Enrico Valente

MY FIRST

PLATO

The life, thought and works

of the great philosopher

Table of Contents

Table of Contents      

1. INTRODUCTION      

2. LIFE      

3. THE FIRST DIALOGUES      

4. THE THEORY OF IDEAS      

HYPERURANION AND THE CONCEPT OF IDEA IN PLATO      

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WORLD OF THE SENSES AND THE WORLD OF IDEAS      

5. KNOWLEDGE OF IDEAS      

THE THEORY OF REMINISCENCE      

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL      

TRUTH AND OPINION      

PASSIONS, OBSTACLE TO TRUTH      

6. THE MYTHS OF PLATO

THE WINGED CHARIOT      

THE MYTH OF THE CAVE      

THE MYTH OF THE ANDROGYNE      

THE MYTH OF THE DEMIURGE      

THE MYTH OF PROMETHEUS      

THE MYTH OF THEUTH      

7. THE IDEAL STATE

JUSTICE      

THE JUST STATE      

THE THREE PARTS OF THE STATE      

PLATONIC COMMUNISM      

THE EDUCATION OF GOVERNORS      

THE DEGENERATIONS OF THE STATE      

8. SCIENCE AND IMMITATIVE ART............................................................................................

9. RHETORIC........................................................................................................................... ...

10. DIALETICS...........................................................................................................................

11. ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE.................................................................................................

12. TO BE AND NOT TO BE, THE ERROR .................................................................................

13. GOOD FOR MAN..................................................................................................................

14. THE LAWS.............................................................................................................................

15. RELIGION AND COSMIC ORDER ....................................................................................

16. PLATO IN HISTORY..........................................................................................................

1. INTRODUCTION

Introducing Plato, and, mostly, being able to do so concisely, is a difficult undertaking, to say the least, because in him we recognize one who was probably the most important and influential philosopher of antiquity. His ideas and his theories will be the themes that practically all thinkers who come after him will have to deal with. And they will do so to criticize him, to surpass him, to praise him, to confirm their own ideas or to find fault with those of others. For this reason, no scholar who wishes to undertake the long path of the history of philosophy can ignore approaching his thought.

To understand Plato adequately philosophically, we must start with two important premises. The first is that his thought is characterized by a basic intention, an imperative requirement, that is, by the will to remove all traces of relativism that were so dear to the Sophists who, by negating any stable viewpoint of things, prevented the certainty of knowledge and of language and demanded of the law the strongest work of establishing what was true and what was false, what was right and what, on the other hand, was wrong. Plato has the merit of having inaugurated the concept of the rational soul which, by regulating itself on the principle of non-contradiction, fixes the uniqueness of meanings, subtracting them from that oscillation of sense that is the expression of a symbolic language that impedes the development of a structured thought, a discourse constructed upon stable and universal definitions, a language that claims to remove any ambiguity, any risk of misunderstanding and incomprehension. This is why today we still say that Plato is the father of grammar and the founder of metaphysics and Western philosophical thought.

The second premise is that regardless we cannot ignore the historical framework in which his thought is shaped. We are talking about the profound poly-cultural crisis that affected the years of his youth. The defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, the nefarious experience of the aristocratic experiment of the Thirty Tyrants, the return to a democracy that soon turns out to be a disappointment so strong that it is soiled with Socrates' blood. A socio-political decay but not only, for Plato the crisis also concerns man understood in his totality: in his cultural aspects, in his values, in his being a citizen. Having acquired this appalling awareness, the Athenian philosopher will direct every effort in an attempt to trigger a profound ethical renewal of man in the name of virtue, justice and the common good, in short, what he proposes will be a global reform of human existence.

