Last
week we studied the early dialogues of Plato, those that are believed
to present Socrates as he originally argued with and questioned
everyone. This earlier, “Pre-Platonic” Socrates sounds much like
Xenophanes and Heraclitus, skeptical of human understandings yet
encouraging everyone to strive for wisdom and virtue. This week and
next week, we will consider the dialogues of Plato’s later period, in
which Plato uses the character of Socrates to present his own
Pythagorean and Parmenidean views. This week, we will examine Plato’s
Symposium and Republic, and next week Plato’s Timaeus and Parmenides (a
dialogue between Socrates and Parmenides, the Eleatic philosopher we
have studied).
The Symposium
With
the early Greek poets, it was mentioned that Greek men would gather
together at parties, known as ‘symposia’ (‘symposium’ in the singular,
literally “drinking-together”) to drink, hear music and discuss
politics, philosophy, and the shortcomings of those not present. Much
of Attic pottery displays images of symposia, likely because much of
Attic pottery was used at symposia. Men would gather separately, as it
was considered obscene for men and women to eat or drink in mixed
company. Reclining on Egyptian styled cushioned couches in the men’s
quarters of rich households, philosophers such as Socrates and Plato
would discuss ideas with their fellow aristocrats.
Today,
many an academic conference is also called a ‘symposium’. It is still a
discordant gathering of disagreements and rambling, but there is
slightly less drinking involved.
Plato’s
Symposium is a dialogue between Socrates and others about the nature of
love at a party hosted by the poet Agathon in 416 BCE after he won a
theatrical contest. It is largely a series of speeches of each of the
party attendees praising passionate love, identified with the god Eros,
the root of our word ‘erotic’. The love felt between family and friends
was known as ‘philia’, half of the word ‘philosophy’, ‘philanthropy’,
‘Philadelphia’, as well as various ‘philias’ and ‘philes’ such as
anglophile, bibliophile, and, important for our text, ‘pedophile’.
Often, for entertainment, guests would take turns talking about a
subject of interest.
The
guests of Agathon’s party are hungover from the night before, and
decide they will go light on the wine and send the flute-girl away so
they can discuss the topic of passion. In ancient Greece, “flute-girls”
who entertained at symposia were often also “prostitutes”, and playing
the flute was seen as an erotic act for reasons I will not explain here.
Thus begin six speeches, Socrates giving the last and most popular,
which I gave you in your reader.
Phaedrus
(who also appears in Plato’s dialogue of the same name) begins by
praising the god Eros, who inspires us to care for others, be courageous
and virtuous, and even sacrifice ourselves for those we love.
Pausanias,
a legal expert, argues that sexual lust is different from genuine
passion, which cares about the long term wellbeing of the beloved.
Strangely, after using the goddess Aphrodite’s two common and cosmic
forms as a metaphor for the difference between lust and genuine love,
Pausanias states that it is only men who are capable of genuine love
that is beyond lust, and that it can only truly be shared between males.
Apparently Sappho didn’t know what she was talking about. Pausanias
says that homosexual relations between younger and older men are
considered disgraceful in Ionia, but this is likely because they are
ruled by tyrants and so do not know much of love, sports, or philosophy.
This is odd, given that Anaxagoras fled back to Ionia after being
charged with impiety in Athens, and that Socrates, who gives the best
and final speech, will be killed for practicing philosophy as the
audience of this play would certainly have known.
Eryximachus
next identifies love with harmony, crucial to music, medicine and
science. Taking up Pausanias’ distinction between lust (lower desire)
and love (genuine concern), he speaks of love as a cosmic force, similar
to Pythagoras’ harmony of the spheres and in accord with the ancient
teleological conception of the cosmos. Eryximachus continuously reminds
everyone that, as a doctor, he knows how crucial harmony is for the
proper functioning of a healthy body and a balanced universe.
Aristophanes,
the aforementioned playwright who had to skip his turn and let
Eryximachus speak first due to hiccups, tells a myth that, as mentioned a
few weeks ago, is quite in line with Empedocles’ cosmological
speculation that originally proto-humans lived as pairs, and so genuine
love is a longing for return to completion. Aristophanes says that when
these dual beings wanted to move quickly, they could stick out all
their arms and legs and turn cartwheels like a gymnast. They were
circular, like the sun, moon and earth, and the male pairs were born of
the sun, female pairs born of the earth, and androgynous male/female
pairs born of the moon, which is part sun and part earth. When these
beings tried to cartwheel up into the heavens to threaten the gods, Zeus
had the wisdom to split them in two rather than obliterate them with
thunderbolts, and from these pairs comes homosexual and heterosexual
people. Homosexual men are the bravest and most virtuous people (our
solar betters), and heterosexual people are notoriously unfaithful to
each other. Finally, Aristophanes warns that we must love each other
and fear the gods, or the gods may decide to split us in half again. It
is not clear how serious or drunk Aristophanes is, whether he is
mocking earlier mythology or putting forward his own Empedoclesian
views.
