Plato
Plato
Plato, son of Ariston, a member of the Athenian nobility, was born in 427 B.C. and died at the age of eighty in 347 B.C. Perhaps the greatest thinker of all times, he was not only a philosopher but the founder of political theory (he was himself involved in practical politics) and of sociology; he was, moreover, a physicist and a cosmologist. His influence, direct as well as indirect, upon European (and thus American) thought is incalculable. Whether his influence was on the whole beneficial or not is a question which has recently become highly controversial. For his political philosophy is authoritarian and hostile to democratic ideas, as when he said, “The wise shall lead and rule, and the ignorant shall follow” (Laws 690b), just as his social theory is collectivistic and hostile to individualistic ideas: “You are created for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of you” (Laws 903c). He identified individualism with egoism and group egoism with altruism, overlooking the fact that people may be unselfish not only for the sake of “the whole” (the collective, the state) but also for the sake of other individuals.
Plato’s deep interest in the problems of politics and of society seems to have had two roots. One was a family tradition of assuming political responsibilities. (His father claimed descent from Codrus, the last king of Athens, and his mother from Dropides, a kinsman of Solon.) The other was the terrifying experience of the political and social disintegration which affected not only Athens but the whole of the Greek world during the later years of the Peloponnesian War (the “Decelean war” of 419–404 b.c.). This period coincided with Plato’s formative years and culminated for him in the trial and death of his friend and teacher Socrates in 399 b.c.
The Peloponnesian War (or wars; 431–404 b.c.) was not merely a war between the two most powerful city-states of Greece; it became, one might say, the first ideological war, and it involved some of the first large-scale ideological persecutions. The clash was between the ideologies of a tribalist and authoritarian (and perhaps even totalitarian) Sparta and the maritime trading empire of democratic Athens (the “Delian League”). It became the more terrible because some of the leading families of Athens and its democratic allies were traditionally antidemocratic and oligarchic, and sympathetic to Sparta. (Thus Aristotle mentioned in his Politics, 1310a, an oligarchic oath which even in his time was still in vogue, as he said; it consisted of the formula “I promise to be an enemy of the people, and to try my best to give them bad advice.”)
When the Spartan King Lysistratus captured Athens in 404, he instituted there an oligarchic puppet government, under Spartan protection, known as the Thirty Tyrants. The Thirty were led by two of Plato’s maternal uncles, the highly gifted Critias and the much younger Charmides. During the eight months of their reign of terror, the Thirty killed scores of Athenian citizens—almost a greater number of Athenians than the Spartan armies had killed during the last ten years of the war (Meyer [1884–1902] 1953–1958, vol. 5, p. 34). But in 403, when Plato was 24 years old, Critias and the Spartan garrison were attacked and defeated by the returning democrats. Originally only 70 men, led by Thrasybulus and Anytus, the democrats established themselves first in the Piraeus, where Plato’s uncles were killed in battle. For a time, their oligarchic followers continued the reign of terror in the city of Athens itself, but their forces were in a state of confusion and dissolution. Having proved themselves incapable of ruling, they were ultimately abandoned by their Spartan protectors, who concluded a treaty with the democrats. The peace treaty re-established democracy in Athens. Thus the democratic form of government had proved its superior strength under the most severe trials, and even its enemies began after a few years to think it invincible.
As soon as the restored democracy had re-established normal legal conditions, a case was brought against Socrates for “corrupting the youth”; its meaning was clear enough: he was accused of having corrupted Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides, who were thought responsible for the defeat of Athens and for the bloody regime of the Thirty. In his defense Socrates insisted that he had no sympathy with the policy of the Thirty and that he had risked his life defying their attempt to implicate him in one of their crimes. He also made it clear that he preferred death to being prevented from speaking his mind freely to the young. Found guilty, he became the first martyr for the right of free speech.
Such were the tumultuous times of Plato’s most important formative years. They led him in his time of maturity to pose his fundamental problem: Society, and the body politic, are sick. How can they be cured?