Platonism, therefore, has an all-encompassing claim. Plato does not try to give an answer to single questions, to single fields of life and knowledge, as did all the philosophers who preceded him. There is no branch of knowledge that is not considered in his philosophy. Plato is interested both in philosophical questions and in those that are religious, ethical, political, linguistic and artistic. His philosophy develops theories in every area, in the field of knowledge, in that of ethics, politics, art, the cosmos, etc. Despite this, politics remains the main objective, the greatest need of his philosophy. The search for the collective good is the object of all his efforts. For Plato, injustices will never end until philosophers lead the State. This is the fulcrum of his political theories. For this criteria any other form of government, tyranny, timocracy and also democracy were revealed, to his eyes, as being totally inadequate for the foundation of the just State.

A new man for a new politics, a new politics for a new man. This could be his slogan as well as the objective of his philosophy. For this Plato, throughout his life, will place his genius at the service of the community. His greatest masterpiece, the dialogue of the Republic, became the first work of antiquity to create a project of an ideal, utopian state. But despite his laudable intentions, he will never meet anyone who is willing to test his theories of the State and the decline of the Greek poleis [cities] will prove dramatically unstoppable.

2. LIFE

In his Chronology, Apollodorus of Athens set the date of Plato's birth at the eighty-eighth Olympiad, on the seventh day of the month of Targellion, i.e. at the end of May 428 BCE.

Plato was born in Athens to aristocratic parents: his father Aristone imposed the name of his grandfather Aristocles on him (although according to Diogenes Laërtius himself there is a legend according to which the philosopher was actually the son of the god Apollo). It was his gymnastics teacher who jokingly named him “Plato”, given the breadth of his shoulders, (from the Greek πλατύς, platýs, which means "wide" or broad). In fact, Plato practiced pancrazio a sort of combined combat and boxing. According to others, however, the name was attributed to his broad forehead.

From an early age, Plato was able to distinguish himself for his acute intellect and prodigious memory. His upbringing, at least initially, was mostly artistic. He studied music, painting and literature, distinguishing himself, in particular, in poetic and dramatic composition. Already in the period of his youth he came into contact with philosophy, as demonstrated by the fact that he had Cratylus among his teachers (himself a pupil of Heraclitus and to whom he will dedicate a dialogue).

Fundamental was the meeting with Socrates, who was able to influence his thinking decisively. Plato remained faithful to his teacher throughout his life, so much so that he became the only reference in philosophizing (the devotion will be such that in many of his writings the figure of the teacher will be almost idealized). His entire production, far from being composed into a system, was intended to be a continuous interpretative study of the master's philosophical speculation (we can therefore say that if Socrates planted the seed Plato took care of and made the plant grow).

Socrates, however, after the parenthesis of the oligarchic and pro-Spartan government of the Thirty Tyrants, was accused of impiety by the new democratic government (it was said that he had invented new divinities) and of corrupting the young and he was sentenced to death in 399 BCE (in the apology of Socrates the pupil described the master's trial, pronounced his defense, denounced the falsity of those who accused him of corrupting the youth).

For Plato, the death of the master represented the clearest proof of the deterioration of the Greek world, which had been caused by the complete separation of politics from knowledge and justice. From this awareness the idea arose in him, which he will develop in the dialogue of the Republic, according to which only a government of philosophers could create a just State.

In 388 Plato made the first of several trips to southern Italy. He settled in Taranto, where he attended the school of the Pythagoreans, and then in Syracuse: here his political ideas aroused the irritation of the tyrant Dionysius the Elder, who considering him a dangerous opponent, imprisoned and sold him as a slave.

The philosopher Anniceris paid his ransom and, fortunately, Plato returned to Athens as a free man, where he founded the Academy in 387, the first great philosophical school of antiquity, a school that would traverse the centuries and which, even if Justinian would suppress it in 529 CE, would have profound repercussions on generations of philosophers.

In 367 BCE, after twenty years dedicated to study and teaching, the passion for politics reawakened in Plato's soul, also because Dionysius the Younger, who succeeded his father, showed interest in his theories and invited him to Syracuse, but just as had already happened with his father, this experience did not have the desired outcome.

