INTRODUCTION TO PLATO FROM
THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
Plato and Platonism
Preface
The Republic Book I
I. LIFE OF PLATO
Plato (Platon, "the broad shouldered") was born at Athens in
428 or 427 B.C. He came of an aristocratic and wealthy family, although some
writers represented him as having felt the stress of poverty. Doubtless he
profited by the educational facilities afforded young men of his class at
Athens. When about twenty years old he met Socrates, and the intercourse, which
lasted eight or ten years, between master and pupil was the decisive influence
in Plato's philosophical career. Before meeting Socrates he had, very likely,
developed an interest in the earlier philosophers, and in schemes for the
betterment of political conditions at Athens. At an early age he devoted himself
to poetry. All these interests, however, were absorbed in the pursuit of wisdom
to which, under the guidance of Socrates, he ardently devoted himself. After the
death of Socrates he joined a group of the Socratic disciples gathered at Megara
under the leadership of Euclid. Later he travelled in Egypt, Magna Graecia, and
Sicily. His profit from these journeys has been exaggerated by some biographers.
There can, however, be no doubt that in Italy he studied the doctrines of the
Pythagoreans. His three journeys to Sicily were, apparently, to influence the
older and younger Dionysius in favor of his ideal system of government. But in
this he failed, incurring the enmity of the two rulers, was cast into prison,
and sold as a slave. Ransomed by a friend, he returned to his school of
philosophy at Athens. This differed from the Socratic School in many respects.
It had a definite location in the groves near the gymnasium of Academus, its
tone was more refined, more attention was given to literary form, and there was
less indulgence in the odd, and even vulgar method of illustration which
characterized the Socratic manner of exposition. After his return from his third
journey to Sicily, he devoted himself unremittingly to writing and teaching
until his eightieth year, when, as Cicero tells us, he died in the midst of his
intellectual labors ("scribens est mortuus") ("De Senect.",
v, 13).
II. WORKS
It is practically certain that all Plato's genuine works have come down to
us. The lost works ascribed to him, such as the "Divisions" and the
"Unwritten Doctrines", are certainly not genuine. Of the thirty-six
dialogues, some -- the "Phaedrus", "Protagoras",
"Phaedo", "The Republic", "The Banquet", etc. --
are undoubtedly genuine; others -- e.g. the "Minos", -- may with equal
certainty be considered spurious; while still a third group -- the
"Ion", "Greater Hippias", and "First Alcibiades"
-- is of doubtful authenticity. In all his writings, Plato uses the dialogue
with a skill never since equaled. That form permitted him to develop the
Socratic method of question and answer. For, while Plato elaborated to a high
degree the faculty by which the abstract is understood and presented, he was
Greek enough to follow the artistic instinct in teaching by means of a clear-cut
concrete type of philosophical excellence. The use of the myth in the dialogues
has occasioned considerable difficulty to the commentators and critics. When we
try to put a value on the content of a Platonic myth, we are often baffled by
the suspicion that it is all meant to be subtly ironical, or that it is
introduced to cover up the inherent contradictions of Plato's thought. In any
case, the myth should never be taken too seriously or invoked as an evidence of
what Plato really believed.
III. PHILOSOPHY
(1) The Starting Point
The immediate starting-point of Plato's philosophical speculation was the
Socratic teaching. In his attempt to define the conditions of knowledge so as to
refute sophistic skepticism, Socrates had taught that the only true knowledge is
a knowledge by means of concepts. The concept, he said, represents all the
reality of a thing. As used by Socrates, this was merely a principle of
knowledge. It was taken up by Plato as a principle of Being. If the concept
represents all the reality of things, the reality must be something in the ideal
order, not necessarily in the things themselves, but rather above them, in a
world by itself. For the concept, therefore, Plato substitutes the Idea. He
completes the work of Socrates by teaching that the objectively real Ideas are
the foundation and justification of scientific knowledge. At the same time he
has in mind a problem which claimed much attention from pre-Socratic thinkers,
the problem of change. The Eleatics, following Parmenides, held that there is no
real change or multiplicity in the world, that reality is one. Heracltus, on the
contrary, regarding motion and multiplicity as real, maintained that permanence
is only apparent. The Platonic theory of Ideas is an attempt to solve this
crucial question by a metaphysical compromise. The Eleatics, Plato said, are
right in maintaining that reality does not change; for the ideas are immutable.
