Reflective Wanderer

Over the past eight months I have been reading through about sixteen Platonic dialogues from  the Hackett edition of the Complete Works of Plato, along with my small group and wonderful interlocutors from Online Great Books (go sign up at onlinegreatbooks.com).  We read a dialogue or two, then meet together to discuss the book once a month. It’s been a very rewarding endeavor, which I would recommend to anyone interested in eavesdropping, on what Mortimer Adler referred to as the “great conversation,” which reading the great books can provide. 

Last night my seminar group finished our Plato readings, and, after a brief palate cleanser, Plutarch’s Lives, will be diving into Aristotle. However, my Plato reading journey is far from over; I feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is between the pages of my big, red brick of a door stopper book. I have a long way to go, and I have definitely failed to grasp many of the ideas and implications that a more mature or smarter reader would have, so some rereads are in order for me. Nonetheless, this brain stretching reading has caused me to think more concisely, read more thoughtfully, pursue truth more energetically, and I have managed to pick-up (or as Plato might say, remember) some ideas along the way. Hopefully writing out some of his key points and recording a few of my impressions will aid me in understanding these concepts a little better, however imperfectly they are expressed here. 

Metaphysics: 

1. The forms. No discussion of Plato would be complete without Plato’s famous forms. Starting here gives a better understanding of Plato’s thought, because for him the form comes before the particular. The forms, to put it as simply as possible, are the transcendent ideal of each thing. It is the being to which each becoming is measured. Human love is universally recognized as love not because it is the perfect love, but that it measures up in some way to the ideal. Bigness is big because (Meno) it shares in the preexisting realm of the eternal ideal of the big. All things have their ideal, and keeping that in mind allows man to measure the imperfect sensory perceptions around and in terms of ultimate reality. Forms are changeless. Maybe Plato over thought his forms a bit, but the idea behind it is crucial and correct. The form is a way to say that all is is tied to a realm above the universe, above even the gods (Euthyphro). It is objective reality. Therefore truth and accurate language is possible for Plato, insofar as they reflect the ideal. Different classes contain different parts (Statesmen), a thing can share in different forms, but the essence of a part is given meaning in relation to its non-physical form. In classic paganism all is changeable, by the whim of a god, in platonic thought matter is changing, but the form behind it, which is in the mind, is changeless. A thing is not a thing because it is an individual thing, but because it shares in thingness of the thing that is and does not in the thing that becomes, is basically how this works. 

2. The ideal and the phenomena. An ideal, or a form, is non-material. It exists in the mind and is known by the eternal soul. For Plato the soul always was, and it came in contact with the forms in eternity, so they recognize things in the phenomenal (physical) realm based on its connection with the realm of the ideas. Good souls have a clearer remembrance of the ideal than bad ones (Phaedrus), and it is the role of the philosopher to spend his life in contemplation of the ideal forms, and hence, knowing the ideal, seek to conform the world to that really is (The Republic). Plato tends to have too great a duality between mind and matter; it makes sense, after all the world is deeply corrupted yet all have a knowledge of a world far less full of imperfections, but he fails to elevate the good within the matter, for he has no incarnation, resurrection, or recreation of the physical imperfect . In Christian theology, the form, the ideal, takes on matter. In the incarnation of Christ the pure being elevates the physical by taking it on Himself. The promise of a physical resurrection and future recreation of the phenomenal universe raises matter above its present imperfect state, in anticipation of being remade in the likeness of the ideal. Without this knowledge, Plato saw the corruption of the physical world and the purity of the ideal world and said that spirit is caged in the body (Phaedrus).

3. Being versus becoming. The forms share in pure being, and, in the Timaeus, the eternal first being (god, but not the gods of Greek myth, more like Aristotle’s first mover) is the cause of all that is (being). He is eternal, for that which is pure being cannot be connected to time. Earth is not timeless, for “it isn’t possible to bestow eternality fully upon anything that is begotten.” (Timaeus). Time and the physical are inescapably linked, because they change. God does not change, just like in Christian theology God is the “I Am. This divine being is the fountain for all that exists, for Plato it is “by unquestionable necessity that this world is an image of something.” (Timaeus). The model for the forms is seen in the first eternal being that exists, without parts, since “a thing that is truly one, properly speaking, has to be completely without parts,” and is not becoming, “that which is doesn’t either rest or change.” (Sophist). Plato’s metaphysics establishes the concept of a creature/creator distinction. He was a far cry from the pagan animists of his day, which saw a oneness with men and gods. The gods were simply better and stronger versions of themselves, they had little concept for the transcendence of a god outside of time and of pure spirit. These ideas in Plato paved the way for the Christian apologists, like Justin Martyr in the second century, to articulate the claims of Jesus Christ, who is the manifestation of the form (logos), of the God of pure being. 