The elderly philosopher thus made two more trips to the Sicilian city that ended in complete failure (he was imprisoned again), which nearly cost him his life. Plato's political reform was strongly opposed by the tyrannical faction that saw in the Athenian philosopher, and in his eloquence, a threat to its own existence, or even a new attempt at conquest by Athens. Returning to his hometown in 360, Plato remained at the head of the Academy until his death in 347 BCE.

During his life Plato wrote many works: 35 dialogues and 13 letters that can be grouped into the writings of his youth, maturity and old age. The teaching, as for Socrates, takes place through the technique of dialectics, that is, with debates and heated exchanges of opinion between the student and the teacher. Unlike the Sophists, who were handsomely paid to give lessons where there was no confrontation, exchange of ideas and opinions, for Plato the passive assimilation of the word did not count.

The philosopher's aversion to writing was fundamentally determined by the fact that this method led to rigid dogmatism, to the fossilization of knowledge and made the reader lazy, while dialogue has the advantage of remaining fluid, dynamic, active, continually aimed at inquiry, to the development of one's own convictions (even if, to tell the truth, many scholars say that in the Republic Plato, himself, poses as a perfect dogmatist).

All the dialogues written have his great teacher Socrates as the protagonist where the same pupils participate, directed by Plato or by the older pupils, and illustrious characters passing through Athens.

3. THE FIRST DIALOGUES

Plato's first dialogues are those that are most affected by the teachings of Socrates. In them the philosopher of Athens is engaged in a continuous search and demand for definitions. The questions cover topics such as friendship, courage, temperance, the possibility of teaching virtue and justice.

In the apology of Socrates the author describes the historical truth of the process that led Socrates, his great teacher, to be sentenced to death. The accusation is both that he did not recognize traditions, such as the gods, and of having introduced new divinities and of having corrupted the young. Faced with this accusation, the philosopher could have left the city or at least tried to defend himself. But he did not choose to, justifying himself by saying that he would not renounce his education of the Athenians for any reason.

The work that Plato dedicates to his master is, in addition to a description of the trial and of Socrates' refusal to escape condemnation, an exaltation of the social task he had proposed. The message that the author wanted to convey is, fundamentally, that a life without philosophical research does not deserve to be lived.

In the Crito, a dialogue closely linked to the Apology, Socrates is presented as being before a dreadful dilemma that consists of the chosen obligation of accepting death in respect of what the just man owes to his country and its laws, or, following the encouragement of his friends and loved ones, to escape from prison, thereby denying the substance of his teachings. In this dialogue, research is elevated to an indispensable mission for the man who has decided to dedicate his life to this.

The minor dialogues that anticipate the more mature works of this first phase of his thought foretell and prepare for the dialogues of Protagoras and Gorgias.

The central theme is virtue. According to Plato, there is only one virtue: science. All the other virtues described in the dialogues, such as sanctity, courage, wisdom, are not independent, but are interrelated and find their raison d'etre in science. Indeed, if the virtues were all autonomous, they would tend to create different and therefore also conflicting values. Instead it is the task of science to give order to the virtues, to harmonize them and lead them to itself.

In Protagoras Plato denies any possible educational value in sophist teaching. The virtue Protagoras talks about is not science, but the simple skills acquired from experience. A private heritage, therefore, which cannot be taught. Science, on the other hand, Plato teaches us, can belong to anyone and, for this reason, is teachable; is transmissible.

Euthydemus is the dialogue of Plato's critique of heristics, the art of refuting anything spoken, whether true or false. In the dialogue, the speakers have fun demonstrating that anything can be true and false at the same time. First it is said that only the ignorant can learn and, immediately afterwards, instead, that only the wise can learn. For this reason, it is not possible for eristics to err, because anything they say can be true.

