Plato

General Facts
General Facts
● 427-347 BCE
● Son of wealthy and
influential Athenians
● Student of Socrates
● Aristotle was a student
at his “Academy” in
Athens
Early Philosophical
Life
 Early Philosophical Life
● Studied with Socrates
● When Socrates died, Plato
traveled to Egypt and Italy,
studied with students of
Pythagoras, and spent
several years advising the
ruling family of Syracuse
● In 386 BCE, he returned to
Athens and founded his
own school of philosophy,
the Academy
Plato’s
Philosophy
 His Philosophy
● Concerned with justice, virtue, character, and the human
soul.
● Wanted students to become independent thinkers (think for
themselves).
● The only good life or life worth living is a life reasoned by
your own mind, not other’s ideas and opinions; change your
life and mind!
● Examine your life, history, and ideas, once you self
examine, then you are ready for knowledge.
● All knowledge begins in not knowing. To state “I don’t know”
is the first step – open to learning.
 His Philosophy
● Everything has a truth or an “essence,” your job is to seek
this truth. Life is an adventure and journey, not destination.
● The good teacher will spark you, lead you to the truth with
integrity, reason, imagination.
● Virtue is excellence, or doing your best – reaching your
highest potential for good. All human’s have potential for
virtue, goodness, and to shape good character.
● The potential rests in the human soul (or psyche/mind),
everyone born with a soul.
● Character is what is developed from this soul, and is molded
and tested and shaped—a dynamic process.
 His Philosophy
● Plato was the first to unify a system of thought in
Western society.
● We all begin with common sense beliefs, opinions, we
are lead further to ideas, and principles.
● Human life always involves our fellow man and our
personal and societal destiny.
● Philosophy is not specialized nor technical but a way
of life, requiring intellectual ability and moral goodness
to pursue the good and truth.
● Society is our ultimate teacher, and it may produce
errors and evils, as well as wrong values. Previous
generation may have been wrong and transmitted bad
ideas and practices.
Literary Works &
the Dialogue
Form
Literary
Works
39 Dialogues – wrote in
defiance of the arrest and
death of his mentor, Socrates

Socrates is Plato’s
mouthpiece

The Republic – most famous

dialogue; discusses the
virtues of justice, wisdom,
courage, and moderation as
they appear in individuals and
society; also argues that
government should be led by
 The Dialogue Form
● Plato used the dialogue form of writing as the most effective means of
presenting his philosophical ideas.
● It was not Plato’s intention to answer specific question or to propose
final and dogmatic solutions to any of the problems that were being
discussed.
● Plato preferred instead to do something that would stimulate original
thinking on the part of the reader. This manner of presentation enabled
Plato to present contrasting points of views as they would likely occur
in a series of conversations taking place among individuals having
different points of view.
● Finally, by using conversational method (dialogue), it would be
possible to illustrate ways in which current issues of the day were
related to one another.
● This is one of the reasons why none of Plato’s dialogues are devoted
exclusively to the discussion of a single topic. Plato wanted to make it
clear that in order to understand any particular subject, you must see
how it is related to other subjects and to the field of knowledge as a
whole.
 Plato’s Theory of
Knowledge
● Plato described how the human mind achieves
knowledge, and indicated what knowledge
consisted of, by means of:
● 1) his allegory of the Cave
● 2) his metaphor of the divided line
● 3) his doctrine of the Forms
 The Cave – General
● Allegory fromInformation
The Republic
● Socrates is talking to Glaucon, one of his
followers
● Story to explain knowledge/wisdom
● Contends that we are ignorant and we are
comfortable with the ignorance because it is all we
know
● Seeking the truth is a difficult process
● Once you have had a taste of the truth, you never
want to go back to being ignorant
 The Scenario
● Prisoners: Men living in a large cave; chained by
the leg and neck since childhood so they cannot
turn their heads and can only see what is in front
of them
● Elevation: Behind them is an elevation that rises
abruptly from the level where the prisoners are.
There are other people walking across this
elevation carrying artificial objects (figures of
animals, humans, etc.)
● Fire: Behind the people carrying the objects is a
fire
 The Prisoners
● Can look only forward against the wall at the end of the
cave; cannot see each other, the moving persons, nor the
fire
● Can only see the shadows on the wall in front of them which
are projected as the persons walk in front of the fire; they
are not aware that the shadows are shadows of other things
● When they see a shadow and hear a person’s voice echo
from the wall, they assume that the sound is coming from
the shadow because they are not aware of the existence of
anything else
● The only reality recognized by the prisoners are the
shadows on the wall
The Cave