4. Good and Evil. In the Timaeus Plato gives his fullest teaching on the nature of goodness and evil in the universe. For Plato, the god is good, because the universe is good. This is self-evident, for even though there is corruption, the basic nature of things is good. The syllogism goes something like this: creation is good, a good creation refers back to a good god, therefore all that god creates is good. Evil then has no metaphysical reality and the void of goodness. The great Christian theologian Augustine picks up on this thread and further develops it. Furthermore, in The Republic, Plato claims that because god is good, and a good god cannot do evil, then punishments sent from god to punish evil are always good. All this is not to argue that he understood concepts of good, evil, god and the like in a consistent Christian way, he says plenty that proves the darkness of even his brilliant mind; to read Christian theology back into Plato would be anachronistic at best and injurious to the revelation of the Word of God at worst, nonetheless, much eternal truth is found about the metaphysical reality of this universe in his works, which, if read, cannot be denied.  

Epistemology:

5. Theories of knowledge. Plato establishes a competent theory of universal truth, how is truth known? Epistemology is the study of how knowledge is known. For Plato knowledge is ensconced within the soul, for the soul always existed, and in its prior existence gained knowledge of the forms in the heavens (Phaedrus). Souls are reused and overtime they become clouded as to true knowledge. It is the role of the educator to remind the student of what they already know in their souls but has been caused to be forgotten over time. He propounded a distinction between true knowledge (coming from contact with the universal forms), which is sure, and only true opinion, which is not certain, but happens to be correct (i.e. it is my opinion that the Queen of England is Elizebeth the II, and that opinion may be correct, but I have no concrete way to establish that as absolutely true; I may be mistaken somehow). Opinions are caused from the shifting world of sense perception; true knowing is gained from the world of eternal forms, or essences. 

6. Education. In the Platonic dialogue the Meno, Plato famously led a slave boy without any education to solve a very complex mathematical problem. He does this by using logical questions to aid the boy in “discovering” the answer for himself. The point to be gained by this exercise was to prove that education is never the giving of facts, but aiding the soul to rediscover the truth planted within it from its eternal past. Admittedly, he may have taken this thought too far, yet it does uncover an important fact, knowledge is not simply outside a person, waiting to be dumped in, but rather sense perception somehow (being made in the image of God in Christian theology) must correspond with an innate knowledge of things (why else are there things universally believed?). 

7. Epistemology in the Theaetetus. In this dialogue, Plato (through Socrates)  gives three basic theories of what exactly is knowledge itself, all of which are inspected and ultimately rejected (as happens in many of his works). Basic to all these assumptions, which have been grouped together under the name “empiricism,” is the idea that knowledge is constructed out of perception. The first is that knowledge is sense perception alone. The issue here is, of course, what if the perceived perceptions are wrong? If someone thinks there is a pond because they see a mirage that does not make the mirage into a pond. Sense perception may be correct, or incorrect, but it can not stand alone as the arbiter for changeless and exalted truth. The second attacks the idea that knowledge can be defined as true belief, if beliefs are a collection of sensory impressions.  Plato writes that, unless something can be said to explain how impressions can be linked so as to give them coherent structure, there is no reason to give them the distinction between true and false beliefs any more than it does to perceptions. The third section is that knowledge is true judging with an account. This looks like having a logical judgment coupled with facts, here too, this explanation falls short. Basically, because it gives no proper explanation of how this logical construction takes place, and without that explanation, merely sense perception is again to be relied upon, which is faulty. It does not follow that knowledge is therefore unknowable, indeed the whole point of this dialogue is to show three true ideas, which was that these three commonly held ideas of where knowledge comes from, held by Protagoras and Heracles, are faulty. Knowledge can not come from matter alone, though opinion (and many times right and scentsible opinion) may. Interestingly enough, no mention is made to the theory of knowledge mentioned in point # 5 above. This, if accurate, spells the end for pure “empiricism” to gain the answers to the ultimate questions of reality, for some higher authentication is necessary.  

