ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 11: PLATO
BIO:
- Noble family, disillusioned with tyranny and democracy alike
- Meets pythagoreans in Sicily
- tried to make Dionysus the Elder and Younger philosopher kings, failed
Many interpretations, political Plato is a modern conception
- now we have a chronology of them
- later dialouges include less of Socrates, less conversation, more exposition by a different character (i.e. Timaeus)
Against writing:
- it brings about forgetfulness
- could replace true dialogue and engagement with ideas
Plato or Socrates?: probably a mixture, but even if polyphonic, that one voice changes depending on context
Dogmatic or undogmatic?: there’s arguments for both, but perhaps not so dogmatic, urging a search for truth, but not truly presenting it
- Plato’s ‘dogmas’ have come to us from Aristotle, but are untrustworthy
[Monad/One limits Dyad/Matter and thus Numbers & Forms arise]
True/False
- opinion deals with the changing
[he agrees with the sophists that in reality there is only opinion, but takes it a step higher] - knowledge deals with the constant
- STRONG REALISM: there is definite reality because of intelligible essences (Forms, which structure the sense-perceptible)
- we move from a part of knowledge to complete knowledge via RECOLLECTION (soul is eternal)
Phaedo:
- things are made sensible by what participates in them (like Anaxagoras)
Becomings vs Being: perishing, opinion vs persisting, knowledge
- the object of knowledge must be stable (Meno), so it must be Being
Sensible: images and sensible objects; that which is given
Intelligible: mathematical objects, Forms
Dianoia: starting with a hypothesis, moving towards a conclusion
Noesis: true grasping of the Forms
Dialectic: starting with assumptions, which are eventually questioned; allows us to establish definitions of the Forms
Sophist:
- two movements of knowledge/the dialectic
- Collection: grasping the Form(s) via definition, from scattered reality to singular intelligible
- Division: making the definition specific by accepting or rejecting certain members
- Aristotle takes this up later
Is knowledge deduction or induction, the immortal soul remembering solves this
GENRES:
- grander Forms, in which others participate: Being, Identity, Diversity, Motion, Rest
- thus the animation of the sensible does not discount the apparently unmoving Forms
Timaeus:
- possible cosmology, but not to be understood literally
- debate if the cosmos is temporal existent, or eternal, becoming and with a cause on which it depends
- demiurge uses something eternal as a paradigm of his crafting
- the world is designed and teleological, made by a craftsman with an end-goal in his mind
- the demiurge solves the problem of how the forms and being/becoming came about and were connected
- Temporalists: Demiurge is God, not the Forms
- Eternalists: Demiurge is the Forms’ causal power, explained simply
The cosmos is embodied, and has a soul
- 4 elements make it up
- its soul takes up Being, Sameness, Difference mixed together
- the soul is between being and becoming, participating in both
- this the cosmic soul transmits forms
- through the revolving of the cosmic souls through 2 concentric circles (stars, planets) Forms influence us
Matter:
- either Disorderly Motion, or Unqualified Raw Material
- if combined there are necessary mechanical characteristics moving semi-chaothically due to there being no teleology
Soul is in perpetual motion, and is what gives birth to motion
- for Aristotle the unmoved mover is not itself moved, but moves others
- for Plato the soul is a self-mover
Phaedo: soul-body dualism
Timaeus/Phaedrus: soul dualism, between the moral and immoral (rational/irrational) parts
- the irrational part of the soul is the result of its incarnation and embodiment
- in our body the irrational part is positioned lower, the rational higher, closer to the head
- many souls, as many as the stars, like the Godly souls or Universal soul, but less pure
- chariot story shows the souls their fate of incarnation
- incarnation can be stopped via becoming a philosopher
Phaedrus: reason is a chariot controlling the spiritive white horse, and appetitive black horse
- you can see a place beyond the heavens before reincarnation (if your horses are proper)
Republic (Book X): Myth or Er
- previous lives influence reincarnations, and the choices you make
Book IV: since we want contrary things, and because of an early form of the PNC, our soul must have different parts wanting different things - Aristotle divides the rational part into contemplative and practical
- recent interpretations paint Rationality itself as a kind of passion
Knowledge is not enough to be good, each part of the soul has its virtue
- Reason: knowledge, wisdom
- Spirited: courage
- Appetitive: temperance, continence
- Complete virtue of the soul: justice
Republic: search for a complete correspondence between the micro (soul) and macro (city)‘s respective virtues
- Philosophers: knowledge, wisdom, task of ruling
- Guardians: courage, task of defending
- Artisans: temperance, task of obeying
- Virtue of the city: justice
What is Justice?
- sophists believe in an instrumental justice, Socrates is for justice for its own sake
- justice makes you happy
- from the primitive to the ‘luxurious’ contemporary city
- warriors needed, land expansion
- but we should throw out Homer in virtue of a new mythology of the philosophical city
- Noble lies: golden, silver, bronze races which are non-hereditary (against nepotism)
- family is the birth of injustice (nepotism), so its best if property and child-care were communal activities
The philosopher should return to the dark cave to rule the city, help those who haven’t seen the light
- even if they don’t want to, they have to
- even if the population doesn’t want them, they have to