Plato is firmly opposed to this conviction, who, through the words of Socrates (in all the dialogues Plato's thought takes shape in the words of Socrates), instead affirms that in this case there would be nothing to teach and nothing to learn. Only wisdom can be taught and it can be accomplished through philosophical research: the only science that, in addition to producing knowledge, leads man to happiness, well-being and being able to live in harmony with society and with himself.

In Gorgias the central theme is rhetoric, which is the verbal technique of persuasion that permits lawyers and politicians to be successful in their profession. If Gorgias defends it, for Socrates, on the contrary, it is to be condemned because it has no object of its own but allows us to talk about anything, and because it allows us to persuade only the simplest souls, those devoid of a critical spirit and who lack common sense. In short, rhetoric is not a virtue, it is not directed towards the search for the just, but is a flattering practice that gives only the appearance of justice and truth.

If we can affirm that rhetoric can be useful in defending oneself against unjust accusations, it is equally true that it is only an apparent advantage, unable to guarantee lasting happiness. Because, says Plato, the real harm is not in receiving an injustice but in committing it. And mostly, after having brought it about, in evading punishment, for the reason that it takes away from the soul the chance of purifying itself, of freeing itself from guilt through its redemption.

On the subject of justice, we will see, the view of the Sophists is radically contrary to that of Plato. Indeed, rhetoric is indifferent to justice as an ethical value. Indeed, for the Sophists it is only a human convention that is not reflected in the laws of nature where the strongest wins. And the strongest do not care about justice; on the contrary, it is defined around them. Against this insipid immoralism, Plato asserts that the prevaricating spirit is incapable of making one truly happy, but insatiably goes from one pleasure to another, it is like a barrel with holes that always fails to fill. If, for Plato, pleasure derives from virtues, from thinking right and philosophizing about truth, the pleasure sought by the Sophists arises from the satisfaction of an insatiable and painful need to rule.

4. THE THEORY OF IDEAS

HYPERURANION AND THE CONCEPT OF IDEA IN PLATO

I seek to create (...) another method (...) for myself. I feared my soul would be completely blinded by wanting to look directly at things with my eyes and to try to understand them with each of my senses; it seemed to me, then, that I had to take refuge in places and consider the reality of things in them (...). When this was allowed, it was agreed that in correspondence with everything there is an idea and that all things, insofar as they take part in ideas, take their name from them (Phaedo, 95b, 99d-e, 102a-b).

The theory of ideas represents the pivot around which Plato constructed his entire philosophical system, the backbone of his elaborate doctrine, as well as the most important legacy he leaves to Western philosophy and civilization. It is not exhibited completely or organically in a single dialogue, even though it is more widely spoken of in his works of maturity: in Phaedrus, in Phaedo, in Parmenides and in the Republic.

For the philosopher of Athens there is a supersensible reality, a reality that goes beyond the world, as we know it, the tangible and concrete, which our eyes can see and our senses can perceive. I see the car go by, the pencil I'm holding, the book I'm reading, the chair I'm sitting on. These are all examples of realities that can be traced back to the world we inhabit. The super sensed, on the other hand, is not all of this, but it is something that is impossible to experience directly, practically and immediately, because, as the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery would have said, it is invisible to the eye. Plato calls this otherworldly and metaphysical dimension hyperuranion, which means beyond the sky, and the place, for the philosopher, where our soul and ideas, immutable and incorruptible entities, dwell. The world is only an imperfect imitation.

But what are ideas for Plato, and why are they so important? For the Athenian philosopher, ideas are not what we mean, that is reproduced by the mind, the object of our thinking (I am thinking of a book and therefore we say that I have an idea), but it is something more relevant and nobler. Ideas are abstract forms, archetypes that have always existed, immutable and imperishable, through which it is possible, and this is their fundamental characteristic, to find the pattern, the exemplary form that unites a dispersed plurality of objects, what therefore remains similar in the multifaceted and stable in becoming.