Still, there is, as Heraclitus contended, change in the world of our experience,
or, as Plato terms it, the world of phenomena. Plato, then, supposes a world of
Ideas apart from the world of our experience, and immeasurably superior to it.
He imagines that all human souls dwelt at one time in that higher world. When,
therefore, we behold in the shadow-world around us a phenomenon or appearance of
anything, the mind is moved to a remembrance of the Idea (of that same
phenomenal thing) which it formerly contemplated. In its delight it wonders at
the contrast, and by wonder is led to recall as perfectly as possible the
intuition it enjoyed in a previous existence. This is the task of philosophy.
Philosophy, therefore, consists in the effort to rise from the knowledge of
phenomena, or appearances, to the noumena, or realities. Of all the
ideas, however, the Idea of the beautiful shines out through the phenomenal veil
more clearly than any other; hence the beginning of all philosophical activity
is the love and admiration of the Beautiful.
(2) Division of Philosophy
The different parts of philosophy are not distinguished by Plato with the
same formal precision found in Aristoltelean, and post-Aristotelean systems. We
may, however, for convenience, distinguish:
- Dialectic, the science of the Idea in itself;
- Physics, the knowledge of the Idea as incorporated or incarnated in the
world of phenomena, and
- Ethics and Theory of the State, or the science of the Idea embodied in
human conduct and human society.
(a) Dialectic
This is to be understood as synonymous not with logic but with metaphysics.
It signifies the science of the Idea, the science of reality, science in the
only true sense of the word. For the ideas are the only realities in the world.
We observe, for instance, just actions, and we know that some men are just. But
both in the actions and in the persons designated as just there exist many
imperfections; they are only partly just. In the world above us there exits
justice, absolute, perfect, unmixed with injustice, eternal, unchangeable,
immortal. This is the Idea of justice. Similarly, in that world above us there
exist the Ideas of greatness, goodness, beauty, wisdom, etc. and not only these,
but also the Ideas of concrete material objects such as the Idea of man, the
idea of horse, the Idea of trees, etc. In a word, the world of Ideas is a
counterpart of the world of our experience, or rather, the latter is a feeble
imitation of the former. The ideas are the prototypes, the phenomena are
ectypes. In the allegory of the cave (Republic, VII, 514 d) a race of men are
described as chained in a fixed position in a cavern, able to look only at the
wall in front of them. When an animal, e.g. a horse, passes in front of the
cave, they, beholding the shadow on the wall, imagine it to be a reality, and
while in prison they know of no other reality. When they are released and go
into the light they are dazzled, but when they succeed in distinguishing a horse
among the objects around them, their first impulse is to take that for a shadow
of the being which they saw on the wall. The prisoners are "like
ourselves", says Plato. The world of our experience, which we take to be
real, is only a shadow world. The real world is the world of Ideas, which we
reach, not by sense-knowledge, but by intuitive contemplation. The Ideas are
participated by the phenomena; but how this participation takes place, and in
what sense the phenomena are imitations of the Ideas, Plato does not fully
explain; at most he invokes a negative principle, sometimes called
"Platonic Matter", to account for the falling-off of the phenomena
from the perfection of the Idea. The limitating principle is the cause of all
defects, decay, and change in the world around us. The just man, for instance,
falls short of absolute justice (the Idea of Justice), because in men the Idea
of justice is fragmented, debased, and reduced by the principle of limitation.
Towards the end of his life, Plato leaned more and more towards the Pythagorean
number-theory, and, in the "Timaeus" especially, he is inclined to
interpret the Ideas in terms of mathematics. His followers emphasized this
element unduly, and, in the course of neo-Platonic speculation, the ideas were
identified with numbers. There was much in the theory of Ideas that appealed to
the first Christian philosophers. The emphatic affirmation of a supermundane,
spiritual order of reality and the equally emphatic assertion of the caducity of
things material fitted in with the essentially Christian contention that
spiritual interests are supreme. To render the world of Ideas more acceptable to
Christians, the Patristic Platonists from Justin Martyr to St. Augustine
maintained that the world exists in the mind of God, and that this was what
Plato meant. On the other hand, Aristotle understood Plato to refer to a world
of Ideas self-subsisting and separate. Instead, therefore, of picturing to
ourselves the world of Ideas as existing in God, we should represent God as
existing in the world of Ideas. For, among the Ideas, the hierarchical supremacy
is attributed to the Idea of God, or absolute Goodness, which is said to be for
the super celestial universe what the sun in the heavens is for this terrestrial
world of ours.
