Plato

From Philosopedia

Plato (c. 427 - c. 347 B.C.E.)

Plato, whose real name might have been Aristocles, was a major ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates and founder of the Academy in Athens where Aristotle studied.

He wrote on aesthetics, education, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mathematics.

During the French Revolution, Pierre Maréchal cited Plato as one who seems to be an atheist only from the standpoint of the strictest religious orthodoxy. But, like Aristotle, he is no freethinker and, instead, is one who inspires theists.

“Not one of them,” Plato wrote, “who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.”

In Christian history, he is the typical philosopher of dualism. As such, according to J. M. Robertson, “he came to be par excellence the philosopher of theism, as against Aristotle and those of the Pythagoreans who affirmed the eternity of the universe.”

What freethinkers admire about Plato, however, was his early love of ratiocination, of “the rendering and receiving of reasons.”

On Sex

“Platonic love” has come to mean a kind of sexless friendship. Although Phaedrus praised pederasty, not homosexual intercourse in general, Plato condemned homosexual intercourse in both the Laws (Book VIII) and the Republic. In the former, he wrote that it should be punished by a deprivation of civil rights, which was a severe penalty. He also stated that adultery, fornication, and the use of prostitutes should not be engaged in; but, if engaged in, it should be kept private or closeted. The Symposium (384 B.C.E.?) speaks of the philosophical life as being an ongoing quest for ennobling beauty. Such a quest can result in a type of immortality in which one can leave beautiful memorials of words and deeds. The work describes male love:

• . . . if any device could be found whereby a state or an army were made up only of lovers and beloved, there would be no better way of living, since lovers would abstain from all ugly things and would be ambitious in pursuing honor and truth toward each other; and in battle side by side, such troops, although few, would conquer most of the world, since a man would be less willing to be seen by his beloved than by all the rest of the world, fleeing the ranks during a fight or throwing away his arms; he would choose to die many times rather than that.

In fact, when the Sacred Battalion of Thebes, entirely composed of pairs of lovers, fought the battle of Chaeronea, according to Reay Tannahill, “all 300 of its members fell dead or mortally wounded.”

Elsewhere, Plato wrote,

• “Through the nightly loving of boys, a man, on arising, begins to see the true nature of beauty.”

So although in his Laws he writes one thing, in his private life he practices another. Apologists explain he was merely relating the attitudes of his time, attitudes which were not his own.

An Evaluation By Dr. Paul Edwards

Plato was an Athenian aristocrat who early in life came under the influence of Socrates. When Plato was twenty-eight, Socrates was tried by the democratic rules of Athens on the charge of undermining the morals of the young and sentenced to death. This event was decisive in Plato's life. He retired from Athens to Megara where he began to write his dialogues. Their main character is always Socrates, though only the early dialogues, if even these, seem to be accounts of actual episodes in which Socrates participated. Mostly Socrates functions simply as the transmitter of Plato's ideas.

At the age of forty, Plato returned to Athens, founding his Academy, which was really the first university in Europe. The subjects taught were philosophy, mathematics, and political science. At the same time he went on writing his dialogues.

Plato's metaphysical theories and also his political ideas, as set forth in these works have been of tremendous influence on Western thought.

Plato was a consummate literary artist and even those who do not admire his theories usually find the dialogues delightful reading. Plato hoped to put some of his political theories into practice when he became adviser to Dionysius II of Syracuse. Through no fault of Plato's, the experiment did not turn out well and brought him nothing but grief.

Russell's Critique

Bertrand Russell, in History of Philosophy, has called Plato one of philosophy’s misfortunes:

• Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals. It has always been correct to praise Plato, but not to understand him. This is the common fate of great men. My object is the opposite. I wish to understand him, but to treat him with as little reverence as if he were a contemporary English or American advocate of totalitarianism.

(See the entry for Platonism by Gilbert Ryle in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 6. Bertrand Russell, in History of Philosophy, details the weaknesses of Platonism. A first-rate discussion of the man, his works, and his impact has been compiled by The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

{CE; ER; Lee Eisler, The Quotable Bertrand Russell; EU, Aram Vartanian; GL; HNS2; JM; JMR; JMRH; Reay Tannahill, Sex in History; RE; TYD}