Agathon,
the poet who is putting on the party, says that the previous speeches
do not honor the god Eros enough. He says that Eros is the most
youthful, beautiful and virtuous of the gods, which is why he inspires
the best in people. It sounds as if Agathon wants to physically love
Love itself. At several points he mocks Socrates, who will speak next,
as the opposite of Eros, the oldest and ugliest guest at his party.
Socrates
begins by praising but then questioning Agathon, getting him to
contradict much of his earlier speech. Because love is the desire for
beauty, and because one does not desire what one already has, love can
not be beautiful. Because good things are themselves beautiful, and
love is not beautiful, love cannot be good. Socrates says that he used
to believe that love was beautiful and good, but then Diotima, the
shaman priestess, taught him that love is neither good nor bad, between
the two, born out of both abundance and poverty together. Love is both
lacking and capable, and can spin lies as well as reveal the truth. As
Love loves the beautiful, and wisdom is extremely beautiful, Love is a
philosopher, like Socrates, both wise and ignorant. Note that Socrates
knows that he does not know, knows that he is ignorant, and that the
philosopher, like Socrates, can only desire additional wisdom if he is
somewhat ignorant and not entirely wise.
Socrates
explains that before he heard Diotima, he saw love as the previous
speakers did, as the loved rather than the lover. In ancient Greece,
the beloved younger male was desired for beauty, and the older male was
not desired for beauty but taught wisdom and experience. Some believed
the transfer to be physical, and again I will not explain this here.
Notice, however, that Socrates, as a philosopher, is like Love itself,
older and unattractive but desired for his wisdom. Both Plato and
Socrates value the mental over the physical, valuing wisdom over sex,
similar to Pausanias who placed genuine love above lust. Wisdom is the
highest form of love, a love of and union with the cosmos itself.
Diotima
taught Socrates that human beings are all pregnant (I was as surprised
as anyone to learn this), pregnant with the desire to procreate both
mentally and physically. Mortal humans want to be immortal, and they
attempt to do this by creating offspring as well as ideas which live
beyond them. I mentioned with Heraclitus that Nietzsche, the German
philosopher, criticized Plato for being seduced by the beauty of ideas
into thinking that they were eternal and more real than the physical
reality that surrounds us. Diotima taught that love is a mystery,
something we rise into beyond what we know in its lower forms. At first
we love physical beauty, and because we desire people and things we
find beautiful we are inspired to create beautiful ideas. If the lover,
which increasingly becomes the philosopher, comes to value wisdom,
beauty and virtue above particular attractive people and things. The
genuine philosopher is inspired by love to improve all people, not have
sex with the young men they find attractive.
This
is the origin of the term “platonic love” (or “platonic friendship”)
which the Neoplatonic philosopher Ficino coined after studying Plato’s
Symposium in Florence during the Renaissance. While Plato was using the
term to refer to nonsexual relationships between older and younger men,
today the term is used for nonsexual friendships between men and women,
known by some men as being “friend-zoned”.
According
to Plato, according to Socrates, according to Diotima, the philosopher
seeks the eternal unchanging nature of things, the source of all that is
beautiful and good. The philosopher is something between immortal god
and mortal human, a spirit (daimon in the Greek, as mentioned).
Notice
that Plato is now beginning to bring in the position of Pythagoras and
Parmenides. While in the beginning of the dialogue, “pre-platonic”
Socrates explains the nature of love, but love is ambiguous and between
both sides of various oppositions. He does not put forward a positive
position as much as relativise the praise of all the earlier speakers.
This fits with the presentation of Socrates in the Apology, as a
talented debater who can show others that they do not know what they
presume to know. Each speaker presumed that love was an excellent and
praiseworthy thing, all presenting very similar views, and Socrates
contradicts them all while gaining their admiration. However, at the
end of Socrates’ speech, we find Plato bringing in the idea of an
eternal form of the good and the true, something “pre-platonic” Socrates
does not make any claims about. We have a mixture of pre-platonic and
post-platonic Socrates, who is neither god nor man, neither wise nor
ignorant (very Heraclitean), but has grasped the eternal unchanging form
of things (very Pythagorean).
