PLATO

Plato (428–347 b.c.e.), born in Athens, was a philosopher and founder of a school, the Academy. He was a student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. Apart from a few letters, Plato's writing consists entirely of dialogues. These philosophical dramas display a mastery of composition, character, and action that rank him among the best of ancient poets. The range of philosophical problems treated in the dialogues and the quality of the treatment make this one of the most important bodies of work in the history of Western philosophy.

The chief character in most of the dialogues is Socrates, Plato himself never speaking. This raises two questions: First, to what extent does the Platonic Socrates correspond to the historical Socrates? And second, because Plato is silent, how can scholars determine what his views were? The standard answer is that Socrates or his occasional stand-in is always the mouthpiece of Plato, but that only the earlier dialogues present the authentic Socrates. There is no strong evidence for either conclusion. In this entry, the Socrates referred to is the character as he appears in Plato's dialogues.

Socrates in the Early Dialogues

Plato's early dialogues present the reader with the Socrates who brought philosophy down from the heavens. Pre-Socratic philosophers had been largely preoccupied with the study of the heavens and the earth, and especially with the phenomena of change and generation. Socrates apparently turned away from natural science to investigate the moral and political opinions of his fellow citizens. His habit of questioning them eventually resulted in his indictment, trial, and execution by the city of Athens. Plato uses this background both to mount a political defense of Socrates and to explain the kind of wisdom Socrates laid claim to.

In the Apology, the presentation of his defense, Socrates explains himself. According to the Oracle at Delphi, no one was wiser than Socrates. This astounded Socrates, for his philosophical investigations had convinced him that he knew nothing at all. He decided to test the oracle by interrogating those who were reputed to be wise. The politicians, he discovered, neither knew nor produced anything of value. The poets composed beautiful works, but could not explain how they did so or what their compositions meant. The artisans by contrast both produced useful things and understood what they were doing. Because of this, however, they supposed themselves wise about beauty, justice, and virtue, when in fact they were ignorant of such things. Socrates concluded that he was indeed wise in this one thing: He alone knew the full extent of his own ignorance.

But how can this meager knowledge, which Socrates calls human wisdom, be of any use? First, Socratic questioning can teach fellow citizens humility by showing them that they do not know what they think they know. What do they think they know? They know that power and wealth are the most valuable things. By undermining these opinions, Socrates was in effect urging Athenians to care about their own souls more than their property and the city's virtue more than its power. Small wonder they killed him for it.

In the Euthyphro, Socrates encounters a young man who is prosecuting his own father, an act that amounts to a radical assault on Greek familial morality. Euthyphro's boldness turns out to be supported by a hubristic confidence in his own understanding of piety. Socrates' relentless questioning demolishes that confidence, with the apparent result that Euthyphro drops his suit. So even if the only knowledge that is available is knowledge of one's own ignorance, philosophy can still be useful to the city by encouraging political moderation.

The utility of Socratic questioning is not limited to undermining bad arguments. The Crito provides a more positive account. In the absence of knowledge, one is left with opinions; Socrates, however, draws a distinction between the opinions of the many and those of the expert. If someone wants medical advice, that person does not put the matter to a vote but consults a doctor. If Socrates wants to know whether to accept his sentence or escape from jail, he will not be swayed by popular opinion but will turn to the expert in moral and political matters, presumably himself.

An opinion is never more than a guess; but an art or expertise consists of a set of educated guesses, informed by a long practice of questioning the evidence and alternatives. Expertise differs from philosophy insofar as it does not aim at comprehensive knowledge of the whole of things. In a theoretical sense the expert does not necessarily know anything, but in practical matters knows what he or she is talking about and so can be relied upon. If Plato's early dialogues were all there were to go on, one would conclude that Socrates was a political scientist and ethicist, and that these were the limits of Plato's ambitions.

