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PLATO
427-348/47 BCE
An introduction
Socrates and Plato
• Socrates himself (see pp. 7-8) wrote
nothing; we know what we do about him
mainly from the writings of his pupil
Plato, a philosophical and literary genius
of the first rank.
• It is very difficult to distinguish between
what Socrates actually said and what
Plato put into his mouth, but there is
general agreement that the Apology,
which Plato wrote as a representation of
what Socrates said at his trial, is the
clearest picture we have of the historical
Socrates.
• He is on trial for
impiety and
“corrupting the
youth.”
• He deals with these
charges, but he also
takes the
opportunity to
present a defense
and explanation of
the mission to
which his life has
been devoted.
Socrates on
Trial Apology
A defiant speech
• The Apology is a defiant speech;
Socrates rides roughshod over legal
forms and seems to neglect no
opportunity of outraging his
listeners.
• But this defiance is not stupidity (as
he hints himself, he could, if he had
wished, have made a speech to please
the court), nor is it a deliberate
courting of martyrdom.
No compromise
• It is the only course possible for him in
the circumstances if he is not to betray
his life’s work, for Socrates knows as
well as his accusers that what the
Athenians really want is to silence him
without having to take his life.
• What Socrates is making clear is that
there is no such easy way out; he will
have no part of any compromise that
would restrict his freedom of speech or
undermine his moral position.
the improvement of the soul
• The speech is a sample of what the
Athenians will have to put up with if
they allow him to live; he will continue to
be the gadfly that stings the sluggish
horse.
• He will go on persuading them not to be
concerned for their persons or their
property but first and chiefly to care
about the improvement of the soul.
• He has spent his life denying the validity
of worldly standards, and he will not
accept them now.
refused to disobey the laws
• He was declared guilty and
condemned to death.
• Though influential friends offered
means of escape (and there is reason
to think the Athenians would have
been glad to see him go), Socrates
refused to disobey the laws; in any
case he had already, in his court
speech, rejected the possibility of
living in some foreign city.
execution
• The sentence was duly carried out.
And in Plato’s account of the
execution we can see the calmness
and kindness of a man who has led a
useful life and who is secure in his
faith that, contrary to appearances,
“no evil can happen to a good man,
either in life or after death.”
Dramatic form
• The form of the Apology is dramatic:
Plato re-creates the personality of his
beloved teacher by presenting him as
speaking directly to the reader.
• In most of the many books that he
wrote in the course of a long life, Plato
continued to feature Socrates as the
principal speaker in philosophical
dialogues that explored the ethical
and political problems of the age.
The Republic
• These dialogues (the Republic the
most famous) were preserved in their
entirety and have exerted an
enormous influence on Western
thought ever since.
Plato and Athenian politics
• the execution of Socrates by the courts
of democratic Athens disgusted him with
politics and prompted his famous
remark that there was no hope for the
cities until the rulers became
philosophers or the philosophers, rulers.
• His attempts, however, to influence real
rulers―the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse
in Sicily and, later, his son—ended in
failure.
399 BCE
• The death of Socrates in 399 B.C.,
coming as it did around the turn of
the century, has made it a convenient
point of demarcation in the history of
Greek philosophy.
“pre-Socratic philosophers”
• Thus Socrates’ predecessors of the
sixth and fifth centuries are
commonly called the “pre-Socratic
philosophers.”
• Socrates represents a shift in
emphasis within Greek philosophy,
away from the cosmological concerns
of the sixth and fifth centuries toward
political and ethical matters.
Plato (427-348/47)
• Plato (427-348/47) was born into a
distinguished Athenian family, active
in affairs of state;
• he was undoubtedly a close observer
of the political events that led up to
Socrates’ execution.
Academy 388 BCE
• After Socrates’ death, Plato left Athens
and visited Italy and Sicily, where he
seems to have come into contact with
Pythagorean philosophers.
• In 388 Plato returned to Athens and
founded a school of his own, the
Academy, where young men could
pursue advanced studies.
