Download Lesson 6

AS Ethics: Plato
Introduction
Plato(429–347 B.C.E.)
 Plato was about 31
when Socrates died
and he lived to be 81.
 Plato’s writings are
mainly written in the
form of dialogues.
 Most are named after
the people to whom
Socrates is talking
e.g. Phaedo and
Euthyphro.
Plato
 Plato is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling
writers in the Western literary tradition and one of
the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential
authors in the history of philosophy.
 An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in
his works his absorption in the political events and
intellectual movements of his time, but the
questions he raises are so profound and the
strategies he uses for tackling them so richly
suggestive and provocative
 that educated readers of nearly every period have
in some way been influenced by him, and in
practically every age there have been philosophers
who count themselves Platonists in some important
respects.
Plato
 Questions:
1. On what charges was Socrates
condemned to death?
2. What is significant about the
‘Academy’ founded by Plato?
3. Can you explain why Plato
decided to become a philosopher
and why he wrote philosophical
works?
Plato
 Socrates was condemned
to death on charges of
impiety and corrupting the
young.
 Plato founded ‘The
Academy’ the first
prototype of a University.
 Reading Plato, Socrates’
followers must have
thought “He’s not gone
after all he’s still here,
asking awkward
questions, tripping you up
with arguments”
Plato
 Plato’s Socratic
dialogues were
defending his
reputation
showing that he
had been unjustly
condemned.
 Socrates the great
educator not the
great corrupter.
Plato
After over two thousand years we
are still puzzling about the meaning
of beauty, courage, friendship,
justice, truth. Have we made any
progress?
Yes and no.
Plato believed that it was in the
nature of such questions that we
have to puzzle them out for
ourselves. (The answer is worth
nothing unless we think it out for
ourselves).
Plato’s Doctrines
 In Plato’s Apology,
he makes the claim
that no harm can
come to a good
(virtuous) man
either during his life
or after his death.
 In the Gorgias.
Socrates claims that
injustice harms the
doer and justice
benefits the doer.
Plato’s Doctrines
 “One may lose all one’s money, be
paralysed by disease but this is nothing
compared with the damage that one may
do to oneself.”
 Explain what Plato means by this
statement.
 Plato thinks that the only real harm one
can do is to one’s soul by leading an
unjust life. Conversely, there is no gain
like that which a good man has from
practising the virtues.
 Courage, temperance, wisdom and
justice. (The four Classical Virtues).
Plato’s Doctrines
Plato teaches that ‘virtue is
knowledge.’
What is knowledge?
Why is knowledge better than
opinion? Can you give any
examples of knowledge that is not
based on opinion?
Mathematics or a scientific fact e.g.
It takes light from the sun eight and
a half minutes to reach the earth.
Plato’s Doctrines
 Plato was a rationalist and he taught that
rationalism was the basis for morality. He
thought that it was important that rationalism
should be in charge of the non-rational
elements that also made up human beings.
 Thus Plato asserted that if one does not do the
right thing (morally speaking) it cannot be that I
knew what to do but lacked the courage to act
on it.
 Rather, if I lacked the courage, Plato would say
that:
 I lacked the knowledge.
 But isn’t this going against common sense?
Plato’s Doctrines
Plato believed that our
assumptions and beliefs should be
open to perpetual questioning.
For Plato ‘conclusions’ don’t have
any special status they are merely
staging posts on the road to further
inquiries.
Plato’s Doctrines
 Two most
important of
Plato’s doctrines
are:
 The Theory of the
Forms and
 That learning is
recollection
Plato‘s Doctrines
 That learning is
recollection sounds
bizarre at first.
However, modern
philosophers like
Noam Chomsky
holds that we must
have innate
knowledge. He
argues that we are
born with a whole
grammar
programmed in our
minds.
Plato‘s Doctrines
Plato taught that knowledge is part
of the essential nature of the soul.
Thus the soul exists before birth.
In the Meno, Plato argues that latent
within our mind we have knowledge
of the correct answers to what is
justice, courage, beauty etc.
Such knowledge is deep within us.
This leads on to Plato’s Theory of
Forms.
Plato’s Doctrines
 Such questions as what is justice? Are
centred on the quest for a definition.
 If Plato is right we must have answers to
these questions latent within us
independently and prior to our
experience of the world in which we are
now living.
 Thus Plato holds that there is apriori
knowledge.
 This view is fundamental to his Theory
of Forms.
Plato: the Parable of the Cave
Explain Plato’s parable of the cave.
What point does Plato want to make
in his parable of the Cave?
Plato’s Cave
The Theory of Forms
The theory that there is another
world than this – an ideal world in
which everything exists that gives
value and meaning to this present
world has had an incalculable
influence on the whole of Western
Culture not least Christianity.
N.B. However, it is important to be
careful of using such phrases like
the ‘World of Forms’ or ‘another
world.’
The Theory of Forms
 Plato uses such
phrases but the
contrast he has in
mind is not
between one set
of particular
things and
another set
completely like it
but more perfect,
more abstract and
located elsewhere
e.g. heaven
The Theory of Forms
 His contrast is between the particular and the
general.
 Thus what is justice? Is a general question
about justice.
 It is not a question about the here and now.
 In the Phaedo, Socrates maintained that to do
philosophy is to rehearse for death- in fact
practicing being dead.
 Since being dead is having one’s soul
separated from one’s body.
 In doing philosophy you are, in so far as you
can, separating your soul from your body.
The Theory of Forms
 So, when you ask the general question what is
justice? Plato thinks you are referring to justice
anywhere and any time- justice in itself.
 It follows then that if you are not thinking about
here and now then you are not here and now.
 You are where your mind is and therefore not in
a place in that sense at all.
 You are, as Plato would describe it, ‘immersed
in generalities.’
 So, it is o.k. to use the phrase ‘World of Forms’
provided you understand this to mean ‘the
realm of invariable generalities.’