Beginning of literary activity. That the historical events described influenced Plato in the sense indicated is, of course, conjectural. Indeed, it should be stressed that almost everything about the evolution of Plato’s thought, the sequence of his works, and the events of his life is conjectural. Our sources, so far as they are consistent, seem to be largely interdependent. Thus, we cannot be certain that this story of Plato’s life is not a legend. What is probably the oldest source, the Book of Plato’s Letters, may well be an ancient forgery. Even the most informative “Seventh Letter,” which many scholars accept as genuine, is suspect. (Certain other works transmitted under Plato’s name are almost certainly forgeries.) Yet even though the “Seventh Letter” is probably a forgery, it appears to be very old, and the writer must surely have been well informed about the facts of Plato’s life to get his forgery accepted. For the temporal order of Plato’s works, we have now what appears to be very good evidence from the statistics of minor stylistic peculiarities (“stylometry”). This method (which in the main leads to groupings rather than to a definite sequence) may fail, however, in cases in which Plato revised or rewrote his books. (We seem to have some independent evidence for the revision, by Plato, of at least one of his works, the Theaetetus; see Popper [1945] 1963, vol. 1, addendum II.) These uncertainties should be kept in mind throughout this account.
Most of Plato’s literary work consists of “Socratic dialogues”—dialogues, that is, in which Socrates is the main speaker and the superior intellect. Socratic dialogues were composed by several other writers, notably Xenophon; yet most of Plato’s dialogues bear the stamp of supreme originality, and we may therefore conjecture that it was Plato who invented this literary form. If so, then the view expressed by some scholars that it was the tragic death of Socrates which turned Plato into an author —into a writer of Socratic dialogues, to commemorate (and defend) his friend and teacher—is not only attractive but also likely to be true. This view would also suggest that the Apology of Socrates— Plato’s report of Socrates’ defense and of his condemnation—was Plato’s first work. Admittedly, there is important evidence against this: the Apology is a masterwork, and quite a number of the early dialogues are, in comparison, immature. On the other hand, it is not so very unusual that an author’s first work shows him at a peak which he is not soon to reach again; and in this particular case, the unique personality of Socrates and the immediate impression made by his defense in court (Plato made it quite clear that he was present) may be more than sufficient to explain how one of the greatest and most moving works of all literature could be the first fruits of a literary novice.
At at any rate, until we have good evidence to the contrary, it seems reasonable to accept the Apology as a true portrait of the historical Socrates and as a faithful report of the proceedings (hundreds of eyewitnesses of these proceedings must have been alive when the Apology was first published). It is a marvelous portrait, and the first (or almost the first, in view of Xenophanes and Pericles and Euripides) and the greatest manifesto of what may be called “critical rationalism”—the characteristically Socratic view that we ought to be aware of how little we know, and that we can learn by means of those critical discussions to which all theories and beliefs ought to be made subject. Though this is hardly a view which could ever become a generally accepted one, its influence upon Western thought (and Western science) has been of decisive importance.
Socrates’ critical rationalism is not skeptical, nor does it take pride in reason or cleverness: he believes in truth and in human beings, of whose intrinsic fallibility and intrinsic goodness he is equally convinced. Moreover, he is loyal to the democratic laws of Athens, and he loathes the crimes of the Thirty: he is a democrat, though one who is not greatly impressed by the democratic party leaders; he is a man passionately interested in other men; he is ready to die for the right of free discussion but despises the art of flattering the people.
Three periods of Platonic works. It is here proposed to divide Plato’s work into three periods. The first, or Socratic, period develops Plato’s portrait of Socrates as a man, teacher, and lover of truth. Its dialogues (I mention only the Crito, the Protagoras, and the Meno) are opposed neither to democracy nor to the value of the individual.
In the second period, Plato’s attitude, imputed to the Socrates of his dialogues, is different: Plato now blames democratic Athens—nay, democracy itself, the rule of the many, of the mob—for having murdered Socrates. This mob rule threatens every just man, who is like “a man who has fallen among wild beasts, unwilling to share their misdeeds and unable to hold out singly against the savagery of all” (Republic 496c).
This shows that the social body is sick. Plato has found his problem: how to heal the sick body of society.
The problem itself involves a theory—the organic theory of the state and of society. (The origin of this most dubious and ever-influential theory is Oriental.)
Plato’s new and very personal version of the organic theory of society is his analogy between the city-state and the soul of man: the city-state is the soul writ large, and the soul is a state in miniature. He thus originated the psychological theory of the state and also the political theory of the soul. The state is class-divided. Its structure is characterized by an unstable equilibrium between the ruling classes, consisting of the rulers and their helpers (or auxiliaries), and the ruled classes, the money-earning classes and the slaves. Similarly, the structure of the soul is characterized by an unstable equilibrium—indeed a schism—between its upper functions, reason and will, and its lower functions, the instincts or appetites. (It is interesting to note that Marx and Freud were unconscious Platonists. They also were anti-Platonists in accepting Plato’s scheme and inverting it, Marx by demanding the emancipation of the workers, Freud by demanding the emancipation of the instincts or appetites.)
