Socrates
(470-400 BCE) is a very famous yet controversial and obscure figure.
Like many great thinkers of the ancient world, he did not write his own
thoughts down but taught others and it was Plato (430-350 BCE) and
another philosopher and historian named Xenophon who wrote about
Socrates and his teachings after his death. The third source of ancient
Athenian literature that speaks about Socrates is Aristophanes who
wrote plays mocking Socrates and portraying him as an idealistic fool.
It was believed and still is by many that Plato and Xenophon were
Socrates’ students, but new scholarship has shown that this may well not
have been the case. Plato was a playwright who wrote several unpopular
plays before writing the dialogues between Socrates and his students
that became celebrated as some of the first and central works of ancient
Greek philosophy. While Plato never appears in his plays himself, he
does put his own family members in roles. He has characters mention him
as a young devoted follower of Socrates, but in one place it is said
that Plato was sick which explains why he could not be with Socrates
before his court ordered death by drinking hemlock.
As
already mentioned last week before covering Heraclitus, it is often
said that Plato’s dialogues such as the Republic are some of the first
works of philosophy and ‘Western’ European thought, but really Plato and
his student Aristotle were revered by Muslims and Christians alike and
their texts survive because they were important to the Abrahamic
religions, not because they started a new way of European thinking.
Modern European philosophy is quite diverse in its opinions, and
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the three celebrated Athenian thinkers,
did not identify with Northern Europeans and did not believe that they
were the first to be concerned with wisdom and the world. Before the
rediscovery of the “presocratics” (like Thales and Heraclitus) they were
even considered to be the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece by
many, even though this proved also to be untrue.
It
is generally accepted by scholars today that Plato’s early dialogues
are one of the best sources for understanding Socrates and his ideas,
but in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates is a mouthpiece for Plato’s own
ideas. We will consider Socrates and his thought first, then turn to
two of Plato’s most important later dialogues, the Republic and the
Timaeus, to study Plato’s thought. Socrates and Plato were both
influenced by Heraclitus (our subject last week), and while Socrates
seemed to have been quite similar to Heraclitus, Plato’s thought changed
and he began putting quite different views into Socrates’ mouth.
Consider
two polar opposite views one can have of reality and the world. In the
first view, everything changes constantly and all permanence is an
illusion. In the second opposite view, everything remains the same and
change is the illusion. Both of these views, in fact, can be found in
Indian thought, particularly in Buddhism. As we saw last week,
Heraclitus was a famous champion of the first view. He argued that only
Being, the One and All, the cosmic fire or energy, is eternal and all
other beings are temporary in spite of what our judgments tell us.
Another presocratic thinker named Parmenides (who lived sometime before
500 BCE) argued for the second and opposite view. He argued that there
is one unchanging reality that is eternal and all change and temporary
beings are the illusion in spite of what our judgments tell us. This
would mean, similar to some scientific theories today, that there is
only one moment of time and it is our position and perspective within
that moment that changes.
Socrates
and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus, but in his later
dialogues Plato has Socrates argue for views that sound much more like
Parmenides. Originally, Socrates questioned everyone to show that we
know very little and it is the job of the philosopher to show this to
people. He would argue with others, including famous thinkers and
sages, who believed that they possessed certain truth and point out the
contradictions in their reasoning. This is much like Heraclitus telling
us to beware of experts and being seduced into thinking that one school
of thought or perspective is simply correct but instead continue to
investigate the self and world as both have no limit to their depth or
the things we can learn. It is also very similar to Pyrrho and his
skeptical school of thought, as well as Buddhist logic and debate,
particularly Nagarjuna, one of the most famous Buddhist teachers and the
central Buddhist logician.
While
according to Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes Socrates did not put
forward views of his own but rather attacked others to show that human
beliefs are imperfect and incomplete, in Plato’s later dialogues
Socrates argues that there is one unchanging reality above the temporary
perceivable world and it is the job of the philosopher to seek and
understand this eternal reality. Plato uses Socrates to teach his own
increasingly Parmenidean view that there are unchanging and eternal
forms of things in the heavens and only the educated and the persistent
come to see and understand these forms.