Suddenly,
there is a crash at the door, and in drunkenly stumbles the perfect
proof that love is not always a good thing. Alcibiades, drunk and
nearly naked, literally crashes the party after attending another
symposium elsewhere. He stumbles to Agathon’s couch to crown him with a
wreath in honor of his victory, but is horrified to find Socrates
sitting next to Agathon. Alcibiades says that Socrates is, as always,
sitting next to the most handsome man in the room, and Socrates asks
Agathon to protect him from Alcibiades. Socrates and Alcibiades accuse
each other of being foolish and jealous. When asked if he wishes to
offer a speech honoring love, Alcibiades says that Socrates would be
jealous if he praised anyone other than Socrates himself, which he then
offers mockingly to do.
Alcibiades
says that Socrates is like an ugly statue full of gold, and like a
satyr who charms and casts spells on people with his flute. Socrates,
unlike the satyr, does not charm with his flute, but with his ideas and
words, which have shown Alcibiades that his rich lifestyle was no
different than slavery. He wanted Socrates to want him alone, but
Socrates made no sexual advances. Alcibiades, the most attractive young
man of Athens, found himself pursuing Socrates as if Socrates was the
attractive youth, and Socrates’ continuing rejection made him even more
attractive, the only one in Athens worthy of Alcibiades’ affections. He
goes on to praise Socrates as the most courageous, unique and wise man
who has ever existed, and warns everyone not to fall in love with
Socrates, for he will never be yours alone.
Alcibiades
has, of course, in what many consider to be the most brilliant scene of
Plato’s dramatic career, proven Socrates to be correct about love. At
first, Alcibiades says that Socrates is jealous, but in the end he has
revealed that it is he who desires Socrates, not Socrates who desires
him, just as it is wisdom that should be truly prized over the
attraction of sex. It turns out that the most attractive thing in all
of Athens is not the body of Alcibiades, but the mind of Socrates.
Even
Alcibiades, who is clearly ignorant of his own desires as well as those
of others, sees Socrates’ true worth in spite of this. Just as
Socrates is not completely wise, and is wise enough to know this,
Alcibiades is not completely ignorant, even though he is quite ignorant
of his own condition. This is similar to the Meno, where Socrates
argues that we do know what we are ignorant of, such that we do
recognize it when we see it no matter how ignorant we are.
The Republic
In
the late dialogues, believed to have been written about 360 BCE,
Socrates was no longer sharing much of the conversation with other
debaters, but dominates the texts with monologues that are now Plato’s
own Pythagorean and Parmenidean views of the eternal and unchanging form
that is the hidden source of the mortal and temporary. Plato believed
that Heraclitus was right about the world below, but Pythagoras was
right about the eternal world above, the unchanging model, form, order
and cause of the ever-changing world below. Plato has Socrates argue
that those who think they know the world below have mere opinions, but
the one who knows the world above, the true eternal pattern of reality,
has true knowledge.
In
Plato’s Republic, we find Socrates again debating with his fellow
Athenian aristocrats on the nature of virtue, justice and the Good
itself. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal
model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well
ordered soul, three faculties that must be kept in their places and
assigned their proper roles. Thus, the Good is the proper order of the
elements in accord with ancient cosmology. Just as the city is a
microcosm of the cosmos, the individual is a microcosm of the city and
the cosmos, with each level corresponding to each other. The elements
must be separated and put in their places with the highest element on
top and the lowest beneath. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding,
producing the ideal order of the soul and city. When the cosmos is in
order, the forces of nature are in balance. When the city is in order,
culture and society are in balance. When the individual is in order,
the mind and body are in balance.
In
the first book of the Republic, Socrates talks to several interlocutors
and argues against their concepts of justice. The term ‘interlocutor’,
meaning inter-speaker, is used not only for additional participants in a
debate, but also today to describe other opinions brought into one’s
argument to use as counter-positions to disprove, such as, “An opponent
of mine may say...”, or, “While a critic here might reply to my argument
that...”. Modern philosophers such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein use
this device often.
In
the first book, Socrates is questioning others like the original
pre-platonic Socrates, showing each opponent that they are unclear about
their views while refraining from offering his own answers. Remember
that, in the Meno, Meno accuses Socrates of being a stingray that stuns
its opponents, and Socrates replies that he himself is stunned. The
first interlocutor, Polemarchus, argues that justice is paying debts,
helping friends and harming enemies. Recall that Meno argued the same
position, which he learned from Gorgias.