Here are a few examples that will help make this concept more understandable. If I say "horse" I don't really mean that particular horse that is eating the fodder in front of me, or if I say "pen" I am not referring to that precise and certain pen that I have in my hand with which I am writing, but rather, the abstract idea of horse, or the idea of a pen. In fact, the idea allows us to include in a single entity (or as we say today “concept”), what a multiplicity of things have in common. The examples could go on: the idea of Beauty is common and includes all things that are beautiful, the idea of Justice all that is right, the idea of a bottle all that we call a bottle, and so on.

Platonic ideas are perfect models, primordial archetypes that have always existed and will exist forever. There are many but they have common characteristics: they have the character of totality (for example, beauty does not only concern some beautiful things but all beautiful things, justice does not only concern a just person but all just people), possess the character of unity (because the idea of beauty is independent of the multiplicity of beautiful things in which it is determined, or where justice is presented) and of immutability (it cannot be said that the idea of beauty and justice have a beginning or an end or that they change, but they will always exist).

Ideas, for Plato, can be divided into two categories: the idea values, which correspond to the supreme aesthetic and ethical principles such as for example Good, Beauty, Justice, Harmony, Loyalty and Friendship and mathematics that refer to the principles of geometry and arithmetic such as numbers and geometric shapes. Ideas do not all have the same importance but, according to Plato, must be ordered hierarchically, like a pyramid at the top of which the idea of good is placed (towards which, for the philosopher, human action must be oriented) and immediately beneath the ideas of values (as mentioned, the idea of justice, loyalty, courage, beauty, etc.).

As we can easily see, ideas, even if they do not belong to the world of the senses, establish a necessary link with the things that are part of it. Things participate in ideas, and ideas participate in the supreme idea which is that of the Good of which they are an imitation and reflection. But what is the relationship between these parallel worlds? And Why are ideas so essential?

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WORLD OF THE SENSES AND THE WORLD OF IDEAS

Although ideas do not belong to the world of the senses, they are accessible through thought and reasoning (a square, taken as a strictest conception cannot exist materially, but it can present itself to our eyes and our intellect as a square, for example, or a table of the same shape, or again, and let's move on to those definite ideas values, we could appreciate a beautiful thing, a beautiful person, a beautiful portrait, but not beauty as an idea in itself).

In substance, for Plato, the infinite variety of things that exist and that reach our senses can escape their absolute vagueness because they find their cause and foundation, their correspondence, in ideas. They are, therefore, the cause and judgment of all things. It is in fact only thanks to ideas (accessible as we have said through thought) that we can evaluate, judge and orient ourselves within the existing reality and for us the world is understandable and intelligible. For example, we say that two things are equal on the basis of the idea of Equality, or we say that a certain behavior is right on the basis of the idea of Justice, or, again, that a statue is beautiful because we know the idea of Beauty.

And therefore, before we began to see, to hear and to perceive with the other senses, we needed to posses already, somehow, a knowledge of the same on the basis of the idea of equality and of its reality, because otherwise we would never have been able to compare the equality of the senses, nor thought that, while aspiring to be similar to it, the latter remained inferior. (Phaedo, XIX)

Plato expresses the sense of this "presence" of the ideal world in the world of the senses, arguing that between these two different realities there is a relationship of imitation (mimesis) because material realities are constructed on the model of ideas and of which, however, they are only imperfect imitations (remember there is no creation in the cultural horizon of the Greeks, the Greeks are not creationists as are monotheistic religions), of participation (methexis) because, for example, individuals are part of the idea of man, individual horses are part of the unique idea of horse and, finally, of presence (parusia) ideas are present in things; the horse is a horse and not a dog because within it there is the idea of the horse, the chair is a chair and not a bed because within it there is the idea of a chair, etc.

What Plato wants to do, breaking all ties with the past, is to remove any risk of breakdown by relativism and the instability and anarchy of becoming. For Plato, judgments about things are not and cannot be relative. If I say that woman is beautiful, I don't mean, in the sophist way, that I like that woman, but I mean that the woman is objectively beautiful. This is because the idea of beauty is not something that can be corrupted by subjective opinions and perspectives, but it is an absolute and untouchable entity. If I say that that person is wise, I do not mean to state what my view is about their wisdom but I mean that they are objectively wise because they imitate and are part of the perfect idea of wisdom, and so on.