Socrates and his Method of Questioning
We
know very little about Socrates’ early life other than the details
supplied in Plato’s works. He mentions several influences, including
two women. He says that the witch/shaman Diotima taught him about love
and how it is central to life and the cosmos. Like Buddha we studied
last week and Confucius we will study next week, Socrates identified
love with wisdom and objectivity. There is an interesting dynamic in
human thought about whether learning and acquiring knowledge make one
passionate or dispassionate, whether science for example fills our
hearts with awe or stills them. The word ‘philosophy’ is often
translated ‘love of wisdom’, but in fact ‘wisdom love’ could refer
either to the loving of wisdom or wisdom that is also love.
Socrates
also gives credit to Aspasia, the mistress of the general Pericles, who
he says taught him rhetoric. If true, this shows that Socrates was not
a common person but just like almost everyone in Plato’s dialogues an
aristocrat who knew politicians and the wealthy. Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle lived at a time when the glory days of Athens were in decline.
Eventually, Alexander (Aristotle’s student) would conquer the city and
the surrounding city-states. Socrates was a critic of Athenian
society, called “the horsefly” because he believed in stinging Athens
into action, and he was eventually condemned to commit suicide for
corrupting the youth of the city after there was a riot.
Socrates’
career as a philosopher began when his friend Chaerephon went to the
oracle of Delphi to ask if anyone was wiser than his friend Socrates.
Socrates, with characteristic modesty, protests that this was a very
crass question to ask of the great oracle. Notice that Socrates does
believe in the oracle and in the gods. His last wish, the last thing he
said before he died, was that a rooster should be sacrificed to
Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing and mystical insight who is
associated with Thoth the Egyptian god of knowledge and insight.
Socrates loved irony, and it seems that he viewed his death as being
cured of life and its limitations.
Religious
people, including Christians and Muslims for centuries, often view
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as making way for solar monotheism already
popular in Egypt and Persia in their time and seeing the gods as many
human shaped anthropomorphisms of what is rather one and without and
above human form. Non-religious people often view the three Athenians
as moving away from religion and toward atheism and questioning
traditional understandings. Interestingly, traditional polytheists in
Athens in their time said the same thing and called them atheists as
well, along with other increasingly monotheistic thinkers such as
Heraclitus who are likely being influenced by the latest developments of
Egyptian and Persian thought. It seems that if you want thinking to
evolve towards your own thought, you could view it either way.
The
oracle replied to Chaerephon that no one was wiser than Socrates. Upon
hearing this, Socrates says, with either genuine or false modesty, he
was very troubled by this because he did not believe that he was very
wise at all and this would mean that humanity is quite ignorant overall.
He decided that he needed to determine if what the oracle said was in
fact true, and so he began to wander and debate others, seeking someone
wiser than himself.
Socrates
felt that he knew nothing, but as he questioned the experts of Athens
he came upon a horrible discovery and paradox. The experts believed
themselves to be wise and possess great knowledge, but when questioned
it turned out they knew very little. Socrates knew that he himself knew
nothing. Therefore, Socrates says he discovered that he was wiser than
the experts because he knew that he knew nothing, while the experts
knew nothing but thought that they knew a great deal. Humble and modest
Socrates was aware that mortal humans know nothing, but the
politicians, artists and warriors were unaware of this great equality
they shared with Socrates. The ignorance of Socrates was thus the
greatest wisdom in all of Athens. It is certainly true that the more
one knows, the more one knows there is an endless amount to know and
that we are all quite equal in knowing very little even when we know a
great deal. There is another paradox here: the more one surpasses
others in wisdom, becoming different, one identifies with them more,
seeing the similarity.
Notice
the similarity between Socrates and Heraclitus, who argued that the
experts believe themselves to know a great deal but do not understand
that their knowledge and perspectives are mortal and we are all mere
apes to the gods. Socrates argued, like Heraclitus, that the greatest
wisdom is found in questioning oneself and others. Remember that great
city-states and empires had risen and fallen along with increasingly
specialized experts. Philosophy questions experts and the basis of our
knowledge, which humans find useful particularly in times of crisis when
hard questions must be asked.
Socrates
argued that one should accept one’s own ignorance and the guidance of
the world through intuition. He believed that he had a spirit, a
‘daemon’ in the Greek, a word which became “demon” as Christianity
replaced the polytheism and spirits with monotheism and angels. This
spirit was much like what we would call a conscience, a word which means
“co-seeing” or seeing along with, an intuition that one should or
should not do a particular thing, something Christians identified with
angels sitting on shoulders just as ancient Greeks did with spirits.