Proposition
1:
What would happen if one of
the prisoners was unchained,
forced to stand up, turn
around, and walk with eyes
lifted up toward the light of
the fire?
● All of his movements
would be exceedingly
painful
● Would the objects being
carried be less meaningful
than the shadows seen
before?
● Would his eyes ache from
looking at the light of the
fire?
● He undoubtedly would
return to the things he
could see with clarity and
without pain, convinced
that the shadows were
clearer than the objects he
was forced to look at in the

Proposition
2:
What if the prisoner could not
turn back and was dragged
forcibly to the mouth of the
cave and released only after
he had been brought out into
the sunlight?
● The sunlight would be so
painful on his eyes that he
would be unable to see any
of things he was now told
were real
● It would take time for his eyes
to become accustomed to the
world outside the cave
● Would at first recognize some
shadows
● Would next see reflections of
things in water
● In time, he would see things
themselves
● Next, he would see heavenly
bodies at night
● Finally, the sun
 Prisoner’s Conclusion
● the sun is what makes
things visible
● it is the sun too that
accounts for the seasons
and is the cause of life in
the spring
● would understand what he
saw on the wall in the
cave; that shadows and
reflections differ from
things as they are in the
visible world
● without the sun there
 ● He would recall what he
and his fellow prisoners
took to be wisdom, how

Proposition they had a practice of

honoring and commending

3: each other (i.e. prizes for

How would such a person
feel about his previous life in
the cave?
the sharpest eye, best
memory, etc.)
● Would the released
prisoner still think that
such prizes were worth
having?
● Would he envy those who
received honors in the
cave?
● Instead of envy, would he
have only sorrow and pity
 ● He would have great difficulty
seeing for going suddenly
from daylight into the cave
would fill his eyes with
Proposition darkness
● He would have trouble
4: distinguishing the shadows
on the wall
What if the released prisoner ● Those who had their
went back to his former seat permanent residence in the
in the cave? cave would win every round
of competition with him
● Those in the cave would find
this very amusing and would
taunt him saying that his sight
was perfectly fine before and
was now ruined
● They would argue that it was
not worth going out of the
 The Allegory
● The cave and the blurred world of the shadows =
ignorance
● The bright world of light = knowledge
 Education
● It is the function of education to lead people out of the cave
into the world of light
● Education is not simply a matter of putting knowledge into a
person’s soul that does not possess it, any more than vision
is putting sight into blind eyes. Knowledge, like vision,
requires an organ capable of receiving it
● It is necessary for the entire soul to turn away from the
deceptive world of change and appetite that causes
blindness of the soul
 Education (cont.)
● Education is a matter of conversion, a complete turning
around from the world of appearance to the world of reality
● “The conversion of the soul [is] not to put the power of sight
in the soul’s eye, which already has it, but to insure that,
instead of looking in the wrong direction, it is turned the way
it ought to be”
● However, even the “noblest natures” do not always want to
look that way, and so Plato says that the rulers must “bring
compulsion to bear” upon them to ascend upward from
darkness to light
● In addition, when those who have been liberated from the
cave achieve the highest knowledge, they must not be
allowed to remain in the higher world of contemplation, but
 The Divided Line
● In the process of discovering true knowledge, the
mind moves through four stages of development
● At each stage, there is a parallel between the kind
of object presented to the mind and the kind of
thought this object makes possible
 Diagram
OBJECTS MODES OF
THOUGHT
( )
[The Good] The Good Knowledge > Knowledge
Intelligible (Forms)
World<
( Mathematical Thinking )
Objects

