Ancient Philosophy
Two parts of Plato’s scientific methodology
Knowledge consists in an access to the ideas. If we deny that there can be any access through immediate sense-perception, as there is an unbridgable line between becoming and being, then we have to explain in what way we obtain knowledge. He says that the soul has had access to the ideas before this life, and will gain access to the world of ideas again after this life. Our corporeal life is just an intermezzo between two stages in which the soul has access to the ideas. When a baby is born it is stupid and needs to be taught everything. But being taught everything relies on remembering all of those things which you knew already when your soul knew the ideas. It takes some time to realise, a child realises that 1+1=2 without any teacher. It is something anyone can find out by themselves. Anamnesis. It is a technical term meaning that we had the presence of ideas which we somehow need to reactivate. The word for memory is actually Mneme. This word is related to sense-perception. Anamnesis is about thing you haven’t seen but which you can have/and have had insight about.
In the Meno Socrates just asks questions to a slave and brings about his inherent knowledge of mathematics that you just have to bother to activate.
A second scientific term is dialectic. Derived from having a conversation from a wise person and a pupil/interlocutor – whoever is being delivered. This dialectical movement of going back and forth needs to be done on the basis of natural joints. If you want to cut meat you cant just cut through the meat, but you should cut at the joints. In the Phaedrus he says as much. If you want to follow nature in defining things you have to split things up where it is split up naturally. Not just definitions that arbitrarily come out of your mind. If you really want to be a scientist, then dialectic is the highest discipline you need to master in the rule of the state. You need to know where the correct classifications are in reality, so as to find the idea in itself. The whole of the Sophist is an excercise of dialectic, trying to cut off the sophistic definitions, and rather ’cut at the joint’. Dialectic may as such help us see the true nature of things by misusing terms and definitions. It is in use that the theory develops. In Phaedrus he explains that dialectic consists in two seperate approaches: bringing together the multitude of examples in order to find the common denominator of things; if you have one thing, try to find its constitutive parts and make the division so that all the things correspond to the thing you are investigating.
Tree of porphyry: a genus and a differentiation of each thing. Aristotle applies this to biology. This is how you use natural joints in the meaning of Plato, but Plato hates biology because it is of the sensible world so cannot be an expression of the intelligible world. Animal is probably not an idea in the world of ideas.
Self-criticism of the theory of Ideas in Parmenides.
Young Socrates is put on stage with the old Parmenides. Socrates explains his theory of ideas and participation and so on. And Parmenides is not impressed. This is Plato critiquing his own theory of course. And what do we do with that? Does this mean that post-republic Plato has given up the theory of ideas? Or is he just introducing some self-consciousness about the problems of the theory? There are two large tendencies in Plato studies regarding this: the revisionists, saying that Plato rejects his theory of ideas – revises his theory of ideas. Then there are the unitarians who argue that no it is just a self-criticism that isnt particularly fatal, he is just trying to be woke. Some revisionists will argue that the unwritten doctrines are the things he revised to. Then there are those who argue that there are new scientific theories in the following dialogues. In Sophist Plato talks about the five greatest kinds (megista genè) which are beyond the ideas. Anything you find existing in the world of thought will be a combination of the greatest kinds: being (ideas), sameness, otherness, motion, and rest. He doesn’t explain whether this is an alternative to the theory of ideas. But it is clear that he is looking for other ways to solve problems like that of participation raised in Parmenides. Is he here doing away with the theory of ideas or trying to help us understand it in a better way? In Philebus he introduces another classification, instead of four kinds. Here he argues that you need a mixture of intellect and body in order to enjoy life. Everything you find existing, is the world as a combination of body and soul. And in order to explain this you need a cause, two components: limit and unlimit – and with these you find the mixture. It seems not to cohere with the theory of ideas properly. But he seems to be raising the same questions as he raised in Parmendies in Philebus too. Do you introduce a limited number or an unlimited number of ideas? Etc. It seems that he is trying to find a way out of his own criticism.
