Plato
From Thelemapedia
Plato (Greek: Πλάτων Plátōn) (c. 427 BC – c. 347 BC) was an immensely influential classical Greek philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, writer, and founder of the Academy in Athens.
Plato, a philodorian, lectured extensively at the Academy but he also wrote on many philosophical issues. His presence survives through his written philosophical/dramatic compositions which are preserved in manuscripts recovered and edited in many different editions and translations since the birth of the Humanist movement. The written corpus of Plato consists almost entirely of dialogues, epigrams and letters. All the known dialogues of Plato survive, however modern-day standard editions of his oeuvre generally contain dialogues considered by the consensus of scholars to be either suspect (e.g., Alcibiades, Clitophon) or probably spurious (such as Demodocus, or the Second Alcibiades).
The personage of Socrates often makes an appearance in the dialogues of Plato though it is unclear how much of the content and argument of any given dialogue is Socrates' point of view, and how much of it Plato's.
There is a prominent crater on the Moon named the Plato crater, in his honor.
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Biography
Plato was born in Athens, into a moderately well-to-do aristocratic family. His father was named Ariston and his mother Perictione. One of Plato's ancestors, Glaucon, was one of the best-known members of the Athenian nobility. Plato's own real name was "Aristocles" however his nickname, Plato, originated from wrestling circles. Since Plato means "broad," it probably refers either to his physical appearance or to his wrestling stance or style.
Plato became a pupil of Socrates in his youth, and — at least according to his personal account — he attended his master's trial, though not his execution. Unlike Socrates, Plato wrote down his philosophical views and left a considerable number of manuscripts (see below). He was deeply affected by the city's treatment of Socrates and much of his early work records his memories of his teacher. It is suggested that much of his ethical writing is in pursuit of a society where similar injustices could not occur.
Plato was also deeply influenced by the Pythagoreans, whose notions of numerical harmony have clear echoes in Plato's notion of the Forms (sometimes thus capitalized; see below); by Anaxagoras, who taught Socrates and who held that the mind or reason pervades everything; and by Parmenides, who argued the unity of all things and was perhaps influential in Plato's conception of the Soul.
Plato founded one of the earliest known organized schools in Western civilization when he was 40 years old on a plot of land in the Grove of Academe. The Academy was "a large enclosure of ground which was once the property of a citizen at Athens named Academus... some however say that it received its name from an ancient hero." (Robinson, Arch. Graec. I i 16) and it operated until it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium in AD 529. Many intellectuals were schooled here, the most prominent being Aristotle.
In Plato's writings one finds debates concerning aristocratic and democratic forms of government. One finds debates concerning the role of heredity and environment in human intelligence and personality long before the modern "nature versus nurture" debate began in the time of Hobbes and Locke, with its modern continuation in such controversial works as The Mismeasure of Man and The Bell Curve. One finds arguments for the subjectivity — and objectivity — of human knowledge which foreshadow modern debates between Hume and Kant, or between the postmodernists and their opponents. Even the story of the lost city or continent of Atlantis came to us as an illustrative story told by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias.
Work
Plato wrote mainly in the form of dialogues. In the early ones several characters discuss a topic by asking questions of one another. Socrates figures prominently and a lively, more disorganized form of elenchos/dialectic is perceived; these are called the Socratic Dialogues.
But the qualities of the dialogues changed a great deal over the course of Plato's life. It is generally agreed that Plato's earlier works are more closely based on Socrates' thoughts, whereas his later writing increasingly breaks away from the views of his former teacher. In the middle dialogues, Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato's own philosophy, and the question-and-answer style is more pro forma: the main figure represents Plato and the minor characters have little to say except "yes"; "of course" and "very true". The later dialogues read more like treatises, and Socrates is often absent or quiet. It is assumed that the later dialogues were written entirely by Plato, while some of the early dialogues could be transcripts of Socrates' own dialogues. The question which, if any, of the dialogues are truly socratic is called the Socratic problem.
