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Ethics: Plato
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Difficult to sort out what Plato taught (vs. what Socrates
taught), because Plato did not put his views forward
under his own name – he mostly wrote “Dialogues”
between Socrates and other Greek philosophers of the
day.
The basic point is this:
o If a person knows what “the good life” is, he
or she will not act immorally. Evil is due to a
lack of knowledge. Knowledge is Virtue.
o People will naturally do good after they figure out what it is –
how can this be done when people differ greatly in their
opinions about the good life?
Plato held that determining what constituted a “good life” was an
intellectual task similar to the discovery of mathematical truths
o Just as the latter can’t be discovered by the untrained, neither
can the former
o Only after they have been educated in various disciplines
(math, philosophy, etc.) through a long period of intellectual
training will they have the capacity to know the nature of the
good life
Plato does not teach that one must have knowledge to lead a good
life; he only argues the weaker position that if one does have
knowledge, that person will lead the good life.
o Even without the knowledge, some people will lead a good life
 BUT they will do so in a haphazard fashion
 ONLY if they are educated will they lead such a life
consistently
 THEREFORE they must be trained in two ways:
 They must develop virtuous habits of behaviour
 They must develop their mental powers through
study
o Though all can develop habits of virtue, only a few have the
mental capacity for the second kind of study
 This is what led Plato to develop his ideas about a society
led by an elite ruling class of “Philosopher-Kings” – the
gifted few would model virtuous behaviour for the
ignorant masses
Plato’s ideas are a kind of absolutism – he held that there is
basically only one good life for all to lead
o This is connected to his theory of forms: virtue and goodness
are not dependent on human wishes, desires, opinions, etc.,
but have their own true independent existence in the ideal
world of forms, where they await discovery (like mathematical
truths) by properly trained people.
o This kind of view is also called objectivism
 Morality is not a matter of opinion or preference: a course
of action is right or wrong regardless of what anybody
“feels” about it
 E.g. just as the statement “This is a computer” is
right or wrong independently of anyone’s opinion,
so was it wrong for Nazis to murder 6 million Jews
in the death camps – this is an absolute wrong,
regardless of how anybody feels about it, because it
violates the objective moral law that “Thou shalt
not commit murder.”
 This latter point has had a huge impact on “religious”
philosophy
 most theologians (Jewish, Christian, & Muslim)
have assumed that moral laws such as “Thou shalt
not steal” and “Thou shalt not commit murder” are
absolute and objective in the Platonic sense
 one difference: Plato himself believed that moral
standards were even greater than God, since
God can only be good if he acts in accordance with
a pre-existing standard of goodness
Criticisms:
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there are 2 main criticisms of Plato’s ideas
o the assumption that if a person has knowledge of the good life,
he/she will never act immorally
 it is clear that some people, though they are doing wrong,
and clearly know that they are doing wrong, will persist
in doing that wrong
 Plato might argue that in such a case the person’s
knowledge is defective, and that more education and
training might resolve the problem
 The truth seems more likely to be that moral
choices are not analogous to scientific and/or
mathematical knowledge:
o When all the relevant facts have been
gathered in a scientific issue, we can in
principle always decide the issue or decide
what is the most suitable answer
o This is not so in a moral situation. We may
know all the relevant facts, and still be
perplexed
 E.g. should the U.S. have used the Abomb on Hiroshima or not?
 Further, an act is not truly moral if it does not result
from the free choice of the individual
 Thus it is not sufficient to say that those of us
lacking intellectual ability can still become good by
following the example of the virtuous elite – this is
mimicry, not choice or “goodness”
o the assumption that there is one and only one good life for all,
consisting in obeying absolute, objective moral truths
 this objection will be made clear when we turn to Aristotle