About the sensible world and the thing you find existing there, you don’t need ideas to explain everything that exists there. We can reduce the existence of all of these things to elementary constitutents that we can then explain as what they are. You don’t need ideas of hair, mud and cows, because the constituent parts will make sure you can explain everything in a mathematical or scientific manner. As such, the extent to the theory of ideas seems to be quite limited. Only justice, truth, beauty, good etc. are what is needed to explain the world. And maybe explaining the world is not really the point either for Plato. How are we to know what the ideas are? What makes us certain that we have recollected? Well we can’t actually. To make this decision we actually have to be gods. We have to look up at the ideas and transpose our notions to our ideas, so even saying that there is an idea of justice is actually using our own human notions to describe the world of ideas, which may already be wrong. We can’t categorically say that this isn’t the case.
If you have justice and just things, is the power of justice exhausted in the things that participate in it? Do just things show the entirety of justice? If we don’t know the nature of participation we cannot decide if the instances of the idea really reflect the idea itself well or not.
Plato says that if you have a large thing, there is largeness in that thing in the scheme of participation. Then we have to decide how the idea of largness actually corresponds to the large thing. This presupposes access to some other thing which we call the Large, which explains the correspondence between the idea and its participant. That means you end up with three instances for explainin that large thing being large. This continues ad infinitum as you need another Large to explain the first Large etc. because there is likeness in each stage of the Large to the Large that comes before it. This is the third man argument. This is Aristotle stealing a criticism of Plato from Parmenides. Of course this particular example of large is a bit stupid because it is an accidental anyways, Aristotle using it for the definition of man is a bit more clear.
The theory of the soul
What the soul had been before, we know from the pythagoreans, that it was immortal and involved in a cycle of rebirth – could move from one body to another. In Plato it becomes the principle of our central moral life. This cycle of rebirth which Plato takes over is now defined as a cycle of life choices based on the moral improvements we have made, which improves the ability of our soul to choose a new body in the afterlife. You need to know that what we do in this life has a direct bearing on making our new-life choice. It is something our soul personally chooses. It may be a deterioration, if we are constantly attached to the body, by eating and drinking in class, when we die our soul will not be prepared. And our soul will then immediately look for another body and join it whatever it may be. You have to learn to take distance from your body in order to prepare yourself for a better life in the future. There comes a moment which is left up to you basically. This is what underlies your capabilities as a learner. If you were a worm in your previous life, what you saw previously will not really help your ability to recollect. For Plato God has nothing to do with the kind of life you are living, you chose this life, so properly live it up!
The soul itself looks more or less exactly like the state. They are all a function with a corresponding virtue. There are three functions to the soul. The soul performs three different kinds of actions. One of them is rational, which virtue is understanding. It functions like the guardians. In order to become a good person as an individual you need a good organisation just like in the state. Then there is the spirited and the desiring parts. They are described as the horses of the chariot, whilst the rational function is the charioteer. The spirited is the sort of impulsive fumes that take over you through passion, a kind of anger, it makes you react to something you don’t like. It is not the same as your desires. The desiring part is that you want something to be yours. The example Plato gives is the necrophile. He has a desire to have sex with a dead body, but he really loathes his attitude towards himself. So there is a structural distinction between desiring and have passionate indignation. He knows that what he is doing is wrong, but he still wants to satisfy his desire. Who you are is just an emanation of the striving between each function of the soul. The amount to which rationality guides, or are being indignated, or are slaves to their desires, and so who you are depends on your accidental consitution of these in the soul. A just person then is going to be the one in which these three do their job properly. Here the charioteer commands and the horses always obey. This again is an ideal description of the individual to which no one will really be able to reach. You can’t give up your desires, because then you will actually kill yourself. If you don’t want to eat you will starve yourself to death. The desires are necessary. In the same way is indignation necessary. If you don’t get angry at someone trying to kill you they will kill you. Rather the virtue of each of these courage and moderation respectively. Denial of each is not following the golden mean. In nature desires are well-ordered, but in human beings they are not, and we need to replace our jumbled desires with something that resembles the natural desires.
In Phaedo philosophy is not just something that helps you to be happy, but is rather a proper training for death, the detachment of the soul from the body. Then the soul must be prepared. The whole enterprise of philosophy is to prepare yourself in such a way that you make a good life-choice later. There are enough bodies to choose from, and you have to know at the point of death which body will be the best for you.