Socrates
says that his daemon told him to stay out of politics. Good advice,
seeing as how his death was quite political. Not only did politics get
Socrates killed in spite of this, but Plato has Socrates get
increasingly political in his later dialogues, particularly in the
Republic where Socrates debates the best form of the city. This is
another piece of evidence that Plato may not have known Socrates and is
using him as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. Socrates also praised the
divinity of poetry, mysticism, love and getting drunk with friends as he
does at the Symposium, a dialogue about a drinking party that turns
into a philosophical discussion about the nature of love.
Plato & his Dialogues
Plato
was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato
writes as much in many of his dialogues and he is the best source on
him, though if he turns him into a mere mouthpiece for very different
ideas in the later dialogues he may also be the worst. As Socrates is
about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which
another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there
at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato
had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in
his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is
difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato
himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply
influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial
and death.
Plato’s
actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling
instructor named him Platon or ‘Broad’ because he had a wide figure and
wrestling stance. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known
to have a wide and thus ‘broad’ breadth of knowledge covering all
subjects of ancient thought and might have acquired the nickname in this
way. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his stepfather became
the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court. Remember that
Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time, and
Zoroastrianism, Persia’s solar monotheism, would be a major influence on
the Abrahamic religions just as Plato himself would.
Long
after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his
dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his
Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a sacred tree grove where he, his
students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of
philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means ‘porch’ or ‘step’, an
open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to
understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building
itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of
Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world cosmology, Platonism and
Christianity), when in fact the library was a shelf that ran along a
hall that connected two buildings, just as one would say a collection of
books is a personal library. Plato writes in the Timaeus, his book on
the cosmology of the world, that ancient Egypt was the birthplace of
philosophy and science, which again he would have understood to be the
same thing acquired through knowledge of the self and the cosmos.
To
examine Plato’s thought in its later and mature form we will look at
his two most influential dialogues which both come from his later period
and are certainly to be read together. It is sad that the dialogue of
the Timaeus is supposed to happen on the day after the dialogue of the
Republic, and the Republic covers the proper order of the self and city
while the Timaeus covers the cosmos and how it also works in the same
way that the self and city should if ordered properly and justly, but it
is difficult to find the Timaeus in print while every Intro Philosophy
course covers the Republic. I made sure to give you both texts in your
reader. It is much easier to believe that Plato and Aristotle invented
secular scientific reasoning when you do not read the cosmology of the
Timaeus. For Muslims and Christians, the Timaeus was understandably
Plato’s most important work and Aristotle would be making modifications
to this picture, that the world is a living being and vegetation is the
body hair of the world. On campuses today, however, students read
sections of the Republic that speak of the self and city and are often
told that this is the birth of speaking abstractly about subject matters
this way. Plato and Aristotle had much greater reverence for Egypt and
Persia to believe such a thing.
In
these two 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 Parmenides-like views of the unchanging form that is the hidden
source of the temporary. Plato believed that Heraclitus was right about
the world below, but Parmenides 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 this
way, wisdom for Plato was not simply knowing that one knows little to
nothing, but rather is acquired through the gathering of knowledge of
the world and its patterns.
The Republic
In
Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good.
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. Thus, the Good
is the proper order of the elements perfectly in accord with ancient
cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city
is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again 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 the city.
Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice.
This
is Socrates acting like the original Socrates. Polemarchus argues that
justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates
argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are
wrong. Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’.
Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one
would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves
if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the
whole. Remember the politics of the time, and that many tyrants and
forms of rule came and fell, had some success but also great failure.
This is the substance of Book 1.
Starting
with Book 2, Socrates now turns into Plato. He says to those who
remain and do not leave upset that he did not feel he had convincingly
refuted these other views, and that perhaps they should continue to
debate to figure out what justice actually is. This is the turn from
Socratic questioning to Platonic forms and separate structures that
should have ideal forms. Unfortunately, everyone who is critical of
Socrates has left the party, and the two who stay are mindless yes men
who agree enthusiastically to everything Socrates says and praises it as
the most certain and good wisdom they have ever heard.
Plato,
as Socrates, argues for an eternal form of the Good over the world of
many temporary beings and desires. Socrates is challenged to give a
positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents as Thrasymachus
accuses him of doing before leaving similar to Hindu debaters accusing
Jains and Buddhists of tearing down other positions rather than arguing
for a consistent truth. 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.
