religious person.

Myth is a symbolic way of expressing one's religious ultimate - "It is an empirical way of expressing the non-empirical transcendent" (215).

Linguistic Means of Expressing the Transcendent

Written regulation, creed and dogma are the primary form of linguistic expression of the Transcendent.

The Origin of God-Talk

F. M. Conford argued that doctrine was an attempt to give logos to a mythos.

A. N. Whitehead believed that dogmas was the enunciation of a general truth.

The Advantages of Linguistic Expressions of God

One can understand, propagate and preserve his or her faith through linguistic expressions of God.

The conceptualization of religious experience is in some sense necessary. Experience without expression is meaningless.

The Dangers of Religious Language

The danger of over conceptualization of religion in a disassociation with experience.

Some times dogma can can over step its bounds and replace true religious experience.

Religious language and its Concomitant Problems

Religious language must avoid verbal idolatry and experiential emptiness.

The Adequacy of Language as Means of Expressing God

The God of theism is infinite and only the language that cannot limit God is sufficient in describing God.

But any Goed-Talk that is so transcendent as to have no grounding in human experience will be devoid of meaning.

Does language imply limitations?

There is no way of eliminating a priori the possibility of meaningful God-Talk.

What is Language?

Heidegger admits that language often involves objectification, but does not necessarily do so.

Ian T. Ramsey stated that if language is capable of pointing beyond what is empirical ten it is essentially not limited.

To state what a person fully means by God one must:
1. Narrate his mass experiences
2. Describe the contexts in which he believes he uses the word "God"
3. Enunciate his understanding of human understanding

Establishing the Reality of Transcendence

(Originally written March 4, 2007 in Book 13)

Other Experiences of the Human Need for the Transcendent

Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) & Heidegger (Waiting for God) both expressed a craving of modern man to hear from God. Even Nietzsche found life without God to be unbearable. The skeptic Hume confessed he could not always bear his skeptical thoughts. Kant found that it was practically necessary to postulate God to make sense of his moral life.

"Is there any basis in reality for this God-need which both believers and nonbelievers have confessed in having?" (73).

The Possibility of Fluffing the Need for the Transcendent

Pure logical proofs for the non-existence of God are no more successful than proofs for the existence of God.

One ought not to judge does not exist on an a priori basis.

Humans expect that there are ways of fulfilling their basic needs. Both science and social activities are predicated on this expectation.

Individual or local failures to find a reality basis for religious experience cannot be made into universal impossible.

But, psychological desire alone is insufficient ground for establishing something as real.

Establishing the reality of the Transcendent

"What human beings really need really exists" (74).

This is based on human experience in two ways:
1) It is in accord with basic human expectations. "People cannot lead a life built on total absurdity. A totally meaningless life is contrary to human expectation" (74)
2) Real human needs can be fulfilled. An individual may die of thirst, but this does not prove that there is no water. The fact that people need water and expect it to be somewhere means there is water somewhere.

"It is contrary to both human expectation and human experience to suppose that what people really need is really not there to fulfill that need." (75)

Since people, both believers and nonbelievers really need God it would follow that there must really be a God.

In addition, since some individuals have found fulfillment in God then God must exist.

It is not a logical contradiction that every sense of religious fulfillment is merely an illusion, but this is hardly believable.

"The problem with atheism is that it admits the human need to transcend but allows no object to fulfill this need. This is an existential cruelty" (76)

Reality and the Existential Need for God

(Originally written March 1, 2007 in Book 13)

Philosophy of Religion
Norman Geisler & Winfried Corduan

The Meaning of Reality

"Reality is more than a subjective condition of human experience" (64).

In dealing with religious experience it seems there is no surefire way of separating the hallucinatory from the real.

There is always the possibility that one's supposed religious experience is actually explainable by purely psychological phenomena.

All experience is subjective, hence religious experience is subjective.

"Religious transcendence must be more than a subjective condition in religious experience before it should be called 'real'" (64).

Reality is more than merely a projection of human imagination.

Religious transcendence is not real if it is merely a projection of human nature.

Ludwig Feuerbach argued that God was really a projection of humanity's ideal man.

Karl Marx believed that religion was a projection of man's hope for the superman in heaven.

Reality is more than an object of wish-fulfillment.

Freud believed religion is an illusion, not in the sense that God is not real, but that it came about from man's wish that there be a God.

Reality is more than a subconscious force in human experience.

Carl Gustav Jung called the collective subconscious the real, but this is insufficient.

"Reality means to have an independent existence"

Transcendence, in order to be real, must exist outside of the mind of those who conceive it and must exist outside of the experiences of the people who experience it.

"Reality means to have an objective existence" (67).

Objective existence means to exist in and of itself, independently of other things.

The Need For Verification

Deception and illusion are possible so there must be some means of determinism whether there is a basis in reality for religious experience.

Kierkegaard held that the need to give evidence for God is evidence of one's choice to reject God.

Kierkegaard believed verifying God's existence was ridiculous,: "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it". (68).

Kierkegaard held that in order to offer a proof for God's existence one must presuppose that God exists.

He believed that faith, not reason, brings one to God.

Alvin Plantinga echoes Kierkegaard in stating that a belief in God is "properly basic".

Properly basic beliefs are beliefs that one needn't require verification; i.e. "I exist" or "there is a past".

There is a difference between the basis for believing that there is a God and the basis for believing in God.

"One needs evidence to know that there is a God, but one needs faith to commit oneself to the God that the evidence indicates is really there" (68).

Verifying the Reality of Religious Experience

People sense a basic need for God and this is the beginning of religious experience.

Theists and atheists alike have a feeling of dependence and a sense of contingency. But, is there really a God to fulfill the need people sense?

The Need for the Transcendent

Freud analyzed the human need for religion as a purely psychological need.

Religion was an infantile neurosis of mankind for Freud.

The Sense of Absolute Dependence

Freud did not deny the validity of people having religious experience.

"Science can never overcome a human's finitude or sense of cosmic contingency" (70).

Friedrich Schleiermacher takes the sense of cosmic need as the essence of religion.

A feeling of absolute dependence is a religious experience.

There is a need for the Transcendent because of the feeling of absolute contingency.

People sense a need for some Transcendence, whether or not it is really there.

Humanity's Being Unto Death

Martin Heidegger characterized human life as "being-unto-death".

Fear of death or nothingness is the anxiety of all man.

"I am, but I need not be and will not be" (70).

Asking about why one is are evidence of human ontological dependency.

Paul Tillich held that finite beings are ungrounded and must search for grounding, an ultimate grounding.

Does the need for God as ontological grounding of one's being imply that there is really such a grounding?

The Existential Need for God

Jean-Paul Sartre said he needed religion, he needed God and "Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself" (71).

Sartre maintained that humans have more than a psychological need for God. Sartre held that humans have an existential need for God.

Essay Idea: Needs for God
-Psychological
-Existential
-Ontological
-Religiou
-etc.

Sartre held that "To be man means to reach toward being God" (71).

Man is seeking to be self-determined and self-caused.

The existence of a person cries out to God to give it definition and essence.

Sartre held that while this is man's need and goal, the whole concept is absurd. How can man transcend himself to discover himself?

The need for God is a fundamental, existential need, even if there is no God to fulfill this need.