This picture is substantially modified in later dialogues. Whereas in the Apology Socrates strenuously denies that he has anything to do with the physical sciences, in the Phaedo he confesses that, as a young man, he had a wonderful enthusiasm for physics, cosmology, and biology. But he came to believe that the reductionism of Greek science blinded its practitioners to the true nature of the phenomena they studied. Anaxagoras, for example, would explain the fact that Socrates is in jail by the position of his bones and muscles while ignoring the most important cause: the fact that the philosopher had concluded that he was obligated to accept his sentence. Without that last reason, Socrates exclaims, those bones and muscles would be long gone from their prison.

This approach, applied to nature, obviously anthropomorphizes it. Socrates supposes that to explain the moon or the stars one must explain why it is best for them to be as they are. Perhaps the expert can get by with good guesswork, but real knowledge requires a consonance between human understanding and the world it seeks to understand. The mind looks for motives and justifications, and seeks answers in general ideas such as beauty and the good. What would have to be true of the world for such knowledge to be possible?

The Theory of Ideas

Socrates' most famous innovation was his theory of ideas. According to this principle the ideas by which human beings conceive of ordinary things are more real than the things themselves. Thus bigness is more real than a big tree, and unity and multiplicity more real than one person or the parts into which that person may be divided. Visible, tangible things are conceptually messy: relatively large and small; many and one at the same time; young and beautiful then, yet old and ugly now. But the idea of beauty is never ugly nor does the idea of one ever admit of division. That alone is real that simply is what it is, without contradiction, everywhere, and always.

Consider what happens when one approaches a mature oak tree from a distance. At first the tree appears so small that a person can cover it with one hand. Up close it is so large that it fills the horizon. But the tree cannot be both larger and smaller than an individual, nor does it really change as one approaches it. It is not what the eyes see but what the mind apprehends that is real. In the case of ordinary things, the true object is invisible, and what is visible is less than true.

Now compare the painting of a table with the fabrication of a table. The artist fashions an image of an image, at least twice removed from reality and bereft of dimension and substance. The artisan produces an actual table. He does so because he looks beyond any particular object to the idea or set of ideas that constitute the universal table. Just as images of a tree draw their reality from some object that is always, somehow, behind them, so human apprehension of various objects as one kind of thing—a tree or a table—draws on objects that are yet more universal and more real. It is in fact the ideas that generate reality, rather than vice versa.

Socrates' theory solves an impressive range of problems. It explains how human beings are able to perceive unities behind the otherwise chaotic manifold of sense impressions. It is also the basis of a theory of knowledge. Opinions are nothing more than temporal/spatial perspectives on things, and are therefore more or less unreliable. Knowledge is a grasp of ideas that never changes, for which reason it cannot fail.

This theory of knowledge in turn explains Socrates' moral perfection. How is it possible that Socrates alone seems never to succumb to temptation? Most people are guided by opinions about justice, and so are subject to changes in perspective. When one is owed money, justice means always paying debts. When one's luck changes, justice requires the forgiveness of debts. The philosopher by contrast is guided by the idea of justice. He is therefore perfectly steadfast in all circumstances. Even when confronted with his own imminent execution, Socrates says and does the same things in the same calm manner as he did before.

Political Philosophy

The theory of ideas is also the basis of Socrates' moral and political philosophy in the Republic. In that dialogue Socrates describes an ideal form of government consisting of three distinct classes. Philosophers rule, supported by a class of warriors called guardians. Both in turn are supported by a class of producers. The mores of the guardian class are shockingly radical. They practice a communism not only of property but of sex and reproduction, with no individual knowing who his or her own children are. Moreover women receive the same military training as men. In addition to these unprecedented social arrangements, the guardians' exposure to poetry, music, and religious teaching is tightly censored by the rulers.

The primary object of all these innovations is to prevent faction. The philosophers can rule because they alone are guided by the ideas of justice, moderation, and the good, and hence are incorruptible. A philosopher will never choose what is really bad because it looked good at the time. Because the guardians are not philosophers, their opinions about what is honorable and just must be scrupulously regulated by the ruling class, and private interest must be suppressed.