(b) Physics
The Idea, incorporated, so to speak, in the phenomenon is less real than the
Idea in its own world, or than the Idea embodied in human conduct and human
society. Physics, i.e., the knowledge of the Idea in phenomena, is, therefore,
inferior in dignity and importance to Dialectic and Ethics. In fact, the world
of phenomena has no scientific interest for Plato. The knowledge of it is not
true knowledge, nor the source, but only the occasion of true knowledge. The
phenomena stimulate our minds to a recollection of the intuition of Ideas, and
with that intuition scientific knowledge begins. Moreover, Plato's interest in
nature is dominated by a teleological view of the world as animated with a
World-Soul, which, conscious of its process, does all things for a useful
purpose, or, rather, for "the best", morally, intellectually, and
aesthetically. This conviction is apparent especially in the Platonic account of
the origin of the universe, contained in the "Timaeus", although the
details regarding the activity of the demiurgos and the created gods should not,
perhaps, be taken seriously. Similarly, the account of the origin of the soul,
in the same dialogue, is a combination of philosophy and myth, in which it is
not easy to distinguish the one from the other. It is clear, however, that Plato
holds the spiritual nature of the soul as against the materialistic Atomists,
and that he believes the soul to have existed before its union with the body.
The whole theory of Ideas, in so far, at least, as it is applied to human
knowledge, presupposes the doctrine of pre-existence. "All knowledge is
recollection" has no meaning except in the hypothesis of the soul's
pre-natal intuition of Ideas. it is equally incontrovertible that Plato held the
soul to be immortal. His conviction on this point was as unshaken as Socrates'.
His attempt to ground that conviction on unassailable premises is, indeed, open
to criticism, because his arguments rest either on the hypothesis of previous
existence or on his general theory of Ideas. Nevertheless, the considerations
which he offers in favour of immortality, in the "Phaedo", have helped
to strengthen all subsequent generations in the belief in a future life. His
description of the future state of the soul is dominated by the Pythagorean
doctrine of transmigration. Here, again, the details are not to be taken as
seriously as the main fact, and we can well imagine that the account of the soul
condemned to return in the body of a fox or a wolf is introduced chiefly because
it accentuates the doctrine of rewards and punishments, which is part of Plato's
ethical system. Before passing to his ethical doctrines it is necessary to
indicate one other point of his psychology. The soul, Plato teaches, consists of
three parts: the rational soul, which resides in the head; the irascible soul,
the seat of courage, which resides in the heart; and the appetitive soul, the
seat of desire, which resides in the abdomen. These are not three faculties of
one soul, but three parts really distinct.
(c) Ethics and Theory of the State
Like all the Greeks, Plato took for granted that the highest good of man,
subjectively considered, is happiness (eudaimonia). Objectively, the
highest good of man is the absolutely highest good in general, Goodness itself,
or God. The means by which this highest good is to be attained is the practice
of virtue and the acquisition of wisdom. So far as the body hinders these
pursuits it should be brought into subjection. Here, however, asceticism should
be moderated in the interests of harmony and symmetry -- Plato never went the
length of condemning matter and the human body in particular, as the source of
all evil -- for wealth, health, art, and innocent pleasures are means of
attaining happiness, though not indispensable, as virtue is. Virtue is order,
harmony, the health of the soul; vice is disorder, discord, disease. The State
is, for Plato, the highest embodiment of the Idea. It should have for its aim
the establishment and cultivation of virtue. The reason of this is that man,
even in the savage condition, could, indeed, attain virtue. In order, however,
that virtue may be established systematically and cease to be a matter of chance
or haphazard, education is necessary, and without a social organization
education is impossible. In his "Republic" he sketches an ideal state,
a polity which should exist if rulers and subjects would devote themselves, as
they ought, to the cultivation of wisdom. The ideal state is modeled on the
individual soul. It consists of three orders: rulers (corresponding to the
reasonable soul), producers (corresponding to desire), and warriors
(corresponding to courage). The characteristic virtue of the producers is
thrift, that of the soldiers bravery, and that of the rulers wisdom. Since
philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is to be the dominant power in the state:
"Unless philosophers become rulers or rulers become true and thorough
students of philosophy, there shall be no end to the troubles of states and of
humanity" (Rep., V, 473), which is only another way of saying that those
who govern should be distinguished by qualities which are distinctly
intellectual. Plato is an advocate of State absolutism, such as existed in his
time in Sparta. The State, he maintains, exercises unlimited power. Neither
private property nor family institutions have any place in the Platonic state.