( Things Belief )
[The Sun] Visible Images Imagining > Opinion
World <
( )
 Theory of Forms
● The linchpin of Platonism is the theory of forms, a doctrine which
receives surprisingly scant treatment in the dialogues but which
nevertheless undergirds Plato's approach to ethics and
metaphysics, aesthetics and epistemology. The theory is taken up
in Book X of The Republic, is discussed in the Phaedo, taken apart
in the Parmenides, and revisited in two later dialogues, the
Timaeus and Laws.
● ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, VOLUME 6:
● "What was this Theory of Forms?
● It originated out of several different and partly independent
features of the general ideas or notions that constituted the
recurrent themes of dialectical disputations.
 Definitions
● Definitions. Every discussion of a general issue turns ultimately
upon one or more general notions or ideas. Even to debate
whether, say, fearlessness is a good quality is to work with the two
general notions of fear and goodness. Two disputants may
disagree whether fearlessness is a good or a bad quality, but they
are not even disagreeing unless they know what fear and
goodness are. Their debate is likely, at some stage, to require the
explicit definition of one or more of the general terms on which the
discussion hinges. They may accept a preferred definition, but
even if a preferred definition is justly riddled by criticism, this
criticism teaches what the misdefined notion is not. If
"fearlessness" were misdefined as "unawareness of danger," the
exposure of the wrongness of this definition would by recoil bring
out something definite in the notion of fearlessness. The Socratic
demolition of a preferred definition may be disheartening, but it is
Standards of Measurement
and Appraisal
● Standards of measurement and appraisal. Some general
notions, including many moral notions and geometrical notions,
are ideal limits or standards. A penciled line is, perhaps, as straight
as the draftsman can make it; it deviates relatively slightly,
sometimes imperceptibly, from the Euclidean straight line. The
notion of absolute straightness is the standard against which we
assess penciled lines as crooked or even as nearly quite straight.
Rather similarly, to describe a person as improving in honesty or
loyalty is to describe him getting nearer to perfect honesty or
loyalty.
 Immutable Things
● Immutable things. Ordinary things and creatures in the everyday
world are mutable. A leaf which was green yesterday may be
brown today, and a boy may be five feet tall now who was two
inches shorter some months ago. But the color brown itself cannot
become the color green, and the height of four feet, ten inches,
cannot become the height of five feet. It is always five feet minus
two inches. A change is always a change from something A to
something else B, and A and B cannot themselves be things that
change.
 Timeless Truths
● Timeless truths. What we know about particular things, creatures,
persons and happenings in the everyday world are tensed truths,
and what we believe or conjecture about them are tensed truths or
tensed falsehoods. The shower is still continuing; it began some
minutes ago; it will stop soon. Socrates was born in such-and-such
a year; the pyramids still exist today; and so forth. But truths or
falsehoods about general notions such as those embodied in
correct or incorrect definitions are timelessly true or timelessly
false. Just as we cannot say that 49 used to be a square number
or that equilateral triangles will shortly be equiangular, so we
cannot say, truly or falsely, that fearlessness is now on the point of
becoming, or used to be, indifference to recognized dangers. If this
statement is true, it is eternally or, better, timelessly true. We can
ask questions about fearlessness or the number 49 but not
questions beginning "When?" or "How long?"
 One Over Many
● One over many. It is often the case that we can find or think of
many so-and-so's or the so-and-so's, for example, of the
numerous chimney pots over there or of the prime numbers
between 10 and 100. Things, happenings, qualities, numbers,
figures, can be ranged in sorts or characterized as sharing
properties. Hence, where we speak of the so-and-so's -- say, the
storms that raged last week -- we are talking of storms in the
plural, and we are thereby showing that there is something, some
one thing, that each of them was -- namely, a storm. Or if there are
twenty idle pupils, there is one thing that all twenty of them are --
namely, idle. Sometimes we do not and even cannot know how
many leaves, say, there are in a forest, and we may ask in vain,
How many leaves are there? But however many or few there are,