Socrates
argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies is
wrong. Suppose one’s friend wants something unjust? In this case, it
is wrong to help one’s friend. Suppose that by harming an enemy, you
bring harm to yourself or your friends? In this case, it is wrong to
harm one’s enemies. Socrates is particularly opposed to the view that
one should seek to harm in the name of justice, as it would be much
better to benefit everyone than harm enemies. This is similar to
Socrates’ speech in the Symposium, where he says that the highest love
is concerned with the benefit of all, not attachment to those one is
attracted to.
The
second interlocutor, Thrasymachus, is irritated with Socrates’
incessant questioning, and demands that Socrates give his own account of
what justice is. Socrates asks Thrasymachus to give his own views, and
Thrasymachus argues that justice is “the good of the stronger”. Recall
that Athens had been conquered and reconquered, just like the city
states of Ionia, and many rulers and forms of government had come and
gone. Thrasymachus, like Socrates, does not claim to know what the good
is in and of itself, but argues that the powerful get to impose their
own views on the people as to what is good and what is bad, practicing
their own form of justice as they see fit.
While
this is similar to pre-platonic Socrates’ own position, not claiming to
know the form in itself, it is quite pessimistic, skeptical of striving
for the good itself. Socrates believes that there is such a thing as
good, virtue and justice, even if we mortals do not ever understand it
entirely. Thrasymachus does not explicitly argue that there is no good
in itself to strive for, but his relativistic position is pessimistic
rather than optimistic. Whichever ruler, just or unjust by our own
position, gets to impose whatever form of justice they please on others,
without any progress or direction in sight.
A
third interlocutor, Glaucon, joins Thrasymachus and similarly argues
that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates
argues against them that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only
act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole.
Thrasymachus leaves, angered and unconvinced by Socrates’ arguments.
This is the end of Book 1. Nothing has been resolved, and everyone,
including Socrates, is unsatisfied with the results of the debate so
far.
Starting
with Book 2 of the Republic, Socrates now begins to argue for ideas
which many believe to be those of Plato himself. Glaucon and
Adeimantus, who has joined him as Thrasymachus departed, wish to hear
Socrates give his own views, which he does by questioning them and
leading them to answers which satisfy everyone. This is much like
Socrates leading the slave boy in the Meno through proofs of geometry,
arriving at the correct answer through questioning. It is justifiable
to say that Plato believes that there is a true form of justice and
virtue, and we know it already even as we have concealed it from
ourselves in ignorance.
Glaucon
challenges Socrates to prove that justice is better than injustice.
Because injustice seems so attractive to so many, why would people do
what is just if they could do injustice without punishment? If a mighty
warrior, as Thrasymachus has argued, could capture a city and do
whatever he liked without fear, why would he not grab everything for
himself rather than help others and improve the entire city? Socrates
has committed himself to the position that such a tyrant, of which
Athens had seen many, would corrupt and thus destroy himself, but he has
not, to his own satisfaction or to anyone else’s, given reasons why
this is so.
Socrates
says to his remaining two interlocutors that he did not feel he had
convincingly refuted Thrasymachus, and that perhaps they should continue
to debate to figure out what justice actually is. This is the turn
from Socratic questioning to Platonic ideal forms. Unfortunately, at
this point the remaining interlocutors, while occasionally asking
questions for clarification, become somewhat mindless ‘yes-men’ who
agree enthusiastically to everything Socrates says and praises it as the
most certain wisdom they have ever heard. As Plato interjects his own
ideas into his dialogues, the opposition becomes weaker and weaker. In
the dialogue that follows the Republic, the Timaeus, which concerns the
order of the cosmos beyond and above the order of the good individual
and the just city, the text becomes a virtual monologue, without much
room for interlocutors and dissenting opinions.
Aristotle,
Plato’s student, argued that skeptics such as Heraclitus are mere
destroyers who are no better than plants. While Xenophanes, Heraclitus,
and Socrates were optimistic about skepticism, pushing for greater
truth even though truth can not be entirely obtained, Zeno was more
pessimistic about human understanding, arguing like Parmenides that any
attempt to separate and differentiate results in contradiction and
misunderstanding. Plato, like his student Aristotle, seems to have
become more pessimistic, like Thrasymachus himself, about a lack of
substance in Socrates’ argument, though Plato does not share
Thrasymachus’ pessimism about truth itself. Plato, unlike the original
Socrates, has become pessimistic about skepticism, about endless
questioning, and this is personified in the character of Thrasymachus,
who is pessimistically skeptical about power and its ability to achieve
genuine justice.