The first university
• In 388 BCE Plato founded an Academy in
Athens, often described as the first university.
• It provided a comprehensive curriculum,
including astronomy, biology, mathematics,
political theory, and philosophy.
• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.ge
ometry/unit6/unit6.html
idealism
• The carpenter replicates the mental
idea as closely as possible in each
table he makes, but always
imperfectly.
The divine craftsman: the demiurge
• There is a divine craftsman who bears
the same relationship to the cosmos as
the carpenter bears to his tables.
• constructed the cosmos according to an
idea or plan, so that the cosmos and
everything in it are replicas of eternal
ideas or forms—but always imperfect
replicas because of limitations inherent
in the materials available to the
Demiurge.
Idea and material
• In short, there are two realms: a realm
of forms or ideas, containing the
perfect form of everything;
• and the material realm in which these
forms or ideas are imperfectly
replicated.
• Plato illustrated this
conception of reality in
his famous “allegory
of the cave,” found in
book VII of the
Republic. Men are
imprisoned within a
deep cave, chained so
as to be incapable of
moving their heads.
Behind them is a wall,
and beyond that a fire.
Allegory
of the
cave
Light and shadow
• People walk back and forth behind the
wall, holding above it various objects,
including statues of humans and
animals; the objects cast shadows on
the wall that is visible to he prisoners.
Imperfect images of objects
• The prisoners see only the shadows
cast by these objects; and, having
lived in the cave from childhood, they
no longer recall any other reality.
• They do not suspect that these
shadows are but imperfect images of
objects that they cannot see; and
consequently they mistake the
shadows for the real.
order and rationality of the cosmos
He had no intention of restoring the
gods of Mount Olympus, who
interfered in the day-to-day
operation of the universe, but he
was convinced that the order and
rationality of the cosmos could be
explained only as the imposition of an
outside mind.
Physis and psyche
• If the physikoi found the source of
order in physis (nature), he would
locate it in psyche (mind). Plato
depicted the cosmos as the handiwork
of a divine craftsman, the Demiurge.
Demiurge: a mathematician
• Besides being a rational craftsman,
the Demiurge is a mathematician, for
he constructed the cosmos on
geometrical principles.
• Plato’s account borrowed the four
roots or elements of Empedocles:
earth, water, air, and fire.
• But (probably under Pythagorean
influence) he reduced them to
mathematical ingredients or components.
Plato made these the basis of a
“geometrical atomism”—associating each
of the elements with one of the
geometrical solids. Fire is the
tetrahedron, air is the octahedron, water
the icosahedron, and earth the cube.
Plato also found a function for the
docedahedron by identifying it with the
cosmos as a whole.
"Let no one destitute of geometry enter
my doors."
ARISTOTLE
384-322 B.C.
Not a native Athenian
• One member of Plato’s Academy, Aristotle,
was to become as celebrated and influential
as his teacher. He was not, like Plato, a native
Athenian; he was born in northern Greece, at
Stagira, close to the kingdom of Macedonia,
which was eventually to become the
dominant power in the Greek world. Aristotle
entered the Academy at the age of seventeen
but left it when Plato died (347 B.C.).
Tutor to Alexander
• He carried on his researches (he was
especially interested in zoology) at various
places on the Aegean; served as tutor to the
young Alexander, son of Philip II of Macedon;
and returned to Athens in 335, to found his
own philosophical school, the Lyceum, where
he established the world’s first research
library.
Lyceum
• At the Lyceum he and his pupils carried on
research in zoology, botany, biology, physics,
political science, ethics, logic, music, and
mathematics.
Encyclopedic scope
• He left Athens when Alexander died in
Babylon (323 B.C.) and the Athenians, for a
while, were able to demonstrate their hatred
on Macedon and everything connected with
it; he died a year later.
• The scope of his written work, philosophical
and scientific, is immense; he is represented
here by some excerpts from the Poetics, the
first systematic work of literary criticism in our
tradition.
Poetics
• Aristotle’s Poetics, translated by James Hutton
(1982), is the best source for the student.