The challenge of his problem led Plato to an almost superhuman intellectual effort. He developed not only a diagnosis and a therapy but (especially in his third period) a whole cosmology on which he based his diagnosis, and a theory of knowledge on which he based his therapy.
His social diagnosis goes deep. He is not satisfied with blaming democracy, which for him is a symptom rather than the malady itself. For the malady is social revolution—the revolutionary change which has overcome society and which has led to the dissolution of the old patriarchal society in which everybody knew his place and was happy. Society is in a process of degeneration: change is evil; stability is divine.
The stages of political degeneration are seen by Plato in the history of the Greek city-states. They begin with a golden age of hereditary kingship— the rule of the one, the best, the wisest—and an organic division of labor: the wisest rule, the courageous help them to keep order and defend the state, and the people work (in a variety of occupations). From here we move through aristocracy (or timarchy), the rule of the few who are the best, to the rule of the many, democracy. In the Republic, democracy is shown to lead only too easily to a final state of decay: to the rule of the ruthless demagogue who makes himself the tyrant of the city.
What are the causes of political degeneration? According to the Republic, the main work of Plato’s second period, it is the racial degeneration of the ruling class which undermines its fitness and its determination to rule. According to the Laws, the main work of his third period, the main cause of social change is culture clash, which is an unavoidable concomitant of the development of industry (such as the Athenian silver mines), of trade, of possessing a harbor and a fleet, and of founding colonies. All this shows astonishing insight, as does the remark that population pressure is one of the main causes of an unsettled society. (It seems not unlikely that Plato connected population increase, or increase in quantity, with racial degeneration, or decrease in quality: his view of the few who are good and the many who are bad may have suggested this to him (Laws 710d, 740d-741a, 838e).
So much for Plato’s sociological diagnosis.
The therapy which Plato advocated—his political program—fits the diagnosis: Arrest all social change! Return (so far as this is possible) to the patriarchic state! Strengthen the stability and the power of the ruling class, its unity, and its will to rule! For Plato formulated the following diagnostic-sociological law of revolution: “Change in the constitution originates, without exception, in the ruling class itself, and only when this class becomes the seat of dissension,” or when its will to rule is sapped, or when it is defeated in war (Republic 545d, 465b). Thus, the proper education of the ruling class becomes a major instrument of politics; the degeneration of the ruling class must be prevented by eugenics; the unity of the ruling class must be strengthened by a radical communism (confined to the ruling class) that involves the common ownership of women and children: nobody may know who his actual parents are, and everybody must look upon all the members of the older generation of their class as their parents. (This startling communism is the only major point of Plato’s program given up in the Laws as demanding too much, even though it is still declared to be ideally the best form of society.) Culture clash must be prevented, and it is said in the Laws that the city must therefore possess no harbor and no fleet, and that no citizen may possess means for traveling: the currency must be a token currency without intrinsic value (Laws 742a-c), though the government will possess a treasure of “general Hellenic currency.” Religion and rites are to be developed as important instruments for preventing change, and no variation in them may be tolerated. (This view, which anticipates the idea that religion is opium for the people, is the more remarkable for the absence of any churchlike organization in Greece.)
In his third period (especially in the Laws) Plato no longer used Socrates as his main speaker: it seems that he had become conscious that he had moved far away from Socrates’ teaching. Plato developed the political ideas of his middle period further and gave them (especially in the Statesman and the Timaeus) a cosmological background: the deepest cause of racial degeneration and political decay is that we are living in a world period in which the world is moving away from its divine origin; every change makes it less like its original model—the divine Form, or Idea, in whose image it was created.
In this third period, Plato developed further his theory of knowledge. In his first period, it was an optimistic theory which made it possible for every man to learn (Meno 81b–d). In his second and third periods, only the highly trained philosopher can attain true knowledge—knowledge of the divine Forms or Ideas.
Later life. It is difficult to relate the works of Plato’s second and third periods to his later life, whose most important events, according to tradition, were his journeys (one to Egypt and three to Syracuse), the foundation of the Academy, and the Academy’s (and Plato’s) participation in Syracusan high politics: his friend Dio invaded Syracuse, supported by other members of the Academy, and overthrew the Dionysian dynasty. Dio was murdered by Callipus, another member of the Academy, who in turn was murdered by the Pythagorean philosopher Leptines. (At least nine pupils of Plato’s Academy made themselves tyrants of some city or other.)
Traces of these journeys, such as allusions to Egyptian institutions, and of some others of these events, may be discerned in Plato’s work, but most of these interpretations, though interesting, are highly controversial.
The influence (for good or ill) of Plato’s work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been either Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.