The ostensible mise-en-scene of a dialogue distances both Plato and a given reader from the philosophy being discussed; one can choose between at least two options of perception: either to participate in the dialogues, in the ideas being discussed, or choose to see the content as expressive of the personalities contained within the work.
The dialogue format also allows Plato to put unpopular opinions in the mouth of unsympathetic characters, e.g. Thrasymachus in The Republic.
Plato's Metaphysics: Platonism, or realism
One of Plato's legacies, and perhaps his greatest, was his dualistic metaphysics, often called (in metaphysics) Platonism or (Exaggerated) Realism. Plato's metaphysics divides the world into two distinct aspects: the intelligible world of "forms" and the perceptual world we see around us. He saw the perceptual world, and the things in it, as imperfect copies of the intelligible forms or ideas. These forms are unchangeable and perfect, and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding (i.e., a capacity of the mind that does not include sense-perception or imagination).This division can be found before Plato in Zoroaster (6th BC) philosophy which is called Minu (intelligence) and Giti (perceptual) worlds, as well as the concept of an ideal state which is Zoroaster called it Shahrivar (an ideal city).
In the Republic Books VI and VII, Plato used a number of metaphors to explain his metaphysical views: the metaphor of the sun, the well-known allegory of the cave, and most explicitly, the divided line. Taken together, these metaphors convey a complex and, in places, difficult theory: there is something called The Form of the Good (often interpreted as Plato's God), which is the ultimate object of knowledge and which as it were sheds light on all the other forms (i.e., universals: abstract kinds and attributes) and from which all other forms "emanate." The Form of the Good does this in somewhat the same way as the sun sheds light on or makes visible and "generates" things in the perceptual world. (See Plato's metaphor of the sun.) In the perceptual world the particular objects we see around us bear only a dim resemblance to the more ultimately real forms of Plato's intelligible world: it is as if we are seeing shadows of cut-out shapes on the walls of a cave, which are mere representations of the reality outside the cave, illuminated by the sun. (See Plato's allegory of the cave.) We can imagine everything in the universe represented on a line of increasing reality; it is divided once in the middle, and then once again in each of the resulting parts. The first division represents that between the intelligible and the perceptual worlds. Then there is a corresponding division in each of these worlds: the segment representing the perceptual world is divided into segments representing "real things" on the one hand, and shadows, reflections, and representations on the other. Similarly, the segment representing the intelligible world is divided into segments representing first principles and most general forms, on the one hand, and more derivative, "reflected" forms, on the other. (See the divided line of Plato.) The form of government derived from this philosophy turns out to be one of a rigidly fixed hierarchy of hereditary classes, in which the arts are mostly suppressed for the good of the state, the size of the city and its social classes is determined by mathematical formula, and eugenic measures are applied secretly by rigging the lotteries in which the right to reproduce is allocated. The tightness of connection of such government to the lofty and original philosophy in the book has been debated.
Plato's metaphysics, and particularly the dualism between the intelligible and the perceptual, would inspire later Neoplatonic thinkers (see Plotinus and Gnosticism) and other metaphysical realists. For more on Platonic realism in general, see Platonic realism and the Forms.
Plato also had some influential opinions on the nature of knowledge and learning which he propounded in the Meno, which began with the question of whether virtue can be taught, and proceeded to expound the concepts of recollection, learning as the discovery of pre-existing knowledge, and right opinion, opinions which are correct but have no clear justification.
A short history of Plato scholarship
Plato's thought is often compared with that of his best and most famous student, Aristotle, whose reputation during the western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that the Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher." Contrarily, in the Byzantine Empire the study of Plato continued.