The children belong to the state as soon as they are born, and should be taken
in charge by the State from the beginning, for the purpose of education. They
should be educated by officials appointed by the State, and, according to the
measure of ability, which they exhibit, they are to be assigned by the State to
the order of producers, to that of warriors, or to the governing class. These
impractical schemes reflect at once Plato's discontent with the demagogy then
prevalent in Athens and in his personal predilection for the aristocratic form of
government. Indeed, his scheme is essentially aristocratic in the original
meaning of the word; it advocates government by the (intellectually) best. The
unreality of it all, and the remoteness of its chance to be tested by practice,
must have been evident to Plato himself. For in his "Laws" he sketches
a modified scheme which, though inferior, he thinks, to the plan outlined in the
"Republic", is nearer to the level of what the average state can
attain.
IV. THE PLATONIC SCHOOL
Plato's School, like Aristotle's, was organized by Plato himself and handed
over at the time of his death to his nephew Speusippus, the first scholarch, or
ruler of the school. It was then known as the Academy, because it met in the
groves of Academus. The Academy continued, with varying fortunes, to maintain
its identity as a Platonic school, first at Athens, and later at Alexandria
until the first century of the Christian era. It modified the Platonic system in
the direction of mysticism and demonology, and underwent at least one period of
scepticism. It ended in a loosely constructed eclecticism. With the advent of
neo-Platonism (q.v.) founded by Ammonius and developed by Plotinus, Platonism
definitely entered the cause of Paganism against Christianity. Nevertheless, the
great majority of the Christian philosophers down to St. Augustine were
Platonists. They appreciated the uplifting influence of Plato's psychology and
metaphysics, and recognized in that influence a powerful ally of Christianity in
the warfare against materialism and naturalism. These Christian Platonists
underestimated Aristotle, whom they generally referred to as an
"acute" logician whose philosophy favoured the heretical opponents of
orthodox Christianity. The Middle Ages completely reversed this verdict. The
first scholastics knew only the logical treatises of Aristotle, and, so far as
they were psychologists or metaphysicians at all, they drew on the Platonism of
St. Augustine. Their successors, however, in the twelfth century came to a
knowledge of the psychology, metaphysics, and ethics of Aristotle, and adopted
the Aristotelian view so completely that before the end of the thirteenth
century the Stagyrite occupied in the Christian schools the position occupied in
the fifth century by the founder of the Academy. There were, however, episodes,
so to speak, of Platonism in the history of Scholasticism -- e.g., the School of
Chartes in the twelfth century -- and throughout the whole scholastic period
some principles of Platonism, and especially of neo-Platonism, were incorporated
in the Aristotelean system adopted by the schoolmen. The Renaissance brought a
revival of Platonism, due to the influence of men like Bessarion, Plethon,
Ficino, and the two Mirandolas. The Cambridge Platonists of the seventeenth
century, such as Cudworth, Henry More, Cumberland, and Glanville, reacting
against humanistic naturalism, "spiritualized Puritanism" by restoring
the foundations of conduct to principles intuitionally known and independent of
self-interest. outside the schools of philosophy which are described as Platonic
there are many philosophers and groups of philosophers in modern times who owe
much to the inspiration of Plato, and to the enthusiasm for the higher pursuits
of the mind which they derived from the study of his works.
WILLIAM TURNER
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright © 1913 by the Encyclopedia Press,
Inc.
|