Skepticism
and relativism are often attacked as pessimistic, just as Heraclitus
was called “the weeping philosopher”. However, Democritus, who was also
skeptical of human understandings, was called “the laughing
philosopher”, and was an atomist even as he admitted that we cannot know
the full truth of what remains beyond our sight. Skepticism and
relativism are attacked as pessimistic, as telling us that truth is
“merely subjective”, as lacking any cohesion in objective unity, just as
Thrasymachus argues that justice is merely the power of the stronger
without any common notion in sight. Plato has his character Socrates
turn his questioning from skepticism to dogmatism, revealing what the
true eternal form of the Good is. It seems that Plato had grown
pessimistic of subjectivity, and optimistic about the objectivity. This
is somewhat sad, given that Socrates might have considered this a
betrayal of the Oracle and Apollo.
Plato,
as his character Socrates, now argues for an eternal form of the Good
over the world of many temporary beings and desires. Socrates argues
that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will
show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just
city is a threefold caste system, identical in many ways to the Hindu
caste system of India. There are many similarities between metaphors
and teachings of the Republic and Indian thought. While originally I
believed that this was due to an Indian influence on ancient Greece, it
is likelier that the cosmology and thought of Egypt and Persia, the
interconnectedness of ancient cultures and the similarity of ancient
cosmology are responsible.
Socrates
first asks us to imagine a city ruled by desire, but devoid of courage
or wisdom. Clearly, this would not be a just place, and everyone would
grab for themselves and the city would fall to destruction. Socrates
adds the police (also translated as ‘guardians’, but because the Greek
word for city is ‘polis’, these guardians are quite literally the
‘police’). The police must keep their own desires in check, and be
courageous. However, mere courage is not enough for the just ruling of a
city. Lastly, Socrates adds the philosophers (also intellectuals and
scientists), to provide the wisdom to lead the police, who keep the
common people safe from outsiders as well as themselves.
This
threefold division corresponds to the physical human being and the
cosmic being. The head is fire as an element, reason, thought and
consciousness in the individual, and the ruling philosopher kings in the
city. The heart or chest is air as an element, spirit, breath and
courage in the individual, and the police or guardians in the city. The
hands and stomach is earth as an element, desire, craving and thirst in
the individual, and workers, farmers and craftspeople in the city. The
individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls.
Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil and chaos to
be ordered from below.
Socrates
also framed this in terms of the individual person. If one was thirsty
for water, but one would lose honor or be poisoned by drinking, one’s
courage or wisdom would be right to keep the desire in check.
Similarly, if one wanted to go to war to gain honor, but it was unwise,
one’s wisdom would be right in keeping one’s courage in check. Just as
the head tells the heart and lungs what to do, and these regulate the
rest of the body, in the good individual wisdom and reason rule over
courage and spirit, which regulates desire and hunger.
Plato
and Aristotle were not fans of democracy. Not only were they
aristocrats and connected to royal courts like the educated were in
ancient Athens, Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian assembly
for thinking and questioning too much. The Athenian assembly was
clearly not composed of philosophers, or they would not have executed
Socrates for practicing philosophy. Plato and Aristotle thought much
higher of the royal dynasties of Egypt and Persia than they did of the
brief period of Athenian democracy. Just as Plato praised Sparta for
elevating the great courageous warriors over the common people, much
like his police of the republic, Plato praised the Egyptians for
elevating the priests, who were equivalent to philosophers and
scientists, and setting them safely over the common masses.
Socrates
argues that, in the good and just city, all is sacrificed for the
common good. There is to be no private property or partners or
children, for the police or philosophers. While Plato does not
explicitly say that the common people must similarly share all in
common, this may be because he is largely unconcerned with the common
people as he is with the courage of the police and the wisdom of the
philosophers. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves
will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will
physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true
freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it
will not stick and will fall apart just like many tyrants have recently
in ancient Athens. Similarly, if everyone shares everything in common,
there will be greater justice and less selfishness. This is Socrates’
ultimate and definite answer to Glaucon’s challenge. Glaucon and
Adeimantus are both entirely convinced, and proclaim Socrates to have
indeed given us the recipe for the just city as well as the good
individual.
