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