Ethics: 

8. The Death of Humanism. Protagoras once proclaimed that man is the measure of all things. This is the hallmark of Enlightenment thought, which has in turn led to the postmodernist rejection of universal truth. Plato, thousands of years before, showed the absurdity of this and where it ends, in total absurdity. If man is the measure of all things, Plato explains in the Theaetetus, then whatever man says is; the issue here is, of course, which man? There is no universal man, there are only men, therefore whatever a man says must be true. The rub is, of course, that people do not always agree. Truth can not therefore exist, except as your truth or my truth, which is completely ridiculous and unreasonable. Plato saw this, years before the enlightenment thinkers humanism and its subsequent slide into the postmodern rejection of all absolutes, and destroyed this false thinking. 

9. Justice. What is justice? Plato wrote an entire dialogue on this topic, in his longest and most famous work, the Republic. Always the illustrator, he sought to demonstrate what a just soul looks like by demonstrating on something larger, like a city. So in this work, he flushes out what a just city looks like — Plato does not think that his city is necessarily one that will work in the “real world,” —  it  gives the reader an example of a fully functioning place, where everyone performs his or her proper role, benefiting the whole, which it turns out is Plato’s basic idea of justice. The just man does not meddle with that which does not belong to him, but with harmony and a right fitness of things, “regulates well that is really his own and rules himself.” This is important, because, “just and unjust actions are no different for the soul than healthy and unhealthy things are for the body.” Justice is the order and duty of the soul, and it is to the soul as health is to the body. This harmony in the soul is the right ordering of one’s duty, which is the working out of virtue. 

10. Why be virtuous? In the Republic, Socrates (Plato’s mouthpiece in the dialogue) argues that virtue and justice are always worth it, and his opponent propounds the opposite theory, that it is better to seem just, because people will trust one they think just, and give him privileges and honors, but actually be unjust, because the unjust gets more gain and flourishes more. The unjust can steal, lie, murder, and break all laws to get his way; if they are crafty they will hide their vices or make them appear to be virtues so they also can receive all the benefits of the just man, then all they need is a  little sacrifice to the gods and they are all set, whereas the man constrained by morals gets taken advantage of and never gets ahead. It almost reads like a bit of Nietzsche’s will to power stuff, unjust is power and strength, and the just are only so out of stupidity or weakness. To this Plato responds that even though the just man received no tangible reward, no standing in the eyes of the world, still, being just is always worth it, for the just soul is the healthy soul. It will ruin the soul, the most vital part of man, to engage in that which is evil. Even if no one knows what you’ve done, still doing what is unjust will shrivel the soul, and the committer will know, continuing to walk down paths that are not balanced by reality. On top of that, it’s not true to life that the evil man is fortunate and the just man never gets blessed, it seems like the unjust get ahead first, but in time their foot slips and they are shown for fools, but the name of the just man will (in time) be honored. Lastly, in the Gorgias, Plato gives the greatest reason to be just, despite the temptations and the seeming ease of injustice, the reward of heaven, which is far above that of earth. He practically says what Jesus later will say, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul.  

11. Crime and Punishment. Plato says that the best course is to be a just man, for reasons given above, but if one acts unjustly then the second best option is to suffer a fitting punishment for their acts of injustice. It is just for the one who acts unjustly to suffer an appropriate punishment, this gives the one who was not virtuous the chance to participate in justice, and will (hopefully) cause him to walk justly in future. Virtue is of paramount importance. 

12. The Sophist and the Philosopher. In the dialogue The Sophist, Plato gives the difference between the true philosopher and the Sophist. The philosopher looks to what is, the ultimate reality, true being, and then applies this to the world around him. The Sophist is one who, neglecting ultimate reality, makes up an imaginary world, wherein they are able to bend any situation to get the result they desire. The philosopher, being tired of the shadows on the cave (Republic), goes beyond, and finds the substance of things, then tries to share them with the world, like Christ, the ultimate revealer of the world beyond the shadows, the logos of God. Wise men pursue being, while fools waste their time pursuing seeming. 