After having explained what ideas are, how they are classified and what relationship they have to things of the senses, we can better understand some passages of the Platonic works in which this topic is treated:

In Euthyphro Plato has Socrates say:

Isn't the pious, as such, always identical to himself in all actions? And, in turn, is not the non-pious the opposite of everything that is pious, but this too, as such, is always identical to itself; so that it comes to have (...) its own unique form (idea) relative to its non-sanctity? (Euthyphro, 5c-d).

And again in Euthyphro:

Do you recall I did not ask you about this, to indicate one or two of the many things that we call pious; but rather to permit me to understand what is the only form of the saint for which all pious actions are holy. You said, it seems to me, that due to a unique form (idea) non-pious actions are not holy and saints are pious; or don't you remember? (...). And then teach me this form (idea) well, just what is it, so that I, always having it before my eyes and using it as a model, that action that resembles it, of how many you or others can accomplish, this that I say is pious, that which does not resemble it, states it is not (Euthyphro, 6d-e)

5. KNOWLEDGE OF IDEAS

THE THEORY OF REMINISCENCE

The soul, therefore, since it is immortal and repeatedly reborn, having seen the world here and that of Hades, in a word all things, there is nothing that it has not learned. It is therefore not surprising that it can recall from the mind what it previously knew about virtue and all the rest. Since, on the other hand, all nature is related to itself and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents the soul, remembering (I remember what men call learning) only one thing, finds all the others for itself, when one is courageous and indefatigable in pursuit. Yes, seeking and learning are, on the whole, reminiscence (anamnesis)! We must not, therefore, rely on heristic reasoning: it would make us lazy and it only sounds sweet to the ears of people without vigor; ours, on the other hand, makes everyone industrious and dedicated to research; convinced of being in the truth, I wish to seek what virtue is with you (...) (Menon, 80c-81e)

With the theory of reminiscence Plato wanted to provide an illustration of the fact that the knowledge of ideas does not derive from the senses and experience but, on the contrary, from an a priori intellectual intuition.

For Plato, in fact, ideas cannot derive from the senses, which are capable of witnessing only a world of immaterial and imperfect things, but are accessible only through rational thought, by means of an intellectual vision. Not through seeing, therefore, but thanks to the practice of philosophical reflection and the dialectical method.

Although it might seem so, in reality Plato does not deny the empirical datum absolutely, on the contrary, between ideas and the reality of the senses, as we have mentioned before, there is a relationship of necessity: ideas are not given without things and things without ideas. What Plato denies is that judgment, hence knowledge, stops at the empirical moment.

The path of knowledge always begins, and it cannot be otherwise, from the sensations which, taken alone, appear confused to us, obscure, indecipherable. Immediately we will form an opinion but it will then be the intellect and reflective thinking that will allow us to move away from the imperfection of the opinion and frame and define the sensation perceived as the reflection of an idea. Knowledge, therefore, consists of an ascending path, from sensation to perception and then to insight, or, if we want, from the material world to that of ideas, or if we still wish it, from opinions to truth.

But where does the intellectual vision come from that permits us to free ourselves from the reality of the senses to reach the highest peaks of ideas? How can we manage, while living in a world characterized by becoming and imperfection, to access the truth of ideas?

To answer these questions Plato introduces the concept of reminiscence, that is to say of memory, and affirms that our soul, before finding itself enclosed in the present body, was able to contemplate the purity of ideas during the phase of transition that divides the end of the previous life from reincarnation into a new existence (a period during which nothing is remembered).

The soul retains the memory of this type of "experience" even after reincarnation, and with a little effort and an existence aimed at good, it is possible to recall what our soul