Karl R. Popper
[See alsoConstitutions and constitutionalism; Elites; Justice natural law; Political theory; Social contract; State; Utopianism, article onutopias and utopianism; and the biography ofAristotle.]
WORKS BY PLATO
Plato. With an English translation. 10 vols. The Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1917–1929. ? Volume 1: Euthyphro; Apology; Crito; Phaedo; Phaedrus, 1917. Volume 2: Theaetetus; Sophist, 1921. Volume 3: The Statesman; Philebus; Ion, 1925. Volume 4: Laches; Protagoras; Meno; Euthydemus, 1924. Volume 5: Lysis; Symposium; Gorgias, 1925. Volume 6: Cratylus; Parmenides; Greater Hippias; Lesser Hippias, 1926. Volume 7: Timaeus; Critias; Cleitophon; Menexenus; Epistles, 1929. Volume 8: Charmides; Alcibiades I and II; Hipparchus; The Lovers; The Ages; Minos; Epinomis, 1927. Volumes 9–10: The Laws, 1926.
The Republic. With an English translation by Paul Shorey. 2 vols. The Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1930–1935.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
AristotlePolitics. With an English translation. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959.
Bluck, Richard S. H. (1949) 1951 Plato’s Life andThought. Boston: Beacon.
Burnet, John 1928 Platonism. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Cherniss, Harold F. (1945) 1962 The Riddle of the Early Academy. New York: Russell.
Cherniss, Harold F. 1959–1960 Plato (1950–1957). 2 parts. Lustrum, Nos. 4–5. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Chroust, Anton-Herman 1962 Plato’s Detractors in Antiquity Review of Metaphysics 16:98–118.
Crossman, R. H. S. (1937) 1959 Plato Today. 2d ed. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Demos, Raphael 1939 The Philosophy of Plato. New York and London: Scribner.
Dodds, Eric R. 1951 The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. ? A paperback edition was published in 1963.
Field, Guy C. 1930 Plato and His Contemporaries: A Study in Fourth-century Life and Thought. London: Methuen.
Fite, Warner 1934 The Platonic Legend. New York and London: Scribner.
FriedlÅnder, Paul (1928–1930) 1958–1964 Plato. 2 vols. New York: Pantheon.
Gomperz, Theodor (1896–1909)1955 Greek Thinkers: A History of Ancient Philosophy. 4 vols. New York: Humanities Press. ? First published in German. See especially volumes 2 and 3.
Grote, George (1865) 1888 Plato, and the Other Companions of Sokrates. 2d ed. 4 vols. London: Murray.
Kelsen, Hans 1942 Platonic Love. American Imago 3:3–110.
Kelsen, Hans 1957 What Is Justice? Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. ? See especially pages 82–109, “Platonic Justice.”
KoyrÉ, Alexandre 1945 Discovering Plato. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. ? A paperback edition was published in 1960.
Levinson, Ronald B. 1953 In Defense of Plato. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Lodge, Rupert C. 1956 The Philosophy of Plato. London: Routledge.
Meyer, Eduard (1884–1902) 1953–1958 Geschichte des Altertums. 4th ed. 5 vols. Stuttgart (Germany): Cotta.
Morrow, Glenn R. 1939a Plato and Greek Slavery. Mind New Series 48:186–201.
Morrow, Glenn R. 1939b Plato’s Law of Slavery in Its Relation to Greek Law. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
Morrow, Glenn R. 1960 Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of The Laws. Princeton Univ. Press.
Popper, Karl R. (1945) 1963 The Open Society and Its Enemies. 4th rev. & enl. ed. 2 vols. Princeton Univ. Press. ? Volume 1: The Spell of Plato. Volume 2: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath.
Popper, Karl R. (1960) 1963 On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance. Pages 3–30 in Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Basic Books; London: Routledge.
Ross, W. David (1951) 1961 Plato’s Theory of Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon.
Ryle, Gilbert 1966 Plato’s Progress. Cambridge Univ. Press
Sabine, George H. (1937) 1962 A History of Political Theory. 3d ed. New York: Holt.
Shorey, Paul 1903 The Unity of Plato’s Thought. Univ of Chicago Press.
Shorey, Paul 1933 What Plato Said. Univ. of Chicago Press
Taylor, Alfred E. (1926) 1960 Plato: The Man and His Work. 7th ed. London: Methuen.
Von Fritz, Kurt 1954 The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity: A Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
Wild, John D. (1953) 1959 Plato’s Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law. Univ. of Chicago Press.
Winspear, Alban D. (1940) 1956 The Genesis of Plato’s Thought. 2d ed. New York: Russell.