One of the characteristics of the Middle Ages was reliance on authority and on scholastic commentaries on writings of Plato and other historically important philosophers, rather than accessing their original works. In fact, Plato's original writings were essentially lost to western civilization until their reintroduction in the twelfth century through the Persian and Arab scholars. These scholars not only maintained the original Greek texts of the ancients, but expanded them by writing extensive commentaries and interpretations on Plato's and Aristotle's works (see Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes). These were eventually translated into Latin and later into the local vernacular.
Only in the Renaissance, with the general resurgence of interest in classical civilization, did knowledge of Plato's philosophy become more widespread again in the West. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism and fostered the flowering of the Renaissance, with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo de Medici, saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. By the 19th century Plato's reputation was restored and at least on par with Aristotle's.
Notable Western philosophers have continued to examine Plato's work since that time, diverging from traditional academic approaches with their own philosophy as a basis. Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories, Heidegger expounded on Plato's obfuscation of Being, and Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), argued that Plato's proposal for a government system in the dialogue The Republic was prototypically totalitarian. While many critics reject such readings on a variety of grounds, they remain widely discussed.
Bibliography
Below is a list of works by Plato, marked (1) if scholars don't generally agree that Plato is the author, and (2) if scholars generally agree that Plato is not the author of the work. Most of the works are widely available in paperback, either individually or in collections and anthologies. The works are traditionally arranged according to tetralogies ascribed to an ancient scholar and court astrologer to Tiberius named Thrasyllus by Diogenes Laertius.
- I. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo
- II. Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman
- III. Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus
- IV. First Alcibiades (1), Second Alcibiades (2), Hipparchus (2), Rival Lovers (2)
- V. Theages (2), Charmides, Laches, Lysis
- VI. Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno
- VII. Greater Hippias (1), Lesser Hippias, Ion, Menexenus
- VIII. Clitophon (1), Republic, Timaeus, Critias
- IX. Minos (2), Laws, Epinomis (2), Letters ((1) for some)
The remaining works were transmitted under Plato's name, but were considered spurious in antiquity:
- Axiochus (2), Definitions (2), Demodocus (2), Epigrams (Plato), Eryxias (2), Halcyon (2), On Justice (2), On Virtue (2), Sisyphus (2)
The most complete translations of Plato's extant works into English, still in print, are
- The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Bollingen Series LXXI), edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 1961
- Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, 1997
Oxford University Press publishes scholarly editions of Plato's Greek texts in the Oxford Classical Texts series, and some translations in the Clarendon Plato Series. The hardbound series Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, publishes Plato's extant works in Greek, with English translations on facing pages. Their volumes are listed below:
- Volume I. Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Phaedrus ISBN 0-674-99040-4
- Volume II. Laches. Protagoras. Meno. Euthydemus ISBN 0-674-99183-4
- Volume III. Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias ISBN 0-674-99184-2
- Volume IV. Cratylus. Parmenides. Greater Hippias. Lesser Hippias ISBN 0-674-99185-0
- Volume V. The Republic, Books 1-5 ISBN 0-674-99262-8
- Volume VI. The Republic, Books 6-10 ISBN 0-674-99304-7
- Volume VII. Theaetetus. Sophist ISBN 0-674-99137-0
- Volume VIII. Statesman. Philebus. Ion ISBN 0-674-99182-6
- Volume IX. Timaeus. Critias. Cleitophon. Menexenus. Epistles ISBN 0-674-99257-1
- Volume X. Laws, Books 1-6 ISBN 0-674-99206-7
- Volume XI. Laws, Books 7-12 ISBN 0-674-99211-3
- Volume XII. Charmides. Alcibiades 1 & 2. Hipparchus. The Lovers. Theages. Minos. Epinomis ISBN 0-674-99221-0
External links
- Works of Plato (http://www.gutenberg.net/author/Plato) from Project Gutenberg
- Works of Plato (Greek & English) (http://www.perseus.org/cache/perscoll_Greco-Roman.html) from Perseus Digital Library
References
- Wikipedia. (2005). Plato (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato). Retrieved on 02/25/2005.
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