The
Soviet Union and America funded scholarship during the cold war that
argued each was more like Athens than the other. The Soviet Union
pointed out that they were much more like Plato’s ideal republic
Republic than America, fueled by individual consumption and private
property much like Socrates’ first failed city of desire. American
scholars pointed out that Aristotle was critical of Plato and argued
there should be a balance of public and private property and Plato’s
ideal city was impossible in the real world, while using the language of
‘West’ and ‘East’ to separate Russia from the ‘true’ Western tradition.
I myself would like more of a balance today between the public and
private, but to many this is very socialist like Soviet Russia and thus
un-Western. All sides agree the situation is quite unbalanced.
Socrates
argues that in the ideal republic each person is best suited to one
thing, and should be assigned this one job. If people do more than one
job, they will not be able to do this one job as best as they can. He
argues that we will lie to the people, tell them the ‘noble lie’ of a
Phoenician story, that people were born from the earth and there are
three races of people because the metals of gold, silver and bronze flow
in their veins. Note that these are the three metals of the Olympic
games, gold as first place, silver as second, and bronze as third.
While
people will raise all children in common, they will be tested from
early ages to see whether they can be athletic and educated. Those who
cannot be athletic will be workers. Those who can be athletic but can’t
study will be police. Those who are both athletic and educated are the
philosophers, educators and rulers. Note that this fits the speech of
Pericles, who told the Athenian assembly that the Athenians had learned
scholarship, but in spite of this had not lost their manliness.
Strangely, in our own culture we view intellectuals much as Pericles
must have viewed the magi of Persia, as scientists who had failed to
first become athletes.
Why
tell the lie, that there are gold, silver, and bronze people, if we are
striving for ideal good and justice? Because the common people will
not understand and grab for themselves, very much Plato’s opinion of the
brief period of Athenian democracy when the rich each grabbed for
themselves in the absence of a powerful and just king. Plato’s cave,
which we will discuss, reinforces this point. If you tell the truth to
everyone, they will not believe you and try to destroy you as the
assembly did Socrates when he asked them to put their desires in check
with wisdom.
Socrates
argues, and the interlocutors naively agree without much of a fight,
that if they separate out the police and train them as best as can be,
and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as
best as can be, no injustice will be possible. There is the simple
belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole.
The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the
people below. Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in
Thebes did it, by elevating priests as a class. He also says to
imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors.
In
the same way, if you put your desires and appetites in check with your
feelings, and your feelings in check with your reason, you will be a
well ordered soul or individual. The appetites crave, the spirit is
passionate, and the mind is reasonable. These are their jobs, the
single thing they do the best, their purpose. Socrates argues that
sometimes we are very thirsty, but if we know the drink is poisoned our
reason puts our desire in check. Other times we may want honor but
realize that it is not the smart thing to do, putting our spirit and
emotions in check by our reason.
This
is interesting, for in the Apology Socrates argues not only that he
should not be condemned to death but given free food and drink for life
because he is helping Athens out with his wisdom, but then when this
angers the assembly (as one could have reasoned), Socrates argues with
Crito that he must drink the poison and not escape by bribing the guards
because it is the right thing to follow the law even when the law is
unjust. Clearly, Socrates is presented as a philosopher who should be
fed by others so that he can continue to reason, and an individual who
can drink poison as the wisest and best course of action.
Socrates
suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is
counterproductive to the good of the city, everything that isn’t
impressing the highest good and order. The youth are to be taught that
they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the
gods are never drawn to injustice or desire. Remember that Heraclitus
also thought it foolish to believe that the gods had the same problems
and flaws as humans, and that Homer and Hesiod were fools for preaching
this. Plato here agrees with Heraclitus, and wishes to make his view
the law.
After
being questioned about lying for the purpose of the good and justice,
Socrates says that this is best explained with an analogy, the famous
Allegory of the Cave. He describes the masses and the assent of the
philosopher beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the
heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should
have authority. It also illustrates Plato’s placing of Pythagoras above
Heraclitus, the eternal and heavenly forms above the mortal and earthly
things of this world.
Imagine,
Socrates asks, that everyone is chained in a dark cave, watching
shadows of puppets carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The
people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who
escapes, breaking the bondage of appetites and earthly things, first
sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that
casts the shadows. This draws the seeker to the mouth of the cave.
Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first
blinded by the sunlight, but then sees real things outside of the cave
and realizes that the puppets were just poor copies of the real things
casting shadows that were shaped like real things. The seeker now has
knowledge and the wisdom to see the difference between opinion (the
shadows) and knowledge (the real things that the shadows imitate).
While Heraclitus said there is no limit to wisdom, Plato has marked the
limit as the mouth of the cave, the line between the mortal and
eternal, between the assembly and Socrates himself.