Politics:

1. Forms of Government. For Plato (in the Republic), the very worst type of government is a dictator, which is the unjust ruler. The one who gives laws not in keeping with harmony and health to the state, but ruins it. The second worst is, of course, democracy. Writing during the time of the disastrous  Peloponnesian war, Plato (as well as the able historian, Thucydides), saw first hand the shortcomings of democracy in his native city of Athens. There were a variety of laws, which contradicted each other, not made by competent professionals who had first hand information of things, but rather by the average Athenian, swayed at any moment by the most eloquent Sophist around. He rejects this model, and for good reason. Instead, he comes (with many innumerable arguments, as always) to the position that the best form of government is monarchy, however, there is to be one catch, in order for him not to be a tyrant, he is to be a philosopher too, wise and discerning the truth, and not enamored with seeming. The issue here is, of course, can such a one ever be found? Ultimately, only Jesus Christ, the coming king, can ever fulfill the role of the perfect philosopher-king, the one who couples full authority with perfect justice. In one of his last dialogues (The Statesman), he writes that while it would be ideal for the king to be free from external law, so that he may adapt rules to differing circumstances, yet this could lead to tyranny, for the temptations to injustice would be too great, so in an acquiescence the to limitations of weak men, he maintains that a written constitution, limiting the powers that be to what is just, is needed. Here is seen the beginnings of the rule of law. Begrudgingly as Plato may be about it, however we see from Plato that even the king is to be under the law.

Aesthetics:

1. The Good, the Beautiful, and the Proportioned. The dialogue, the Symposium, is about love. Love drives the lover to the object of his love. The lowest form of this is the love of physical attraction, which causes one to pursue the beautiful, this, however, is only the beginning. From the lower forms of love for physical attraction alone, the wise man will be motivated to higher beauty. Physical attraction is therefore like a gateway drug, and the committed then will climb higher, to the love of beauty within the goodness of things, than to the love of wisdom (which is very beautiful) and then up to a contemplation of the eternal form of love itself. There is, beyond this, a sense of what beauty may be: the signs of good measurement and proportion show its presents and link it with what is good and just. Beauty here is perfect unity, or even the principle of unity itself. Beauty is objective, there is an eternal form of beauty, and things on earth are more or less beautiful in how much they measure up to it. Thus to be beautiful, a thing must be proportioned to its created end and correspond with the good. Beauty, though with many variations in the world leading to different preferences in man, is in itself, not in the eye of the beholder, but rather a transcendent universal, to which the things of earth are seen as beautiful insofar as they correspond to the form of the beautiful, which is always good. 

Logic:

1. Reason. Because Plato had universals that were stable and changeless (forms) he could do logic, which is the right deduction from a known maxim or truth to other related truths. Thus when arguing, the wily Plato will get his interlocutors to agree, for example, that when sailing a ship it is best for there to be one, knowledgeable captain, than take a whole lot of land lubbers on board and invest them all equally with the command of the ship, then he likes the ruling of a state with the ruling of a ship, to prove a king is obviously better than a democracy. Of course great care must be taken, lest one of the premises are wrong, but if done correctly truth can be gained by the right application of what is already known to what follows from that logically. This is all so because truth does not change, and is knowable, in a world that is founded on reasonableness. This is the primary vehicle of persuasion Plato uses, asking questions and getting his listeners to answer them, while leading them on a chain of reasoning to the desired conclusion. At times this may seem vexing and he does use some shaky premises from time to time, yet the use of this Socratic method, for which he was famous, does often bring the most hesitant to accept the conclusion. All reasoning to Plato is, therefore, axiomatic, because it must move from the acceptance of the universal, and to the particular. 

Conclusion:

Plato got a lot right, that is clear, and he got a lot wrong, that is also clear. Exactly where that line is I’m not yet entirely sure, but one thing is certain, he started with some true premises about the universe (like recognizing universals) and this led him to many correct deductions about the universe around him. There are plenty of times in his writings where it feels like he is looking through a mirror darkly, giving hints that reflect the truths God has founded the world upon. At other times, he writes things that clearly show the darkness of the heart apart from Christ, or the limitations that he had due to his lack of Biblical revelation. He needed the Form to take on flesh, so that the universal could be fully seen. Despite his limitations, Plato was blessed by seeing parts of God’s truth, and reflecting that, however brokenly, to his readers. This was important for the spread of the faith in the early centuries, for it provided and popularized ideas in the Greek language that early apologists like Justine Martyr would be able to use to proclaim Christ, the logos of God and the transcendent truth of the Christian faith. Rather than ignore or minimize this, we should praise God for it, as John Calvin wrote, “Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skilful description of nature, were blind? Shall we deny the possession of intellect to those who drew up rules for discourse, and taught us to speak in accordance with reason? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold. But shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of God?” Read Plato, reread Plato, then bring it all back to the Word of God.

If I have one friend who reads this whole post I’ll be thrilled, not because these notes are worth reading (they really aren’t; they’re merely a way to try and sort some of this out in my head), but to know that I have a reader who’s that dedicated to reading what I write or is that interested in this stuff:)