Plato 427–347 BCE

views updated

Plato 427–347 BCE

Plato was born in Athens in 427 bce just as the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta was beginning. His mother was related to one of the oligarchs who ruled Athens after the Spartan victory in 404 bce, and his father died when Plato was very young. The most important shaping influence in Plato’s early life, however, was the philosopher Socrates (469–399 bce). Plato was among the young men of Athens who regularly engaged Socrates in dialogue and who took the Socratic challenge to “know thyself” very seriously. Plato, then twenty-eight, was present at the trial of Socrates, an event that clearly made a deep and lasting impression on Plato and which is reflected in all of his work. Socrates is widely regarded as the hero of the Platonic dialogues, a literary form that Plato preferred for most of his works. Following Socrates’ death, Plato traveled throughout Italy, Sicily, and parts of northern Africa before returning to Athens, where he founded the Academy in about 387 bce. Among Plato’s pupils there, for twenty years, was Aristotle (384–322 bce). Late in life, Plato traveled to Syracuse to educate and inspire a new young king, Dionysius II, though the attempt ended in failure. Plato died in Athens in 347 bce at the age of eighty-one.

Among the more famous of Plato’s dialogues are the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro, on the trial and death of Socrates; the Gorgias, which explores the way of life of the sophist; the Symposium, which focuses on love and beauty; the Phaedrus, on rhetoric; and the Timaeus, a study of cosmology. Other dialogues of note that are still widely read and studied today are the Meno, Protagoras, Phaedo, Thaetetus, and the Sophist. All of these deal in various ways with Plato’s famous theory of forms, according to which aspects of the physical world, because subject to decay and death, are inferior to eternal forms such as the true, the good, and the beautiful. But Plato’s most famous dialogues, and those that continue to shape international discussion and research in the social sciences, in some measure at least, particularly in political science, are the Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws.

The Republic is considered one of the great works of world literature. It is often referred to as an example of utopian literature, which sketches an ideal polis, or citystate. Such a view distorts, however, what Plato clearly intended as an exploration of what human beings mean when they appeal to justice and to good rule or government. Similarly, the Republic is frequently summarized as an appeal for the rule of philosopher kings. This too obscures, at a minimum, Plato’s belief in gender equality among philosopher rulers, not necessarily kings. Like any classic work, it is difficult to condense and summarize Plato’s Republic. But there are key aspects that may be sketched along the following lines. At the center of Plato’s political theory is a concept of the cardinal virtues. These virtues are moderation, or temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice. Following a procedure according to which the state (city-state) is the human person “writ large,” Plato examines the cardinal virtues both with respect to the individual person and with respect to the larger city-state. Ultimately, a just society for Plato is a society of just persons. And individuals are just according to their capacity with respect to each of the cardinal virtues. Another important concept in the Republic is the three waves, which refer to perennial issues in all societies at all times. These waves represent the issues of gender, property relations, and who should rule. In the dialogue, Socrates argues on behalf of gender equality; for a community of goods and spouses for the guardians of the polis, a group further divided according to warriors (auxiliaries ) and rulers (philosopher rulers ); and for the rule of philosophers. A full measure of justice is possible for Plato only when philosophers become rulers or rulers become philosophers.

Perhaps the most famous passages in the Republic are those that present the allegories of the divided line, from Book VI, and the cave, from Book VII. According to the divided line, human consciousness develops well or poorly according to a progression from imagination, to belief, to understanding, to reason based on consciousness of the good. This same progression is illustrated in the famous cave allegory, where we must imagine human beings chained and facing a cave wall, see them believe in the images projected on that wall from a fire behind their backs, understand that there might be more to reality than what such images suggest to the cave dwellers, and have the courage and capacity, unlike most of those in the cave, to turn around, see the drama to our backs, and theirs, and make our way out of the cave to a transcendent reality that, for Plato, must ultimately inform human reason. These allegories come toward the end of the Republic and summarize and condense what is explored through dialogue in the previous five books (chapters). Toward the end of the dialogue, Plato presents his thoughts on declining forms and censorship. According to the first, regime forms decay over time, such as from aristocracy (rule of the virtuous), to timocracy (rule of those who love honors), to oligarchy (rule of the wealthy), to democracy (rule of those who love freedom), to tyranny (rule of the lustful despot). The final book, Book X, explores the role of the artist in society, among other topics, and the need for some form of censorship.

The Statesman and the Laws represent significant departures from Plato’s views and style of presentation in the Republic. In the Statesman, for example, an outsider from Elea takes the place of Socrates as the primary spokesperson and the dialogue form is all but abandoned. More significantly, Plato emphasizes a rule of law, or legal codes, as preferable to the rule of philosophers. This shift of emphasis in the Statesman puts Plato more in the tradition of constitutional democracy, with its emphasis on well-constructed constitutions and institutions, characteristic of modern and postmodern approaches to the science of politics. Yet, in the Laws, among Plato’s last works, which otherwise places a similar emphasis on the need for good laws, one encounters a nocturnal council that would be the final authority in the city-state. Many critics point to this dimension of Plato’s work to support the idea that Plato was ultimately something of a totalitarian.

The twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) once famously observed that the European philosophical tradition could be characterized as but a “series of footnotes to Plato.” Though his influence is not as great in the modern social sciences, there is continuing debate, especially among theorists within the discipline of political science, regarding Plato’s insights on the role of intellectuals in society; the role of government in promoting excellence, or virtue; the educative function of the state; gender relations; property relations; the role of religion in the state, if any; and the perennial question regarding who should rule and why. And these are but a few of the modern issues regarding which Plato’s works continue to inspire creative approaches. Some modern scholars, most famously Karl Popper (1902–1994), see in Plato’s political theory the seeds of modern tyranny and closed societies. Others, such as John H. Hallowell (1913–1991), Eric Voegelin (1901–1985), and James M. Rhodes, see a more balanced and humane approach to the study and practice of politics. Because of his depth of insight and his creative approach to the perennial issues of human beings in their social and political dimensions beyond temporal and cultural considerations, Plato and his legacy will continue to be debated among scholars in all of the modern social sciences into the distant future.