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Ethics: Plato 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: 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