there must still be one thing -- namely, leaf -- which each of them
is. It is one or singular; they are many or plural. We have not seen
 Intellectual Knowledge
● Intellectual knowledge. For our knowledge of, and our beliefs
and opinions about the things, creatures and happenings of the
everyday world, we depend upon our eyes, ears, noses and so on,
and what our senses tell us is sometimes wrong and is never
perfectly precise. There is nobody whose vision or hearing might
not be even slightly better than it is. On the other hand, our
apprehension of general notions is intellectual and not sensitive.
 Conceptual Certainties
● Conceptual certainties. Last, but not least in importance,
dialectical debates are concerned only with general ideas, like
those of fearlessness, goodness, danger and awareness. The
answerer's thesis is a general proposition, such as "Virtue is (or is
not) teachable" or "Justice is (or is not) what is to the advantage of
the powerful." When such a thesis has been conclusively
demolished, something, if only something negative, has been
conclusively established about virtue or justice. In the domain of
general ideas or concepts certainties, if seemingly negative
certainties, are attainable by argument. About things or
happenings in the everyday world no such purely ratiocinative
knowledge is possible.
 Ontology of Forms
● Ontology of Forms. Most of the above ways of characterizing general
ideas or concepts has been brought out severally or together in Plato's
elenctic dialogues. Yet his Socrates did not in these dialogues put forward
the Theory of Forms. The Theory of Forms, as first fully developed in the
Phaedo, is a unified formulation of these several points, but it is also more
than this. For Plato now proffers an ontology of concepts. A general idea or
concept, according to this new doctrine, is immutable, timeless, one over
many, intellectually apprehensible and capable of precise definition at the
end of a piece of pure ratiocination because it is an independently existing
real thing or entity. As our everyday world contains people, trees, stones,
planets, storms and harvests, so a second and superior, or transcendent
world contains concepts-objects. As "Socrates" and "Peloponnesus" name
perceptible objects here, so "justice," "equality," "unity," and "similarity"
name intellectually apprehensible objects there. Furthermore, as the human
mind or soul gets into contact, though only perfunctory and imperfect
contact, with ordinary things and happenings in this world by sight, hearing,
touch and so on, so the human or soul can get into non-sensible contact
 The Forms - Summary
● Separated the world of thought from the world of
flux and things
● Ascribed true reality to the Ideas and Forms,
which, he thought had an existence separate from
the things in nature
● Example: All trees are reflections of a tree whose
form is ideal, but which does not exist in nature
 Governance
● The State as Man Writ Large – Plato argued that
the state grows out of the nature of the individual
● State reflects the structure of human nature
● The origin of the state is a reflection of people’s
needs (esp. economic)
● Three classes – craftsmen/guardians of the
community, guardians of the state, highly trained
guardians
● Classes represent 3 part of the soul: appetites,
spirited element, rational element
 The Philosopher-King
● Competence should be the qualification for
authority
● The causes of disorder in the state are the same
as those that cause disorder within the individual
—the lower “elements” usurp the role of the higher
“faculties” = anarchy
● Rational element must be in control
 The Philosopher-King
(cont.)
● Who should lead then?
● Who should be the
person in control of a
ship—the most
“popular” person, or
someone with a keen
knowledge of the art of
navigation?
● Who should rule the
state—someone with
training in war or
commerce?
Plato’s Answer: The
Philosopher-King
 Who is the Philosopher-
King?
● Fully educated; one who understands the difference between the
visible world and the intelligible world, the realm of opinion and
knowledge, between appearance and reality
● By 18, he will have had training in literature, music, and
elementary mathematics
● This will have been followed by extensive physical and military
training, and at 20, a few would be selected to pursue an
advanced course in mathematics
● At age 30, a five-year course in dialectic and moral philosophy
would being and for the next 15 years would be spent gathering
practical knowledge through public service
● Finally, at age 50, the ablest men would reach the highest level of
knowledge, the vision of the Good, and would be ready for the task
of governing the state