Socrates' ideal republic has been scathingly rebuked as both fantastic and totalitarian. But these criticisms forget the context. Its sole purpose is to provide a model of justice in the human soul. Like the republic, the individual soul is composed of distinct parts. If not, how could someone desire drink or revenge and at the same time want to resist such desires? In the well-ordered soul, intelligence governs the passions and the passions in turn discipline the appetites. When each part of the soul confines itself to its proper work, justice exists. By contrast, when passions or appetites take command of a person, injustice prevails.

The moral argument in the Republic seems to depend on the theory of ideas; however, in the Gorgias Socrates is able to derive much the same ethics from even the most jaundiced of moral opinions. Socrates' most frequent and persistent opponents in the dialogues were the sophists and orators. These men claimed to possess an art of persuasion whereby they could move an assembly or a jury to any conclusion someone might desire. Acquire that technology, either by learning it at a fee or by hiring one of its practitioners, and all the powers of state are at one's disposal. Even better, one may do whatever one desires without fear of prosecution. The young orator Polus knows exactly what the payoff is, the power to murder with impunity.

Socrates argues that sophism and oratory are not arts at all, but examples of flattery. An art, or techn?, must be informed by some more or less correct notion of what is good for body or soul. Thus the arts of gymnastics and medicine aim to perfect the body and repair it, respectively, whereas the arts of politics and justice do the same for the soul. But just as cosmetics and gourmet cooking deliver what looks good, even if the person wearing the makeup or the food used to prepare the meal is in fact unhealthy, so sophism and oratory cater to vanity while doing harm rather than good.

The sophists held that the ends at which all human actions aim are unproblematic. Everyone wants the same things: wealth, reputation, beautiful lovers, and, occasionally, revenge. If one could rule other human beings, one could obtain an unlimited supply of these things and so be perfectly happy. Socrates argues that these ends are in fact problematic and may as easily bring ruin as happiness. No power is any good unless people know how to use it to get what is good for them; and that is not ruling over others but ruling oneself.

Platonism and Technology

Socrates' presentation of wisdom as expertise seems perfectly compatible with the development of technology. But the presentation was so overwhelmed by his theory of forms that it is almost invisible in the history of Platonism. There are good reasons to suppose that Socrates would have been at best indifferent to technological progress. He himself was so moderate in his appetites that he could live comfortably in ten thousand-fold poverty. In the Republic he suggests that the only city that is really natural is the city of sows, where human beings live very simple lives without any need for the arts and sciences.

The theory of forms provides powerful existential consolation, as the perfection of ideas is always available to the trained mind without need to modify the tangible world. During the Renaissance, Aristotle, whose philosophy was more oriented to practice, was popular whenever events seemed to be going well. When foreigners invaded and governments collapsed, scholars turned back to reading Plato. A philosophy of consolation does little to encourage political or technological innovation.

KENNETH C. BLANCHARD JR.

SEE ALSO Aristotle and Aristotelianism;Evolutionary Ethics;Evolution-Creationism Debate;Social Engineering;Virtue Ethics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Guthrie, William K. C. (1975). A History of Greek Philosophy, Vols. 4 and 5. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Guthrie's history is the best general work on Greek philosophy. Newcomers to the topic will find it especially useful.

Kraut, Richard, ed. (1992). The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. A good collection of essays on various aspects of Plato's thought.

Plato. (1980). The Laws of Plato, trans. Thomas L. Pangle. New York: Basic Books. Very similar to Bloom's translation of The Republic.

Plato. (1991). The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books. A very fine translation of this work, using consistent English terms and phrases for the same Greek terms. It also includes a challenging but very thorough essay.

Plato. (1998). Gorgias, trans. James H. Nichols Jr. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. The best translation of one of Plato's most important ethical dialogues.

Plato and Aristophanes. (1984). Four Texts on Socrates, trans. Thomas G. West, and Grace Starry West. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. An excellent translation of the most popular of Plato's short dialogues, with notes and brief commentary.

Rosen, Stanley. (1993). "Techne and the Origins of Modernity." In Technology in the Western Tradition, ed. Arthur M. Melzer et al. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press. A profound treatment of the philosophical meaning of technology.

Strauss, Leo. (1963). "Plato." In History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. Chicago: Rand McNally. One of the best essays on Platonic political philosophy.