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.
Plato
and Aristotle were not fans of democracy. Not only were they
aristocrats and connected to royal courts like the educated often were
in ancient Athens, Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian
assembly thinking and questioning too much. Unlike how it is often
taught today with sections of the Republic, Plato and Aristotle thought
much higher of the royal dynasties of Egypt and Persia than they did of
the brief period of Athenian democracy. Like other educated Athenians,
they revered King Darius of Persia, particularly because he gave
Athenian nobles much freedom and rights.
All
is sacrificed for the common good. There is to be no private property
or partners or children, for any of the three classes. 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.
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 the Republic than America, a
democracy fueled by individual consumption and private property.
America 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 and thus un-Western, like
Soviet Russia.
Socrates
argues that 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.
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.
Why
tell the lie, if we are striving for ideal good and justice? Because
the common 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 they did Socrates.
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, but then when this angers the assembly (as one could have
reasoned), Socrates argues with his students 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.
Plato
also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is
counterproductive, which pretty much means 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 never to injustice or desire. Remember
that Heraclitus also thought it foolish to believe that the gods had the
same problems and flaws as humans.
The Allegory of the Cave
After
being questioned about lying for the purpose of the good and justice,
Socrates says that this is best explained with an analogy. 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 Parmenides above Heraclitus, the eternal and heavenly
above the mortal and earthly.
Imagine
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 much like Jainism and
Buddhism teach, 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 wisdom, not mere earthly opinion and
belief.
The Timaeus
The
Timaeus, the work of Plato which he as well as Christians and Muslims
believed to the most important, is not in spell check when typed today.
Aristotle refers to it more than any other text of Plato’s, and it was
the most important book for philosophers and scientists of the Italian
Renaissance, one of the only works of Plato that Christian Europeans
kept until they got other works of Plato and Aristotle from Muslims. It
is, again, sad that we have largely forgotten it while remembering to
praise the ancient Greeks and Renaissance Italians for being the great
sources of European culture and study. It is very clear after reading
the text why both religious and non-religious people ignore the text,
because both have forgotten what used to be central religious and
scientific beliefs in the European tradition.
Socrates
the day after the party where the ideal Republic is discussed says that
he would like to talk more about the ideal state and how it corresponds
to the cosmos. Then, Critas tells the story of Solon going to Egypt
and that the Egyptians told him of the story of Atlantis. This is,
indeed, where the story of Atlantis comes from and it is not found
earlier in Egypt as Critas says. The Egyptian Priest tells Solon that
the Athenians do not remember because they have just become educated and
civilized, but the Egyptians know from their history records that
thousands of years ago the Athenians stopped the people of Atlantis, who
were threatening to take over the world. We now know that Egypt was
not as many thousands of years old as Plato believed, but this does show
Plato believed that they were civilized long before Athens. The story,
which is now believed to have been an invention by Plato or a story
told to him that he believed, is very similar to the Battle of Marathon,
and the Athenians and Spartans repelling the Persians.
Timaeus
now speaks of the creation of the cosmos out of the One, showing the
order already described of the elements and how the individual human was
created as a microcosm of the macrocosm. This implies that you put
your faculties of desire, spirit and reason in their proper order to be
good and healthy, which is the order of the cosmos. The One sprouts the
eternal order or model of things, which includes all eternal models or
archetypes of things, and the demiurge, the sky father being that is the
small fire at the mouth of the cave, then produces copies of the models
in the ever changing world of earth below. The whole is a living
creature, with the heavens as soul and the all as reason. Timaeus, as
Plato, says that human beings are a plant with their roots in the
heavens. The demiurge fashions reason in soul, and soul in body in
individuals. The demiurge then moves everything in a circle, bringing
about the life and death in circles of earth beings from planetary
orbits and starlight.
This
is all done by sameness and difference. Sameness has the higher and
encompassing role, difference being proportional downward. The four
elements have certain shapes, which are then glued together by the fifth
element, quintessence or ether. This is the cosmology of Christianity
and Europe well through the middle ages, up to Newton and Leibniz, who
read Islamic scholar’s commentaries on the Timaeus. The Medieval
Christians had to retranslate Plato, with central interest in the
cosmology of the Timaeus, from Arabic into Latin.
